[SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.12.1

[Xilmi]

Hi Xilmi,  there's one more save with Cult HQ (main base, ~90-100 enemies)
Layout is quite good, but one thing embarrasses: gillmen used to attack alot wherever I used to land in previous playthroughs. Right now they don't do it often.
And even if the hitchances are too little, they should bombard by means they have infinite ammo.
In Dagon HQ castle they spawn at corners & inside the temple itself.
It's turn 3, low-tier enemies around are downed.

Also, this save can be used to train AI use strategies vs usual player approach for such missions (set up a line, then aimed + snap). The most notable about this map vs BAI is: it covers inside the castle and then each unit, that is supposed to attack, goes to the gate, where following sniper reaction shot comes, as 10 agents simultaneously watch the exit.
Meanwhile, I retreated from previous same mission because layout was different (close to castle, more grenades and more shots consequently)

I tried with the settings as attached and the Gillmen did almost all attack. Used debug to watch them.

[Xilmi]

UPD 3 oh my god, you fix bugs way prior I report them. The discord community must be very active.

Erm... not exactly. I found this one myself.

The links are always the same

https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/brutal-ai

and

https://github.com/Xilmi/OpenXcom/releases

You can bookmark them.

[Abyss]

Erm... not exactly. I found this one myself.
The links are always the same

Whow.
The discord chat link, though. I wanted to look at what other ppl write there

[jnarical]

There's something odd with arcing shots for now, at least with RA enabled. I still have to find time to investigate

[0xEBJC]

would it be an easy, quick change to add a keyboard shortcut option to allow the player to change "Automated Combat" from: ctrl+a to what ever they want?

or ctrl+ "user defined key" like always keep the ctrl+ and allow the user to specifiy another key like 'c' for ctrl+c for example?


Reason being is I'm testing out the auto combat and I used directional keyboard layout (a s w d) for (left down up right) as opposed to the arrow keys and since my left key is 'a' when I press ctrl+a auto combat starts and then the 'a' key is held down and the screens scroll locks left.

[0xEBJC]

Two things I noticed, one a light graphics bug, but not necessary to fix:

If you click somewhere on the map and it shows the trail of TUs and the path routing for a specific soldier, then enabling auto combat before clearing the path, then that way point graphics remains even after the soldier moved because of entering auto combat.

The other thing is a QoL request. I know some may not care if you can see what your soldiers are doing when in auto combat mode, but I hope you could consider updating the auto combat so that it tracks the movements and keeps the screen centered on the active soldier.  Currently in auto combat the soldier moved off screen and the screen doesn't track the solder.

Thanks for any considerations.

[Xilmi]

The discord chat link, though.

Oh... Yeah. This makes a lot more sense and explains the seeming contradiction between knowing what I've updated and not knowing the link. https://discord.gg/xxTPB72x

[Xilmi]

would it be an easy, quick change to add a keyboard shortcut option to allow the player to change "Automated Combat" from: ctrl+a to what ever they want?

or ctrl+ "user defined key" like always keep the ctrl+ and allow the user to specifiy another key like 'c' for ctrl+c for example?


Reason being is I'm testing out the auto combat and I used directional keyboard layout (a s w d) for (left down up right) as opposed to the arrow keys and since my left key is 'a' when I press ctrl+a auto combat starts and then the 'a' key is held down and the screens scroll locks left.

Yeah, I'll do this for the next version.

[0xEBJC]

Regarding AI improvements or observed issues

In auto player mode, against swarmoids the players just pace back and forth one tile then back to the other next to a swarmoid when trying to melee or stunrod them and take no attack action but use up their TUs.

also in auto player mode I think there should be a higher polling for keyboard interrupt, sometimes it's almost impossible to get the game to receive a ctrl+a to disable the auto player mode once activated.  Escape to menu still seams to function fairly quickly.

[Xilmi]

In auto player mode, against swarmoids the players just pace back and forth one tile then back to the other next to a swarmoid when trying to melee or stunrod them and take no attack action but use up their TUs.

What was the Auto-play-aggressivity this happened on?

I think this can happen on the highest aggresivity when they don't have enough TUs to perform a melee-attack once they reach the enemy. But they are forced to change position instead of just ending their turn.

A savegame of this situation would help greatly identifying and fixing the issue. Do you have one?

