Brutal-OXCE 8.3.4

[Abyss]

Hi, Xilmi!
Sorry for late reply, I've seen your message.
Ok, I'll change Ironman, because there are plenty of moments that seem unfair and I anyway  have to often reload from backup.
Initially, I switched to Ironman/SH from just SH, because it was kind of enhancing the difficulty in vanilla and I didn't use to reload by in-game months.

This mission has tons of cover so I can very well imagine that the AI can do a good job with being aggressive on it. They also threw lots and lots of grenades. The high health-pools compared to the damage and the availability of medikits also helped me under consideration that the enemy played less aggressively.
Overall the level of challenge felt good considering me probably not playing very well.

This mission is proposed to be done with higher tier armor, which was not available at the moment, because my overall on-globe progress is non-optimal (guess why ). If not urban location, the proxy grenades would have been very useful. I had it never occured in town.
Also, that's second team, not the best one.
So, it's doable even vs BAI, but not in my case (actually, I cannot see any player to get optimal on-globe progress with this amount of casualties BAI usually brings)

You mean you didn't replay the same mission but only a similar one? The one you won was the one in the urban area or not? It's not entirely clear to me.

I played exactly the same mission four times from backup.

A TFTD-player told me that for his play-style it is very helpful if the AI rushes.

Overall, AI rush is very niche. It should be occurring if the conditions are positive:
- overall amount of units * unitpower  >= 2,0 or even 3,0. Unitpower is weight-comparison in terms of armor (weight=50; including resistances vs wielded arms, because even 10 armor with resistance 0.2 equals 50 armor in simple approach), weapons (weight = 30; including best possible damage per turn) and combination of TU's (there BAI should assume something, not cheat. I mean, at beginning it should assume that X-COM TU's are ~70, but when few turns pass, it can reconsider these values).
- dense cover before the point of actual approach
- at least some initial shots made actual damage.
- OR melee is seems to be the most reliable way to deal with X-COM (or no other weapons are in stock)
If such adjustment can happen, then it can be more fluid approach.
Also, although it was initial and helpful collab with classic X-COM scenario users, it should be noted that major pf players are megamod users.

I think my reaction to "too strong" in the future will be: "Then mod it easier/lower the difficulty", whereas I will take to "too easy" very seariously and will want to look into the reasons for that and what to do about it.

I watched a year ago when there was a misunderstanding between you and the modders. If you remember what I mean. While the progress of BAI is great and all conditions for cooperation on megamods are in place, there is no clear movement yet. Perhaps rebalancing mods under BAI requires effort (mods have been created from several to ten years) comparable to months of debugging and gameplay-testing. And, in the end, it may be that only the community can rebalance it optimally.
You cannot see how personally I wish you and modders take each other hand-in-hand and jump up and down together on a road into a bright future.
- at the same time, players are interested in a strengthened AI, capable of diversified approach to confrontation
- players are interested in the dynamics and quality of the game as such.
- At the same time, the game should not be able to be completed only under the condition of savescuming.

I guess with all this I'm saying in the current moment it would be better to bring back the BAI dumbness level settings until the connection arises, because for now the control over the level of player suffering is solely on you
There was cool option of "static intelligence" to adjust weighted-randomization of BAI movement logics, where it rolled from x to 1. Please consider bringing it back in. It should be up to a player. Like, I will set it to 0.6-1.0 most likely, or even 0.4-1.0. 

The formula is pretty much this:
100 / (discoverThreat + walkToDist * myAggressiveness);

What if myaggressiveness is partially brought by units.RUL (if none, then 1),
while discoverThreat is fluid by means of comparative unitpower (weights: armor = 50, weapon = 30, stats = 20)  + unit_excess_over_player? If armor is somewhat better, then more aggressive. But then it can be abused with a craft of 10 no-armor dogs + four power-armor guys. Wait, 3 power-armor guys probably could do nothing against 20 enemies with plasma, right? So... it has all chances to work correctly.

[Abyss]

The AI considers a unit as a valid target to attack on the current turn when the unit was "seen" in the current turn. target->getTurnsSinceSeen(_unit->getFaction()) == 0

I think this would be justifiyable to have as an option. It's a bit of a grey area in terms of whether that can be considered cheating or not. The introduction of holding Alt to see where the AI units were spotted shooting from even without actually seeing the units leveled the playing-field when it comes to precision. But that could also be considered as: "Allowing the player to cheat too so the AI-cheat becomes more justifyable."

