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Enemy behavior and AI suggestions


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There isn't a thread for Beta AI behavior discussion yet. Or at least I didn't find one.

I posted some of my thoughts in the mapping section already but I seemed to wander off there.

I think alien placement should be more random and dynamic. At the moment the levels are full of places that you simply know not to have aliens in. I know the AI is not done and that it's ment to be more passive at crash sites, but I'd like them to wander around the levels more active, set ambushes in second floor windows, patrol in packs etc.

There should be more variance in alien numbers, like 1-6 on small scout vs. always 2 or 3.

My point: there shouldn't be too rigid rules on maps or alien placement to keep things fresh and frightening. Surprising and unexpected should happen now and then to keep the player on their toes. ATM I can move around the levels too carelessly knowing where the enemies are and how many are left to kill.

Edited by Skitso
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My point: there shouldn't be too rigid rules on maps or alien placement to keep things fresh and frightening. Surprising and unexpected should happen now and then to keep the player on their toes. ATM I can move around the levels too carelessly knowing where the enemies are and how many are left to kill.

I'm inclined to agree with this, but at least Xenonauts doesn't approach the way it used to be in UFO: Alien Invasion (where the same number of aliens would spawn at the same place, every single time). That quickly became a grind, especially since there was only one map for the Scout UFO back then.

But a little more unpredictability as to what you get, would be nice. Maybe Sibbie the Sibellan took his pet Reapy the Reaper on that scouting tour over the English countryside?

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Yeah, there should be an element of randomisation already but maybe I need to check that it's actually working. Each map has about 20 alien spawn points and the aliens outside the UFO should be spawned at random in one of them.

The AI should get another major update in the build after the next one. It needs more work than I thought it did; it doesn't really punish mistakes at the moment. The focus of the next update will be to make the aliens shoot at your soldiers in all the situations where it would obviously be preferable to do so (rather than just running away or reserving AP for reaction fire).

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Yeah, there should be an element of randomisation already but maybe I need to check that it's actually working. Each map has about 20 alien spawn points and the aliens outside the UFO should be spawned at random in one of them.

The AI should get another major update in the build after the next one. It needs more work than I thought it did; it doesn't really punish mistakes at the moment. The focus of the next update will be to make the aliens shoot at your soldiers in all the situations where it would obviously be preferable to do so (rather than just running away or reserving AP for reaction fire).

Good to hear. Currently it feels like the majority of units have a small radius in which they camp and wait for you. There are some units that appear to have moved around the map a bit more, but those instances do not seem to be the norm.

Looking forward to more dynamic AI.

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Looking forward to more dynamic AI.

Yeah, I would love to see aliens surprising me on their own turn instead of me always chasing them. You know, alien moving in from fog of war discovering me for a change. Atm all they know is run away and reaction shoot my troops.

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Yeah, I would love to see aliens surprising me on their own turn instead of me always chasing them. You know, alien moving in from fog of war discovering me for a change. Atm all they know is run away and reaction shoot my troops.

I just remembered this was actually the best tactic in EU against the aliens, but this shouldn't be any risk here since not all soldiers actually take reaction shots once they see the enemy

Edited by zolobolo
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I have just run into an alien base mission where after discovering all the aliens waiting in the control room, I have been playing hide ans seek with 6 transporting aliens each in different locations waiting for my soldiers to reaction shoot them and transporting to another room each time I found one of them (and always to rooms where I had no solider placed. This is possible the worst constellation of alien transportation ability, passive behaviorism and reaction fire.

Such a scenario should be avoided at all costs, since it really gets the player frustrated. The transporting ability should really be used with caution when programing the AI so it does not play hide and seek with the soldiers for an hour or two :)

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Such a scenario should be avoided at all costs, since it really gets the player frustrated. The transporting ability should really be used with caution when programing the AI so it does not play hide and seek with the soldiers for an hour or two :)

Transportation should leave me terrified that the aliens will flank me and cause heavy casualties, not annoyed that I have to find them again. I agree.

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I have just run into an alien base mission where after discovering all the aliens waiting in the control room, I have been playing hide ans seek with 6 transporting aliens each in different locations waiting for my soldiers to reaction shoot them and transporting to another room each time I found one of them (and always to rooms where I had no solider placed. This is possible the worst constellation of alien transportation ability, passive behaviorism and reaction fire.

