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Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.1.0

« on: July 19, 2023, 05:59:29 pm »

Major props on implementing the tough units purposefully triggering mines idea, Xilmi. Quite enjoying all the other updates and improvements you've made thus far as well.

Have a couple questions, though: Would you be willing to make the better pathing for UFOs on search missions default or at least separate from 'aggressive retaliation' option? The fact that this also triggers retaliation missions on landed craft and means UFOs also always search for bases means it just never goes on for me despite the objective improvement.

Also is there a meaningful difference if one decides to manually designate the targetting mode of melee units? I wouldn't expect there to be since they need to get into visual range to attack you anyway but want to make sure. Made a mod for use with 'inherit unit aggression' base game that along with assigning sensible (to my eye anyway) aggression levels to the individual units also designates which units can target what based on their class and abilities. Essentially bulky units and soldiers position themselves closest to your units as the heavys / defacto scouts with the rarer, more specialized units having the ability to target what these guys see with only leaders generally being able to blindly target your units based on their relative position and activity thanks to their big brains (specifically thinking about blaster bombs.) Expanded this role to navigators who won by default (engineers get blaster bombs and I want to contrast their lack of "skill" using them with the leaders, medics I want being more passive) so there's a at least a theoretical threat of the AI blindly grenading your units on regular missions.

Edit: Updated the mod to toggle 'Leeroy Jenkins' mode properly.

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Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 6.4.0

« on: June 28, 2023, 09:40:19 am »

Greatly appreciate the update Xilmi. I'm sure everyone will be satisfied now...probably. lol

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Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 6.4.0

« on: June 26, 2023, 08:52:11 pm »

That one comment "my squad was blaster-lanched on turn two-three, giving the infinite panic loop" is purely out of tamagochi approach of mission-by-mission raising elite squad of guys who will assault the Cydonia chambers (36 ppl, in all, vs 200-300 top aliens).

'Your AI is too hard.'
'Why?'
'You can pick a a whole bunch of options to make it that way! See, I'm going to cite someone who's having fun trying to figure out how the AI works when given every opportunity to mess you up.'
'...'

For the record, I didn't mean a true panic spiral nor does the AI do this every time. Next two tests (me vs AI for ~6 turns, AI vs AI for 16 until XCom was done) didn't trigger blaster launchers at all.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 6.4.0

« on: June 25, 2023, 08:53:42 pm »

Boom. Downloading the update right away. Appreciate the quick turnaround.

Edit: Can confirm Brutal AI has officially been woken up with inherited aggression on. Turn two blaster bomb killed at least 3 guys despite only one of them being left out in the open (concealed in smoke but intially in full view of a floater that survived the turn before). Turn 3 had a second blaster bomb annihilate the rest of my bunkers once the exposed aliens from the previous turn were dealt with. Queue the panic spiral. LMFAO.
Have to note that the floater I talked about on the first turn DID move to trigger the mine I left in front of him. In my initial post wasn't exactly sure if I had left it just out of his movement range or directly in front of him since I hadn't taken a screenshot, but now I'm leaning towards thinking it was directly in front of him, leaving no escape.

Edit 2: Second brief test went similar to the first only no alien was visible to me this go around. Mine wasn't triggered from the placement the third screenshot shows but the blaster bomb wiping the area clear that same turn might have something to do with that. I assume the scouts go first before the launcher is fired. 1 death on both sides as a result, theirs being friendly fire of course, several injuries on mine. All in all pleased to have base defenses be appropriately terrifying as well as get an early warning that my usual base design philosophy needs serious readjustment. Might finally have a reason to turn the 'limit explosives use to turn 3' option on.

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Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 6.3.9

« on: June 25, 2023, 09:12:29 am »

Okay, I've analyzed it. It is a pathfinding-issue afterall!
For their planning my AI uses the Dijkstra-pathfinding but for the actual movement it seems like it uses bresenhamPath and if this doesn't work A*.
So there's basically a discrepancy. If there's different ways to walk to the same target, for example: "north-east, north-east, east" and "east, north-east, north-east" then there's a slight difference between plan and execution. A difference, that may very well mean life or death depending on whether there's a mine on one path but not the other.
The very same underlying cause could also make the difference between walking through reaction-fire or not.

So my goal is now to figure out how I can make the AI to actually use the same path it had planned and not make a new one that may or may not be different from that.

Edit 2:

No idea why it first attempts bresenham and only uses A* when that fails. A* and Dijkstra seem very similar and in my test also have the same result. So by skipping the attempt of bresenham the Alien no longer triggers the mine. Now putting the mine-check into the path-finding-itself, maybe in a similar way to how Sneaky-AI works should help to make it find paths around mines, when possible.

Thanks for the explanation! The rabbit hole goes even deeper than I thought. Happy to know I tipped you off on this issue. if you make any more progress on implementing a fix I'd be happy to hear it.

