Charon

I watched this tragedy unfold but I have to step in between this now. Rookie, come back when you got the experience to talk. Ofcourse we did test in every imaginable way. This included this way as well. I believe its rude when someone offers you his work which he sweat blood and tears for and you didnt even test it. Thats not a custom race problem, this happens for andron units too. Heres the thing you dont know: Having full TU units and/or xenonaut units with and without TU nearby makes units very passive, but thats true for all races. The codeline which is partly responsible is the CautiousDistance: The distance to a known enemy before the AI starts reserving TU for reaction shots, but its not limited to that. --> You could call it an AI flaw but GJ specifically adressed this problem with an aggressive script enforcement, and maybe things beyond that, and especially for melee untis which go close. First of all you dont understand that the MeleeVehicles ability isnt a fix for anything. There is no bug for rapid fire, although its good to know that this doesnt work. There is no passive AI bug, just a tendency. This kind of behaviour works very well for ranged units waiting behind a corner, and doesnt work for melee units that well or for units with low range, therefore the aggressive tweak enforcement. GJ KNOWS about this. I mean i dont even want to start on what other tendencies there are ... and you just scraped the top of. Theres is the low accuracy tendency, and we dont call it a bug either ( the X-Division team ). But my point was: You dont seem to understand that MeleeVehicles AKA Reaper code tweak is just a number tweak on top if the normal AI code. If you figure out EXACTLY what the Reaper Code tweak does you can achieve the same results without the MeleeVehicles ability. But we dont even know how the general/race/rank values are getting merged. Added and/or replaced seems the most possible ones, but the truth is, we dont know. Its all experience. In a nutshell, you simply dont know how to code the AI, and thats all there is to this thread. The AI file doesnt tell you everything, there are hidden value tweaks, and some descriptions are partly wrong, or do exactly the opposite of what they state, a +/- can change the whole behaviour overall. Basically you cant look at the numbers and guess what it will do, only experience can tell. There have been several people giving their utmost effort to make a good AI, namely @TacticalDragon, he gave 6 months of continues work to make an incredible good AI and he even he was not really "finished", but still considers it his life achievment for the xenonauts community. Great KUDOS to inspire many AI modders to do this. @drages, not much to say here, its self evident. 2 years experience, started as tweaks from @TacticalDragons AI, was improved and abolished, then made completely independend. Between the .30 and .32 patch an new-old merge was performed, which took major insights from TacticalDragons AI into X-Division again, forming an ultimate state which im very happy about as it stand right now. And here you are crying bug after 1 month. Heres the advice: Once you are capeable of codeing the AI you can produce mostly any result you want, apart from hardcoded things I suggest moving this thread into the XCE General discussion thread as this doesnt qualify as a bug by far. I apologise for my aggressive tone, thats just my style sometimes, but isnt meant badly in any way. I apologise if i offended anybody. Uhm ? Well ... i dont even know how to start ... and i dont want to .. im just saying ... if you give an alien an a 30 dmg weapon instead of 60 it will behave completely different even with the exact same AI. The same goes for high TU costs, they are lethal in a lot of ways to the AI. As far as our experience goes, i wouldnt recommend giving a unit a higher than 45% tu costs for a weapon. The AI majorly changed with Tu costs ranging from 15 - 30, 30 - 45, 45 - 70 and 70 to 100 percent. All of this tu ranges produce entirely different results with the same AI. The same goes for weapon damage but is more granualar and comprehensible. High Tu/Low damage/low accuracy are lethal to the AI behaviour. Every AI is unique to its content environnment. If you want to make new content, set the units stats, set the weapon stats, and then you can start to make an AI for it, and if you change environment values, the behaviour changes as well. Thats what i ve been saying.

Sssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhh ... Im writing a long post. So until i finish that everybody chill.

Tried it and couldnt trigger any bug, although i only tried 3 times.

Well, MeleeVehicles was never intended for non-melee and/or rapid fire weapon in the first place, so its not really a bug.

Than check this:

Due to fire being hardcoded and the fact that fire + smoke slows down even the most powerful computer to a snail we are perfectly fine with the current setup. Although i like fire too , especially in the night.

I cant seem to find the issue here, but as you can see on numerals examples on youtube there is no such thing for a correct install. Keep in mind that changes dont get applied to GC saves, so if you want to see the difference you have to load a geoscape save and then go into the battle.

We have been telling that there are more variables that influence AI behaviour for a long time . Im sure drages has some saves lying around from his tests you saw in the videos.

