Steve's Army

Steve’s Army

Lead your own squad of persistent AI soldiers through combat in Minecraft.

Recruit soldiers, equip them with weapons, armor, and ammunition, organize them into fire teams, and command them with a tactical ping system. Your squad detects enemies, shares threat information, takes cover, suppresses hostile positions, advances toward objectives, and fights alongside you.

Example video: https://youtu.be/u89X8uPOlQ4

Features

Squad Command

• Recruit soldiers into your own squad. (currently can only recruit with spawn egg)
• Switch between Follow and Hold modes.
• Order soldiers to move to locations, attack objectives, or suppress enemy positions.
• Recall or dismiss individual soldiers.
• Open soldier inventories and manage their weapons, armor, healing items, and ammunition.
• Squad members and their equipment persist through world saves.

Fire Teams

• Organize your squad into up to four fire teams: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta.
• Assign recruits to specific teams.
• Cycle through fire teams with fire teams control button to control or highlight only that group.
• Fire teams are assigned and rebalanced based on weapon types and soldier positions.

Smart Combat AI

• Soldiers detect enemies using line of sight instead of x-ray vision.
• Detection is affected by distance, visibility, movement, exposure, and brightness.
• Aim quality and target acquisition change based on movement, target exposure, weapon accuracy, recoil, and firing posture.
• Soldiers share enemy contacts, last-known positions, and threat information with their squad and you, the player.
• Soldiers reload from their own inventories and manually operate compatible bolt-action weapons.
• Injured soldiers use healing items from their inventories.
• Friendly-fire checks help soldiers avoid shooting squadmates and allies.

Tactical Cover

• Soldiers search for and evaluate nearby defensive positions.
• Cover selection considers protection, firing angles, flanking risks, distance, squad spacing, and formation position.
• Soldiers use low cover, full-height cover, crouching, crawling, and temporary firing positions.
• Soldiers peek around cover when they have a viable firing angle.
• Cover positions are reserved to prevent multiple soldiers from crowding into the same location.
• Soldiers abandon ineffective or compromised positions and search for better cover.

Suppression

• Incoming fire, explosions, and near misses can suppress soldiers.
• Suppression reduces combat effectiveness and can keep soldiers pinned behind cover.
• Soldiers recover from suppression more quickly while protected.
• Squads can coordinate suppressive fire against shared threats.
• Machine guns are especially effective for sustained suppression.
• Use the SUPPRESS_AREA ping to deny an area and prevent enemies from safely exposing themselves.

Attack Movement

• Use the ATTACK ping to assign an objective.
• Soldiers move toward attack positions while using available cover.
• They spread out to reduce clustering and reposition when their current route or firing position becomes ineffective.

Respawn as a Squadmate

If you die while you have living squad members, you can respawn as the nearest living soldier. Your soldier’s equipment and inventory are transferred to you, allowing you to continue the fight from the squad’s position.

Tactical Ping Wheel

Coordinate your squad with eight ping types:

• GO_TO: Move soldiers to a location.
• ATTACK: Assign an attack objective.
• THREAT_DIRECTION: Mark the direction or location of a threat.
• SUPPRESS_AREA: Order suppressive fire against an area.
• FOLLOW: Return soldiers to Follow mode.
• HOLD: Order soldiers to hold their positions.
• SEND: Send a single soldier to a location.
• LOCATION: Mark a point of interest.

Pings are rendered as in-world markers with labels and distances, and can be shared with players on the same scoreboard team.

TaCZ Compatibility

Steve’s Army supports firearms from Timeless and Classic Guns (TaCZ) when it is installed.

Soldiers can:

• Aim and fire TaCZ weapons.
• Use weapon-specific accuracy and recoil.
• Reload magazines using ammunition from their inventories.
• Operate manual-bolt weapons.
• Use different firing behavior for rifles, SMGs, and machine guns.
• Conduct coordinated suppressive fire.

TaCZ is optional. But without it, the soldiers can't quite do anything

Valkyrien Skies Support

Steve’s Army supports transporting soldiers with Valkyrien Skies ships and compatible Create contraptions.

• Soldiers can board supported seats and transport vehicles.
• Soldiers remain mounted while the ship moves.
• Soldiers can disembark safely when transport ends.
• Ship collisions are avoided during navigation where possible.
• Soldiers can be extracted if they become trapped or entangled with a moving ship.

Ships are treated as transport platforms rather than normal terrain for soldier AI.

PlayerRevive Compatibility

When PlayerRevive is installed, nearby soldiers can help revive bleeding players by contributing revive progress. If the player eventually bleeds out, Steve’s Army can select a living squadmate as a respawn point when available.

Dependencies

Required:

• Minecraft 1.20.1
• Forge 47.4.0 or newer within the Forge 47 range

Optional:

• TaCZ 1.1.0 or newer
• Valkyrien Skies 2.3.0 or newer
• PlayerRevive 2.0 or newer

AI Disclosure

This project was developed with substantial assistance from LLM-based AI tools [ChatGPT 5.6], which generated portions of the source code. The human author provided the design direction, feature ideas, testing, integration, and final release decisions.

Steve’s Army turns Minecraft combat into a squad-based tactical experience where positioning, visibility, cover, suppression, and coordinated movement matter.