Rumors about incompatibility with Brutal-OXCE

[Nalca]

If there are legitimate reasons not to pick up blue-clips, I'd rather have a generally valid algorithm that can determine whether it's worth to pick something up rather than forcing the modder to create a whitelist for every item that should be possible for the AI to pick up.

There are a lot of items that aren't weapons, but loot. Like the blue credit chip. - https://xpedia.netlify.app/##STR_CREDIT_CHIP_M
They are useless for battle, but worth a lot after. Some foes spawn with these in their inventory.

Some items are both, like the coconut - https://xpedia.netlify.app/##STR_COCONUT
A crappy weapon in the hand of a unexperimented hand, but maybe better than her fists.

[Dioxine]

Can you tell me how I can set-up a scenario where I can test my fix via the "New Battle"-functionality?

Launch Ratman Cache mission. And no, there is 0% chance of it being blind fire, unless your AI tries blind fire through 30 tiles of solid rock

My expectation as a modder would be that I can give the AI whatever kind of unit/weapon/terrain-combination I can come up with and that the AI then would be capable of grasping what it can do with that on it's own based on the properties of the units, not some arbitrary additional values that have to be set to control the AI.

The problem with your argument is, OXC had achieved this funtionality >10 years ago already. (and you haven't replicated it fully yet.)

[Juku121]

OXCE didn't have the functionality of enemies not killing Damsels until about a year ago, and it's achieved by... an "arbitrary additional values that have to be set to control the AI."

Now, I doubt this functionality is ever going to be achievable without such a value, so Xilmi's aspiration is not fully realistic, but let's not outright misrepresent what OXCE does and doesn't.

BAI might not fit a mod that's excessively customised to work with vanilla parameters, at least not without a big rework and the mod embracing Xilmi's "I want to be destroyed by AI" philosophy and both sides working together, but let's not act as if base game AI knows much anything about what it's doing. It doesn't, and it's long been a thing that's been acknowledged as a potential problem but one that is outside the scope of both OXC and OXCE.

All it does is create a passable illusion of intelligent resistance. Which is good enough in many cases. Game AI in general being relatively clueless is not an accident, an AI that can fairly kick their asses is not something most players want and thus it gets the barest attention paid to it by most developers.

If you actually pay attention, non-Brutal AI plays very inefficiently and frequently does not punish the player for obvious mistakes. And it must, or many of the maps with lots of enemies would be death traps that only the most hardcore of players could even hope to win.

[Berestow]

Well, it makes several missions unplayable or working radically different than intended (eg enemies killing Damsels), so not compatible with XPZ.

Things like it making game much simpler and one-dimensional (in my opinion it's a camp-or-die mod, at least in its current state), not even worth mentioning, to each their own.

So XPZ is not compatible with XPZ, nice.

makes several missions unplayable

Like XPZ with base defense with sewers? Or terror mission at first week that u can't win because your weapon is piece of shit and your transport is just shooting range for enemies.
 

making game much simpler

Like XPZ when once you get ACAR or tanks you can annihilate everyone without protection of power armor?

one-dimensional (in my opinion it's a camp-or-die mod)

Just like XPZ, X-Files and 40k? Right? Or there different mods with same name where are you not forced to wait 1st turn? Where are your team are not outnumbered? Where are they don't have much better equipment and stats? Where are no useless airbus?

[Juku121]

Just like ... X-Files ... Or there different mods with same name where are you not forced to wait 1st turn? Where are your team are not outnumbered? Where are they don't have much better equipment and stats?

Let's not get carried away here. I haven't played Piratez in a long while, but I do know X-Com Files. And these two mods have quite a bit in common. While these issues are present to some degree in XCF, they are not absolute:

• You are not even able to 'wait first turn' until Promo II. Since your transport has no walls until the Dragonfly. After that, it's situational, as always. A lot of aliens (and some others) also have a degree of heat vision and/or are snipers, so transports with open doors and smoke are quite a bit less effective.
  
• Your team may be outnumbered, but due to vanilla AI faffing about, unless they have heavy weapons (aliens, cultists with grenade launchers or explosives) or lots of TU (Chupacabras, Gilldogs, Chryssalids), that is not a big deal. I've watched several let's players leave 2/3 of their team idling about and still winning. This is exactly where BAI might do a lot of good.
  
• Agent stats are inflated to a quite ridiculous degree compared to most enemies, alien or not, due to a) transformations, b) commendations and c) comparatively high natural stat caps, d) armour. A generic cultist/alien mook is hilariously outstatted by X-Com.
  
• Equipment is hit-and-miss, since quite a few early and mid-game weapons are as good or better than enemy gear if played to their strengths. In fact, a plain wood axe is more terrifying than many a firearm, and can be had within the first month.
  

[Solarius Scorch]

@Berestow: your first post on this forum is an incoherent rant about a mod you don't like (or more accurately, don't know how to play), with a hint that other major mods are just as bad. And it's all quite off-topic to boot.

Honestly this post looks like a deliberate ban bait, but let's take a step back and please consider your actions here a bit more carefully in the future.

[Torchwood]

Having test played Brutal-AI with Piratez myself, I can tell you about my firsthand experiences. Long story short, while running it is possible, there's some complications that make this inadvisable to outright.
First, it will radically change the way AI behaves - by default, Brutal AI shares information between enemies as well as the player going on better. This means there are few to no campers, every single enemy will start rushing towards your position. So most fights boil down to can you hold your position or be overrun, with very little maneuver on your part. Giving how assault-focused Piratez can, and arguably should, be, it's not an improvement for the better in terms of gameplay experience.
And yes, whatever code used for enemies to ignore neutral units in certain missions, i.e. damsels, doesn't work in the BrutalAI version.

Regarding X-Com Files, I enjoyed playing it because is yes, you will at one point be expected to fight scores of humanoid enemies with just a handful of agents. However, with good tactics and superior training and equipment, it is possible for a small elite force to prevail even when greatly outnumbered. High quality weapons to make sure your volleys are deadly, grenades for crowd control, body armor to increase agent survivability, and a few others tricks. Enjoy it while it lasts and the tables turn when you need to deal with alien expeditions using a mass army ill-equipped for their weapons.