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Not sure if there are a lore reasons for not doing this, but if the aliens are smart, they should withhold some reapers to defend their ship, seeing how confined space full of smoke cover is the best place for short ranged melee units.

So I've been noticing as I train up reaction fire... on Reapers... it seems that if more than one unit takes a reaction fire shot at once, the Reaper just ends its turn. No suppression, not necessarily even hit, but if a second reaction shot goes off before the alien gets to move again it just freezes. What I'm wondering is if this is intended behavior for incoming fire, or if maybe the check for the alien's turn is interrupted by a second (or more) reaction fire shot? Anyone else noticing similar behavior?

I figured we should probably have a dedicated AI thread to make suggestions and gripes about the AI for Chris and Gijs-Jan to look at. On the whole I consider the AI to be FAR superior to the original game, but there is always room for improvement. So, I'll start with some suggestions. 1. Aliens need to use buildings for cover/ambush more often. Buildings are excellent defensive positions. 2. Aliens need to defend from inside the ship more (known issue.) This one seems particularly important to me. 3. How come the aliens NEVER use the second floor of a building? 4. Aliens seem to have eyes in the back of their heads (known issue.) They'll turn around and shoot you even if you're completely behind them.

Just a gripe. I thought I was being clever so I had a a shotgun trooper sneak around a sebilian. and sure enough teh sebilian turned around kill my trooper. Is this intended?

Uhm... why am I running into pacifist invading aliens? They do not fire at my soldiers, ever. They shoot civilians and local forces, but not Xenonauts. I'm more than three months into the game (January 1980) and pretty much all I had to fear from aliens was reaction fire (well, occasional friendly fire as well). Is it just me or is the AI not working at all in this version?

I have recently started playing the beta, briefly 18.3 now 18.5, and whether it is bug or intended on crash sites most of the remaining aliens will run out of the crashed UFO into the open when my troops approach the UFO. Now when I play the original xcom I have many fond memories of having to plan how to breach the ufos knowing aliens were hiding inside waiting for me I would have troops do stackups on the doors and use grenades of different kinds before rushing into the ufo; it was for me one of the tense moments on every ufo mission because of how dangerous entering them was. Now after awhile I did learn that if you waited long enough the game let the aliens see you and they would come running out the door which could be easily exploited. But I was just thinking it might be worth looking into maybe having some aliens stay inside and hide behind cover and just plan to ambush you. Currently in this build they ether run out at you or they sit at the end of the ufo in the open staring at the door or even worse staring at the other door. I just want xenonauts to have fun but challenging UFO entries. Note I have only played a month and a half into my current game so I have not gotten to the bigger ufos.

Sorties I loved the feeling of surprise when I first strolled up to a UFO door only to have the aliens rush out and shoot me. Likewise, I appreciated it (even if I didn't like the death of my entire team) when, having wondered around the alien base blasting a few sleepy Wraiths, I first approached the control room and was rushed by a load of psychotic, armoured, alien-RPG-wielding maniacs. I've got a feeling that there's a precise on-off trigger for this behaviour though. In the case of the alien base, it seems to be opening of the outer door (but that's based on just 2 missions, so I may be wrong). Variety of trigger and variety of response would be a good thing. Triggers might be 50% outer door, 25% inner door and 25% one/more of the doors elsewhere. Response might be 50% sortie and each turn after the trigger it'd perform the check again with a reduced probability (say 50%, 25%, 13%, 6%, 3%, 0%). Perhaps also a 1% chance each turn that they'll just rush out anyway, trigger or no. Similar triggers could apply to the UFO sorties. Line of sight I've often heard shooting and alien screams and wondered what was going on. In a base defence mission I got to see; the aliens in other hangers were firing at closed doors and walls in an effort to kill a guy one of their buddies had spotted. That's fine, assuming they have a chance of drilling through the walls, although they might be better off trying to join the fight. A bigger problem is that, whilst I don't think they shoot at their own, they don't mind shooting the avalanche torp and killing their own or themselves. Thinking about it, I'm sure I saw a UFO explode in v18.3 because of a similar thing.

I was fighting a ground combat mission against a landing ship. One of my soldiers found the ship, but he was alone (scout). Therefore I waited for the other soldiers, hidden behind a rock near the entrance. Four or five turns after, most of my troops were ready to engage the enemy. The first soldier opens the door and... Here is the alien welcome party! I believe the AI moved all the soldiers near the entry, then, as it could not see my soldiers, all of the aliens remained inside the ship. Is this an expected/correct behavior? I would expect the aliens to be scattered around the entrance, but not in this way...

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.

The final balancing of the game will be difficult if the AI is not complete. Are more AI updates on the way? If so, is there an ETA? What can we expect in the way of improvements?

