Messages

1

Brutal AI / Re: BOXCE for Windows XP

« on: November 12, 2024, 09:37:12 pm »

There is a reason why I put quite some extra effort to get it to 64Bit.
32 bit was fine for the base-game and smaller mods. But behemoths like WH40k-mod pushed it to the limits and over.
I'm not sure XPZ is also at risk of exceeding the memory-limitations of 32 bit but it's quite possible.

2

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 9.1.4

« on: October 09, 2024, 07:57:17 pm »

One quick question, in Xpiratez if I choose the setting  1 for Ai targetting, would it respect the standard OXCE spotter mechanics?

No. With Brutal-AI enabled the standard-AI-behavior is ignored. Setting 1 means no spotting for others and only units who can see a target can attack it.
Setting 2 already means full team-vision and everyone can attack who is currently spotted.
Note that standard OXCE-spotting-mechanics make your units not just targetable on the current turn but also the amount of turns equivalent of the intelligence of the shooter afterwards.

3

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.12.1

« on: September 26, 2024, 11:14:54 pm »

So, do I understand correctly that quoted means apart from a small manufacture quirk everything else from Brutal OXCE could be disabled somewhere in its settings on player side while still having Brutal OXCE technically installed to satisfy Facility Expansion Pack's requirements?

I think the manufacturing-queue is now also part of regular OXCE, so there shouldn't even be a difference there anymore.
And yes, everything else is optional and should act pretty-much the same as in OXCE, when disabled.

4

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.12.1

« on: August 15, 2024, 11:55:17 pm »

Aggressiveness now can be set from levels 0-3 and choosing option 4 means aggressivness is inherited from unit-aggression.

There's now 4 distinct levels:
0> Camper
1> Ambusher
2> Skirmisher
3> Zealot

I want to tweak the aggression level of the units in XPiratez. The aggression level in the .rul file goes from 0 to 8. How does inheritance work?

Is 0 - camper, 1 - ambusher, 2 - Skirmisher, 3-8 - Zealot?
Or is there another formula?

Yes, with inherit enabled everyone >=3 will be zealot.

5

Brutal AI / Re: [BUG REPORT] XCF crashes in Black Lotus HQ

« on: July 15, 2024, 10:53:23 pm »

options are also present in the save file

Is there a way to make the game apply the options from the save-file?

6

Brutal AI / Re: [BUG REPORT] XCF crashes in Black Lotus HQ

« on: July 14, 2024, 05:09:00 pm »

Tried reproducing the crash with XCF 3.1, no submods and Brutal-OXCE 9.1.2 with default-settings for the AI.

To no avail.

Could play to the end of the mission without any isses on 2 separate attempts.

I think I need more information. In particular your options.cfg would be helpful.

7

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 9.1.0

« on: July 04, 2024, 10:53:47 am »

Intelligence takes the score that the AI calculated for each tile and replaces a certain factor of it with a random number. As long as the score wasn't 0.

At 0 intelligence all tiles that had any score will just create a random number. So it's kinda random where it goes.
Otherwise it's Intelligence * 20% of the score that comes from the original score and the rest is random.

So for example if the calculated score for a tile is 100.
0 Intelligence means the score is now RND(0-100).
1 Intelligence means the score is now 20+RND(0-80)
2 Intelligence means the score is now 40+RND(0-60)
3 Intelligence means the score is now 60+RND(0-40)
4 Intelligence means the score is now 80+RND(0-20)
5 Intelligence means the score remains 100

8

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 9.1.0

« on: July 03, 2024, 11:08:49 am »

Weighted randomization surplus which depends on morale is good, but also reverse scenarios are acceptable: when units that are supposed to be zealots, start to hide for a random amount of turns and then became zealots once again, coming out of shitholes and dark places of any kind.
Well, based on my perception of BAI's previous versions, it usually makes it hard to proceed without casualities within player's troops, setting up ambushes quite good, but rarely relying on reserved TU's for reaction shots. From player's perspective, this lowers the most consistent part of the joy (a gambling within a game), making it rather a straight-forward chess game, than a a sort of rogue-like role playing game. 
I can't comment current BAI, as still want the thing to happen: be it possible to rewrite all RUL aggro settings manually. Now it comes much closer to that.

Remember, that aggressiveness level written in OXCE RUL file has nothing in common to be compared with BAI aggressiveness.
So. There is HARDLY an option to "choosing option 4 means aggressiveness is inherited from unit-aggression" at the current state of BAI-mod (XPZ/XCF) compliance, because units then will behave unnaturally, and most likely push themselves to death, even weakest ones that should otherwise passively run around in vanilla. And, btw, they run around so to make mission more mild/narrow in terms of shooting density (such balanced, that's it). So player don't have to deal with all 50-100 troops simultaneously turn 2.

And one more thing. There's invisible units on player's side too. By invisible I mean really invisible, not CAMO. Last playthrough I had one catgirl making beef out of whole BAI cruiser because they couldn't do anything regarding it. Invis = 5, range = 20.
Of course, I cancelled reaction shots my turn. But vanilla has sniper-spotter. What can BAI make in this case?
 

The aggressiveness-levels written in the rul-files of the base-game are all 0-2. This is kinda in line with the suitable levels for BAI. If modders, for some reason, massively exceed what was common in the base game, then this is something I can't really take into account. It is supported but might lead to undesirable results.

I said it before and I'll say it again: BAI was designed to make enemies play as well as they can. If mods are designed around fighting 50+ stupid enemies, then BAI might not be a valid option to use for these. There is now btw. also the possibility to set intelligence to 0. This might make these missons doable afterall but is not really the intended experience.

I did provide some options to nerf the AI to get some kind of in-between-state between the base-AI and the fully brutal experience. It's on the player to figure out what options they like.

