Messages

136

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 23, 2023, 03:37:14 pm »

What aggression-settings do you use? On a balanced aggression, like the default 2/2, they should only rush toward your troops if they think they can overwhelm you.

All defaults. That is right. They think they can overwhelm me and then, boom, they not. Sure, sometimes I have to hunt one two remained but usually the battle is done by then.

Also it seems to be a bit contradictory. Both sides doing a lot of blind-shooting doesn't sound like rushing.

Do you mean rushing battle or AI rushing toward me? I don't see how it is contradictory. Some blind shoot me and other gather at my location.

I'd actually like to see some footage where you point out what issues you have.

These are no issues. Interesting play. I just recite what I see.

It seems like you'd prefer the AI not to do blind-shooting rather than having a feature helping the player do be better at doing the same. Oh wait, there seems to be another contradiction. You say it's much more satisfying but then you say playability is seriously skewed.

I can't really deduce what your preferences are.

No preferences at this point. Still testing. I didn't say I like or not like them blind shooting. That seems fair and I can adapt. Already did, actually.

Skewed in term of battle duration and progression compared to vanilla. Very intense first few moves and then game over for one or other side.
Again, I am not saying I like or dislike it. This is just how it is. Obviously, because AI tries to use opportunities fast.

No need to modify anything at this point. These are just "front line reports".
😄

137

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 23, 2023, 05:45:00 am »

Played with yellow arrows a little. Much more satisfying. They blind shoot me but I do the same sometimes with better efficiency.

Game seems fair but playability is seriously skewed. Combat is very fast and very intense. They rush toward my troops and whole battle continues and ends is in transport vicinity. Blind shooting is the 90% of all damage dealt to both sides. It is spiraling retaliation on retaliation.

138

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 23, 2023, 04:24:53 am »

Agree. More or less the same.

139

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 23, 2023, 01:38:01 am »

Note on the spotting mechanics. Can open separate thread if needed.

I checked your code and it seems that you attach "last spotted" property to the unit. This does not seem right since spotting action outside of visibility does not reveal the unit itself, only action.
Meaning, you have a location where shot originated from. Which unit did it remains unknown. Moreover, game does not indicate whether multiple actions were conducted by same unit or multiple. Of course, one can infer that actions from opposite corners cannot be done by same unit but this is up to human/AI to decide. The point is game engine should provide the information, not conclusion. In this regard, action locations are self informational data not related to any unit. If unit is invisible it is not even possible to tell whether it is still at location or moved away.

This is, actually, another strong reason not to mix it with scanner indicators because it spots actual units, not action locations.

140

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 23, 2023, 01:29:30 am »

I second that. The ability to notice where on the battlefield someone dropped a used ice-cream cap is kind of cheesy. I never used it as a player and I doubt anyone does this on a regular basis. So this should preserve fairness.

Also, as I mentioned before, this would just doom unconscious soldier right there. That seriously impair the "healing" mini game.

141

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 23, 2023, 01:09:56 am »

At which point AI receives a clue an item dropped on the ground? Immediately or at their turn? Do they notice if I drop and pick in same turn?

142

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 23, 2023, 12:23:30 am »

Now the puzzle starts coming together. It is still hard but, at least, I know why am I getting hit out of nowhere.

The tactics differences summary:
- Priming and throwing at the same turn is a NO-NO. Even more relay throwing. Pre-prime, throw, then run for your life the hell out of this location. At least at the sonic pulser explosion radius.
- Same for shooting. Reserve time for get out of cover, shoot, fall back.
- No dropping stuff on the ground. Ugh. If had to - run away.
- Move in a relative compact group to retaliate against jump shooters. This is no different from vanilla except here it is much more difficult to shoot them back from far away due to them taking cover much better. It may require some amount of maneuvering to get into retaliation position.
- Move groups in sweeping fashion trying to keep uncleared locations just by one side of the squad. Moving toward the center in between unknown locations is mighty dangerous.

I also found some bearable disembarking tactics. Let tanks slightly out of the bay so they do not interfere with soldiers internal transport movement. Soldiers preprime grenades (regular or smore or whatever), run out of the transport, throw, run inside. Few turns like that to cover area with smoke or as long as needed to throw grenades at everyone in vicinity. Then disembark and spread. Meanwhile, use scanners to spot enemy nearby and use tanks to kill them at close range. Tanks may be banged up pretty badly and even destroyed but this seems to be least evil comparing to losing whole squad.