I think, the overall decision as concept is good and very intriguing, but the impact on player is too punishing.
I would see it as range-dependent randomization of square (or in-depth rectangle) where famous Bullet-Scanner (a.k.a. BS) can be involved. Then, if target is hit, then the necessary tile is 100% determined.

Also, I would call back Joynarical to do something about grenades so they make landing with range-dependant Gaussian distribution around the target tile.

[Abyss]

Changelog:

This was previously always the case but now can be turned off. Disabling it will help units with stealth- and vision-advantage to rely on reaction-fire-based-strategies without instantly triggering retaliation to their exact position.
The AI will still know where the shot came from but can no longer target that tile without visual confirmation.

You rush in decisions. The base option of counter-reaction fire was something very new to X-COM mechanics.
Players also use blindfire in some cases. Not as precise as BAI did, but sometimes it helps.
BAI also has no flaring options, which can be used to reveal reaction-fired opponent. 
Actually, questions arise now:
- will BAI prefer hiding&lurking instead of shooting
- what if it's impossible to get reach the positions alive? Will BAI have to run to discover, sacrificing units one by one in order to reveal enemy positions?
- etc etc

BS is cool thing, which also adds dynamics. Just imagine 10 guys simultaneously shooting through the area with rifles, like mexican mafia from B-class action movies. 
Okay, okay. You got me. I just really desire it for you to implement BS into the battles 

[Xilmi]

You rush in decisions.

Hu? How is adding a new option, which doesn't even change anything unless the player deliberately changes it a "decision" on my part? Juku asked what he could to modding wise against this kind of behavior. I realized that there wasn't much he could do and that it would be easy to add an option to change how that works.

The base option of counter-reaction fire was something very new to X-COM mechanics.
- will BAI prefer hiding&lurking instead of shooting
- what if it's impossible to get reach the positions alive? Will BAI have to run to discover, sacrificing units one by one in order to reveal enemy positions?

I guess you mean for the case that the spotting from getting shot at is deliberately disabled by the player?

The answer is: It depends. The point of the new mechanic that was added in 8.0.0 is to dynamically determine whether it's worth to try and send in a spotter or not as opposed to the arbitrary behavior created by the aggression-system. By default the aggression-system is disabled but if you use inherit aggression it gets reenabled.

The new system does the reverse logic of determining discoverThreat. It basically does discoverthreat for the enemy units. Currently it uses a 1 for 1 threshold. Basically if at least one unit can use it's full TUs to attack what a spotter would likely reveal, then the spotter is considered. The spotters own TUs are not considered for that. So it has to be another unit that provides the discoverthreat.

So whether the units hide or attack depends on how well the enemy is exposed. If you position your units without cover in a centralized position it's very likely the AI will send in a spotter. But of course also only if that is necessary. As soon as the spotter spots something he returns to its regular behavior, which is the main-difference to the sweep-mode.

In Mods where the player has a massive vision and/or stealth-advantage, it could happen that the AI sacrifices several spotters that all die to reaction-fire. Whether or not the AI shall get some specific logic to better deal with the scenario that tracking of reaction-fire is disabled is a question that the people who'd like to play with that setting should answer. Overall the idea was to make it easier. In a similar vein to not using blind-grenades.

BS is cool thing, which also adds dynamics. Just imagine 10 guys simultaneously shooting through the area with rifles, like mexican mafia from B-class action movies. 
Okay, okay. You got me. I just really desire it for you to implement BS into the battles 

This is not a trivial task. It requires an underlying logic. Blind-shooting reveals your own position, likely wastes ammunition and TUs that could have been used to improve the own position and/or preserved for reaction-fire.

I, as a player, usually only do it, when I'm relatively certain about the position of an enemy. And that's pretty-much how the AI also works. There's also an engine-thing. If you attack tiles that don't contain enemies or objects, the shot will be aimed at the floor. So chances of hitting someone near that tile with stray-shots is reduced quite a bit because of that. You'd actually have to aim behind the tile to avoid hitting the ground.

You could use Targeting-Mode 4 and tell yourself it's blindfire.

[Abyss]

Hu? How is adding a new option, which doesn't even change anything unless the player deliberately changes it a "decision" on my part?

Oh, pardon me. I must be f****ng into my eyes whole time, thinking it is permanent change (given all psychological wounds you inflicted on players by denouncing AI nerfing system  <- it was a half-serious joke).