Nevertheless, drages coded the whole andron race under a custom race to avoid those interferences, and i am coding the Xenomorph race under custom races not tied to "Reaper"s, although i cant avoid the connection if i want to use the MeleeVehicles ability. The only thing we can say for sure is: It happens for androns put together with drones the "Reaper" code AKA reaper race majorly tweaks behaviour, and this applies to units possesing the MeleeVehicles ability as well. There is an additional behaviour @Policenaut mentioned, and that is overreserving TU units, AKA not moving at all, as soon as it gets too close to xenonaut units, especially when the xenonaut units have full TU. This majorly seems to apply to andron units, under the "Andron" race, as Caesan/Sebillian units hardly show this kind of behaviour. I dont think this is a bug, because i really think GJ has put this in intentionally for andron races, as it corresponds perfectly to the androns advertised patient behaviour. Think about the development of X1 like this. GJ made the decision making GC AI the same for all races. After that was done he additionally implemented some characteristics for the races he felt needed a bit more "punch". Hence the "Reaper" characteristics and the "Andron" characteristics were born. Voíla, we just back engineered the game.

The more i think about it, the more i get the feeling the game has "groups" which it can pull units into to form some sort of collective decision making. This "groups" tells androns not to shoot when paired with drones, most of the time and it tells the melee "group" to not overtarget a single unit. Caesan and Sebillian are all getting processed as lone wolfes, but a different decision making seems to apply to either "Reaper" or melee units, and androns.

@Solver Dont think about this as a "race" reference, but the game suggests a "group" reference tied to the race, but not limited to.

No, you didnt get it. The sentence meant that the hidden AI tweaks for the reaper race get applied as soon as a unit has the MeleeVehicles ability. Did you look into the AI decision making process ? This is all empirical data collected over hundreds of hours of coding, testing, and small adjustments. I am not saying we are making the connection right, but its a different hidden variable, but it appears to be there, and it majorly influences the AI behaviour in 100% visible way. The latest test were with custom race reaper "stages", as soon as a unit got "killed" and spawned a unit with the MeleeVehicles ability, which it didnt have before, it behaved totally differently. Maybe the game counts all "melee" units together and sees them as a group of units where everone has a different task ?

Goddamit, 3 minutes too late . It can happen in both cases, for ranged units we confirmed it for androns, and we also confirmed this kind of behaviour for custom races units as long as they have the MeleeVehicles ability. @Policenaut I forgot to mention, the MeleeVehicles ability is 100% tied to the Reaper race code, so as soon as a unit has this ability the game treats it as if it was under the "Reaper" race, and adjusts the AI accordingly.

Why does this sound so familiar ? Maybe because we requested that weeks ago ? Hm ... . +1. Sounds as awesome as it was when we suggested it. He walks right into the darkness, and he doesnt even know it ... :D. On a more brighter note though ( get the pun ? ), you can already make custom animations per race with the deathExplosion code. Just make a custom deathExplosion where you can freely set the animation used, and overwrite the vanilla one with a blank file. That ofcourse has different drawbacks, like not being able to use a proper deathExplosion for the race, or the fact that you would then have to set up the vanilla animation for vanilla units as a deathExplosion again. On a different note, the vanilla races AI has a lot of behaviour implemented as hardcoded, to optimise some behaviour, but it can also play out quite queer, and none of the variables are in the aiprops. The most twisted AIs are the "Reaper" ones, and the "Andron" ones. X-Division did a lot of AI testing in this and the not shooting thing applies to when androns and drones ( big/small ) are in close proximity to each other, with the result that Androns dont shoot and drones do. When there are no drones around androns start to shoot again. The Reaper behaviour is VERY odd, as it seems to give civilians/locals at least a 75% percent higher target value, and an behaviour optimised for the "Zombify" ability. There can be some connections to "marking" AI behaviour, as we call it. "Marking", 90% of the time only occuring for melee units, means that when the AI decides what to do, it assigns an alien unit a target, "marking" it. All other melee AI actions before the chosen melee alien can move are directed to different targets/actions. I guess this is to maximise the "Zombify" ability, which kills in one hit. Keep in mind the "marking" behaviour occurs 90% of the time, but there can also be different behaviour merged together producing less comprehensible movements. Heres the info, enjoy .

Never install something during GC, this is the A and O in modding. So as i can read that you gave up inlcuding mods because you potentially risk bugs, glitches and inabilities wihout being able to make sure you have an uninterrupted game ? Does that mean you would be interested in a mod collection where other people make sure that everything is compatible and tested ? Or a list of compatible mods ?

Added: Charons Overhauled Mods - [V1.08] Jsleezy's Real Fighter Portrait Pack

There is nothing like this in X-Division and you dont provide the minimum necessary information that we can help you.

While watching this it actually struck me that X-Division has a point defensive system in place, so you can take a look at how it is set up for your own design wishes.

This ones for you, dunno what went wrong:

Incidently, this is what X-Division is working on right now as well. I always thought you can work around that with the AI things like: DamagePreference: The weight given to the damage done to the target (damage / maxHP), etc ... Try a melee weapon with aoe damage, thats as far as we are. Give me the specs of what you used in your future tests. X-Division will have the definite answer in the next few days.

I sincerely have no clue where what that means, and am not inlcined to google around further. It works for mega, and it doesnt here, thats all i need to know. Maybe my attitude changes later towards this.

Hm, ok.

Whats the fix ?