Just to confirm, the intended behavior you meant for the AI is to stay back behind any mines you drop and wait for you to approach instead, launching bombs if it "hears" or sees clusters of your troops in the interim?

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Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 6.3.9

« on: June 24, 2023, 05:21:00 pm »

With the modified "Aggressive Retaliation"-option winning missions against landed UFOs should also trigger base-defense. It also fixes that they simply wouldn't find your base in certain locations due to how they were searching for it. They got a new searching-pattern, if you enable that option.

Hell no! I like my guy's insides exactly where they are, thank you very much. Unlike certain others I have no problem lowering the recommended difficulty settings for myself to make the game more fun. That fix does genuinely sound to be a good thing but I haven't necessarily had many issues with bases not being discovered if I've taken appropriate risks in triggering the missions.

Hmm... I definitely have to investigate it then. This is not supposed to happen. One explanation would be that inherit aggression could lead them to go into sweep-mode. So depends on what their base-aggression is. I prefer using balanced aggression for these tests. As that's what I do almost all of my tweaking on.

Yeah, pretty much confirmed this pattern of behavior on superhuman as well in order to check the terrorist's behavior (none spawned earlier) and evaluate the danger of blaster bombers with squadsight. As in the first test the AI became far more conservative the fewer in number there were to the point they stopped charging and I had to hunt them in the hanger / flush out some of the positions near the elevator they were presumably using to peek and definitely using to camp. Managed to avoid convincing the enemy that launching their bombs would be a good idea as I keep the hallway pretty well smoked throughout with the troops hiding within the doors usually. Overall ended the mission with 6 deaths and 2 drone scrappings, some of which were caused by human error. Wish I'd have thought to have taken some screenshots of the more interesting moments, though.
in any case, if this behavior wasn't intended then I can see why introducing dedicated pathing logic for mines might be a good idea as it'll solve multiple problems at once on top of making things more interesting. To give a nod to alledged nerfing concerns certain others have brought up in the case of mods like XCF, it would certainly make more powerful and heavier mines capable of killing and incapacitating tanky units viable again as the AI wouldn't want to trigger them if at all possible if serious damage or death were likely unlike the less lethal cousins. Food for thought. ...You can take your sweet time getting around to adjusting the AI's behavior on inherited aggression for now, though. I like winning fairly convincingly. lmfao.

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Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 6.3.9

« on: June 24, 2023, 07:10:29 am »

 

Next turn, after evading mines, enemies should toss primed grenades back to thrower the same turn. If some TUs are saved for that case. Because, AI should win anyhow. That was sarcasm and joke.

Heaven forbid one be of the opinion that the AI might be better off using a bit of nuanced strategy dealing with your already impressive toolset and status as a thinking human. That's the equivalent of wanting it to utterly (and unfairly, most importantly) dominate the player! If you want to convince people you're joking, maybe don't inject so much accusatory bitterness in your post especially in the context of your next response.

And who are these guys, who comment only your branch, with brand new nicknames?

I'm me. Howdy. What, lurkers can't post for the first time and then respond to a reply of said post without being viewed without suspicion? You're a strange individual. I'm in agreement with panzer. Turn down your settings and / or the difficulty until the game is fun again and you'll be fine.

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Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 6.3.9

« on: June 23, 2023, 05:40:09 pm »

Well I haven't gone far enough in the game to ecounter a proper base defense as of yet (purposefully avoiding downing UFOs) but did do a brief test of precisely what the AI does when it encounters mines in the mission generator's base defense. Beginner difficulty, Floaters, minimum tech and inherit unit aggression turned on. Turns out the floaters have no problem running into them to their deaths as if they weren't there kind of like base AI with the mission playing out pretty much the same as it does normally: Mine and hide (smoke / doors) until one of the aliens sets it off, reset as needed with occasional instances where multiple enemies would break through and get shots off on my guys waiting inside the doors closest to the elevator while (it did take full advantage of squadsight in these cases naturally.)  The was one moment when one purposefully walked around a mine that was misplaced by one tile but I don't know if that's a coincidence based on where they spawned or what.

All in all I think it would be brilliant if you could find a way to attach some neat pathfinding logic to the AI's consideration of mines but it doesn't seem to be an absolutely critical issue so far (at least when it comes to base game) that can be exploited any more than it was in vanilla. Maybe it's different with a mod like XCF with a hundred+ enemies running around the map with only a few ways to get to you. They might be able to be manipulable into taking the exact path you want them to.

No plans to record any of my gameplay for now but you for sure aren't the only one interested in seeing seeing a lot more footage than is available. I need as many tips as possible considering how many painful losses I'm taking. I'm only heartless towards soldiers with garbage stats unfortunately.

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Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 6.3.9

« on: June 21, 2023, 03:54:17 pm »

Does the AI always avoid mines or (if sufficiently beefy) can they purposefully walk through them in order to clear the way for the rest of the team when the player leaves them no alternate path to move forward like in a single entrance base defense?

Love getting destroyed by the AI so far. lol