Policenaut

Yeah I'll probably disable the gas rebalance for now then and re-add it later, oh and forget about those wraith leader sprites I mentioned before, that was way too much work (hundreds image files that would take way too many hours to edit, which I'd rather spend playtesting and fixing bugs). What's left is mostly just finding any bugs that I might've not noticed before. Hopefully I might be able to release the first version near the end of January.

Sorry for the lack of news but I'm getting close to releasing the first version of XXP (mostly playtesting, fixing bugs and creating the sprites for Wraith Leaders at the moment). Just wanted to get some input on whether I should wait for X:CE to get updated with the multiplePerTurn fix for gas effects, which allows for making stun gas damage every time you touch a gas tile, instead of only taking damage once and being immune for the rest of the turn. I could disable that feature for now and re-add it when X:CE gets updated with the fix, or I could direct people to download the WIP .exe Solver uploaded which fixes that bug, but at the same time introduces a music bug. What do you guys think?

Some things that would be neat to have. This post will be updated as I stumble upon other ideas. gas_gc.xml - ability to set as overdamage and disabling of the vertical spread (see picture below for why). gameconfig.xml - ability to set multiple ticker values for the alien base spawned for retakeable continents (i.e similar to the already existing small, medium and large alien base tickers, so you can have different ones depending on the main alien ticker). Ability of setting a ticker value to one of the alienbase.extra entries for retakeable xenonaut bases. aiprops.xml - ability to set custom zombify/spawnreaper animation and sound on a race basis. EDIT: Whoops. Posted in the wrong general discussion, someone please move this to X:CE general discussion.

Tweaking the delay="" setting for weapons lets you tweak the single fire/melee weapon animations, but it won't work with burst fire weapons because the animation stops playing when the first bullet is fired. The ending part of the animation where Xenonauts stop aiming the weapon can't be shown either for the same reason. Making it so that the animation does not stop playing after the delay="" should fix it but I have no idea how complex the animation code is. Might be more trouble than it's worth and there are more important issues as well.

This AI stuff sure is mysterious. I've also noticed that attack animation bug and the injury animation bug as well but I've never played Xenonauts without X:CE so it might be a vanilla bug too. The attack animation bug seems to be tied to the delay="" setting. The explosion animation is also tied to the impact radius which can be annoying if you want a high radius but not a giant explosion animation.

Does the custom Andron work fine with Drones? Edit: That behaviour is similar to the passiveness I refer to. They just move around.

The Androns in X-Div that had passiveness issues with drones, were they the standard Androns or your new custom ones?

Yes.

I used _Aggressive for most of my tests.

It has some form of unknown range. When the standard race was hiding in a UFO the passivity bug was there but when it moved outside and got closer to my custom units, the passivity disappeared. I'm not sure but perhaps AlliedInfluence might do something with that range?

A single unit with the proper AI behaviour, i.e standard race units or units with MeleeVehicles, is enough to "activate", "fix", "cure" the custom race and bypassing the AI passivity bug. Nevermind all this, I get the feeling we're just misunderstanding each other, no hard feelings. I have a workaround that works for me and I agree that it might not be worth fiddling too much with the AI and potentially messing it up. @Solver If you want to go through with this, I could set up a test mod with some included saves. The workaround is alright though except for the BurstFire CTD but that's acceptable. Might be better to focus effort on other areas.

If anyone else wonders, humble bundle has been updated with 1.65 now.

What does my post count have to do with anything? I've tested many different values in aiprops similar to both the things you did in X-Division and the things the XNT team did and pretty much nothing except adding MeleeVehicles or having standard races around fixed the passivity issues. CautiousDistance and messing with TU did not solve it. Please stop projecting and going for personal attacks. I tested various things and experienced this bug and wanted to report it to improve the modding capabilities. You can easily replicate this issue and Drages even mentioned that your custom unit only UFOcontents are accompanied with MeleeVehicles units, thus fixing the passivity. The weapon damage/range/TU cost issues you mentioned were also all fixed by adding MeleeVehicles. MeleeVehicles is a good enough workaround for now for what I have in mind, so no need to focus too much on the AI stuff and instead fix other more critical stuff. I appreciate you guys giving your insight but no need to get so worked up about it.

I have no idea why custom races act passive when not close to standard race/MeleeVehicles units then. Even copy pasting the exact same AIprops settings as standard races still showcases the bug. Oh well, I'll keep using MeleeVehicles as a workaround but settle for SingleFire weapons instead.

So I'm planning to fill the remaining empty slots for extra tilesets in X:CE. There's currently 5 unused slots for landing/crash sites and 4 for terror missions. I've put up two polls with some suggestions that won't be too hard to create by mixing edited existing tilesets with some new stuff. Please only select your top 5/top 4 and if you have any other suggestions that won't be too hard to implement then feel free to share them.

