Any midgame AI related mod/config changes to improve it?

From this thread:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/11718-The-AI-is-cheating-but-I-guess-that-s-ok

"Fun fact: there are even more advanced AI capabilities that are turned off for performance reasons now, and that are good enough to guess the location of your soldiers really often."

I see that there are overhauls like "X - DIVISION - Destiny Denied" and "XNT- INTO DARKNESS V6.0" which state that they made AI behavior improvements, and I plan to play through them next...

But for now, I am on my first play-though on Insane (not Ironman though) and anything to make my current play-through more fun would be welcome.

Main question: I don't mind waiting a few minutes for AI to decide what to do during it's turn - are there any edits to some configs I could make to improve AI performance?

Secondary question about one specific AI behavior:

Right now I am playing with Dynamic UFO's and Armoured Assault mods, as far as I know they don't alter this, but one of the most consistent and bewildering behaviors I am seeing are suicidal Reapers. These enemies made somewhat nervous at first when I saw how far they can move during their turn and their one hit kill attack.

But during the 4 encounters with them, they have consistently used up their entire turn to run into middle of my formations, sometimes getting into blind spots of my soldiers. That's nice and all, but end result is that when I know a reaper is nearby, all I need to do is hold position, end turn, and if reaction fire doesn't kill it, next turn it will be standing behind one of my guys for easy target practice... Any way to fix this mid game?

I made some experiments with AI and only AI. Give those a try.

thank you. will load this in tonight

Main question: I don't mind waiting a few minutes for AI to decide what to do during it's turn - are there any edits to some configs I could make to improve AI performance?

Yes, adjusting the configuration in aiprops.xml (which is what those mods do). But otherwise no, besides extending the AI code (which I'd like to do for X:CE 0.34 or 0.35).

Also, I expect you'd very soon start minding waiting several minutes for every single AI turn.

But during the 4 encounters with them, they have consistently used up their entire turn to run into middle of my formations, sometimes getting into blind spots of my soldiers. That's nice and all, but end result is that when I know a reaper is nearby, all I need to do is hold position, end turn, and if reaction fire doesn't kill it, next turn it will be standing behind one of my guys for easy target practice... Any way to fix this mid game?

What would you expect would be a fix for that? If Reapers were any smarter and e.g. did ambushes, that'd make the game practically unplayable, because either almost every Reaper would mean a casualty, or it'd require such a slow and meticulous advance that it'd make the game tedious.

Reapers can be dangerous enough as they are, especially if they attack you together with some other units and you have to choose between focusing on the Reaper or on those units, leaving the other free to cause you harm. And if in those 4 cases so far that hasn't happened, well, sometimes luck can be nasty, sometimes it can be kind.

Maybe what you want is playing on a higher difficulty level (possibly together with using X:CE 0.33RC1, where I've fixed some AI bugs).

Regarding reapers:

I am already playing on Insane, only way to go more difficult is Ironman mode, which I think may be too much for me.

As for reapers, I think I would prefer to make them do the ambushes you mentioned - meaning they try to stay out of sight or in heavy cover, and rush Xenonauts only when there are enough TUs to reach target and strike.

When I know they are on the map, I have to advance much more slowly - and you are right in that this would be annoying fast if I had to do this on every mission...

However since they are so far quite rare (I am getting them ~1 out of 10 mission), I think having to radically shift my tactics on a small percentage of missions wouldn't be a bad thing.

Also even if they properly ambushed here are some additional strategies that provide mitigating options available to the player, right now I use these but they are more flavor then necessity due to Reaper's silly behaviour:

1) Alien Communications building becomes high priority to kit out the crew properly for them. Necessary for option 2 and more of the right stuff in option 3

2) When reapers are present, tanks become very important as scouts, and relying on them can greatly mitigate danger from Reaper ambushes. Right now tanks are flavor, due to all their weaknesses (replace 2 soldiers, very low ammo capacity, unwieldy, don't improve) - but them not being Reaper food would potentially overrule all of those if Reapers weren't gimped.

