Infantry

Infantry (also known as *Bots* or *Grunts*) are the basic units in Ravenfield.

## General Information

Infantry units are capable of performing various actions:

* Carry and use various items such as Weapons and Equipment.
* Operate any vehicle in using them to their advantage, and exiting when it is critically damaged.
* Siege or defend capture points.
* Operate alone or in squad formations for their objective.
* Hide from enemy fire when damaged.
* Attack hostile units.

## Navigation and Displacement

Bots follow certain rules and patterns while navigating autonomously on the battlefield. The area on which they can navigate is fixed, and varies based on the map.

### Movement

* Bots will navigate over smooth surfaces and plan paths around obstacles. They cannot climb any slope greater than 35˚.
	+ Bots also maintain the same horizontal speed whilst moving along slopes. This means that a bot will effectively outpace a player while on uneven terrain, or will appear to zip up or down steep ramps at lightning speed.
* They are incapable of jumping, but can be permitted to climb or jump off specific ledges by a map's author.
* They can swim when necessary, but will generally avoid doing so unless few to no other valid routes to their objective exist.
* They can climb ladders to reach designated areas.
* They can crouch, lean, and go prone as the player would.
* They will sprint to traverse longer distances, and slow down to a cautious walking pace in close combat zones (areas with a high amount of cover)

### Attacking

* Bots will attack any adjacent flags. Which flags are "adjacent" to each other is a matter determined manually by the map's creator.
* Bots will attempt to find multiple routes from which to attack a flag. This usually entails a frontal route, and some distinct flanking routes.
	+ These routes are chosen dynamically as the battle progresses. Bots will start by using more direct routes, but will gradually shift to using routes that offer higher chances of success.
* While on foot, bots will employ a number of tactics during enemy encounters.
	+ At close range, they will sometimes halt and seek cover before firing at an enemy.
	+ If no nearby cover exists, they will strafe left and right while firing.
	+ At long range, they will simply halt and crouch to fire. This increases their accuracy.
	+ At longer ranges, they will go prone to fire, unless doing so blocks their sight of the enemy. This further increases their accuracy.

### Defending

* Bots will automatically defend certain flags that are vulnerable to attack.
	+ This depends on how many bots are available for duty, as attacking and roaming generally take higher priority than defense.
* To defend, bots will chose certain obstacles to crouch or stand behind, taking cover. They prefer to use cover that most directly faces enemy flags, and that allows them to see as far as possible. The radius in which this occurs is configured by the map's author.
* When an enemy steps inside a flag's capture zone, all defending bots will automatically rush to that zone and seek out the enemy.
* If a turret is available for use, bots will utilize it to defend.
* Destroyed turrets within a flag's territory can be repaired by friendly bots.

### Vehicles

* Bots will use vehicles that are placed in a flag's territory. They will ignore vehicles discarded by the enemy or by the player.
* Bots will use vehicles to attack the enemy in a variety of ways.
	+ Land vehicles will chose a relatively direct route to attack a flag. If they have passenger seats, they will disembark once arrived, and re-embark to attack again.
	+ Water transport vehicles will do the same but on water. They will generally reach a landing zone before disembarking fully and ditching the vehicle.
	+ Air transport vehicles fly a straight line to the flag, allowing their passengers to parachute down. They will select an air landing zone at which to pick those troops up again.
* Bots can also use vehicles to "Roam" between allied and enemy flags that are actively fighting each-other. This applies to attack helicopters and planes, as well as to attack boats. While roaming, bots will randomly select flags to navigate towards for a set time, before choosing another route.

### Parachutes

* While falling, bots will deploy their parachute to prevent fall damage.

### Squads

* Bots automatically divide themselves into squads upon spawning. The size of a squad defaults to 3, but can be as large as needed to fill a vehicle's seating capacity.
* The squad leader is the frontmost bot in the formation, and it is they who decide what action for the squad to take. If the leader dies, the next bot in the formation takes over.
* Squad formations can vary. The most common formation is a wedge formation, but line and diamond formations can occasionally be seen.
* While defending, formations can be broken or dispersed to suit available cover or turrets.
* Squads currently cannot disband or further divide themselves.

### Orders

Orders are assigned to squad leaders by the "AI Commander", and invisible entity which prioritizes attack and defense for both teams during a match. It factors in several things at once, but will generally operate to ensure that a stable "status quo" develops during a match.

* Depending on what flags have been designated as adjacent, the AI Commander will calculate how many bots should defend, attack and roam on each front.
* Defense usually takes a lower priority than Attack orders, so on maps with many flags or roaming vehicles, defending bots become rare.

### Player Commands

Bot movement can be influenced by player intervention via squad commands. Bots can freely follow a player on foot or by vehicle, and be ordered into or out of any vehicle. However, they may be unable to follow over obstacles, or certain narrow spaces.