As the title says, in my opinion reaction shots are "mad op" right now. Especially because the AI overuses them, and without having any method of getting greater line-of-sight (reading game files it seems that eventually there's an armor that'll do it... eventually) it is virtually impossible to avoid being on the receiving end of them, often. And since the aliens rarely miss on their reaction shots, I often dread my own turns greater than the enemy turns. A compound to this issue is the clunky way the squadsight is handled, specifically that aliens can easily throw rounds at you from nigh-on half a map away. Between those two problems, unless I kill every enemy I see within a single turn, I'm usually on the receiving end of hellish firepower: I'm currently at a spot where my troops have Wolf armor... and my enemies are toting heavy plasma, plasma snipers, and plasma cannons primarily. Wolf gives me a roll to survive those, but asking my troops to survive a single turn when spotted by the enemy is apparently unreasonable. Anyway, what usually happens if I fail to kill an enemy in a single turn is that one will turn tail and run, while his buddies shell my troops/vehicles from a distance. Often he'll have a reaction shot for me at the same moment my Hunter spots him, since the Hunter has equal sight range. So then I'll take a turn of his teams shots... and I have to take another reaction shot when I pursue. It's brutal. Side note: Aliens seem to be far more likely than humans to take reaction shots: This is best showcased by a recent event when I had four soldiers (with 30-40 TUs each!) staring at a door... and it opened, a Caesan walked out, took five steps or so, and shot at my Hunter, never once being shot at. Contrast that with my turn when moving a single tile within enemy LOS procs reaction fire. Suggestions: Nerf reaction shots overall? Prevent reaction shots from occurring at the outermost 2 tiles of vision? Have a minimum-distance-travelled-within-LOS requirement? I decided to be a b*tch and just edited my own weapons.xml file and reduced ALL reaction shot values to tiny numbers (pistols went from 1.8 to 0.8, rifles went from 1.0 to 0.1, shotguns 1.4 to 0.4, so on.) I did this for both human and alien weapons, since I'm nothing if not fair.* Gonna see how that works out, although I get the feeling it's going to become far too easy as the AI tries to use it's same old tricks and have horrible odds. *I did notice an oddity when going through that file: The alien sniper plasma has a reaction value of 1.5, meaning it's better than shotguns at taking reaction shots. And the final straw that drove me mad was a sniper-equipped Caesan getting a one-shot-kill with a reaction shot. I'm pretty sure that value is (at the least) not supposed to be that high. OKAY, thanks for reading my rant. I know its a rant, but I needed to say all that. And a good part of it's rambl-y, I know. I'm sleepy right now. Stop judging me. Stop it. STOP IT! Oh, and inb4 "learn to play," "it's in alpha so you can't complain," "stop trying to make everyone else play your way."

I have not yet bought this game, but I am only delaying to avoid spoiling things for myself (sounds a little strange, what with having played original X-com and the new one - how different can things be, but I mean mechanics-wise). It all looks very promising and I just have a question regarding difficulty: I'm someone who plays at the hardest settings, and enjoys the challenge. I've beaten the original on superhuman, but the newest on Ironman Impossible too - which is much harder than the original at that setting! So, will this game have a suitably high enough difficulty available, and a near-insurmountable challenge? I would love that. I only ask because I have seen a couple of videos, and there seem to be relatively few aliens - I realise its the smaller ships I'm seeing, and people are not always playing on hard difficulties, but the battlefields seem a little sparse in terms of alien numbers. Also, how is the AI shaping up? I would love seeing intelligent moves - the new XCOM has aliens that make pretty much optimal moves, admittedly that's because of the design decisions regarding a very gamey, cover-based model, which I'm sure most are familiar with, but still it IS good that they make those good moves. I understand this game isn't designed that way, but it would be great to see some clever AI movements now and then. Keep up the great work, I look forward to beating another alien invasion!

Well...I guess I'm boned...

Hi, Chris repeatedly mentioned that GJ would provide updates on his work on AI but I never found anything. Latest remark is from 17.6 release announcement. Any idea if and when we might get to read something from GJ ?? Thanks and Regards, Michael

In the linear ambush the enemy gets on line, usually using cover like the long fences in some maps, once the enemy comes in range they simple react fire, once their turn starts, the aliens free aim on the closest target to take out soldiers with over whelming fire superiority. Its important to note they can move forward on line like this sweeping an area, the other option is the right half moves up, ends turn then the left half gets on line and ends turn, and they repeat, its slower but exposes less of the alien forces as they advance and leaves the side standing to free aim targets the moving side spots for them IMPORTANT, the "bait alien" starts with his group, then moves out away from the group half his AP and then run back This can be used with any ambush The L shaped ambush is set up to remove your ability to have effective cover, no mater what you do, one side of the L can shoot at you in most situations. Once this is engaged the aliens should wait 1 or 2 turns and just shoot at you, if you try and advance then they fire away, if you retreat they should fall back and try something new or hold this ground if its all they got Again, this will work well on fence lines so they have some cover The Z shaped Ambush is a modification of the L shaped ambush, when the aliens have no clue what direction you may come from, this gives them 360 Degrees of adjustable fire power to bring to bear on you. If the Xenonauts come from the left or right of the formation shown, the 3 aliens there should engage the enemy and the aliens behind and out of sight should set up the proper ambush or advance if they horribly out number the xenonauts 3 to 1 The Y shaped ambush, best in your game when the lower aliens in the Y can be hiding behind a building so as you walk past they are close, can react fire, and shoot at you, normally you would have groups making up each leg of the Y with cover or massive numbers for fire power if out in the open IMPORTANT, the "bait alien" should run to the middle of the Y once he sees any one with a gun, wait 2 turns and then go looking for armed enemy civs/xenonauts again X Shaped Ambush (since I'm limited to 5 pics per post and I need 6 Ill draw it out here for you) ..................a..............................................................a................................... .................a..................................................................a .....................................................x ......................................x..............................x .......................x This in your game will work best indoors with aliens taking up the 4 corners of a room and waiting for xenonauts to walk in. If smoked or flash banged they should try and head upstairs, out of the building or stand and fight 33% across the board on chance the alien group pick option 1, 2, or 3 If aliens can lean around corners then buildings outside allow the use of this ambush style IMPORTANT, like the Y ambush the "bait alien" runs back to the center of the ambush once he sees armed cix/xenonaut so in this set up he would run into the building that they are holding (figure the lizards with poor eye sight and aim would use this a lot) MOVEMENT DRILLS so...we went over how the aliens wait and bait, lets talk how they move This is a rolling linear ambush, a1----> a2----> a3----> a4----> 1 based on cover alien 1 moves first 2 if no targets are seen the rest move up on line 3 if a target is seen, the aliens in the back shoot at the target 3a if all targets killed, lead alien goes forward to his pre picked cover 3b if targets still active, lead alien falls back to his line start of next turn the AI get goes back to doing 1 2 3 Next is the basic army wedge, the idea is you expose the smallest number of your group to the enemy while maintaining easy 360 degree fire arc with little chance of shooting your own. Again you use the lead element to find and point out targets for guys in the back a1---> .......a2---> ..............a3---> a4---> in this mock op, A3 moves first, followed by a2 then a1 then a4 as above 1 Lead alien moves to a pre picked spot 2 if no targets are seen the rest move up 3 if target seen the aliens in the back shoot at the target 3a if all targets killed, lead alien goes forward to his pre picked spot 3b if targets still active, lead alien falls back so he cant see the target (unless no good cover is in range then he runs to what ever cover is around and holds it). from here aliens get on line and push up 1 scout so the boys in back can shoot the target NOTE with both of these set ups, the lead alien doesn't move forward until his team catches up, so after combat they get back into formation if they win and resume mission Hope this helps if not in this game then the next

Recently I have been thinking about difficultly and how game ramp it up. And how I think some xenonauts aspects could work. Locking the AI might work if it is a complex locking system, and not teh xcom 2012 version. So If on easy/normal the AI does not cooperate. I think this is not a very good idea. I believe it could work if the no co op is fixed by having an alien leader present. And Maybe locking more complex things like falling back, ambushes, etc. I am curious about the idea of researching aliens and getting damge bonuses. maybe on harder difficulties the bonuses could be removed. Maybe interogating leaders could bring up a text about how they atttack/think on easy/normal. Lets have debates about my ideas and your own. Thanks for reading When I thought of writing this I had more ideas but I forgot... Will edit OP