I narrowed it down to being the BurstFire + MeleeVehicles combo causing CTD. It would be nice if abilities that makes the unit receive the same conditions as the standard races were added, similar to how MeleeVehicles gives the unit Reaper conditions. This would allow for better AI customization and I wouldn't have to piggyback on MeleeVehicles which isn't intended for non melee units.

Using your aiprops wouldn't make any difference. Custom race AI units are not included in the hardcoded AI system that makes the units more aggressive. The passive AI bug is only noticeable if your custom race unit is not accompanied by any of the standard races or a custom race unit with the MeleeVehicles ability (since it gives the unit the hardcoded Reaper AI settings). You have probably not experienced the bug because: 1. Your custom units are accompanied by standard units or MeleeVehicles units. 2. Your custom units have the MeleeVehicles ability. To replicate the bug create a new alien race and populate a UFO to only carry that race. Without the MeleeVehicles ability or any standard races to "activate" it, you will notice that they'll often not use their weapons even when practically hugging Xenonauts. I need to use the MeleeVehicles ability or my units like the suicide bombing slime won't use its weapon properly. With the MeleeVehicles ability it 100% uses its weapon correctly. This also applies to the other custom race units I've made. I understand that the MeleeVehicles ability was not intended for this but it does fix the passive AI bug, the only apparent drawback being this BurstFire bug.

I require MeleeVehicles for my custom alien units or they get the passiveness bug and one of them uses a burst fire weapon. For now I'm replacing it with a SingleFire weapon instead but a fix, or better, an alternative to MeleeVehicles to fix the passive AI bug for custom alien units would be nice.

Giving a unit with the MeleeVehicles ability a weapon with BurstFire will cause the game to crash to desktop when the unit gets its turn during ground combat. SingleFire weapons are ok. To reproduce: Give the lightdrone the MeleeVehicles ability and start a GC mission featuring lightdrones. The game will load fine and your turn will play out ok. During the alien turn it will CTD when the lightdrones gets their turn.

The first one should be fixed in the Xenonauts Fix Pack, the one included with X:CE is outdated though. Latest version is on steam workshop/nexusmods. The second bug is LOS bug that is caused by the shapes of the UFOs. They talk about it in the development diary.

Yes, its weapon does enough damage to kill pretty much every unit in one hit and it has enough HP to survive a lot of shots, even the high end weapons. Making all your units focus their fire on them makes them manageable though. About the focus on civilians/vehicles over xenonauts, how about editing the Faction values? I looked through your aiprops and you use the default for your MeleeVehicle units. Civilians and AlliedUnits have lower values than Xenonauts so switching those for the MeleeVehicles units might help? It won't help with the vehicles beeing a priority but that is less important than chasing civilians far away. Another thing worth trying is very low sight values. Here's a preview of the unit as well if anyone is curious.

My unit is a slime creature that is very slow (very low TU) but has a very high amount of health. Its deathexplosion does not cause any damage but is used for particle effects and spawning a permanent slime tile after it dies, which hurts units that walk over it. Its "weapon" causes extremely high damage and has enough AOE radius (1.5) that it always gets caught in the blast but only a range of 1 so they have to get in melee range to use it. It also has a TU cost of only 1% so it pretty much can use its "weapon" every time it's next to any humans. The idea is that they're very slow but very tough, so they'll slowly move towards your units while being able to take a lot of damage and if it's able to get close enough, splat! If Xenonauts kill it, it does not explode so when one appears you should focus all your firepower on it and never let it get close enough during alien turns.

Adding the MeleeWeapons ability fixed the issues I had with this. Just make the suicide unit carry a rocket type weapon with range="1" with 1TU cost and edit its aiprops minimumaccuracy to 0.01 and engagement range to 1.0. They still can't reaction fire so they will only explode when killed or during alien turns.

@Charon @Solver Interestingly enough Charon mentioned that adding the MeleeVehicles ability makes units inherit the hardcoded Reaper AI behaviour and adding it to my custom alien races actually fixed the passiveness! This pretty much fixes it and also works for ranged units so no need to spend too much effort on fixing this, but the things the MeleeVehicles ability does is a clue towards figuring out the hardcoded AI behaviour. I'd still appreciate custom "SpawnReaper" animation and sound, since the deathexplosion work around Charon also mentioned has some scaling issues with the gore_transformation animation.

It could be helpful to see your aiprops so could you please upload it? However, you might not have noticed it if you mix your custom race with standard races in the ufocontents, since standard races seem to "activate" custom races when they're in close proximity as I mentioned in the first post.