Messages

136

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.6.6

« on: September 21, 2023, 05:22:43 pm »

Of corse this will not fix problem like energy shields that are vulnerable only to specific weapons types.

Of course, that's what I come up to during the analysis of possibilities: if modder (universe's God) gives something to the unit, it is purposeful and should be used.
Other, special attacks use should be balanced purpose-wise. If howl, then specifically to disrupt reactions. If CHARM, then specifically to take one out of the equation, not just to inflict some stun.

137

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.6.6

« on: September 21, 2023, 01:30:03 pm »

A mission vs ghosts that can only do CHARM damage. (it is similar to daze and inflicts stun.)
Indeed, now AI doesn't use it, preferring to hide or run around, whereas in vanilla it just spammed charm spells until whole crew is unconscious.
I, in person, think that AI still doesn't realize that driving whole enemy squad unconscious is victory condition, too.
If it can inflict wounds - that's good,
If it cannot, then every possible way is good.
Ghosts can do much better, as their attacks ignore armor.

Firstly it checks this via the scoring-algorithm that also determines who to attack. There it calculates the assumed damage based on their weapon-damage, the targets armor and the targets resistances.

That's convenient, but does it:
- count (0-100)x2 damage roll? Which means, that weapons rarely make 200% damage
- to be not that cheaty, at least try to inflict damage before deciding to flee or hide?
- know that fire does at least 1 damage?
- know that his weapon (mostly, multibarrel weapons and energy weapons) reduces target's armor, and then damage can be inflicted?
- interesting, can BAI decide to pass the most convenient weapon to the next unit (e.g. drop it on ground and move a tile, then next unit picks up the weapon and shoots one more time, as player can do this multiple times)

Well, actually the part of the balance is mostly up to the modders who design enemies in each tier of game, BAI's part is to make it better in decision making.
If some unit cannot inflict damage, it still should act with it's powers.

BTW, ghost mission is not the only when possible CHARM attacks are mostly ignored by BAI. There's a mission where naked guys are running around your single soldier on cruise liner. Seems like they don't know how to use melee CHARM attack properly. This is their only attack, because lore-wise they are non-combatants (no brawl).
Ranged CHARM attacks from other units were simultaniously used (although not that efficiently as it could be).

What is it all about, I think:
If modder adds some special weapon (like special claws, howl, or melee/ranged charm, or mind control), he presumes that it alone will make difficulties to the player, thus keeping intrigue even in mid/late missions where all-brutally armored.

138

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.6.6

« on: September 21, 2023, 11:11:01 am »

Made saves for werewolves howling, both geoscape (vessel approaching) and battlescape. The version with "bugged" behavior was 7.6.1. Testing it too.
UPD. Works much better.
Still, one thing that will raise the elegance: howling disrupts reaction attacks, so if werewolf howls at someone, he logically should attack that particular unit.
Right now howling is much less (still here, which is good for objective reasons), but melee attacks and "aimed shots" are patterned in such way that melee to closest unit, while howl at random.   

139

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.6.6

« on: September 21, 2023, 10:35:48 am »

Xilmi, I read the changelog for 7.6.6. and it seems practically good approach.
The mechanics in OXCE are that each crewmate death damages morale for all units. Plus, in XPZ morale lowers by itself due to units' armor stats (crew gets bored).

"The AI shall no longer attack targets that it cannot harm at all and instead spend their time-units on something else." -
How is it checked?
If by trial and error, then will it be that barehanded naked guys will flee from power-armored crew? 

140

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.6.3

« on: September 20, 2023, 01:36:05 am »

Xilmi, one more thing I found out:
dogs, werewolves etc. have barking/howling attack, which is ordinarily used to damage TU, morale and reactions, rarely causing stun reactions.
BAI tends to prefer this over convenient claws/jaws, which damages HP.
Recently I've got the mission in X-Piratez where I had to deal with 9 werewolves barehandedly (don't ask why, it's insanely deep lore of XPZ), and they were running around me and howling.