143

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 23, 2023, 12:10:25 am »

Also in regards to your other point about how exactly it should be displayed. You suggested to use something other than the arrow. That's a lot trickier to implement. For the arrow I just had to hijack the respective existing method and make some adjustments. To draw something different instead would be more difficult.

Also the way it's implemented iterates through the units, that's why it makes only one arrow per unit if both scan and spotted is the case. So what I hope I can maybe accomplish would be a separate different color-arrow that is also only shown on the level the unit was seen.

That is the exact reason I think you should not reuse scan spotted routine. You don't want to hook on its future modifications in OXCE. I still think the cleaner solution would be to draw your own as they they have conceptually different marking mechanics, not even mentioning they are originated in different forks.

I sure may help you if you are interested.

144

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 22, 2023, 09:53:13 pm »

Do I understand correctly that AI marks not only dropped items but also picked up ones? I.e. something was laying on the floor and now it is not.

145

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: December 22, 2023, 08:30:41 pm »

Eh. I think I am thinking too much. Let's keep it as is and see how it works out.
Works out for me quite well so far.

146

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 22, 2023, 08:10:50 pm »

Folks, who is interested, please help me to figure out best UI.
The topic: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,11659.0.html

Notification pops when continuous undetected alien activity in area reaches threshold. This is a player helper that allows not to watch graphs on a regular basis.
The question is how to handle countries (the second tab in graphs).

Countries do not cover whole globe. They also can intersect with multiple areas. So it seems to be helpful information to pinpoint location.
The problem is UFO usually resides slightly longer in area than in country. So if we would show them separately, the country popup would almost immediately follow up the area one. Is it annoying? Does it make sense to show them together? Does it make sense to just list all areas and countries in the list, etc.
What do you think?

147

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: December 22, 2023, 07:56:04 pm »

Thank you for you feedback. I think I have a good picture in my mind how it should look.

Separate notification per area. Notification pops up once area hidden activity reached threshold.
No lists, just a name of the area where it happened.

Not sure what to do with countries. They do not cover globe completely so there are blind spots. When activity happens in the area it also happens in the country so it kind of redundant. Yes, I know they intersect so showing country help to narrow the location down.
Probably just show are and optionally country if there is one.

148

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 22, 2023, 05:56:00 pm »

The problem occurs in combination with your last remark. The scanner-information is more up-to-date but lacks the information of the z-coordinate. If I make sure to show the right z-corrdinate for the spotted unit, then overriding it with the scanner will ruin that information. So I need to think about a better solution.

That is what I was asking. I don't understand what is to override. These are two pieces of completely independent information. They depict LOCATION not the unit. Player spotted a location where shot came from. Then player spotted a location where there is a movement. They could be created by the same unit - nobody cares. They may coincide on the map and look like a single mark - that is fine too. You should NOT remove a marker for the shot just because the unit moved and later was detected by scanner. This is just a helper for the player to remember things. It is not like player forgets where shot came from just because they used the scanner.
🤔

149

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 7.13.1

« on: December 22, 2023, 05:50:39 pm »

You are right. In multi-story-houses it can get confusing. I noticed this in my own play-testing.

The z-axis always gets set to the current one when drawing the arrow. I'll experiment what happens if I don't do this.

The problem with yellow arrow is to understand what level they point at even if you don't reset their z-axis. Since it is two-dimensional screen we have, you can easily mistaken its position to the one level above but closer to you. Maybe drawing some kind of cube shape like the battlefield cursor but different color. Then player can understand the position exactly by aligning cursor with the marker.

I am not proficient with the "yellow arrow" mechanics. I may be wrong. See what works best for you.

Another idea could be to color it differently from the one generated by the scanner. Probably makes sense too since they are different mod mechanics and can evolve differently too.

150

Brutal AI / Alternative ufopedia armor display

« on: December 22, 2023, 05:46:10 pm »

Now when you adopted numbers right alignment in lists, I am thinking whether it makes sense to make this alternative display on by default?
I am NOT pushing for it and creating a global option to switch it would be a piece of cake. However, this is just a display style with:

1) Armor stats list occupies whole article height ONLY IF the info text is empty. Meaning it won't change its position for existing human armor and tanks articles leaving place for the info as it is now.
2) Stats numbers are right aligned.
3) Scrollbar is inside of the page to indicate the list has more lines below.

The #1 does not change the look of existing articles.
The #2 is already widely adopted in your mod.
The #3 is the only thing that visually changes existing articles and I can revert it to OXCE state - absolutely not important for me. I added it just for standardization purposes since ALL other lists in the game have their scrollbar visible.