[SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.12.1

[Xilmi]

2.2.4. If they know to come closer now, that's a lot better.

There were also issues with units just walking back and forth and clumping up when omniscience wasn't used. Overall the behavior in 2.3 is way better and way more decisive in scenarios as the one described.
I'm about to wrap up 3.0 now which isn't so much about improving tactical aspects as it is about providing a major new feature.

When I tried using extender accuracy in vanilla the aliens adapted immediately. That's because the aimed-shot is available on all weapons and has a range of 200 before degrading. They simply transitioned away from auto-shot all the time to using aimed-shot at long range, snap-shot at medium range and auto-shot only when they were really close. Otherwise there didn't seem to be an necessity to change their behavior. The difference in Rosigma was that many of the weapons there either lacked an aimed-shot or the aimed shot had a much shorter range. So my prior tests from vanilla didn't really help. What I changed was that they kinda act like melee-units with ranged attacks when it comes to their movement-logic. Outside of their "comfort zone", which is the range at which their weapon will have full accuracy, they no longer think about fleeing or avoiding reaction-fire. They now know that they have to walk through the enemies' vision to use their weapons properly.

I guess any mod that has sniper-weapons as an extra class that are the only ones with really long ranges is warranted to look at in that regard. So that's really the issue here and not just Extender accuracy on its own.

On (almost) flat terrain, that's actually not a bad tactic since 'hit chance' is significantly lower than actual chance to hit in that case.
It wasn't. But in case you're interested in trying to make this mission harder...

Then this isn't something I got to test much with Rosigma. The test-saves that were attached for that usually featured mostly open terrain. So testing other scenarios is still something that could be helpful.

I've seen two saves in the vicinity of the attached save-game but from the conversation around them I'm not convinced they are about the scenario discussed here. Discussion seemed more about ninja assassins and throwing knifes and not so much about sectoids and dogs. Those were also mentioned but not in the posts containing saves. So I'd appreciate if you could make sure to provide a save of exactly the scenario you'd like me to look at. That would be most helpful for analysis.

What do you mean by COC-shenanigans? Could you un-abbreviate that?

When I tried with 2.2.4, there seemed to be at least a 10% chance for the aliens to miss with every single shot on their turn.

The chance to hit or miss is something that the AI has no real control over. What they have control over is whether they take a shot at what range and try actively to come closer. So basically how they deal with the situation. Whether there's still some things to improve about that is something that testing shall show.

[Juku121]

I've seen two saves in the vicinity of the attached save-game but from the conversation around them I'm not convinced they are about the scenario discussed here. Discussion seemed more about ninja assassins and throwing knifes and not so much about sectoids and dogs.

Those were also mentioned but not in the posts containing saves. So I'd appreciate if you could make sure to provide a save of exactly the scenario you'd like me to look at.

The discussion was about a lot of other things, yeah. But there are a bunch of sequential saves in challenge2_completed.zip, which was about the tangent about a bunch of dogs savescumming themselves through a Sectoid Battleship. I imagine turn 3.5 might be the most relevant.

What do you mean by COC-shenanigans? Could you un-abbreviate that?

The Close Quarters Combat mechanic of knocking a gun off its firing line when there are enemies adjacent to the shooter. Which in XCF only costs a little bit of energy on the part of the 'knocker'. The dogs made good use of that, swarming over Sectoids like they were carrying dog biscuits instead of plasma clips.

The chance to hit or miss is something that the AI has no real control over. What they have control over is whether they take a shot at what range and try actively to come closer.

Yeah, but the issue was that I didn't see them coming closer.

Also, do they run (if they can run) when they do that? Running is a major advantage in many situations.

[Spess Mahren]

In regards to the lag issue I deleted my options files and the lag I was getting that was giving me visual choppiness on the geoscape and menu screens seems to be gone. Battlescape is fine and the geoscape seems just a little borderline but it could be something else, I will enable the fps counter later but my problem appears solved.

[Xylon666Darkstar]

How does one install this mod? Does it go into Users > Mods in directory? Doesn't appear to provide an option to enable it in game.

Or do I open, and c/p the files inside to overwrite within my game directory?

[Xilmi]

Also, do they run (if they can run) when they do that? Running is a major advantage in many situations.

No. I haven't taught them to use any of the optional player-features like running, force-shooting or leaning. Is this option force-enabled for XCF?
I guess the AI should have access to stuff like this too when its enabled.

[Xilmi]

In regards to the lag issue I deleted my options files and the lag I was getting that was giving me visual choppiness on the geoscape and menu screens seems to be gone. Battlescape is fine and the geoscape seems just a little borderline but it could be something else, I will enable the fps counter later but my problem appears solved.

I guess it might have to do with one of the advanced rendering-options then. I've heard that some of these might cause trouble. I played around with them too and found that somehow the default of no rendering looked the best anyways. But of course that's subjective.

[Xylon666Darkstar]

Never mind, figured it out. However, my options appear as below:

[Xilmi]

How does one install this mod? Does it go into Users > Mods in directory? Doesn't appear to provide an option to enable it in game.

Or do I open, and c/p the files inside to overwrite within my game directory?

The stuff in the zip goes in the game-directory. It's not a mod in the traditional sense. It's more like an alternative game-client like OXC or OXCE but I lack the competence to make an installer so that's why it's a zip file. You could also make a copy of your game-directory and put it there so you have a fall-back. At least if you're using OXC as the name of the exe is the same as OXC but differes from OXCE.
The new options should appear under Advanced/AI when you have started the correct exe-file. If you don't use them the game should behave almost exactly as it does in OXCE.

[Xilmi]

Never mind, figured it out. However, my options appear as below:

That's because you only copied the exe and dlls. There's also files in the sub-folder "common/Languages" that need to be overwritten.

Also note that I just uploaded version 3.0.0, you might want to use that instead.

[Xylon666Darkstar]

Fixed x2 with your 3.0 update. Thanks!

Sorry for my caffeine addled brain.

[Juku121]

No. I haven't taught them to use any of the optional player-features like running, force-shooting or leaning. Is this option force-enabled for XCF?

No, but it's on the 'recommendedUserOptions' list, meaning a player can opt out but by default it's on.

[Yankes]

@Yankes: I'm using defaults and haven't changed anything about optimization-flags. I neither know where to do that nor what "proper" settings would be.

And what "default" is? if I understand correctly you use different mechanism that Meridian did use and because of this there could be differences,
this could depend on compiler used (some optimalzie some parts better than other compilers), flags set or even version of compiler used.
Best is to check if you use recent GCC and at least flag `-O2` (some could use `-O3` but grains sometimes are minimal but compile time is lot longer).

[Xilmi]

And what "default" is? if I understand correctly you use different mechanism that Meridian did use and because of this there could be differences,
this could depend on compiler used (some optimalzie some parts better than other compilers), flags set or even version of compiler used.
Best is to check if you use recent GCC and at least flag `-O2` (some could use `-O3` but grains sometimes are minimal but compile time is lot longer).

GCC? Isn't that a Linux-compiler? I'm using Visual-Studio to compile and all the settings I see there are the following:

[Yankes]

GCC is not only Linux compiler, OXCE use it for building windows exes.

Its possible that MSVC have worse performance in some cases than GCC, I encounter couple times thing like this happens.
It could be possible to add custom compiler flags that could improve speed (if this performance drop is real, it could be simply dust in cpu fan )

[N7Kopper]

You've been working hard since I finished my first Brutal AI playthrough. It's nice to see the non-cheating AI be even more brutal. I also like seeing the friendly AI get in on the action of not being retarded gibbons. That said, I did see another game crash - but this time it was actually caught with the crash handler. Either you've properly hooked your code into it (good man if true!) or Bradford (it's now canon that using your XCOM AI puts Bradford in charge. No, you shut up. I don't care that he's from another continuity.) managed to trigger a crash in OXC (or Extended) all by himself!

I was playing with the setting that forced XCOM to be aggressive off (I wanted to see what the AI would do without being forced to do other stuff) so I'll comment on how good Bradford is after I try with that setting on, but for now, here's the crash dump. No save file, sorry. I keep autosaves off because I like Ironman, and am just fine with manual saving if I ever want to come back to a Battle Mode skirmish for some reason.