Interesting story about the invisible unit. Yes, BAI can't currently deal with something like that unless you enable Targeting-mode 4. The base-AI uses it's intelligence stat to cheat and keep units "visible" in their mind for several turns after they revealed themselves. BAI would need an option that works like that too. But I'd predict that this would make it otherwise feel pretty unfair, not unlike enabling targeting-mode 4.

9

Brutal AI / Re: Does anyone have feedback on the new "Aggressiveness = 1"-behavior in 8.5.5?

« on: July 02, 2024, 11:41:05 am »

It doesn't work like in 8.5.5 anyways and I figured it was pretty bad and more like combining the weaknesses and not strengths of other approaches.

At some point there's only so much the AI can do. If the player can start leveling entire building-blocks with everyone inside without even needing to establish any kind of vision, it doesn't matter much what the AI does.

Note that camping isn't so much about relying on reaction-shots. I know this is a bad approach against a player who knows what they are doing. They will still try their best spotting the player on their turn but they won't really advance towards where they think player-units are and instead stay close to where they spawned.

Like with none of the previously existing levels you really had to explore the 3rd floor of a UFO because they would all have moved to the 1st one by the time you got there. That's what the new lowest level is meant for.

10

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 9.1.0

« on: July 02, 2024, 11:31:51 am »

Hey, Xilmi!

The latest release seems quite promising, but what do you think, is it still a viable idea to make BAI understand non-whole numbers to switch between two types of aggressiveness models? I mean, sometimes it is not just "camper" and "ambusher" roles that make pain-in-the ass. It's more about what you cannot expect from this particular unit. If "zealot" goes suddenly goes into "ambusher" state, it can make ppl thrill. As in the vanilla UFO game. Mysterious and new back in 1994-1997's.

In 9.1.0 there's a way for the AI to bump up it's current aggressiveness-level.
However, that's only done when player-units start panicking and is meant as a counter-measure to player just ending turns until morale has recovered.

That will, however, not happen when the mission is going well.

The idea of starting at a high level but lowering it, is something I hadn't thought about before. My main-assumption for using a high one is for players to first and foremost want the mission to end quickly and not caring that it weakens the play of the AI.

But from an immersion-PoV it would make sense to allow it to scale downwards if things are not going well.

Possibilities for changing the value are pure randomization (just roll every turn), weighted randomization (using the default value more often than other values) and based on the game-state. Morale seems like the most logical value to use.

11

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 8.6.3

« on: June 21, 2024, 04:28:47 pm »

Yeah, probably should have naded him after he fell unconcious.

But do we really miss out on hilarious situations like that?

12

Brutal AI / Re: Does anyone have feedback on the new "Aggressiveness = 1"-behavior in 8.5.5?

« on: June 19, 2024, 01:04:00 pm »

It's frustrating. I implemented it to work exactly as I intended it to work and when testing it simply turned out to be just bad.
Due to mutual surprise, it doesn't even really matter all that much if you preserve your TUs. You get spotted and killed by snipers/grenadiers from outside your vision anyways.

I also experimented with a completely different approach that first positions all units outside the assumed danger-zone and then rushes everyone forward. While in theory slightly more effective than rushing forward from the get-go, it also allows the enemy to prepare better.

Overall, being the aggressor is just dramatically lowering the chances of a favorable outcome. It only works when you have a massive numerical advantage. There also isn't really any in-between tactic that's favorable to outright rushing. Or at least it only works when the enemy also does an in-between-tactic by tricking the enemy into thinking they have to search for you while you are still remaining hidden. But as soon as the point comes where you'd have to leave your cover, it's very easy to exploit.

Look for enemies out in the open and hide behind cover again if you don't find any simply is by far the most effective tactic available.

There isn't really any room for "intermediate" approaches.

13

Brutal AI / Re: Does anyone have feedback on the new "Aggressiveness = 1"-behavior in 8.5.5?

« on: June 17, 2024, 10:56:26 am »

By using a combination of nearness and cover-value for scoring tiles it often would get as close as it could, so not really staying in good cover.
Another issue is that when it doesn't have any cover around it would just dash forward. Dashing forward is good for melee or short-range-units but ranged units probably should inch forward more slowly and preserve more TUs for reaction-fire.

Also there's cases where the units looked at walls at the end of their turn.

14

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 8.6.0

« on: June 10, 2024, 05:43:14 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

My fix is actually more of a workaround and can't really be ported back as I'm using one of my AI's routines to do that. An AI-routine that I've written because the engine seemed to lack a function that had the required functionality anywhere else and it was the AI where I first felt the need for such function. It is based on the logic from int Projectile::calculateThrow(double accuracy).

Technically SupSuper should fix it as you probably could recreate in in base OXC

I maybe should do that. And if it's just to hear why he doesn't bother doing it.

15

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 8.6.0

« on: June 10, 2024, 01:42:46 pm »

Is this present in regular OXCE too?

Yes. It doesn't use the game-logic from Createprojectile to check whether the shot will be fired but some weird Mod-script or something that apparently says it's okay without doing actual checking.
I used a workaround to fix it in BOXCE which is letting it be checked by my AI, which I also had to teach not to think that impossible shots are possible and where I recreated the checks that are done in Createprojectile.
And when a human tries to use an arcing-shot-weapon it apparently uses the same faulty check that will give a false-positive so the human doesn't get an error either. This part I didn't fix though.

There should have been a proper API that implements the logic in one place and is just referenced at all other places. But instead the check whether it works was only done when the shot is already supposed to be fired and there's now 2 different methods who do a validity check before that happens. One works properly (mine) and one doesn't and creates false positives (the one that was used before).

But I didn't want to spend too much effort so I just did the simplest thing I could come up with to make it work.