## Health and Damage Mechanics

Infantry units will take damage from a variety of sources such as bullets, explosions, vehicle collisions, melee attacks, long falls and map-specific damage zones. Damage from these sources will also often cause them to fall over, whereupon they will need a moment to recover.

### Basic Damage

* All infantry have 100 health at a base. This figure can be modified through Game Mutators or Mods.
* Damage dealt by projectiles varies depending on what part of the body it lands.
	+ Headshots deal 400%damage
	+ Torso hits deal 100%damage
	+ Abdominal hits deal 90% damage
	+ Leg hits vary dynamically, dealing between 80%-60% the lower the hit lands along the legs.
	+ Arms cannot be hit.
* Damage dealt by explosives, melee weapons, and collisions is applied irrespective of body sections.
* Fall damage is only applied once a unit has entered ragdoll mode, has been falling for certain amount of time, and experiences a sudden deceleration.
* Health kits and resupply crates automatically heal infantry within a limited radius at a rate of 30 health per every 3 seconds. Modded items that deal negative damage can achieve a similar effect.
* Taking damage will prevent a bot from opening their parachute for 4 seconds after the damage was dealt.

### Balance Damage / Ragdoll

* Infantry will trip or fall over if certain requirements are met. Generally, this goes hand-in-hand with receiving damage. Each unit has 100 unseen "balance health", which replenishes automatically by 10 points every second. When their balance health reaches 0, they will enter ragdoll.
* In projectiles and explosives, balance damage is a separate statistic from regular damage.
	+ A bullet from an RK-44, for example, will deal in the realm of 50 balance damage. This means that 2 consecutive hits from an RK will topple a bot, while 2 of the same hits spaced out over about a second will leave the target standing, because of the aforementioned replenishing mechanic.
	+ Likewise, some explosions deal roughly 1200 balance damage at their epicentre, but will deal far less to distant target, and can still topple a target that has taken 0 health damage from the blast.
* Explosives deal reduced balance damage to targets behind obstacles. This means that a target fully shielded from harm can still be knocked down from through a wall, for example.
* When a bot's feet leave the ground, or when they eject from an aircraft, they will immediately enter ragdoll mode. The player is not subject to this rule, and will enter ragdoll after they have spent enough time off the ground.
* Contact with a moving vehicle, regardless of speed or direction, will immediately trigger ragdoll mode.
* If a unit takes balance damage again while flopping on the ground, this will not impede their ability to get back up. However, taking any balance damage while the "getting up" animation plays will knock them back down again. Once they are back on their feet, a unit will need to have their balance health reduced to 0 again to be knocked down another time.
* Certain seat types, such as those found on the Prowler Quadbike, will have their rider knocked over instantly by any balance damage source.

### Hero Armor

"Hero Armor" is a damage-reducing buff that applies to the attacking squad during Spec Ops missions. Depending on the game's difficulty setting, it limits the maximum amount of receivable basic damage to between 25 and 40 per hit, and does roughly the same for balance damage. It also prevents the bearer from taking damage again for a fraction of a second after being hit – enough to shrug off a 1-hit kill from a shotgun blast, but not enough to stop a barrage of assault rifle rounds from being lethal.

### Death and Respawning

Dead bots cannot be revived by any means other than the respawn timer. Upon death, they are not immediately queued into the next respawn wave; instead, they must first spend a minimum of five full seconds being dead on the ground before being allowed to join the respawn wait time. This is to ensure that no body immediately disappears after being shot, no matter how short the spawn time is set as. In gamemodes such as Skirmish or Battle where troops can be barred from respawning, bodies can remain on the ground indefinitely.

A bot's body can be kicked to disgorge a small ammunition pack. This only functions once per body.

A body will have active physics while moving or when being shot, but will freeze after a moment of inactivity to save on processing power.

## Weapons and Targeting

Bots follow a set of rules when attacking an enemy

* Bots will usually use their primary weapon against infantry, their secondary as a backup, and their anti-armor weapon against vehicles and turrets.
	+ Note that because of how mods can allow for any type of weapon to go in any slot, this is not set in stone. The main thing that allows bots to decide on their weapon usage is Target type and effective range.
* If the enemy is out of the effective range of the bot's weapon, they either will not fire, or will switch to a weapon that allows them to fire.
	+ The weapon's effective range is a matter determined purely by the statistic set by the weapon's creator. This means that a modded shotgun can, for example, be used by a bot as if it were a sniper rifle, based purely on human error.
* If a bot runs fully out of ammo in their primary, they will swap to their secondary. Once that has been exhausted, they will use whatever else is available, such as grenades and anti armor. A fully depleted bot can sometimes be observed helplessly clutching a wrench or sabre as their final gambit, if they have one.
* When using a vehicle or mounted machine gun, Bots will sweep the gun across the enemy location, enabling them to hit multiple targets at once (though they are still technically only aiming at one).
* Bots will generally only attack things in their line of sight, and will generally continue to attack them until they score a kill or lose sight of them.
* They will prioritize returning fire on aggressors, but only if they do not have another target already engaged.
* Bot vision is limited by the fog distance of the current map, and is reduced by the nighttime setting.
	+ As NVG is avaliable by default and cannot be altered, the night mode vision reduction is difficult to directly observe outside of Conquest mode, where both teams must research NVGs before using them.