Could that be another AI check: if something can do lethal damage, prefer it over others (not 100% chance, maybe 66-80% because howling is fun too). But I have little comprehension how that would not cause troubles with tribals behavior, who prefer using poisonous darts (damages little HP, but lot of morale and stun), but have daggers as well. See, they doing good. Only dogs and werewolves aren't.

Right now I am doing mission vs deep ones on cruise liner, and I have to say it's very immersive to freaking be scared of every door across, because that last couple of MF's lured so nicely for last suicidal run in the name of deep ocean god.

GJ man. 

141

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.6.1

« on: September 07, 2023, 12:48:44 pm »

Edit: Question: Was this with his feature enabled?
Also: Can you provide a save where you think they should have used ranged-weapons but went for melee instead for testing-purposes?

Oh. God. Save is long gone. I should have long gotten into the spirit of baghunting... It also may be worth considering that I still play 7.5.1.
Will try to catch the moment, if it will happen again.

- For the lobstermen: I noticed that they indeed prefer to take things from the ground. In "vanilla" X-Piratez, btw, they don't, possibly because of hardcoded string in the unit description.
Naturally, I think, strong-armored units like lobstermen should act more open, instead of peeking and taking cover. Also, their claws are strong enough to rip non-powersuit player units apart.

Actually, all these questions are fluid, as the player's progress goes on, strong enemy units eventually become weak (not even saying about special measures vs most types of enemies that modders carefully introduced. Like, deep ones are very exposed vs poison grenades).
So, strong enemies that are supposed to be very aggressive in the beginning of the game become paper-made in the late game.
I don't think this issue can be addressed other than by careful map-balancing by a modder himself.

- For the zombies.
1. In vanilla OXCE X-Piratez and X-Com Files low-tier zombies cannot evade shooting from close-quarter combat (CQC) position, whereas Brutal OXCE somehow enables this behavior.
2. Even with max aggressiveness, BAI zombies sometimes prefer to surround and go around behind player units instead of just biting from closest tile. Sometimes this behavior is good and interesting, but most of the times it reduces actual strength of zombies attack wave. I cannot find out what type of attack zombies do use, X-Pedia 2.0 says they have built-in item "zombie punch" worth 15 TU but doesn't specify the damage. It might be hardcoded somewhere specially for zombies.
3. Also, in vanilla XCF zombies make special growling sound when seeing and chasing enemy units)
The easiest way I might suggest is BAI rely on vanilla rules with everything that regards low-tier zombie threat. They are well-balanced and there's not much for AI to consider: see-chase-kill.

142

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.6.1

« on: September 04, 2023, 12:11:37 pm »

I’ll go on the wave of illogic things BAI does:
When BAI decides whether to go onto melee or not, it doesn't count weapon strength and estimated target's armor. I'll specify that bare fists count as melee weapon, too.
Now, how weird it's to see that enemies try to punch a power-armored player's unit.
Not that it is unfavorable, but can be dice rolled, if not forcing BAI to assume armor/weapon check via cheat (cheating may raise the difficulty of gameplay, which is already a couple of tiers higher than vanilla), or more honestly, to check whether it works or not (damage/stun application check (yes/no) -> decides to switch weapon).

143

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.6.1

« on: September 01, 2023, 08:11:54 pm »

I toyed around with considering dead friends in the cuddle-Avoid-Modifier but eventually decided against it.

I'm sorry, this reply will not be even close to structurized: I try to estimate experience with BAI from different perspectives the same time. I really want to keep this challenging, yet balanced to certain point of joy.

I am considering, specifically two things:
- Ag3, because it seems like the most live-action (not mega-boring game, faster game, but disappointing in terms of wasting TU for too fast advance vs keeping it to fire back)
- There are tons of various scenarios for this game.
From player is Naked/rifles vs Powersuits/rockets/plasma/gauss enemies
to Player is powersuits/gauss/rockets vs Naked enemies,
to 190 TU chupacabras fights (which BAI wisely invests in killing player units within every possible scenario) 

One of the most challenging scenarios: when you begin mission, surrounded by tier/tier+ enemies, all facing towards you, with 100% TUs. And after you shoot, you get a hail of reaction bullets, plasma, rockets, whatever.

