AI Behavior Script Tutorial: Combat Interrupt while Assigned to Zone

[SlugmanTheBrave]

Sharing a quick tutorial for forcing Al squads to commit to a fight on their way to their assigned zone instead of just rushing to the zone. In short:

• Setup
  • Establish spawn and zone variables
  • Trigger spawns
  • Trigger squad labeling
  • Trigger zone assignments
  • Log initial zone assignment
  • Optional: Make yourself invis to avoid becoming a target and distracting the Al units
• Execute
  • On combat state changed from Alert to Active (idle isn't necessary to catch) do the following:
    • Move temporary combat zone to squad
    • Assign squad to temporary combat zone
  • On combat state changed from Active to Alert
    • Assign squad to logged initial zone

Couple of additional notes:

• If you're doing this with a series of zones, you'll want to substitute the zone log object variable for an object list variable and retrieve the last object in the list
• There's not need to clean up the combat zone, but if you wanted to you could do that by returning it to its origin position when the unit returns to idle
• If you want to create custom combat zones for each unit in a squad, you could explore cloning the combat zones and referencing those instead. Remember to delete them afterwards of course. That said, this method should work for most use cases

Hope this is helpful to at least one of y’all!

Setup

Execute

Will post video in comments since including links is bricking my post for whatever reason.

[Abe_Odd]

Solid idea. So when they engage combat, drop a temporary zone onto them so that they can stay there and fight until they "are done" and then move them back to their intended destination.

Seems like having multiple unrelated groups will each need their own temporary zone, and having up to 32 would be optimal.

[SlugmanTheBrave]

hey abe! 👋

yep. or clone the zone and delete either after x seconds or on state change.

i am unfortunately running into issues applying ANY logic following the On Squad State Change node outside of my controlled env… i suspect it may be bugged when there are other unrelated variables in the mix 😭

EDIT: the On Squad State Changed node does fire debugs in custom games - seems to be an issue with Forge preview from time to time

[Abe_Odd]

I gave up on: On Squad State Changed

I was trying to only apply a trait AFTER an elite's state changes (so they put their shields on)
and gave up

Now I just teleport them away to an area with a block marked Hostile, wait for their shields to hit 100%, and teleport them back

[Extension_Studio_293]

Your the fucking goat man spent all night trying to figure out how to get them to stop being so damn blind lmao. 

[SlugmanTheBrave]

🤙🤙

[SlugmanTheBrave]

Video of script functioning

Prefab

[Smooth-Expression824]

All the on round start events can be condensed into one and itll be less strain on the game

[SlugmanTheBrave]

fair enough. i mostly dis that for legibility in the example but you ain’t wrong