## Skill Level and Difficulty Settings

Skill and difficulty are two separate parameters that affect bot behaviour.

**Difficulty settings** can be configured via the options menu, and affect all bots in a match. There are 3 settings, easy, medium and hard, and the bots' aim reaction time and accuracy increase with each level.

**Skill level**, on the other hand, affects bots on an individual basis. In every match, bots are randomly assigned a skill level, which also affects their reaction time and accuracy. Bots with a higher skill level will generally accrue more kills on the scoreboard over time. Those with a lower skill level will often reach the match's end with barely a fifth of the top-performing bots' score.

A bot's skill level can also affect how likely they are to use a specific weapon for a specific task. For example, a more skilled bot is far more likely to target an aircraft with a mounted vehicle machine gun, while less skilled bots might ignore the aircraft entirely. Their tendency to use weapons in this fashion is ultimately determined by a hidden skill stat on the weapon itself, but generally, it boils down to how easy it is to hit a target with a certain weapon, and whether that weapon is specifically suited to that target.

## Bot Names

### Default

* Iwan
* Baron
* Atem
* Frost
* Kahvi
* Croc
* Grams
* Blitz
* Pea
* Kibitz
* Septic
* Penguin
* Turner
* Swammer
* James
* Ref Error
* Sturgeon
* Rob Storm
* RealRaven
* CreeperKiller09
* Hypercore
* Drae
* Vio
* Semtex
* Ronnie
* Kibitz
* Buccaneer

### Custom

It is possible to use custom bot names by editing the botnames.txt file. Each name must be separated by starting a new line.

If purchased on steam, it is also possible for the game to use Steam Friends' nicknames that the player set for them.

Should the player fail to provide sufficient custom bot names, the game uses default ones as fillers.

## Known Bugs

This list is far from an official issue tracker, as the number and specific nature of glitches are in a constant state of flux. Below is a list of the more common recurring issues.

### Conga Lines

Bots may move in rigid and easily distinguishable lines, making them extremely easy targets. Most noticeable in the very early betas, when bots would clump together in single file all the time.

This issue is far less frequent than it used to be, and generally only occurs around very restrictive or ill-connected pathfinding zones. Occasionally, bots will take up a line squad formation, which is fully intended behaviour, and not strictly speaking a conga line.

### Tripping

Bots would fall over in certain areas in certain maps, causing all other bots behind them to also fall on the spot.

### Friendly Fire

Bots will ignore allies in vicinity if they have a visual on a target. It is possible for the bot to unintentionally harm and kill allies.

### Mid-Air Collisions

In maps where aerial vehicles are common, bot pathfinding may be glitched, causing frequent Mid-Air Collisions and consequently killing everyone in all the involved aircraft.

### Stretching / Spaghettification

Bots may stretch and distort after being struck with a hight amount of impact force, or after being struck normally during a moment of low game performance. In extreme cases, the physics engine can fling them so hard that they appear to vanish completely, or transform into impossible, flickering, tangled geometric "spaghetti" in the sky. Other telltale signs of this include: (a), inexplicable frame drops, (b), a bot streaking across the Minimap at extreme velocities, or appearing stuck beyond the minimap's boundary, (c), an invisible bot appearing to get hit or die from an attack that did not come anywhere close to hitting them, or (d), vehicles and other rigidbodies being physically shunted and buffeted by invisible forces.

### Wall Crossing

In some circumstances, bots can cross walls while walking or sprinting. This bug can be annoying, as "ambushing" can happen while an enemy bot is walking/sprinting.

### "Wall-hacking"

Bots will sometimes continue to target and shoot at a player after they have retreated behind cover, even succeeding to kill them through multiple layers of walls. This is an unintended by-product of new failsafe designed to prevent bots from hitting obstacles from behind which they would be firing, such as windowsills and sandbags.

### "Truce"

Bots will rarely cease all hostilities and amble around eachother passively. This usually goes hand in hand with another physics engine breakage.

## Gallery

Eagle Infantry.Raven Infantry.Walkman Raven Bot.Another view of the Walkman Raven Bot.Raven Communications Officer.
## Trivia

* Prior to EA1, all Infantry had Box Men Models. This can still be enabled in the settings menu in newer game versions.
* Rarely, a bot may spawn with a Walkman and headset attached to its model. Kicking this bot's body would once disgorge a music tape, which then unlocked the main menu music. The tape can no longer be acquired, though the bot remains.
	+ The bot that spawns in with the Walkman will always have the name Rick.