Bot marine tactical navigation

[BenLubar]

Background

Marines have two modes to get their target standing position within a squad:

• "tight" following, which is similar to AS2K4's "blind follow" mode, where marines will follow the squad leader at a predefined offset, rotated by the squad's movement direction (the average of recent movement by the squad leader)
• "tactical" following, where marines choose from the set of nearby info_node_marine_hint and info_marine_hint entities to get their target position and yaw

Tactical following generally looks better, and is the default when there are marine hints in the level or rd_use_info_nodes is set to 1.

There are multiple convars that affect tactical following, chief among them being asw_follow_use_hints (default 2) which makes marines use hints never, in combat, or always. Most of the convars are FCVAR_NONE, meaning they can be freely changed by the host, with a few that are FCVAR_CHEAT, requiring the use of a challenge mode to change.

The Problem

In optimal conditions, marine bots follow the squad leader intelligently. They take mapper-defined tactical positions and stagger their movement, group together tightly in areas where it is necessary (such as the escape trigger or a heal beacon they need), and (if the option were enabled) avoid standing on bombs.

However, in practice, the marines do unwise things like passing through an ally's line of fire while they are shooting, running through enemies to get to their desired position, standing in fires, and in general getting in the way.

What we need to do

• [x] Remember/identify why solutions to problems are disabled (rd_use_info_nodes, rd_bots_ignore_bombs (which fbc2c31b81e144ceb2ce5617b0427bb29a45dbac may have helped), etc.) and fix the problems preventing those variables from being in the optimal state by default.
• [ ] Identify and fix the precise reasons for bots performing unwise actions, like passing through active gunfire on their way to a target location.
• [ ] Figure out why bots sometimes fail to weld doors, etc. - this may or may not be related to the follow position system.
• [ ] Investigate the possibility of adding additional tactical information for bots to use, either automatically or within hammer.
• [ ] Determine what types of danger bots are not reacting to and make them react.

We need to solve this both to improve singleplayer/bot-assisted play, and also because when we add the versus system, we will need marine bots to be able to complete a level on their own to allow versus play in singleplayer.

[BenLubar]

As mentioned in the Discord bug reports channel, we need to check for active player-created dangers too (incendiary mines, gas grenades)

[WhenTanksFly]

Currently the problem number 1 is bot melee being on by default. Running away from team and into horde to melee them is never a good idea.

[BenLubar]

rd_use_info_nodes is apparently off by default because maps without marine hints generally also have very bad nodegraphs. rd_bots_ignore_bombs was off because it was simply broken (and now removed and replaced with rd_bots_avoid_bombs, which works properly)

[BenLubar]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/563560/discussions/2/3874842132561395668/

From Javahead on the forum:

About whom the bots follow...

... in a game with bots and humans I think there should be an option to make them follow whoever added them instead of whoever calls out "Let's go!". This would bring up tactical advantages, with basically two teams running a map (I mean, there ARE two leader characters), splitting up when needed, taking different flanks and so on. What do you think?

PS: Sorry if this has been posted before