Brutal-OXCE 8.3.4

[kelltozet]

Items created by built-in weapon sets were placed in the wrong slots.

[0xEBJC]

Xilmi,

I found an alignment issues in the craft soldier equipment menu, see attached pictures.  The issue does not present it self in OXCE, just BRUTAL

Again, thanks for an amazing fork of OXCE

[0xEBJC]

I reworked a new BRUTAL icon, I can change the alien face to any other color you desire and the eyes separately if you have a specific request for eye color and face color.  In my opinion for the BRUTAL icon a darker face and bright eyes seams more ominous and daunting.

[Xilmi]

Items created by built-in weapon sets were placed in the wrong slots.

Can you elaborate a little bit more what I'm seeing here?
I don't know what is intended and I also don't know what is wrong and by what logic it is wrong.

[0xEBJC]

Xilmi,

I found an alignment issues in the craft soldier equipment menu, see attached pictures.  The issue does not present it self in OXCE, just BRUTAL

Again, thanks for an amazing fork of OXCE

Also, this alignment issues wasn't there when I was using BRUTAL v7.x (I can't remember which version I was using) maybe 7.12.2?  I only saw this issue after upgrading directly to v8.2.0, I skipped the other versions in between.

[kelltozet]

Can you elaborate a little bit more what I'm seeing here?

Okay, let's take a Skyforge Engineer as an example.
https://xpedia.netlify.app/##STR_SKYFORGE_ENGINEER
He has a set of list of items he can come pre equipped with. In this case, it's just a valuable loot, like coins and arc welder, not a weapon. The main wepon and other items generation code is somewhere else.

The problem is that these items replace the weapon he has to hold in his hands. If I load the B1_geoscape.sav in Xpirates without Brutal AI and start the mission, all items will be spawned, and he is holding weapon in his arms.

It looks like items spawned by the Built-in weapon sets are being added to the wrong slots, starting with the hands and overwriting the weapons that should be there.

[Xilmi]

Also, this alignment issues wasn't there when I was using BRUTAL v7.x (I can't remember which version I was using) maybe 7.12.2?  I only saw this issue after upgrading directly to v8.2.0, I skipped the other versions in between.

Yes, the alignment issue is a result of accepting a PR from Alpha Centauri Bear and was reported before here:
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,10967.msg161820.html#msg161820

I interpreted his comment under that one as he'll look into it. If he doesn't I'll look at it myself.

Also: I highly recommend people to report issues as new threats now that we got a new sub-forum, as it makes it much easier to keep track of them and avoid duplicate-reports.

[Xilmi]

@kelltozet:

So apparently mods have additional ways to assign equipment to enemy units that are different from the way it works normally and it messes up their intended equipment when smart-auto-equip is used.

I think I'll limit this feature to the player-faction in order to avoid messing up enemy-equipment.

Or are there also ways that this could negatively impact player-units as well?

I guess the safest way is to disable the Smart Ctrl-Click and Auto-equip-feature when playing mods like that as I don't really see an easy way to fix it otherwise.

[Meridian]

So apparently mods have additional ways to assign equipment to enemy units that are different from the way it works normally

No, mods just use the standard OXC logic here.

Or are there also ways that this could negatively impact player-units as well?

Yes, in mods this will negatively impact summoned player units (and probably also player HWPs with a secondary weapon).

[Xilmi]

No, mods just use the standard OXC logic here.

If this is the case I guess I have to debug the concrete example.
As far as I understood the code it shouldn't be possible that the weapon gets replaced.
The weapon is placed first and then occupies the slot it was placed in. So the placement of subsequent items should notice that the weapon's slot is blocked and go for the next best kind of empty slot type.

I also haven't seen or heard of this effect before, so that's why I thought this mod is doing something unusual that I'm not aware of.

[kelltozet]

Or are there also ways that this could negatively impact player-units as well?

For the player-units, the effect is minor.
Some of the player's armor also has built-in items generated at the start of the mission.
Example https://xpedia.netlify.app/##STR_DAMSEL_ARMOR_FURS_UC

The items are not overwritten, but simply moved to the general inventory. This is normal behavior, just the order of slots in which things are added is different.

The "Wierd thingie" here is speshial item - glamour. It is kind of resource from a Xpiratez. With normal behavior, it should not be visible in the inventory. If you manually move it from the units's hands to another slot, it will disappear, but it will be in the loot list at the end of the mission. If glamour was generated not in hands, everything would work as it should.

[Meridian]

If this is the case I guess I have to debug the concrete example.