Such a scenario should be avoided at all costs, since it really gets the player frustrated. The transporting ability should really be used with caution when programing the AI so it does not play hide and seek with the soldiers for an hour or two :)

So you think the aliens ought to just stay in one spot and let your soldiers kill them all at once? It sounds like the aliens are using some pretty smart tactics to me. That's what I'd do if I were them.
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So you think the aliens ought to just stay in one spot and let your soldiers kill them all at once? It sounds like the aliens are using some pretty smart tactics to me. That's what I'd do if I were them.

It could be used as part of a flanking tactics mentioned earlier, but the problem here is that they actively avoid contact and teleport to rooms they know there are no soldiers, and even if there are 3-4 of them in nearby rooms (always one in one room), they do not show any sign of cooperation, just "running away" and hiding in another room. I guess this is simply due to the running away principle observed by most aliens, but it is certainly not intended to stay that way since it does not use the advantage of teleportation as an offensive ability. I agree that this ability should be used to put the aliens on tactical adventitious positions and not to prolong the hunt for individuals - it has even been mentioned a few times that an annoying part of the original game was the hunt for the last remaining alien on the map. Multiple with 5 and give it a teleportation ability which it uses for "running away" to truly magnify the issue.

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And please don't forget that friendly NPCs should also react reasonable. For examples NPC soldiers could take cover. They are most of the time standing in an open field at the moment.

And some of the civilians should go panic mode while others can run to a saver place like the chinook and wait there in a corner when they see xenonauts. And when they do so it would be nice if they try not to run in front of your guns protecting aliens like bodyguards.

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Ran into large ship night time mission on arctic where a teleporter alien was also on board. Cleared out the ship and went for a hunting in the woods. Took me quite some time to find the bogey hiding behind some bushes but he went Brave Sir Robin on me so it took another while till I chased him down again and managed to calm him down with a few rockets ;)

Edited by zolobolo
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My experience is that the aliens will stay and shoot it out if they have cover and are not outnumbered. Generally, that is not true though, so they retreat and shoot. That's called a delaying action in the Army. Now, it may well be that the alien AI needs some tuning. We also have to keep in mind that the AI isn't close to finished yet. We are at AI level II of the planned III or IV stage implementation based on what Gjis-Jan has posted. One of the big things that is planned is for the aliens to have a plan and work together to defeat you. Right now they are only thinking on an individual basis. So, they don't take into account that they have friends, hence, they ALWAYS feel outnumbered and outgunned when more than a couple Xenonauts come into view. I believe this will drastically change when the AI is finished. This is also the reason why I'm not in favor of doing a lot of ground combat balancing stuff right now. We don't know how tough they will be. If you reduce or increase values now, it well be they will need to changed yet again when Chris declares the AI "done".

For example: Let's say the aliens individually hit 25% of the time with weapon X. If we said, "well I hardly ever lose a soldier because the aliens can't shoot straight", so Chris increases the accuracy to 50%. What will happen when they get smarter and all of sudden they coordinate and four them are shooting at the same guy? That effectively gives them a 94% chance to hit each turn. Then it's going to be, "oh SH%^, the aliens are slaughtering me!. We have to make them less accurate!" And back we go to balancing the SAME THING yet again.

I think the best thing right now is to find bugs, fix obvious balance problems that have little to do with the alien AI (like C4 that doesn't blow up walls), and wait for the AI to get done.

Edited by StellarRat
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Fair enough. I like the idea of aliens working in fire teams, but its not a hurry. Just wanted to point out my experience with the AI so far.

Regarding retreat, I approve that in real-world military this is an existing tactic, but when it comes to the game I think one should decide for playability against realism (just like when considering number of troops, strength of local forces, budget, aircraft number and hard points etc). Even if the aliens attack coordinated and in large numbers, the last survivor should not run and hide since:

1. If he is overwhelmed, he will not stand a chance anyway

2. Makes the game unnecessarily long and the end of the battle boring

Thus even on a basic AI level it would make sense to have the enemy not run but make a last ditch to take as many xenonauts with him as possible so the player does not waste time hunting for the last alien each mission and concentrate on the fun part which is the preparation for and the actual tactical engagement

