Messages

1

Brutal AI / Re: "Realistic accuracy and cover system" option

« on: October 23, 2024, 12:10:58 am »

It may be worth testing by disabling this option.

It does nothing in case there's a line of sight fire

2

Brutal AI / Re: "Realistic accuracy and cover system" option

« on: October 18, 2024, 09:30:17 pm »

I should admit I was wrong. Covers in OG work, seems I got used to OXC and forgot how OG feels... Which is not surprising, considering i haven't played it for decades.
I repeated experiments once again, 100 shots for each, twice for OG.  Well, "works as intended", and seems like the intention was to avoid OG behaviour altogether.

To clarify, this is the percentage of hits, blocked by cover, for similar battlefield state but for different game versions
Original game #1 — 55,6% - I call this "cover works"
Original game #2 — 57,1%
BAI / RA On — 36,8%
OXCE — 11,8% - and this is "doesn't work" to me
BAI / RA Off — 8,8% - ...this is my version in "OXCE mode", which is similar to OXCE at least in theory (doesn't work either)

3

Brutal AI / Re: "Realistic accuracy and cover system" option

« on: October 16, 2024, 10:02:46 pm »

You probably meant "no LOS" check?

Nope. I checked that in debugger - there was no penalty.

4

Brutal AI / Re: "Realistic accuracy and cover system" option

« on: October 16, 2024, 08:51:09 pm »

Of course, cover does work in OG, OXC and OXCE.
As an OXCE dev, I can 100% confirm that cover works as designed and as expected.
It's all just definitions and terminology.

There's an old joke

Two Jewish ask Rabbi to resolve their argument.
First guy: "Rabbi, is black a color?"
"Well, sure..." - said the confused Rabbi.
First guy: "See, I told you! Rabbi, is white a color?
Rabbi: "Well, yes, white is a color."
First guy: "See? I told you Moishe, I sold you a Color TV!"

When I show you how accuracy is just the same to half-covered target as like as for fully exposed, you call that "cover works as expected"
When I show how 95% covered target reduces accuracy from 90% to 45%, and missing shots don't hit any cover and just fly by - you call that "cover works as expected"
There's nothing to argue about, other than definitions. Cause right, black and white are still colors ))

5

Brutal AI / Re: "Realistic accuracy and cover system" option

« on: October 16, 2024, 01:04:51 am »

All tests were made in standart OXCE (not BAI/RA).Visibility/Cover percentages were measured in BAI/RA afterwards.

One could think that cover works at least sometimes, at least to some extent. Actually, it doesn't. Cover works, when shot hits it instead of target, in front of it.  That's when cover works as, well, COVER. That wasn't true for almost 80% misses - most of them flew by. Unfortunately, i haven't count them, but they are way more than half of all the misses.

There is a correlation between cover percentage and missed shots, sure, especially for high objects density. But those shots not only don't hit any cover, they are incredibly insufficient to use them to a tactical advantage. Even extremely 95% covered unit will be hit with every seconds aimed shot.

UPD:
Flipbard, I'm not interested to continue this discussion. I jsut don't care.

6

Brutal AI / Re: "Realistic accuracy and cover system" option

« on: October 06, 2024, 01:04:50 am »

But would it matter in the open without cover?

No and yes. At the  early stage of development I've made a decision not to take unit size into account (excluding 2x2 units), for a couple reasons. First one is their size differs A LOT, for example muton is x1.5 or even x2 larger than sectoid. This could've changed accuracy numbers a lot too, and I've considered that was too big of a change, especially for old xcom playerbase.

But. Cover is much more beneficial for smaller units, cause of its relative size. Even small grass counts as cover, and for muton it could reduce its visibility to 97%, but for something as small as rats, it could be 80-85% And grass is everywhere, you could even consider it as "totally open field")) Small sectoids could hide behind small covers more effective than mutons, too.

7

Brutal AI / Re: "Realistic accuracy and cover system" option

« on: October 02, 2024, 03:07:17 pm »

smaller targets like the rats

RA scans target's hitbox, which differs for enemies. For example, there could be situation where you could see muton behind a stone wall but couldn't see sectoid which stands next to it. Their width differs too. But the issue with small creatures is their hitboxes could be much larger then sprite image. I couldn't help with this, it's up to mod makers.

Well could it be added back as a toggable option?