If you attack tiles that don't contain enemies or objects, the shot will be aimed at the floor. So chances of hitting someone near that tile with stray-shots is reduced quite a bit because of that

Recently I was thinking of the ghost spawn mechanic. It's quite simple.
Say, there's 3x5 rectangle from which proposed enemy has made out-of-dark reaction shooting. If this area is unreachable via adequate losses, BAI can imagine there is a unit on the tile, and then shoots into it. It is a ghost unit, with whole one purpose - to make a line of shot through this rectangle. The hit mechanism has been already introducted by you, so there's no trouble with actual revealing of units. And then, ASA unit is revealed, BAI switches to original/combined strategy.
Again, this is counter-reaction_fire mechanism, which means X-COM units are static and not moving. Moreover, it is not proposed as a whole turn strategy, possibly 20-25% of available shots can make fair scanning, if area is 3 tiles, and there's 30 enemies vs 10 agents. For guys with low nightvision and a good crowd.

While, as Juku suggested, instant-explosive and incendiary (including plasma, which is good light-setter itself) rounds can aim into some different positions, deeper into the rectangle.
End-turn explosives, like grenades, are already good.

What do you think now?
* on attachment, please read grenadeing as instant-explosive/incendiary targeting tiles 

[donk]

I want to mention enemies sometimes walk into their own grenades. Someone throws and then someone else just walk up to it. I think it happens when I have an armored unity that they can't hurt so they decide to melee it ignoring the bomb on the ground.

I'll add that when they walk into melee range of a tough unit, they might still fire their gun, which makes little sense.

And an other thing. Enemies don't seem to care if theirs are close my unit, they will still throw bombs. All this is when fighting hybrids.

[Juku121]

I want to mention enemies sometimes walk into their own grenades.

I don't think that's unique to the AI...

BTW i recently walked on mine, which exploded. Amazing things happen

[donk]

I don't think that's unique to the AI...

Well, I don't want to think about all the times I walked on my own mines... But you expect better from the aliens that can travel through space, maybe. 

[Abyss]

BTW i recently walked on mine, which exploded. Amazing things happen

That was about AI pre-priming mine and carrying it around as grenade for later. Surely, they don't know the difference.
As for intention, yes. Everyone walked into it,eventually

[Xilmi]

I want to mention enemies sometimes walk into their own grenades. Someone throws and then someone else just walk up to it. I think it happens when I have an armored unity that they can't hurt so they decide to melee it ignoring the bomb on the ground.

The score for going to a tile inside the blast-radius of a grenade in order to attack is halved. That means if they have an option to attack from outside the blast-radius they'll go into the blast radius only if they think their damage will be twice as high or better if they do so.

This may or may not be foolish based on the exact situation. My thought-process was that on average it's best to try and maximize damage done to the player on the AI's turn instead of giving the initiative back to the player. So even if the melee-unit sacrifices itself in that maneuver, if they can kill or severely damage the player-unit, it is considered worth it.

I'll add that when they walk into melee range of a tough unit, they might still fire their gun, which makes little sense.

Please be a little more concrete about the details of the scenarios you describe. Who is "they"? A unit with or without melee-capabilities? Does the tough unit have that close-quarter-combat-ability that is used in some mods that can make shots fired in melee-range of them miss or not? Ideally a save-game where that happens would be great. There's just too many possible parameters to say whether it's silly or not. The idea behind going into melee-range with ranged-weapons usually is to maximize damage-output by minimizing the chance to miss.

And an other thing. Enemies don't seem to care if theirs are close my unit, they will still throw bombs. All this is when fighting hybrids.

What do you mean with "hybrids"? I need very exact information, ideally save-games so that feedback like that can properly be taken into consideration.
The mindset behind that behavior is that it's better to sacrifice yourself while dealing damage than giving back initiative to the other side that may kill you next turn anyways. Throwing a bomb at short range and then not walking out of the blast-radius usually means they don't have enough time-units to walk out of it again. Which also means that if they hadn't thrown the bomb they most likely couldn't have prevented being killed by you next turn. So taking one of your units with them might still be the best decision.

Also note that the AI will play as if their weapons always have some effect, even if the damage is completely mitigated by the enemies' armor. So if your units are so well armored as to mitigate the AI's attempts to deal damage, a lot of behaviors that otherwise would make sense now look nonsensical as in: "This AI unit nuked itself while trying to damage my tank without success." Yes, this will look stupid but just trying to disengage and hide in these scenarios would be more annoying to play against without increasing difficulty.

