[SOURCEMOD] Brutal-AI 3.3.2

[Xilmi]

You've been working hard since I finished my first Brutal AI playthrough. It's nice to see the non-cheating AI be even more brutal. I also like seeing the friendly AI get in on the action of not being retarded gibbons. That said, I did see another game crash - but this time it was actually caught with the crash handler. Either you've properly hooked your code into it (good man if true!) or Bradford (it's now canon that using your XCOM AI puts Bradford in charge. No, you shut up. I don't care that he's from another continuity.) managed to trigger a crash in OXC (or Extended) all by himself!

I was playing with the setting that forced XCOM to be aggressive off (I wanted to see what the AI would do without being forced to do other stuff) so I'll comment on how good Bradford is after I try with that setting on, but for now, here's the crash dump. No save file, sorry. I keep autosaves off because I like Ironman, and am just fine with manual saving if I ever want to come back to a Battle Mode skirmish for some reason.

I don't really know what all that talk about "Bradford" is supposed to mean. Who is that and why is he synonyomous with autoplay? And I also don't know how to debug a dump-file. I think the openxcom.log from right after the crash would have been more helpful with pointing me towards what method to look at.

[Juku121]

I don't really know what all that talk about "Bradford" is supposed to mean. Who is that and why is he synonyomous with autoplay?

It's an in-joke of sorts. Central Officer Bradford is the face of (parts of) the UI for the nuCom games.

After watching another two XCF streamers putz around using largely braindead tactics, occasionally savescumming and winning pretty handily, I'd really like some brutal AI for a change. Alas, them shaders make me dread to try again.

[Xilmi]

Here's some AI self-play-test-results:
X-Com: 14 Soldiers, 14 Rifles, 28 Rifle Clips, 14 Grenades
Aliens: 11 SH Sectoids all with Plasma-Pistol

Reference game where I played XCom and AI was brutal:
X-Com KDR: 1

Test 1: X-Com careful, Aliens brutal
X-Com KDR: 0.36

Test 2: X-Com aggressive, Aliens brutal
X-Com KDR: 0.29

Test 3: X-Com careful, Aliens brutal + omniscient
X-Com KDR: 0.07

Test 4: X-Com aggressive, Aliens brutal + omniscient
X-Com KDR: 0.07

Test 5: X-Com careful, Aliens base-AI
X-Com KDR: 2.2

Test 6: X-com aggressive, Aliens base-AI
X-Com KDR: 2.75

Conclusion:
Brutal-AI with no cheating is about 10 times more difficult than base-AI.
Brutal-AI with omniscience is about 40 times more difficult than base-AI.

[Meridian]

Here's some AI self-play-test-results:
X-Com: 14 Soldiers, 1 Rifle, 2 Rifle Clips, 0 Grenades
Aliens: 11 SH Sectoids all no weapons

Reference game where I played XCom and AI was brutal:
X-Com KDR: infinity

Test 1: X-Com careful, Aliens brutal
X-Com KDR: infinity

Test 2: X-Com aggressive, Aliens brutal
X-Com KDR: infinity

Test 3: X-Com careful, Aliens brutal + omniscient
X-Com KDR: infinity

Test 4: X-Com aggressive, Aliens brutal + omniscient
X-Com KDR: infinity

Test 5: X-Com careful, Aliens base-AI
X-Com KDR: infinity

Test 6: X-com aggressive, Aliens base-AI
X-Com KDR: infinity

Conclusion:
base-AI is infinitely more difficult than Brutal-AI with no cheating.
base-AI is infinitely more difficult than Brutal-AI with omniscience.


Please forgive the obviously bad test case, it is meant as a joke and intentionally over-exaggerated to make a point that your test case is not much better

[Xilmi]

You could argue that the data from my test-case is rather limited and probably not enough to draw any exhaustive conclusions. But at least it is the result of an honest attempt of quantifying something otherwise purely subjective.

I think that comparing a constant behaviour, as what autoplay generates against a changing challenge does indeed allow some conclusions. At least way more than something that allows no conclusions whatesover as it is based on the undefined division of infinity. Choosing a scenario that generates a non-infinite and non-zero result was kinda important for the ability to draw any conclusions.

[Meridian]

I specifically said that the example is overexaggerated. But ok, if you have a problem with infinity, replace it with an example where plasma pistols do 7 damage or where xcom wears power armor. Same result.

In any case, your example is for 1 situation, 1 map, 1 mod, 1 everything and no generic conclusion can be derived from it.

Who knows, maybe if you do 1000 more tests, it will turn out that brutalAI is in average 40000x more difficult than baseAI. Maybe, probably?