Edited by zolobolo
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Thus even on a basic AI level it would make sense to have the enemy not run but make a last ditch to take as many xenonauts with him as possible so the player does not waste time hunting for the last alien each mission and concentrate on the fun part which is the preparation for and the actual tactical engagement

So the last alien will be a kamikaze grenade bomber that throws a bunch of explosives at our beloved troops in its dying breath :D

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So the last alien will be a kamikaze grenade bomber that throws a bunch of explosives at our beloved troops in its dying breath :D

Spot on, and he should yell: "Death to all humans" and blow into confetti and sweets for the troops to enjoy :)

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Spot on, and he should yell: "Death to all humans" and blow into confetti and sweets for the troops to enjoy :)
I tend to agree that the last alien ought make a banzai charge. Right now the last alien will usually run to the farthest edge of the map from the Xenonauts and finally be shot down like a dog. Probably the last one should either charge or take cover and shoot it out with Xenonauts until it dies. I definitely don't want to search the whole map for the last guy hiding in a closet like you had to do in TFTD! That was the thing I hated most about that game.
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The way aliens seemed to disperse and become more rooted in as a function of time since crash / landing in xcom and tftd was a delight. Seeing an alien (or 5!!) When opening the avenger at a terror site is something I still have yet to experience. The ai and the lack of vertical stratification in xeno at this point is the main detriment to gameplay. That and the lack of ramdomizability of maps (a staple of xcom that made it highly replayable). The solution to the map diversity issue seems to be.. make rooms and tons of maps, but honestly if xeno is to get the same amount of play time as xcom.. I'm going to know those maps inside and out.

Is the community in agreement with these 2 issues and if so how can they be mitigated?

This is meant as constructive criticism. . Not a rant :P I'm trying to nitpick as much as possible

Edited by WhenKatzComes
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There's something odd going on with the alien spawns, as it isn't as random as it should be. At least, that's my experience. That or the aliens always seem to move to the same spots and wait.

Should be addressed in the next AI update, which will have more aggressive aliens.

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There's something odd going on with the alien spawns, as it isn't as random as it should be. At least, that's my experience. That or the aliens always seem to move to the same spots and wait.

Should be addressed in the next AI update, which will have more aggressive aliens.

This is what i'm experiencing too. Alien placement and/or moving doesnt seem that random...?

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This is what i'm experiencing too. Alien placement and/or moving doesnt seem that random...?
Other people have mentioned that the placement doesn't seem random. That may or may not be true. Since the AI is going to look for the best positions it's quite possible they are moving to the same places on the map AFTER they have been placed. We can't see that in the FOW, so it's really hard to see what's truly going on. I wouldn't expect the AI to to be too random. A competent commander is probably going to choose the same initial positions over and over again given the same terrain. That's what I would expect the AI to do also. There is only so much randomizing you can do without actually choosing "dumb" positions. This probably wouldn't be as much of an issue if the maps were larger and/or there are more maps.

Also, keep in mind the AI isn't finished yet. I'm expecting that the true "randomness" is going to occur AFTER your troops make contact the aliens. How they react to your moves will hopefully be different if you change your lines of approach, number of troops, you/they take losses, have different equipment, etc... That will make the game a lot more interesting than the old XComs where you could pretty much count on the AI choosing the same spots everytime and not being too dynamic after the battle started.

Edited by StellarRat
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Other people have mentioned that the placement doesn't seem random. That may or may not be true. Since the AI is going to look for the best positions it's quite possible they are moving to the same places on the map AFTER they have been placed. We can't see that in the FOW, so it's really hard to see what's truly going on. I wouldn't expect the AI to to be too random. A competent commander is probably going to choose the same initial positions over and over again given the same terrain. That's what I would expect the AI to do also. There is only so much randomizing you can do without actually choosing "dumb" positions. This probably wouldn't be as much of an issue if the maps were larger and/or there are more maps.

Well, the smart commander would do that unless he knew that was where he was expected to be. In our case, if the aliens sometimes stand in "dumb" places they can actually become more interesting and dangerous by surprising the player. On a certain farm map with small scouts, I know that I never even have to look into a field to my right, and that if I reach a certain point I can stop being cautious and just sprint for several full turns until I reach the UFO. That's because the fields in question have no cover and aliens don't spawn or move there. An alien standing in a "dumb" spot would really mess me up at that point.

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