Infantry



Bots are the A.I. controlled-characters that exist in Ravenfield. In-game, bots can either be on your team and your allies, or on the other team and your enemies. Bots have various behaviours and actions they are able to perform. As Ravenfield continues to be developed, the A.I. of that controls bots will likely become more sophisticated.

Behaviours
Bots are capable of performing certain tasks and actions. Some examples are:

Entering Vehicles: Quite obvious. Slightly buggy, as if a vehicle leaves, the bot will still go where the Vehicle was.

Entering Vehicles in groups: Also quite obvious, except this time the meaning is when multiple bots create a "Group" and enter a vehicle, meaning that the driver won't leave and cause the bug above.

Moving: Moving. Usually toward flags or enemies.

Moving in groups: Same as above, but as a group of units. (Usually 2 or 3)

Stationary: Usually meaning they are defending or finding cover.

Staying in Cover: Usually after Stationary appears. May happen during Stationary.

Squads: Every bot has a "Squad" number. Usually, say you have 30 bots, the highest squad number will be "30" until one dies, meaning the bot will spawn as #31 and so on. There are chances 2 or more Bots will spawn with the same squad number, meaning they will do grouped things, such as stay in the same Vehicle or moving in the same way.

Squads
The Player can also "create" a Squad - the squad's status can be seen above health - which will change depending on your orders: follow you around (Status: "Following"), move where you send them to (Status: "Moving") or Crouch and don't move and just look/shoot around if enemies are near (Status: "Holding"). You can also see how many Bots are following you, if none are follow you the status says "No Squad", if you have a Squad with 1 bot it says "Squad (1):[Holding/Moving/Following]"

You can use the Button you use to get Bots to join your Squad to make them do things too. Casually pressing it will be enough to make the do the objective, but if you stay on the button you'll be able to control it a bit more specific (like Capturing a Flag). It will show some circles, which will say the objective they are if you hover over them, like "Enter/Exit/Commandeer Vehicle" or "Capture/Defend Flag". It will also say "Go to" if you look at something holding the button and "Follow" if you look at the ground.

At the moment 20 bots can follow you. Leaving Vehicles is easy, as they will get out if you do (only if they're in "Following" mode though) or by just using the Bot-Command button on the car, which will if you hover over it say "Exit Vehicle". Also letting squad members drive/fly vehicles is quite hard, as they sometimes just randomly fly/drive in one direction, and you have to send them back, which results in a crash when flying a helicopter most of the time.

Every bot or squad has it's own objective (e.g. capture flag #1 or defend flag #4 etc.) this is effective however once they have an objective they don't shy away from it until it is completed or they die. This can interfere with larger scale battles with 100+ bots making it almost impossible for much change to occur.

Bugs
As the game is still in development, it is to be expected that the A.I is not fully polished or developed. Still, there are some notable bugs worth discussing.

Bot Conga-lines
Perhaps one of the more infamous examples of the quirks of Ravenfield's A.I. Bots would move in rigid and easily distinguishable lines that made their movement very predictable and made them susceptible to being wiped out due to grouping. This has since been fixed, although occasionally behaviours resembling the 'conga-lines' still show up from time to time and the bug still exists in free versions of Ravenfield.

Tripping
A rather unusual bug that manifests in poorly-designed areas of maps, Bots would fall over in certain areas, usually where a wall is or there is a slope or stairs. Bots directly behind the one that "tripped" will also fall over themselves, leading to highly amusing situations where an entire team has fallen over one spot.

Trivia

 * The bots were changed from simple boxes to more detailed soldiers in Beta 6, however there is a setting called 'Box Men Models' that changes it back if applied.