3) Explosions, and lots of them. The strategy of 'shock and awe' becomes necessary rather then just being flavor. Right now every crew member I have is packed to the brim with ammo, explosives, rockets, and everyone except heavy gunners carry 2 sets of weapons to be able to adjust to multiple roles in the field. First turn is spent to drop the spare kit until everyone is mobile. When I see reapers are present, or I just see Sebilians are around, everyone drops their stun grenades, picks up spare explosives and snipers pull out rocket launchers. Than slow advance with plenty of TU for reaction fire is combined with 'better safe than sorry" demolition man approach where buildings and large spots of cover are methodically demolished. This tends to be not all that slow actually.

4) Having to rely on reaction fire to defend vs rushing reapers would mean the team is better off moving as one, vs trying to split to cover the whole map in a net.

Right now, Reapers do tend to come at me with Sebillians in tow in groups, but because they are so weak, and position themselves so close, having to dealt with 3 - 4 aliens in a single turn of which 1 or 2 is a reaper remains easy because end result is Reaper can be reliably handled by any 1 Xenonaut, leaving the rest to suppress the Sebillians.

At point blank range 2 stun baton hits are certain way to put them down. Or one pistol shot + 1 grenade under their feet is a certain kill. 1 rocket launcher hit is a certain kill. So far, in all cases of such rushes, the Reapers were just handing my soldiers easy kills, rather than presenting any risk or danger. Hell, even if they stopped like 15 steps away from the soldiers, that alone would make a huge difference as they would now tend to need 2 soldiers to reliably put them down due to range making melee-ing them to sleep not an option and shots not being as sure to hit. So at least in a rush with potentially grenade throwing Sebillians, the reapers would become more than nuisance.

Also note about length of AI turn - reason I wouldn't mind extra long turns is I tend to play turn-based games with TV shows running in the background, so waiting 5 minutes for game to think wouldn't feel like a wait to me. I realize that makes me an 'outlier' in terms of gaming speed/AI quality balance.

That said, as I don't know anything about the xml settings, anything in aiprops.xml you would recommend to change for 'smarter' AI behavior?

This is something that I have been previously experimenting with, so it's something I can talk about with some authority. When you set the AI settings, you don't specifically tell the AI to do something. The AI for each unit scores all the tiles it can reach, and the tile with the lowest score is the tile considered the "best" tile for it to go to and take actions from. In the AI settings, you set the scores for the various conditions a tile can have (ease of shooting, best cover, if in LOS, etc. etc.).

If you set the AI to prefer tiles which are out of LOS, it usually responds by running away (because it is then out of LOS). The AI doesn't think ahead - it prefers to take the quickest, easiest option (i.e. the one with the largest score). The best alternative is to get reapers to prefer tiles which have good cover, but there's still a lot of fine-tunign to do. I have found that there's tension between setting the AI to prefer tiles good cover and setting the AI to get as close as possible to the enemy (which is what you want a melee equipped AI unit to do). Too much preference for cover, and the Reaper will scamper between cover spots. Too much preference for getting close, and it ignore cover. I think I can work it out - I just need a day without work getting in the way to experiment.

@Max_Caine, is there by any chance a way to set an AI unit to always preserve TUs for an attack when moving anywhere, like you can do when controlling your own soldiers?

edit: and/or a condition for high preference of a tile that is adjacent to an enemy?

Regarding A) I'm not in front of my home computer, but... no... I don't think so. The closest I believe you'll get to doing that is setting the minimum accuracy setting higher. If the AI can't fire a shot (it prefers burst shots over snap shots, and prefers snap shots over no shots) or if other conditions are set so the "best" tile for it to move into is outside of LOS, it will save AP for shots so by setting the minimum % to-hit of a shot, you can force it to save AP.

EDIT: Edited to change to response to first question.

EDIT 2: Regarding b) there isn't a single setting for that. There are two settings which score tiles nearer the enemy rather than further away, but you would also have to consider setting scores for cover (or it will prefer cover).