Edit: The AI dropping their primed grenades on the ground when they die or get stunned is something that I think I should look at. I think currently they don't register that this also causes a blast-radius of tiles they should rather avoid. So if it happens on their turn due to reaction-fire, they'd still have a chance to avoid the explosion. Definitely something to look into.

[donk]

The score for going to a tile inside the blast-radius of a grenade in order to attack is halved. That means if they have an option to attack from outside the blast-radius they'll go into the blast radius only if they think their damage will be twice as high or better if they do so.

This may or may not be foolish based on the exact situation. My thought-process was that on average it's best to try and maximize damage done to the player on the AI's turn instead of giving the initiative back to the player. So even if the melee-unit sacrifices itself in that maneuver, if they can kill or severely damage the player-unit, it is considered worth it.

But that's the problem, they deal no damage. They don't even try to attack the rear where they actually might do damage, even if they have plenty of TU:s. Hm, do they also consider tanks as cover too?

Please be a little more concrete about the details of the scenarios you describe. Who is "they"? A unit with or without melee-capabilities?

Well, I'm vague since it applies to so many units I'm not sure what to type. This is XCF so I guess most units have some sort of melee. This is so common I'm surprised it hasn't happened to you. Do you have a game that you play along with as you make the AI?

Does the tough unit have that close-quarter-combat-ability that is used in some mods that can make shots fired in melee-range of them miss or not?

No, tanks does not. I have not seen them do this to units that has melee.

What do you mean with "hybrids"? I need very exact information, ideally save-games so that feedback like that can properly be taken into consideration.

Hybrids, the race. The weakest aliens in XCF. I'm not sure how I can make a save since I don't know when this will happen.

But here's a save where it did happen the previous turn. This time it's cults and not hybrids, but the behavior is the same.

Notice the group around one of the tanks. The white dude has both melee and ranged, but he just walked up to the front and shot. The orange one is just ranged and he did the same. The black one is mostly melee and he just went up to the tank and took a few swings and threw some knifes. All from the front. They had plenty of TU:s to walk around before attacking.

It's XCF with Air Raids/Damage Facilities.

[Xilmi]

But that's the problem, they deal no damage. They don't even try to attack the rear where they actually might do damage, even if they have plenty of TU:s.

I checked their weapons. Wakizashi has 30 Power, so it does no damage to a tank from either direction as the tank has 60 armor. So not walking around it to attack from the rear makes no difference to damage but it makes difference to their own safety/exposure, so they rather not.
The only ones that could deal damage are the ones with the Katanas, which has 50 damage and thus theoretically can harm the 60 armor-tank if they roll high enough.

Also I noticed from your save that attacking with a Katana requires not only TUs but also energy. So not having plenty of TUs isn't an adequate condition. Actually the AI might be bad with these kinds of attacks as, for example, if alternative movement-methods is enabled, they might decide to run most of the time not thinking about preserving energy for attacks. I even saw a unit get in position to attack, having enough TUs but not enough energy and then being stranded and not attacking at all.

It's kinda gruesome how much Mods meddle with the game-mechanics. Supporting all of these scenarios via AI is a gargantuan task. And modders really don't seem to care about AI, as the base AI couldn't even use different weapons at all. Yet a lot of enemies have more than one. Makes me wonder why.

Also, when it comes to 2x2 units, I'm not sure whether my AI is even capable to determine where "behind" is. I wouldn't even know. At least I didn't consider 2x2 units, when I made the logic for attacking from different angles. Just looked at the code. It actually should work.

Another aspect is that the units are afraid of reaction-fire. This is something that might deter them from walking around a unit, if it doesn't promise a lot more damage.

Hm, do they also consider tanks as cover too?

No. Neither yours nor their own.

This is so common I'm surprised it hasn't happened to you. Do you have a game that you play along with as you make the AI?

I usually play the base-game, as it seems to be the most logical thing to do. As I said, the modding-capabilities seem to be sheer endless and taking everything that can happen their into account is hard.

But here's a save where it did happen the previous turn. This time it's cults and not hybrids, but the behavior is the same.

It didn't happen on the current turn though. Units that got into melee-range and had a melee-weapon did us the melee-weapon.

As I already told to Abyss: Ironman is horrible when it comes to being capable of providing save-games for feedback. It is possible to restrain oneself from save-scumming without ironman enabled. And by not having it enabled, it is still always possible to use autosaves for analysis.

Notice the group around one of the tanks. The white dude has both melee and ranged, but he just walked up to the front and shot. The orange one is just ranged and he did the same. The black one is mostly melee and he just went up to the tank and took a few swings and threw some knifes. All from the front. They had plenty of TU:s to walk around before attacking.

Again, plenty of TUs you say... but nothing about energy. Could it be that it happened exactly for the reason I mentioned earlier: A lot of the melee-attacks also costing energy? Could it be they were low on energy and thus only could use a limited amount of melee-swings, which cost energy, and then continued with ranged weapons that only cost TU but no energy?

This seems to be the most plausible explanation here. Especially incase you are using alternate movement-methods, which the AI could have used to run but depleting their energy-pool.

Edit:
Okay, I made respective modifications to the code. The AI now also considers energy-consuption when evaluating different attack-options. In the scenario at hand this leads to more shooting from the distance instead of running into melee-range only to then realize they don't have enough energy to perform the intended melee-attacks and then using ranged-attacks from up close instead.

[Juku121]

Wakizashi has 30 Power, so it does no damage to a tank from either direction as the tank has 60 armor.

The only ones that could deal damage are the ones with the Katanas, which has 50 damage and thus theoretically can harm the 60 armor-tank if they roll high enough.

You're right, but there's a lot more to it than just 60 >= 30*2. Swords have an armour penetration malus, and scale with user stats. That katana can do something like 160-180 damage at maximum, depending on which of the two ninja dudes is wielding it. But they also work against 40% higher armour. Melee is pretty bonkers in both XCF and Piratez.

And modders really don't seem to care about AI, as the base AI couldn't even use different weapons at all. Yet a lot of enemies have more than one. Makes me wonder why.

Modders don't really have much access to AI, hence the disinterest. Multiple weapons on enemy units are mostly for immersion and/or looting, as far as I can tell.

[donk]

It's kinda gruesome how much Mods meddle with the game-mechanics. Supporting all of these scenarios via AI is a gargantuan task. And modders really don't seem to care about AI, as the base AI couldn't even use different weapons at all. Yet a lot of enemies have more than one. Makes me wonder why.

Maybe it's their passive way of asking: Look at this cool thing that is possible if someone feels like doing something. Wink, wink. 

Another aspect is that the units are afraid of reaction-fire. This is something that might deter them from walking around a unit, if it doesn't promise a lot more damage.

Strange, because they very often start walking back and forth between 2 tiles just in front of the tank before attacking.

It didn't happen on the current turn though. Units that got into melee-range and had a melee-weapon did us the melee-weapon.

That's unfortunate. Because it happened to me, after killing the 3 dudes some more came from the building. That's why it's hard to know when to make save backups, you don't know when you should and you can't really make a new save for each turn.

As I already told to Abyss: Ironman is horrible when it comes to being capable of providing save-games for feedback. It is possible to restrain oneself from save-scumming without ironman enabled. And by not having it enabled, it is still always possible to use autosaves for analysis.

I didn't know that BAI was this new. I just grabbed some cool shit and through this together and after watching streams I knew I wanted a better AI, so I gave this no thought. Now I'm hundreds of hours in and I don't want to undo that. Besides, it lead to the crash bug being found. 

Again, plenty of TUs you say... but nothing about energy. Could it be that it happened exactly for the reason I mentioned earlier: A lot of the melee-attacks also costing energy? Could it be they were low on energy and thus only could use a limited amount of melee-swings, which cost energy, and then continued with ranged weapons that only cost TU but no energy?

Nah, I never thought of energy since they sure had no problem throwing out lots of attacks. Besides, the orange guy had no business being in melee range having only ranged weapons.

Edit:
Okay, I made respective modifications to the code. The AI now also considers energy-consuption when evaluating different attack-options. In the scenario at hand this leads to more shooting from the distance instead of running into melee-range only to then realize they don't have enough energy to perform the intended melee-attacks and then using ranged-attacks from up close instead.

Hey, don't get me wrong here. I'm happy for all progress with this.

[Abyss]

Supporting all of these scenarios via AI is a gargantuan task. And modders really don't seem to care about AI, as the base AI couldn't even use different weapons at all. Yet a lot of enemies have more than one. Makes me wonder why.

They can, ninjas wielding both katanas and throwing knifes performed both kinds of attacks in XCF way before BAI was presented. Although, I have no clue what exactly triggered one or another. Perhaps, just range to a target.
Also, vanilla AI seemed to most target weakest armored guy, too.
To conclude, it has had (and still has) at least, some logic