I could return it back relatively easily, but I'd rather fix huge technical debt which prevents further development. And that's much easier said than done.

8

Brutal AI / Re: "Realistic accuracy and cover system" option

« on: October 02, 2024, 01:12:10 am »

- Would it be possible to set a maximun hit chance, like 95% of the new games even with kneeling and other acc bonus?

It used to be that way, but I changed it and removed upper cap after numerous requests. The thing is, most players who play mega-mods got accustomed to 100+ accuracy numbers, and even more - mods themselves are made with that in mind. Why do you want such limit btw?

- Can the target size be consider for hit chances?

It does. Big units have something like x1.35 accuracy multiplier as far as I remember,

============

There's a known bug in current version, off-center shooting isn't working as intended for reaction fire and most probably for AI units. Fix isn't trivial and heavily depends on technical debt, which should be fixed first.

9

Open Feedback / Re: Mitigating flaws in XCOM/Openxcom

« on: August 06, 2024, 07:38:37 pm »

For AI, there is such a threshold

Glad to know it exists. Didn't know that, honestly.

For player units (in my opinion) the player can do a much better job manually

I was talking about my mod specifically. Due to overall lowered chances to hit, cases where xcom operative shoots in vain are just too common in RA, so players need an additional tool for reaction fire. I'm talking about new function, like "isGoodChanceToHit", which takes into consideration cover and other non-standard accuracy modifiers.

As for Vanilla, it's good as it is.

10

Open Feedback / Re: Mitigating flaws in XCOM/Openxcom

« on: August 05, 2024, 09:53:21 pm »

Grenades (especially alien grenades) are too powerful in the original. It's easy to put an alien in a difficult to assault position that commands a strategic passage and lob grenades at any soldiers who approach. In general, grenades do too much damage over too wide an area.

I've added alternate tossing mechanics option which nerfs grenades a little bit, by making them less precise, and they depend of throwing accuracy more. It affects long-range throws / low-TH accuracy throws.

Soldier reaction fire is completely stupid. They might as well be robots. A soldier with a rocket launcher will respond by launching a rocket into a group of its fellows if an alien shows up. It completely breaks any immersion in the game, it's so stupid. There should be a way to set reaction fire only if it won't likely result in friendly fire.

Are there mods that seek to rectify any of this?

I'll definitely look in that direction. I already have "suicide protection" and "friendly fire protection", but only for direct hits and nearest allies. I think it's possibe to improve that algorithm for HE shots.

And I also want to implement a reaction fire accuracy threshold where units won't shoot at barely visible or distant targets until they get close enough for a shot to be worth it.

Look for "Realistic Accuracy" mod which ships with Brutal AI version of OXC.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=11928.msg163224#msg163224

11

XPiratez / Re: Brutal AI

« on: July 02, 2024, 09:48:11 pm »

I wanted to use BAI for cover system as well. But I was afraid it would overwrite "sniper", "spotter" attributes from specific enemies in XPiratez. Could you share how did you configure BAI?

I didn't mess up with those mechanics. Should be fine, but shit happens, so you could just check that out by yourself. Can't speak for BAI, I'm responsible for realistic accuracy part only.

12

OpenXcom Extended (OXCE) / Re: OXCE (OpenXcom Extended) main thread

« on: June 24, 2024, 02:54:24 pm »

Apparently one single not terrain-damaging explosion at 1:18:30 in this video was enough to cause the loss of all three hangars: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2179774439?t=01h18m24s

Alternatively, coulda been me shooting off a Multi-Launcher (again, no visible terrain damage) at the Access Lift. Heh.

Yep, you gotta be careful in base defence missions.

13

XPiratez / Re: Brutal AI

« on: June 14, 2024, 10:58:59 am »

As far as I know, people play XPZ with Brutal AI. Don't know if there 100% compatibility, but BAI is highly customizable and could be disabled whatsoever.

14

Brutal AI / Re: "Realistic accuracy and cover system" option

« on: June 14, 2024, 08:42:10 am »

a bug - accuracy calculation when shooting alien through walls does not work correctly

fixed. fix will be added in next bai release.

15

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 8.6.0

« on: June 10, 2024, 02:06:54 pm »

Maybe try to talk Meridian into implementing your fix… but it’s most probably OXC related, and getting pull request approved there… it’s kinda impossible