Same time, no matter how advanced AI in terms of open-battlefield tactics is, it may be weird to presume that armored units should take cover, not preserving TU's for reaction fire, being able to actually fire in reply, or even prior to player.
Also, in the fair scenario, enemies rarely die from 1 bullet taken. And after taking single bullet, even in back, they may turn back and fire whatever they have equipped. But, in case of weak enemies, usually missions designed in way of enemies quantity. 

If only BAI can decide whether this particular unit can take role of a tank... I would suggest a bit of change for Ag3. Name it Aggressiveness 3,5 (Plan B). instead of force-hide closer to supposed player location, BAI can act more open:
- if player is seen, then Ag2 tactics,
- if not, prefer more strategic surrounding over ending turns w/o TU's (not close enough, more reaction-fire oriented, with chose of two strategies: weak armor: carefully advancing + preserve from the corner AND  strong armor: reaction fire-oriented surround + preserve facing the open direction).

144

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.5.1

« on: August 29, 2023, 10:21:10 pm »

Couple of tiles away from the door, my units see enemy units: ones that trying to hide behind the apple trees.
And they will not shoot back, most likely.

145

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.5.1

« on: August 29, 2023, 10:07:12 pm »

Hello, dear

I would like to make make a couple of notes here:
- AI units that are on control by BAI, tend to take same places, where the previous AI unit was killed, next turn. (see pic below)
This is unfavorable scenario, because this tile should be considered dangerous.
Especially, when human prefers camping scenario.
If you feel willing to improve this behavior, this will also add some side-variety to ordinary gameplay.

Coupling this with aggressiveness shifts and randomization (discussed previously), will make it a bit more living and unpredictable.

- second, I think some shift towards preserving TU's (or even randomization of behavior, too) will make it better in sense of overall competitive efforts. I don't know, really. Enemy BAI-controlled units, that camp behind the corner, most of the cases do nothing when player's units walk in (now, X-Piratez playthrough, last version of BAI up to the moment).
See, the strategy BAI considers best is" off-corner shooting and back" is truly good vs slow human-controlled units. If average speed (and overall stats) of human-controlled units is better than BAI's, TU preservation and ambush strategy becomes more favorable, in common sense.

A question:
- can BAI assume player unit's speed and skills, based on first couple of turns? Is it possible to add strategy matrix? That would be cool.
-  Can strategy matrix influence all types of BAI units aggressiveness?
Few thoughts how strategy-matrix may be considered:
- human's playstyle is camping on the open ground (current BAI works pretty well, maybe too well for that)
- human's playstyle is mostly in-door vehicle camping (BAI cannot solve this yet without armor/weapons or unit stats advantage)
- human's playstyle is out-of the door camping + few tiles scouting + back (BAI lacks assumption of supposed scouting positions of human units moving to-and-back. If added, BAI can preserve TU for reaction shooting) 
- human's playstyle is fast advance and close-range (BAI lacks TU preservation. Also, BAI lacks many-reaction-shooters strategy).
I might reconsider this (too spontaneous decision to write my thoughts here, but all from the best intent).
This, also, may be off-reality, because only you know the BAI patterns. But, by this moment I played vs it quite excessive (70+ hrs).
 
Have a good evening!

146

XPiratez / Re: [submod] Aquacuffs

« on: August 28, 2023, 10:05:47 am »

The best manacles is punch-n-a-face

147

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.5.1

« on: August 23, 2023, 01:15:26 pm »

The value could be changed on every pass a unit goes through and also tied to certain conditions. My idea of realizing the random aggressiveness was to roll for it at the beginning of the first turn. But it could also happen every turn. But that's probably a bit too random.

Well, this worth collective consideration to give max profit for the gameplay.
- the most frustrating thing is that AI-controlled units are most likely scattered around the map.
- the second thing is that with BAI level 2, most battles are ending within 5-10 turns, except the grand maps like bases, mansions and story missions (more exposure and pressure than DAI).
 
