BF1 Bonuses Research: Elite Training

[Dark_Phantom]

Hello there!

One of my big projects recently has been to try to document some of the bonuses in BF1 and get a much clearer idea of what they do and possibly patch one of the cut bonuses, Surplus Supplies.
In my research, I was trying to figure out what Elite Training exactly does.  I don't have a complete answer, but I have a much better one than I did before, and can confirm that it does work.  The reason it is disputed is because it is tuned so low that it may seem negligible.  I posted this in the GT server but here is a more permanent and visible home for it.
The chunk of code I identified is this.  I've not ran the function all the way down to the nitty gritty but here's the gist:

Code (cpp) Select Expand

                    /* Is Elite Training Selected? */
      if (*(char *)(&mActiveBonus + local_cc) < '\0') {
        ...
        CombatUtil::SetAISkill(4,0);
       ...
      }

If Elite Training was selected, it runs the function CombatUtil::SetAISkill(4,0).  Tracing this function down, it does some calculations which boil down to this:

team1difficulty = currentSkillLevel + 4
team2difficulty = currentSkillLevel + 0


CombatUtil::SetAIAimValues() then runs and detects the difficulty levels (set through global variables) and sets a bunch of variables like weapon spread/yaw/damping, whatever all that means other than "their aiming sucks less if the difficulty is higher".  (You can see this behavior in SPTest AI cam, the AI can be looking at you and then practically shoot sideways on lower difficulties)

This is not the only influence on AI behavior, but as far as Elite Training is concerned, this seems to be the impact, although it's quite possible that I've missed more stuff in the AIUtil/CombatUtil functionality.  The way the game calls bonuses is extremely haphazard lol.

As a requested test, I changed the value at 1841e8 in the SWBFSpy exe (which is currently 6A 04 in hex) and modified the 04 to another value.  In this case, I picked 20 in hex (which is actually 32).  The easiest way to select the bonus is to play Birth of the Rebellion and pick any map.  Your AI should perform much better than previously, and in the couple of battles I tried (on Hard!), they won the battle by themselves and it wasn't really close.

My research is mainly conducted using Ghidra.  Let me know what you think.

[Red04SWBF]

Interesting findings!

I suspected that Elite Training would indeed be related to an increase in difficulty against the player-controlled side, but I think I have never noticed it enough since I started playing SWBF.

[Zelenium]

Hm, very interesting
Do you know what the highest and lowest levels of teamDifficulty (or it's standart 0-20)? I mean, how good this bonus is compared to the default values?

[Dark_Phantom]

I did not see a limit when I did it.  I think there's a point of diminishing returns obviously but it didn't seem to break.  I think I only set it to 50 at max though. They were rolling through enemies on hard.

EDIT:
So the max constraint is 20 for skill level.  Hard is set to 17 by default for the enemy AI, and 4 for the user AI.
In the SWBFspy exe, at 0x2F07CC (or 6f07cc while running) is a variable that I had misnamed as MIN_DIFFICULTY.  It seems this is actually the MAX_DIFFICULTY.
Pushing this variable up allowed the skill level to exceed 20 when using Elite Training.

[Zelenium]

Do I understand correctly that by default the game has AI difficulties ranging from 0 to 20, and the elite training bonus adds +4 points to the team with the bonus?
Furthermore, have you found a variable that allows you to increase the maximum AI difficulty limit? I.e. make the maximum limit not 20, but 30?

[Dark_Phantom]

Correct, I made a few updates after I did some more research. 1-20 is the default range of values and ET adds 4 to that value.
https://ibb.co/p2rrpYG

I tried to attach a screenshot showing the difficulties and addresses that they are found at in the SWBFSpy exe.  At the bottom is the ET modifier and the MAX_DIFFICULTY which was capping the enemy and player skill levels. Let me know if you can't see the screenshot.  The address is 006f07cc.

[Zelenium]

Thank you, that's a very good discovery.
I know that the complexity of AI not only determines their accuracy, but also their behavior, dodging skills and delay between actions. All of these should, in theory, be boosted by the bonus.

The final thing I'm interested in: what's the spread within the team?
Let's say the difficulty of the team is set to 10. Then how strong and weak bots will spawn? How big is the spread between the weakest AI on the team and the strongest? Is there an answer to this question?
Because I've noticed that the same team can have bots that are clearly stronger and clearly weaker than others.
It gets to the point that in the first part of the game, sometimes there are extremely strong bots that destroy everything in their path.