Gijs-Jan

Should be fixed in the upcoming patch!

I haven't run the save yet; my assumption was that you were only popping out of cover during your own turn. The trepidation would add "danger" to locations which give no viable attack option, but do get shot at. (Also, the next iteration includes a ShotPotential function, which will encourage aliens to move to locations which give better aim at covered/hidden previously known targets) The not-shooting-back is definitely a bug, and probably due to the EngagementRange still set to a low value for Sebillians. This is also fixed in the next iteration.

Thanks for the tips Small preface: I'm an academic AI programmer by heart and prefer search techniques over domain knowledge any day of the week! So when I use a reactive layer, with an heavy emphasis on knowledge, it most likely isn't by choice, but due to necessity. Also; I built a fully fledged HTN planner system the first couple of months I arrived. To be blunt: It runs too slowly, and there's not really anything I can do about it yet. This is due to several things, one among them the fact that there are some design decisions in both the engine and the datastructure which are too costly to fix, and ensure that I can never get near decent enough running times for the lookups I need to do to enable planning. Those decisions were made with a reactive layer approach in mind, not a planning one, and before I got on board. I've started integrating aspects of the planners decision making into the AI as I altered / optimized different areas of the gamelogic. (or better said, abstracted and integrated them in the AI knowledge system). At the moment, I'm creating correct emergent behavior; before I start back again on the organized team behavior. Hope this explains things

I'll answer the questions in sequence: - (1 & 2) I think this is a revert of an old bug; I'll look into it. - Shooting over cover: This is an actual bug I'll look at. - This behavior should probably be in by now (disregarding the previous two bugs)

Thanks; this is probably solved in the next iteration, where Trepidation is introduced. (Concept of moving away from dangerous situations)

So, in this thread I would like to have a discussion with you on how we can change certain aspects of the AI behavior you found strange, faulty, or would like to suggest alternative behavior for. The primary reason for this thread is to present the bug reports / suggestions in such a way that I can easily replicate the situation from my end. In my experience, when dealing with bugs for the AI most time (if not all) was spent in trying to replicate the scenario locally. So the speed of bug fixing / tweaking of behavior will increase tremendously if you can help me in this! I will give preference to those that post saves, and are using the latest version! I therefore would like to suggest the following style: Save & (optional) Screenshot Link to a save and a screenshot which shows me what situation I'm dealing with (if applicable). You can post the save to the forum, and the screenshot to imgur.com (See example) Tech. Info Which version of Xenonauts are you using and which mods. (essentially everything I need to replicate it on my end) Observed Behavior Explain what behavior the AI shows, what it is doing wrong according to you. (or shouldn't be doing) Desired Behavior (Optional) Explain what behavior you think the AI should show. An example, based on Ol' Stinkys post: Save & Screenshot Save Link Tech Info Xenonauts v20 Balance Patch 2, Stinky's Map Pack 2 Observed Units try to enter the center, going through enemy fire. I think they are trying to get to the civilians inside on which they should have no knowledge. Desired The aliens should confront the Xenonaut units in front of the building and/or retreat to safety.

If the entire building is surrounded by sand, i.e. open view, the Ceasans might just be trying to get to locations which they evaluate as being more easy to protect. (Surrounded by walls, option for open sight, etc.) However; this doesn't explain why they wouldn't attack your units on sight.

Glad to hear you're having good fun :-) There will be some more improvements soon!

Thanks for the excellent write up! :-) So, I found the bug, and it was located in the accuracy calculation. For some reason we were checking the throwing range of a weapon for any and all shots. The main reason why it didn't show up in the UI was because it discarded this check. This also explains why increasing the strength would allow shots to be made; it increased the throwing range.

Could you post this save, or send it to me? The AI itself depends on the accuracy calculations given by the system, and I suspect something is going wrong there. In general the AI tests a shot for all different weapons it has in its inventory and gives the shot a potential score (taking into account the cost to swap). The weapon with the best score is then switched out and used. The AI tries to use the core gamelogic whenever possible, so as not to break when people start modding. One of the main problems we've had is that because the AI uses this gamelogic, and searches for the best option (instead of scripting), it exposes some before unseen bugs. Anyway, send me the save and I'll try to see what's going on

Chris and me both took a look at that, and it didn't seem to affect things on my end. Strength should only alter accuracy on heavy weaponry. I found the bug for the penalty being applied to aliens by accident while going through all the accuracy calculations to see if strength affected it. The only thing that also might have affected combat quite a bit was the range change on the heavy plasma.

