Some balance suggestions

[Solarius Scorch]

I was thinking less about destroying the entire syndicate (at once) but like assaulting specific bases/towns/cities. But it would be pretty suicidal xD (I'm thinking a multistage mission with like 8 maps, and high tiered troops)!

And battle tanks, artillery strikes, air support...
Damn, I'd actually play it just for fun if it existed.

[BetaSpectre]

The AI lacks proper artillery ability IMO. In the original we had the dreaded blaster spamming.

I dunno if its just a change from letting easy AI use it or if I simply haven't been giving the aliens/humans a chance.

I could imagine say one artillery unit per 6 troops that simply spams missiles or bombs randomly on the map xD on the locations before their own troops move.

If the aliens were to attack your base by ground IMO they should start a surface raid. Or during terror missions. Since there are so many terror missions and this would mean that civilians are practically guaranteed to die maybe such missions should only subtract if all of them died like how the hideout gives you that solid 500 score when you destroy it. While for each survivor the boost stays the same.

It would also give you a reason to dread terror missions instead of being like ooooh who do I capture/kill/loot this time :3!!!
I avoid the star gods like the flu invisibility, plasma barf, and mind control are not good combinations. No sir.

[Dioxine]

All good points. Yeah I am constrained by the engine, and blasters... while they help, they're unfair, and OP as heck when the player gets them. Trying to use other methods. The next ver. will have all day vision ranges increased to 30 - we'll see if it makes the AI more dangerous - it will be able to attack with more troops and kill civilians faster too.

[Eddie]

As far as I know the AI doesn't use aimed shot if anything else is available. They are not aware of UFO extender accuracy. At range 30 they would happily fire 0% acc snapshots/autoshots all day.
Correct me if I'm wrong though.

[Arthanor]

The AI picks which shot depending on hard coded ranges. It might be worth looking into making those number refer to the parameters defined for UFOExtender accuracy though (Meridian!). If my reading of the source is correct, when the unit is:

within 4 tiles:
Auto shot if it has TUs for it
Aimed shot if it doesn't have TUs for Snap or Auto
Snap otherwise

more than 12 tiles away:
Aimed shot if it has TUs for it
Snap if less than 20 tiles away, didn't have TUs for Aimed but has TUs for snap

Then there's 3 range independent clauses which are probably to catch odd edge cases, where the priority is given to snap, then aimed, then auto shots.

Thanks to the edge cases, an AI unit would be able to fire a HMG if more than 4 tiles distant, since it will fail every check until the very last decision to take an autoshot since it has TUs for it. Similarly, at range > 12, it would prefer to use an aimed shot over a snap shot so use a sniper rifle properly.

Now if you have a good rifle (BlackMarch SMG?) with snapRange of 15, the AI might be better off using snap shots when within 15 tiles instead of 12, so that's a case where the hard coded range bands are not quite accurate but it's not that terrible to use a aimed shot in that case either (I use aimed shots a lot, as I value hitting once more than the chance of hitting twice). The AI does use the various shots in the cases where they would generally make sense, but would probably benefit a bit from getting the autoRange and snapRange of guns from the ruleset, if available.

[Dioxine]

These are minor details. What's important, the AI will be finally using the 20+ tiles away behaviour more often (aimed shot or hide).

[Arthanor]

Yes, it should be interesting. I was just responding to Eddie's claim that the AI only snap shots. Past 12 tiles, it should aim.

I guess the buff to vision extends to gals too? otherwise that's a big impact on reaction shots.

I wonder if it'll make initial deployment trickier, since more enemies might have LoS to the craft on T1..

and it will make melee a bit more realistic too by increasing the risk of getting shot on the way in as you can be spotted faster. Approaching outside of LoF will be even more important with the longer distance to cover (In fact, it's quite a bit more unlikely to be able to rush someone 30 tiles and still attack, compared to 20 tiles).

Should be interesting!

[Meridian]

The AI picks which shot depending on hard coded ranges. It might be worth looking into making those number refer to the parameters defined for UFOExtender accuracy though (Meridian!).

I'm not touching alien AI

[Eddie]

Thank you for the explanation Arthanor.

[Dioxine]

I guess the buff to vision extends to gals too? otherwise that's a big impact on reaction shots.

Yes, it's a buff to global day vision for everyone. Well, I'll think about lowering it for things like tanks or light-hating creatures.

[Arthanor]

I'm not touching alien AI

I'd expect it to be fairly straightforward to implement (replace an explicit number with one read from the ruleset). If I offer a patch, would you be interested?

I'm thinking things like allowing autoshots when in autoRange+1 tiles, instead of 4 tiles, would be great for the quite numerous weapons with extended autoRanges, mostly. It might affect some of the snapshots weapons, but that's less significant. Although possibly landing 2 shots instead of one, or landing one and still having TUs to go hide could be good too.

[Dioxine]

Yeah well it might help or it might make things worse. It's a matter of opinion, too. Should really the enemies always calculate the best possible outcome?

[Meridian]

I'd expect it to be fairly straightforward to implement (replace an explicit number with one read from the ruleset). If I offer a patch, would you be interested?

Not because I couldn't, but because I don't want to know how it works.
Alien AI is one of the few last things that I know little about and I want to keep it that way... otherwise it's not Enemy Unknown anymore.

[Arthanor]

Yeah well it might help or it might make things worse. It's a matter of opinion, too. Should really the enemies always calculate the best possible outcome?

Well, if they are outfitted with a weapon, I'd expect they know how to use them. The current hard coded numbers are made for the default UFOExtender accuracy, more than anything. For 100% vanilla: it's better to use autoshots most of the time (so the AI certainly sacrifices efficiency for realism, something that the player rarely does or would do by enabling UFOExtender accuracy). For tweaked weapons, it depends on the weapon.

Getting more auto-shots from autocannon/autogun wielding enemies sounds like a good thing to me (but the gals would disagree!). As it is, I expect we mostly see multiple snapshots when there could be autoshots, and only see long range autoshots on weapons that only have authshot capabilities.

In a choice between the enemies always using special weapons badly and always using them well, I'd pick always using them well. Ideally, it'd be somewhere in between (based on the intelligence and aggression of a unit? More intelligence, more likely to use the best shot, more aggression, more likely to use faster shots?) but that's more work (but doable).

[Dioxine]

I have to say it it seems. Naturally anyone can code anything, but I'm explicitly uninterested in that kind of changes to AI. I'm for significant changes, or more like, extensions, while that kind of tinkering with gritty details usually leads nowhere. Between Warboy's AI and Arthanor's AI that does the same just with a bit different algos, I choose Warboy's because it has proven to work reasonably well in the basic range of tasks.

PS. Naturally, if it was an alternate AI that can be applied to specific units via ruleset, say,

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useAIType: Arthanor2.0 would be very cool!