Occasionally, the way it can work is between-turn switching from pre-rolled aggressiveness to aggressiveness level 2 and back. Say, BAI randomizes ninja to 2.5, then, in random turn to 2, and again.
Also, a switch between 1 and 2.5 may seem intriguing.

Balanced twist scenarios are always welcome.
That can be also referred to as aggressiveness waves. Sounds cool.

148

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.5.1

« on: August 23, 2023, 09:19:57 am »

Xilmi, hi!
May the goddess bless you, you are wonderful.

For the sake of added variety and value of your mod, please consider these questions:

What do you think of randomization of units aggressiveness within one battle? Is it feasible?
Can BAI core support the multiple aggressiveness scenarios within one enemy turn, given that it can change the value?
What do you think if unit aggressiveness changes to lower value if enemy gets fatal wound?

I think the following options would do great:
* Enable Brutal AI vary aggressiveness of enemy units (On/Off)
* Min Aggressiveness (0-4)
* Max Aggressiveness (1-4)
* Enable Brutal AI lower aggressiveness if unit gets fatal wound (On/Off)

With true random generator, each battle will be different.

149

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.2.3

« on: August 09, 2023, 10:46:30 am »

Hey Xilmi,
In 5 years I haven't seen ANY blaster launchers shots from OXCE AI. All these guys with blaster launchers (mind-guided missiles) were just decorations to punch them and collect stuff. This solely is an advancement worth mentioning.
Bad the thing is: all mods are balanced around some enemy units being decoration instead of real competitive power.
Just in case.

For everything you mentioned, yes, game conditions sometimes resemble RSP game. But each race in original has been designed having their strengths and weaknesses. Like, tanky mutons are weak to mind attacks, while weak sectoids (and aquatoids) can watch through walls (!) and can apply mind control themselves. If only that can be considered in decision of BAI strategy in each particular case, that will be mind-blowing experience for a player.

Stats do determine a lot, and that's one of player's tools of victory: while in the beginning stats of hired personnel are weak and uncompetitive, trained and transformed units are well above mediocre-level enemies.  When you compare experience from auto-quick battle with campaign mission, please consider that player units in second case are stronger (tool of victory, you remember?)

In the beginning, I was frustrated how different the base assault mission is. All enemy units simultaneously take proper positions and attack, making base attack few-turn intense operation. While playing against vanilla AI you had to look all at all corners of the map to find some dangling entity that doesn't know what to do (and that it's haven is under assault).
Again, the problem here is that all has been balanced against some units are decorations until certain point of time. E.g. you battle against one half of enemies in the first sector of the map, then 1/4 in next sector upon spread of your units and so on.

Both situations are extremes.
Both situations are getting player bored after same and same experience in each mission.

I think, I would like to make three suggestions:
1) OXCE menu option
If modder doesn't yet assign each unit's aggression, possible solution is to add some randomization in assigning BAI units playstyles in the beginning of each mission. Is it feasible?
The advanced suggestion is decisive randomization: if BAI can check the units role, it can assign from diapason of aggressiveness: like 0-3 for ranged, 0-2 to mind controllers and 2-4 to melee.

2) The second suggestion regards sameness of each mission. Do you have any insights how to make BAI switch strategies in between?
It's getting weird to watch some low-tier enemy shoot ordinary pistol bullets into power-armor units. Any feedback from action?
Player sees if the attack indeed damages enemy unit (enemy unit gets colored slightly red if any damage, or intense red if fatal wounds are inflicted), I think enemy deserves the same. 
 
3) Related to (1): Race strategy personalization. BAI checks stats and if some competitive sides are available, BAI finds the strategy to maximize it.
Example: condition - night, sectoid NV is far better than players => attack from beyond and mind control more, than approach.
Or, implement mass panic operation. Like, all BAI sectoids are hidden in the ship and emit panic messages to approaching troops, which then be their competitive advantage during the battle inside a ship. 

These suggestions may conflict, but vary gameplay much, which is good in terms of several hundred missions during the ordinary campaign.

150

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.1.2

« on: August 02, 2023, 12:42:03 pm »

So, what do you think of aggression 2.5, Xilmi?