Smarter Civilian AI?

[Solarius Scorch]

There will be no change for civilian AI.
[/thread]

Frankly, following this reasoning, there's no point in the OpenXCom at all.

Great and ingenious as it was, X-Com had its design flaws that were sticking out, like the psionics mechanic or civilian behaviour. These solutions are not "elegantly simple" nor "abstract", they are just crude. They're not "bugs" per se, but they're certainly shortcomings, not very well matching the rest of the game conceptually. I've felt like this back in 1997 and I still do now.

I can't certainly say that any of the solutions presented here would give good, balanced, exciting results. That would require actual work and testing. But I think that there's much room for improvement here.

Examples:

1. Have some civilians crouching in a closet or behind chairs and not budge, because they're too terrified to move.  Sure it probably gets them killed, but I could believe that.
2. Other civilians spot you and the aliens and choose to get your operatives between them and the aliens... and might get killed the process, but at least they tried to get behind the good guys in presumed safety.
3. Other civilians run for the Skyranger in sheer relief throwing all caution to the wind (Hobbes suggestion), and probably get zapped along the way.
4. Other civilians pick up a gun and start shooting anything they see not human (even operatives in power suits).
5. Some civilians actually come under your control when they spot you, and you can order them to safety.
6. Any civilians spawned outside a building, make it their priority to find a building to camp out inside.
7. Civilians that always try to maneuver terrain between them and the aliens.

I guess when I look back over this, these examples would make terror missions even more chaotic   However, I would personally be a little less frustrated and annoyed with them, because they would behave more realistically.

Most of these points sound very good. The only one I would strongly object to is number 4, as it would be unwieldy to implement and mod. It would make more sense if civilians shoot everyone (friend-or-foe recognition is poor in battle with no information), but that'd be too much; maybe only when they have bad morale (but not berzerking/panicking yet) or something.

[volutar]

Frankly, following this reasoning, there's no point in the OpenXCom at all.

So leave it.
OpenXcom doesn't want to please all your ideas. It meant to give non bugged and scalable REPLICA of the vanilla. Vanilla gameplay modifying "enhancements" are not really welcome.

You may create your fork, and do whatever you want, or ask Yankes for his "extended" version to spend months of hardwork on this thing (but more changes of the first way).

[Solarius Scorch]

Who said anything about modifying vanilla? I think nobody wants to remove vanilla features. Even though there already is a number of changes that do not fall under bugfixing, like improved alien AI, which certainly have more impact on the game than civilian behaviour.

I think if OpenXCom was meant to be only a 100% faithful recreation of the original, half of this forum would be pointless. And I don't mean mods.

[hellrazor]

Warboy will be going nuts again if he reads this.

But even so a little bit more realistic behaviour of the civilian AI, would be nice.
Even thou this is at the curretn state not the priority of the developers of OpenXcom, as volutar already stated.

Main goal is to rebuild the Original game with all it's features and without bugs. (And we have even more then that.)

[volutar]

Even though there already is a number of changes that do not fall under bugfixing, like improved alien AI, which certainly have more impact on the game than civilian behaviour.

There is no "AI enhancement" in OpenXcom. Since there's no way to replicate vanilla by 100% it's just went into something SIMILAR to vanilla. In some respect it might seem "smarter" in other respect - dumb. But it's what it is. Until there are some obvious bugs like stuck, crash, hang,etc, nobody will touch that beast. It's a rabbit hole __noone__ wants to dive into.

I think if OpenXCom was meant to be only a 100% faithful recreation of the original, half of this forum would be pointless. And I don't mean mods.

Frankly, quite a bit of forum messages are pointless indeed (as always  ).
Bad thing about that - they are often going over the "trolling" line. Not just trolling each other, but devs as well. Like this turn3 thing, which became a huge raw spot. And by constant annoying about this can simply cause project stop.

[Solarius Scorch]

Obviously nobody wants to annoy the devs (I hope), I'm forever grateful to them like I should be. However, it doesn't mean we can't do some creative talking, at least academically. Because that's what happens on the forums, period, and I personally think it's great, because sometimes it turns into marvellous stuff.

(And that 3rd turn thing is an actual problem. I understand the reasoning behind it, but it's still a problem. And that's a fact. We call it feedback.)

[Hythlodaeus]

I do not think civilan AI should be improved, but one could add an option or mod to rescue civilans like on XCOM 2012. It would add a motivation to walk directly to civilans and allow the player to score a little extra points at the end of the mission.

[pilot00]

Why is it I am seeing a few creative ideas again been treated as heresy I would never understand.

Anyways. The civilian AI in the game is purely stupid. There is no (apparent and what one can see from the game itself, I have no idea of the code) logic in the civilian movements. At times you will see them running towards your men and relative safety and at another you will see them moving right next to aliens or worse still crysalids to be slaughtered. Their movements seem tottaly random and I cant believe that this simulates panic.

I can understand that a person who was just enjoying his dayly routine simply cannot find the mental capacity to understand what the hell is going on, who are these monesters, why the city is on fire and who the hell are those guys totting strange guns, and make sound decisions on the spot. But there must be 1 in 10 civilians who can at least understand that the human blasting at the monsters is at least a human and it MIGHT be a good choice to run to him (forget about lines of fire and things like that).

I agree with Solarius that there are a lot of things wich were made haphazzardly and without real consideration or for whatever other reason, but soddy work should be fixed weather intentional or not.

Should it be in the OpenX-com? Well, since the stated purpose is to recreate the original let them beeing dumb. Should it be done mod wise? Definetly.

[yrizoud]

In TFTD, I remember some cramped places with civilians (cargo ship corridors, tunnels under island hills). A trolling civilian can block them off indefinitely... no amount of AI will prevent that. So the player had better have an option, at least a stun rod.

[redv]

Option for example:
If civilian nearby at Xcom soldier (i.e. 2 tiles distance) then player can control this civilian during 1 turn. Almost the same as psi control.

[Hobbes]

Option for example:
If civilian nearby at Xcom soldier (i.e. 2 tiles distance) then player can control this civilian during 1 turn. Almost the same as psi control.

This would be pure evil... an army of my pet civilian zombies... I love this idea

[Ridаn]

I`d love to see civilians not dying from stun damage (at least score wise), and if stunned civilians counted as rescued if you drag them to escape zone and abort mission.

[yrizoud]

Option for example:
If civilian nearby at Xcom soldier (i.e. 2 tiles distance) then player can control this civilian during 1 turn. Almost the same as psi control.

I like it a lot ! It gives some additional choices to the player without requiring more items or menus. You can keep control of the civilian over several turns, by making him run from one of your soldiers to the next, or actually follow him back.

[ivandogovich]

Option for example:
If civilian nearby at Xcom soldier (i.e. 2 tiles distance) then player can control this civilian during 1 turn. Almost the same as psi control.

And.. if any civilian dies while under XCOM control, they count at 3X or more negative points.   (#SaveTheZombies)

[Solarius Scorch]

At first I was like "arrrgh! I don't want the player to control civilians, that's silly!" like usual, but then thought, "hey, this might actually work". If it only applies to the ones that start their turn right next to an X-Com unit, this would make it a bit more believable. Furthermore, think of the role-playing/drama potential: a wounded soldier stay behind to protect a little girl they found.

Not to mention, most of these civilians will die anyway. And take some of your agents with them.