From commit message:

Items that have a default-slot or a slot-order by item-category will now use the corresponding logic for how they are equipped, even if smart-equip is enabled.

Bug 1: This is not true, your option will simply overwrite it. In worst case, it could even mark a placed item as unplaced and some nasty side effects.

if you want this to work, you need to consider the "placed" flag:

instead of:

Code: [Select]

if (Options::oxceSmartCtrlEquip)

it should be:

Code: [Select]

if (!placed && Options::oxceSmartCtrlEquip)

Bug 2: you are now ignoring weight constraints, poor soldiers get overburdened all the time, see screenshot

Bug 3: you're spamming the log

Code: [Select]

[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_MEDI_KIT placed to STR_BELT due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_MOTION_SCANNER placed to STR_BELT due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_HIGH_EXPLOSIVE placed to STR_BELT due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_GRENADE placed to STR_BELT due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_PROXIMITY_GRENADE placed to STR_RIGHT_LEG due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_SMOKE_GRENADE placed to STR_RIGHT_LEG due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_PSI_AMP placed to STR_BACK_PACK due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_ALIEN_GRENADE placed to STR_LEFT_LEG due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_MIND_PROBE placed to STR_BACK_PACK due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_PLASMA_PISTOL_CLIP placed to STR_BELT due to fallback
[2024-02-16_09-17-17] [INFO] STR_MIND_PROBE placed to STR_BACK_PACK due to fallback


[Xilmi]

...

Thanks for the hints. I thought I removed the debug-messages.
I think you're right about all you said.

[kelltozet]

@Xilmi:
Thanks for such a quick bug fix.

Can I make a couple of suggestions?
The AI is too passive in 8.x.x version for Xpiratez mod.
The game design in Xpiratez is such that the battles should be quite active.
The player's units lose morale every turn if they don't kill enemies. Also, their Freshness decreases every turn.

Another problem is that there are mortars in Xpiratez. In some missions, you can blow up houses from afar without taking any risks at all.

In my opinion, in version 7.13, when enemies thought they were stronger and attacked, it was almost the perfect AI behavior for the Xpiratez mod.
Maybe a little too aggressive, but only a little.

Now, if I put my squad under AI control, then both sides will not clash in battle at all (1.png).
Every turn, units on both sides look out and then hide back.
I understand that in this example there is an almost bare field with two crafts.
But still, I would like the battle to begin.

Is it possible to return scale of aggressiveness from power-balance as an option in the settings?
Or make a new option in the settings, so that in the absence of violence, the AI would start acting more aggressively after a few turns?
Or make AI more aggressive in general, as an option?

[Xilmi]

The AI is too passive in 8.x.x version for Xpiratez mod.
The game design in Xpiratez is such that the battles should be quite active.
The player's units lose morale every turn if they don't kill enemies. Also, their Freshness decreases every turn.

In a case like this isn't it even smarter for the AI to force the player to be more active and prolong the mission?

Another problem is that there are mortars in Xpiratez. In some missions, you can blow up houses from afar without taking any risks at all.

This is indeed a more valid issue. The AI should already press the attack when there is no cover anymore. But when they die inside the house when you blow it up, this of course won't help.

Now, if I put my squad under AI control, then both sides will not clash in battle at all (1.png).

Press the "c" button. This brings up the auto-combat-customization. You can right-click on the soldiers there and change their aggression to "3", which is the mode where they are forced to push ahead.

Is it possible to return scale of aggressiveness from power-balance as an option in the settings?
Or make a new option in the settings, so that in the absence of violence, the AI would start acting more aggressively after a few turns?
Or make AI more aggressive in general, as an option?

There should still be the option to set the Aggressiveness of the enemy-AI to "Inherit aggressiveness". But in a situation like on the screenshot above I'm not sure how much this will do. They also have a lower score to stay in places where they have free vision to their fallen allies.

There used to be 2 modes that forced the AI to do something dumb. One of them was to forbid picking any target-tile that is same or further away from a supposed enemy than they started on and one that forced them to get as close as possible.

All the other experiements I did where essentially different weighs between safety and getting closer. But all these in-between-modes were essentially worse than the extremes.

I could probably bring back the forced-modes. But I need to make sure that people are aware that these weaken the AI and don't complain about dumb AI-behavior as a result of it.

Another thing I'd like to look into is mission-type-specific behavior. There are mission-types the player can win without having to kill any enemies. In the base game that's Alien Base, Cydonia 1 and Cydonia 2.

In these kinds of missions it would also make sense to force the AI to be more aggressive. So I'd have to look at identifying those.