[Abyss]

To Xilmi:
Here's nice mission vs werewolves (X-COM Files):
1) they act like if they are controlled by Brutal AI. Although they seem more intelligent, than basic creatures, clear hide&seek strategy doesn't look Sci-Fi realistic
- the distance is quite good, only couple can reach near-exit player units on turn one. And they go melee.
- excessive range to player units make other werevolves prefer to stay in cover over attacking on aggressiveness 2.
2) but still they peak =>
- and while peaking, move back and forth, causing reaction shots =>
- getting damaged without benefit
3a) I thought this mission is good to be fed to BAI, because it is all-tough-melee VS all-weak-but-ranged mission.
3b) I also think that all melee specialists in the game can perform better and treat more.
I see dogs, deep ones and, now, werevolves, who cannot approach at all because formal logic tells it is suicide run. =>
If so, I also believe that BAI doesn't know how to plan something besides one turn. But if it was able to plan, for at least 2-3 turns ahead, BAI would know that 20 werevolves (100-120 TU?), even if cut by 80% by reaction fire/measures, will destroy whole squad on turn 3. 

P.S. I also kinda like these strange werevolves moves for vanilla AI mission. It gives little tense and much fun.

[0xEBJC]

What was the Auto-play-aggressivity this happened on?

I think this can happen on the highest aggresivity when they don't have enough TUs to perform a melee-attack once they reach the enemy. But they are forced to change position instead of just ending their turn.

A savegame of this situation would help greatly identifying and fixing the issue. Do you have one?

TUs were 100+ standing next to the enemy.  Play er is going back and for many times until TUs run out...  I have only see this issue with swarmoids so far.  Two things come to mind.  Swamoids have a very low chance to take melee damage which might be affecting the AI.  I've also noticed the AI will got around the back of enemies, or tanks to get in a better attack.  Maybe how swarmoids are defined the have no back side just front on every side so the AI keeps moving back and forth to find how to reposition around the back of the swarmoid enemy?

The Auto-play aggressiveness is set to 3

let me know if you wanted to know more of the AI settings.

[Xilmi]

- and while peaking, move back and forth, causing reaction shots =>
- getting damaged without benefit

Okay, let me put this straight:

If you run them without max intelligence they will make mistakes. It is intentional that they make mistakes in these cases.
So reporting that they make mistakes like this when their intelligence isn't at max-level is not helpful.

They are not peeking. They have rolled to make a random move and then their random move made them run somewhere where they get reaction-fired at.

Weighted randomization will make them change from one cover-location to another but still not peeking. Only making them have less intelligence than 5 causes this behavior in my tests. For example inherit intelligence and they'll do what you describe. But if I set intelligence-mode to static and intelligence to 5 it simply doesn't happen.

If so, I also believe that BAI doesn't know how to plan something besides one turn. But if it was able to plan, for at least 2-3 turns ahead, BAI would know that 20 werevolves (100-120 TU?), even if cut by 80% by reaction fire/measures, will destroy whole squad on turn 3. 

I must admit that I'm confused about what you actually want me to do. Some time ago you were asking for the AI to randomly make bad moves and now you are asking for them to plan ahead several turns at once.

I'm actually tempted now to remove the random-mistakes-feature again and instead look into planning ahead. I actually have an idea for something like that. Right now the "communication" of the AI-units is limited to sharing vision. What they lack is the ability to plan a coordianted push.
For that they'd need to be able to identify that they are all in position. "In position", in that regard would mean that they are currently standing on the best cover-tile according to aggressiveness 2.
They'd need to put this information out for the others on their team to access and when enough of them have given their okay, they could perform a coordinated push where everyone comes out of cover and storms ahead at once.

Options that make sub-optimal moves would of course severely interfere with something like that in the sense that they'd have a hard time to get "in position".

[Xilmi]

TUs were 100+ standing next to the enemy.  Play er is going back and for many times until TUs run out...  I have only see this issue with swarmoids so far.  Two things come to mind.  Swamoids have a very low chance to take melee damage which might be affecting the AI.

I just created a test-mission against Swarmoids.

I could reproduce the behavior in the AI, when I just gave them melee-weapons. And then I tried what happens when I play myself... Now my question is:

Are swarmoids even possible to be hit in Meele at all?

I used 4 dudes all slashing away at swarmoids with knifes and not getting a single hit. I suppose the AI calculates a 0 percent chance to hit which leads to them just alternate between positions to attack them from but to no avail.

My hypothesis is that my melee-dodge-calculation has a similar error in how it's applied in the AI as I had with the NoLosPenalty. I need to look up how this mechanic actually works and adapt it in the code.

It's a big difference between: "Very low chance to hit" and "It's impossible to hit." So I have to figure out which one applies.

Edit: Yup. That's it. I'm calculating it completely wrong. Dodge-chance does indeed depend on the angle from which the unit is attacked.

Edit 2: Even with the fixed formula, there still doesn't seem to be any chance to hit the Swarmoids.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I must admit that I'm confused about what you actually want me to do. Some time ago you were asking for the AI to randomly make bad moves and now you are asking for them to plan ahead several turns at once.

It is not very clear for me why you want to make your AI worse?