Well, how about making the AI:
a) Use smoke grenades if not hiding (the aliens in Apoc are capable of using them)
b) Be able to properly launch well co-ordinate assaults on multiple fronts
c) Act more clever when X-COM is preparing for an assault or camping up the door for reaction shots. Say, one alien opens the UFO door, another throws a grenade.
d) Does the UFO AI know about doors that can be opened in UFO? Pretty sure it is totally ignorant about this possibility, unlike the TFTD AI.
e) Civilians run towards the goddamn Skyranger, or at least towards somewhere hidden, rather than herp-derping around like mind-addled morons. Maybe actually keep some of the "herp-derp" behavior because sometimes people DO act derpy in unexpected situations.
f) PSI-controlled X-COM agents can pick guns and reload them. Always hated that kind of cheesery. Take the mind-control like a man!
g) AI isn't as interested in controlling soldiers unable to harm other soldiers - so no more "give lasers/firearms to psi-wimps so our top Power Armor soldiers aren't threatened anymore by psi". Bonus if the AI is smart enough to send that controlled soldier towards weapons that can harm the soldiers.
You are expecting too much, my friend
Remember, that human brain has been perfected by millennia of evolution, while alien AI is actually 60 KB of code
Your ideas are interesting and reasonable but, sadly, most of them are uncodable or require a huge amount of work for little observable effect. Let's talk them over:
a) probably doable (somehow) but consider the following:
- Apoc is more action-oriented (especially in real-time mode), while UFO and TFTD are more about hiding and seeking and are best know for that you never know where to expect the enemy. Exploding alien smoke grenades would give a hint about enemy position, spoiling some atmosphere
- smoke will hinder AI much more than the player, as aliens, by default, require a visual contact to shoot, unlike X-com agents, who could shoot through the smoke
- it would require creating new object (alien smoke grenade) and changing spawning routines so each alien will be equipped with it.
- if implemented I see two functions for alien smoke: 1. alien is carrying primed smoke grenade, which explodes when alien is killed to cover his buddies. 2. when escape evaluation fails because every available tile is in X-com visual range, the alien throws smoke grenade or just drops it to the ground and then moves. Like I said, however, it won't be easy to implement.
b) very difficult (impossible?) to code (unless you can translate it to algorithms
)
c) as above
d) what do you mean? In OpenXcom the same AI is used for UFO and TFTD. It can definitely move through the doors, unless you mean opening doors by "right click", without crossing them which it cannot do.
e) that was exactly my idea, as I always were sorry for this poor guys too
Unfortunately, as Warboy told me, it is impossible to "tell" the AI where the Skyranger is so this won't work. I will ,however, experiment with civillian AI and see what are the results. You may not believe but they are not acting random - they have routines for hiding and running away, similar to those used by aliens. I think their problem are mostly low health and TUs so they are doomed anyway no matter how smart they would be. They also quickly "forget" what they were running from, which I will try to change if I'll have some time.
f) I think this one is already implemented if you turn on Alien Pickup Weapons mod. Keep in mind that mind control lasts only for one turn, so they may have not enough time to do it.
g) this one (choosing targets based on carried weapon) may ne even doable... Picking up weapons - see above
The aliens sniping from afar is very cool, but I guess some more changes will be needed to make it work nicely. Like for example being able to define sight range during a day, too (OXCE only allows it for the night.
Actually, you can consider this a request on my part.
I'll see what can be done, but I cannot promise anything
What exactly you need? Global setting for day/night visibility for the whole mod? Or sight radius as a parameter for given alien race? If we are talking about sniping aliens - do you mean sight range as visual range or the range that alien can shoot at unseen (revealed by spotter) target?
Also, question for the Devs: Is it possible to make AI set grenade timer to more than 0? I can't see what happens next, after grenadeAction is completed (and AI decided to use grenade). Where are the routines for priming and throwing itself?
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I just followed the walkthrough from Ufopaedia, only difference is that I used Meridian dependencies for vs2015 and I add "YAML_CPP_DLL" preprocessor definition (also suggested by Meridian). I haven't modified the code yet. The effect is: