[SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.12.1

[Solarius Scorch]

I am sure that modders will, little by little, shift towards your solution. Think of smooth implementation without total rebalance of mods to ensure each mission isn't masochistic chess in case your troops aren't over-armored terminators.

Yeah sure, balancing a mod to fit two different set of rules is the natural and totally doable solution...

[Juku121]

Nah, Abyss is just certain that you and other modders will see the light and convert to BAI on the spot. There is no need to support two sets of AI rules when one of them is clearly superior!


More seriously, that's the work modders may or may not do, and if not there might or might not be others who make submods or BAI compatibility patches. We'll see. OXC wasn't coded over a winter break, either.


Most of these suggestions are IMO beyond the scope of Brutal AI. Yes, it'd be nice to have a reactive and nuanced AI. Or one tailored to a mod's story arcs, even. But it's a much bigger task to make one than it is to create a 'merely' competitive AI.

[Solarius Scorch]

Nah, Abyss is just certain that you and other modders will see the light and convert to BAI on the spot. There is no need to support two sets of AI rules when one of them is clearly superior!

You know, anything's possible, depending on how OXCE development and BAI development progresses. But right now there are no such plans, the BAI project is not mature enough and the direction of its future development is uncertain. Also, Meridian and Yankes are so great at developing and maintaining the OXCE engine that jumping over to a different branch would be way too risky right now.

[Xilmi]

Yeah sure, balancing a mod to fit two different set of rules is the natural and totally doable solution...

Agreed. And I personally don't even see the necessity for it.
People seem to forget that there's difficulty-levels and that you don't have to play on Superhuman.

For example 14SilverX plays Hardmode Expansion with Brutal AI but on "Experienced" difficulty. Marbozir did vanilla with Brutal-AI on "Beginner". The lower stats and numbers of the aliens, as well has the bigger leeway in terms of necessary score make it all look kinda doable.

I see no need to compromise the AI by coming up with strange ways of making it less capable and I also see no need to rebalance or make alternative versions of the mods, when lowering the difficulty-level could totally solve the issue.

Sure, you won't get Superhuman enemy-numbers on lower difficulty-levels. But at some point you have to compromise. You can't have smart enemies with dangerous stats in high numbers and still expect to massacre them just the same as when they weren't smart. Making them "a little smarter but not enough to have an impact on how many you can handle" is not really aligned with my design-goals.

[Xilmi]

Nah, Abyss is just certain that you and other modders will see the light and convert to BAI on the spot. There is no need to support two sets of AI rules when one of them is clearly superior!

For me this is a strange consideration anyways. I'd say which engine to use is for the player to decide and not the modder. My engine identifies as OXCE when it comes to compatibility-checks with mods and I don't intend to change that.

I have added some modding-features based on requests but this was neither my original intention nor do I think it's a path I'd like to pursue much further.

The basic idea was the AI to be an option from the options-menu and not something that has all that much to do with modding. If you use Brutal-OXCE and disable the "Brutal AI"-option, the AI should behave the same as it does in OXCE.

As I just said. I think neither changes to the AI nor to the mods are required. If the mod is too hard with Brutal-AI on Superhuman, just don't play on Superhuman. No need to bother either the modder or the AI-developer to somehow make changes so that you can beat the mod on Superhuman.

[Solarius Scorch]

For me this is a strange consideration anyways. I'd say which engine to use is for the player to decide and not the modder.

Yes! This should be stated more often.

[Abyss]

As I just said. I think neither changes to the AI nor to the mods are required. If the mod is too hard with Brutal-AI on Superhuman, just don't play on Superhuman. No need to bother either the modder or the AI-developer to somehow make changes so that you can beat the mod on Superhuman.

Hi, Xilmi! Thank you for the answers!

That's what I considered when begged to, preferably, avoid "don't like - don't play" sort of answers.

I have to clarify the intentions: my posts were about considering keeping fun part VS ensuring AI beat player.
OpenXCOM is not all about perfect tactics of AI, it's about how player perceives the visible part of the battlefield: intrigue, terror, suspense, decision forks and weird situations you troops get into. The latter are truly best part of the game. It has the huge amount of roleplay and gambling, also.

IMHO, true entertaining, deviant AI may have serious advantages from the player's perspective, than ass-kicking AI.

Maybe one time you'll see that some of these features may entertain you as well.
Brutally-Deviant AI.

As for realism of massacre: massacre is the part of the game. Most of missions will lose it's charm without some 2-10x coefficient of enemy units. 

And, finally, I am really sorry to put all this here now, when major of work has been done and some pivot-moments are long past.   

Yeah sure, balancing a mod to fit two different set of rules is the natural and totally doable solution...

Hi Sol, Juku121 is right in transcription of my thoughts.

[Xilmi]

I'm still not really sure what you actually want.

It just seems contradictory to me.

On one hand you seem to want an AI, that allows you to massacre them while totally outnumbered without too much resistence and on the other hand you also want them to be smarter.

You could considere the "Force aggressive enemy behaviour"-option as an intermediate-option. One where they are not as easy to deal with as the base AI but also no tactical-geniuses and cover-seeking-experts either.

Putting in all sorts of arbitrary artificial stupidity like throwing unprimed grenades or randomly running around is not really within the scope of my project.

The game is open-source-though. So if you want to customize it to your own specific desires, feel free to fork. This is exactly what I also did. I didn't like it the way it was, so I'm now trying to make it the way I like it. If others like it too, then that's a nice bonus. But I don't really want to put in a lot of effort to fulfill some vaguely formulated design-goals that only have very subjective ways of quantifyability.

[kevL]

heya, I'm not seriously suggesting this but just for the sake of understanding ...

when i was younger, playing XCOM, the ai would do stupid things (obviously). I'd have a soldier out in the open and an aLien would come around the corner and I'd go "oh crap. ded"

then the stupid thing would turn around and go away ... and id just freak out ... not because of the 'stupid ai decision' but because it made things seem like the aLiens had a more important agenda and I had no clue what it was. (confusion)

Chryssalids in aLien base missions were notorious; they'd clomp towards me, then stagger back, then maybe closer ... it was nervewracking (suspense)

[Xilmi]

I think that many of these things indeed were deliberate. I don't know how representative the code of the base AI in OpenXCom is for what it was like in vanilla but it also has these things.
The AI, when it has spotted a unit, basically considers 3 options of how to proceed. They are decided by a weighed randomization, which is heavily impacted by their aggression-stat.

I'm not contesting that this can be perceived as immersive or even suspenseful and nervewracking.

But as you said, it's not really what this is about and it already exists in the base-AI.

[kevL]

https://www.vg247.com/xcom-creator-gollop-voices-concern-over-paper-thin-illusion-of-weak-ai

Gollop also explained that while his AI in XCOM was emulating intelligence - due to a lack of power back then - there was still more believability due to the unpredictable nature of the game's alien enemies. Leaving some things to chance - rather than setting everything in stone - is the key, he said.

But as you said, it's not really what this is about and it already exists in the base-AI.

yep. And, as you say, the code is opensource. I don't imagine it would be *that* difficult to create a few random-branching patterns .....

[Xilmi]

Yeah, it's really not. Almost all of my AIs behavior is controlled by scoring stuff. For example the scores for the tiles it wants to go to. Simply adding a random-multiplier to the scores it generates for that would vastly contribute towards making it unpredictable but also weaker in the process.

The range of the multiplier could be used to make some sort of difficulty. 1.0 - 1.1 wouldn't be that bad. But 1.0 - 5.0 would produce rather whacky results, I guess.

[Abyss]

Hi all!
Thank you, Kevl for narrowing my points.

Xlimi, it

It just seems contradictory to me.
On one hand you seem to want an AI, that allows you to massacre them while totally outnumbered without too much resistence and on the other hand you also want them to be smarter.

Yep. This whole X-COM game is either about dealing with outnumbering forces or much stronger enemies. The progress is always incremental with you getting technologies to beat even more serious missions, with even more strong enemies. You start naked and mendicant (except, I guess, WH40k) and get stuff. This is what major mods about. And this is, actually, a classic RPG scenario.

Almost all of my AIs behavior is controlled by scoring stuff.

Let's think what scoring goals can add more mystery, silliness and deviation, then)
As I believe, your AI clearly can win most human players.
Now it's turn for AI to let human players win, because the game is being designed to entertain.   

The key here is that sometimes we can consider that enemy:
- is confused with being attacked (overall awareness of the battle goes on)
- doesn't want to die no matter what (some)
- tries to rescue injured out of player's LoS (doesn't matter they have no healing abilities yet)
- tries to capture player forces alive (interrogation purposes)
- does brutal things (meatshielding, blocking, distracting, destroying surroundings)
- produces mistakes that were described above, like pure miscalculations etc.
- performs tasks out of battle perspective (weird behavior described by kevL).
- performs guard/escort activity for high-tier members until engaged

More than that, as many of the enemies have respectful classes (ranks), they can possess different deviations types. Like, sectoid medic/engineer are likely behave more cautious than sectoid soldiers. While sectoid leader/commander is more likely to coordinate the forces attack while stay safe.

Sorry for putting all this too late
With all respect,

[panzer]

As I believe, your AI clearly can win most human players.

I think that's the point of the mod. with the addition of a random number generator for enemy actions, you need to change the name of the mod to, say: ,, FunnyAI,, . In short, I don't think this is a good idea..
The only place where it is appropriate to add random numbers is the probability of stepping on non-contact grenades. And add this probability, for example, to the parameter ,,intelligence,, The higher, the more likely it is to see a grenade and not step on it.

[Solarius Scorch]

I think that's the point of the mod. with the addition of a random number generator for enemy actions, you need to change the name of the mod to, say: ,, FunnyAI,, . In short, I don't think this is a good idea..

Since when RNG is a bad idea? Sorry, but I'm quite confident that it's the only workable idea in video games like this one. Unless you mean chess, but it's not really the same.