No, not fully; it's a part of a lot of things that will be changed. But it will solve some of the more obvious problems. Also we're obviously going to have to take a look at some of the balancing implications.

For those dealing with the AI passivity (not shooting), go into assets/aiprops.xml and search for: MinimumAccuracy, change it from "0.35" to "0.01". Happy Holidays

So, I explored the altered files and the primary change that "activates" the AI is the reduction in the accuracy treshold. Nothing really surprising there, as the AI wasn't shooting when it was supposed to. However, upon further inspection of some test setups; I found that the AI was being fed far too low accuracy values. Something we noticed before, but thought could be attributed to the new accuracy implementation some time back. Long story short: It seems the aliens were being given the Using-Alien-Tech penalty, which reduced their accuracy by 50%. Combined with the threshold, this resulted in a whole lot of not firing. This, along with several other things, will be fixed in the next patch.

Passive AI Bug So I became a bit frustrated with the poor AI behavior of the last patch, which I thought was mainly due to an unbalanced aiprops.xml. This file holds all kinds of variables which can be modded which the AI uses in its decision making process. I saw Ol' Stinky's post with the modded aiprops.xml; but this didn't fix everything so I decided to explore a bit. Cause Well, there's several things going wrong in the latest patch, and I think that most of the behavior you guys are seeing can indeed be contributed to an unbalanced aiprops.xml. However, as I'm currently adding a lot of stuff, I can't just give you my local version. There was one thing though that struck me as odd; the non-firing behavior. So, the AI only decides a shot isn't worth it when the accuracy is below a certain threshold, which currently is set at 35%. And in a lot of the cases you guys found and sent me saves for, the accuracy should've been higher. Long story short, I discovered that the penalty for using Alien equipment was being applied to aliens as well. (50% drop of accuracy). So yeah... There will probably be some balancing changes in the new build :-P Temp Fix In AIProps.xml, search for: MinimumAccuracy, and change its value from "0.35" to a low value, e.g.: " 0.01". See Ol' Stinky's post for a file that fixes this, but tweaks several other things as well. This will make the AI a bit more active until the official patch, which will address a lot of things and introduce whole hosts of new behavior. Happy Christmas

Hey guys! I see you've managed to find one of the major new features of the AI, in terms of modding. Thanks for taking the time to take a look at the aiprops.xml. As I mentioned in the another thread, most of the current AI issues are probably due to it not being balanced yet. During the holidays, I'll be balancing it and introducing some other new features. The sound feature's been disabled for now. It was something I am working on that will attract aliens to shots fired, etc. However as I don't want to provide the AI with info that the player doesn't have (e.g.: footsteps), I disabled it for now until I decided on what it would get. Once I get my head out of the code, I'll write up a post on how the aiprops.xml works in terms of the behavior values. Other insights: - AI should be using the exact same code as the player accuracy calculation (it calls that routine) - The AI is setup such that if it can shoot, it will. (Min. engagement range + LOS + Min. accuracy threshold + AP == Shoot; essentially) - If the AI doesn't shoot, and it does when changing this grenade value; there's a bug. Thank you for finding it. If you see any strange AI behavior; the very best you can do is give me a save which will allow me to reproduce the behavior. I will forever be grateful if you can provide a save game, as it cuts down the time to fix it tremendously. You can even just PM them to me. Also; I do read the forums, and whenever I can, I tend to integrate the ideas you guys have.

The Cowardly AI is probably just a mis tweaking of the preferences in aiprops.xml. I will take a look at it.

This was solved though, right?

These people... Make the AI more advanced they say; make it better at killing soldiers they said.. I do my job and you respond by nerfing the weaponry.. :'(

They're laughably ineffective now (grenades!).. :-(

Just so we don't come across too harshly, I am looking into it; it's just low priority at the moment :-)

For those really interested in going this route: You can probably replace Playgrounds Filmstrip Tool by either: - LibGDX's Texture Packer, analyze the .xmls used in the files and write your own output format. (Easy task for those with knowledge of Java) - CodeAndWeb's TexturePacker; and use it's option to create a custom exporter.

It's calculated on the fly, each tile evaluated according to several aspects (which are calculated; so the AI will work with any maps contributed through mods without needing annotations). I will make a post detailing all the aspects; for now there's an explanation of all the different weights in aiprops.xml (in the assets folder )

The AI can handle them; there just wasn't any incentive. The next release will have a weight for this preference in aiprops.xml Hint: The latest build brought a host of tweakable properties for the AI; per race and per rank. You can find it in aiprops.