Well i played the demo yesterday and i have to say it is the first time since old X-com timeframe that i feel a good iteration of X-com. I m downloading the stuff right now. UFO extratererestrial was a failure, UFO aftermath was almost there abit lacking something, UFO:Afterlight almost there too .. JA:BIA is crap. I was first introduced to TFTD and bought and played many times UFO:EU and Apocalipse. Then i went to UFO: Aftermath, up to Afterlight, extraterrestrial gold (despair on this one) So Xenonauts.... i m impressed. There is only one major thing that bugs me, rest are wishes. The distressing enerving stuff: The damn Civilian AI. And no, i don t care it being slow. I care about it being exact equivalent of a rockroach... 3 second short span memory. Running there then forget what happened and run back here to the alien side if survive run away then rince and repeat.....appaling. I would even forget if one or other random would do such, but all, and this almost 2 decades from UFO:EU ? Sad, very sad. Normal behavior is: 1) run away from threats or 2) lock themselves inhouse and 3) run toward law enforcement or military for protection. So i would like to see civilian running toward my soldiers and common soldiers, and them being redirected for the chinook for example and running away from the UFO (if an alien start shooting around, you wont stay joging around, you would sprint the hell out). This would give some immersion to the game and could bring interesting situations since we are there to kick aliens and protect populace. No need to animate anything, text or talk or any bullshit, just screen behavior. Now minor stuff: A higher dream for the AI would be: Alien acting as squad (sometimes), and ambushing or flanking (not only rushing) or doing a total rush. Ok resuming diferent alien behaviors during battle. (diferrent ai being applied) Since the org if financed NATO/VARSOVIA, would be fun to have at disposition: AK47, Dragunov, RPK, RPG7 and Makarov. All those sligthly diferenciated in characteristics (range/weight/damage/qtd of ammo per clip) from their western counterparts, this would add a lot of flavor to the game. Uniform... this blue/grey is sad... ho so sad (Maybe thats why the troops look so depressed in the arming screen). Please put some camo in it can be any camo but damn it a camo.(Look at WW2 camos) The arming screen of the game in the demo sucks in visual. I understand it preserve a style, but soldier body posture and faces look like a bunch of crack addicted just after a stone, would be fitting for a zombie squad. Please put some military stance, pride and form in that!!! World map is boring... can t you do something more spiced ? Nightside lightning of cities? frontiers always shinning? messages remaining on the screen and not linked to time acceleration? Fake 3d map with terrain elevation? Here a link just food for thought: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://cienctec.com.br/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/412091main_PIA12090_full-1024x472.jpg&imgrefurl=http://cienctec.com.br/wordpress/index.php/mapa-de-elevacao-digital-global/&h=472&w=1024&sz=121&tbnid=-j_87RE-53LxnM:&tbnh=55&tbnw=120&prev=/search%3Fq%3Deleva%25C3%25A7%25C3%25A3o%2Bem%2Bmapa%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=eleva%C3%A7%C3%A3o+em+mapa&usg=__KBzvC8tntnBRC7jKaFYRbpP_z4E=&docid=jJ0GwXIrA1n6LM&sa=X&ei=Ti6sUICJFpLW9ASG-4HgBg&ved=0CDgQ9QEwAg&dur=519 I would like to see some reshearch to improve comon weapons (silencer, scope for the like for weapons, underrifle 40mm nade launcher.) No need to show inmap (but the nade launcher), just in the arming screen... the knowledge that ubber advanced weaponry could be a bit more timeconsuming and paliatives would be found meanwhile. I always found it a bit dismaying being able to reproduce laser and whatever whizbang weaponry in month when we aren t even able to reproduce them after decades of reshearch. Well nothing extraordinary here in my post i suppose. Probably most already demanded. Awesome points of the game: Aerial fights Tactical combat Setting are good too

Hi all, after playing Xenonauts V 17.1 for 2 hours i wonder why the ground combat is so easy? For the most time aliens run only around without fighting me so i only have to go to them an shoot. At my last mission my base was under attack and there where many enemys, they could whipe me out easily but i dont even lost one soldier. In the whole fight the aliens only shoot two times. Is this because of the alpha stadium of the game? I realy hope so because this is something i love on the original UFO game, it was hard and you realy have to fear for your soldiers life. Airfights on the other side are hard enough with time, to be honest after playing one hour im realy lost in airfight. There are so many ufos and with the better ones they shoot everething down i have :-) Sorry for my bad english.

I haven't noticed a lot of difference other than the aliens don't seem to hide in walls and crates anymore.

Would be great if the aliens could play like a human player do and use smoke grenades, troop positioning and even C4

Hello, After not being able to support the Xenonauts kickstarter project in time I recently decided to jump on the pre-order wagon, and I've got to say that even after the very small amount of time I've spent playing the previous Xenonauts alpha build, the game looks very promising. Perhaps it's a bit silly, but what I'm loving the most when it comes to how Xenonauts fares to the original Xcom are small details like soldiers possessing various military and national backgrounds generated (I assume) with them, "mysterious phenomena" reported on the geoscape, or the fact that cities get nuked when left to the whim of alien forces. While I understand that such flavor elements are ultimately secondary or tertiary when it comes to gameplay, they really do make the game world come alive, and compound the sense of danger and mystery. Before I dive deeper into the alpha, I'm curious about the state of current enemy AI during ground combat. When playing the kickstarter demo, and what little I did the previous alpha build some days ago, I had the impression that enemies just kind of... stood in place, waiting to be shot during the early intercept missions I did. Can I count on getting my team of commandos slaughtered from the shadows a few times in the current build, or is that still unlikely? Also, there's no way to upgrade a pre-order to get that future iceland incident novella, is there? Aww well.

didn't I find out about this game earlier?! Right, the title... But a retro-UFO is just awesome! Anyway chaps, I'm glad to be here now and greet everyone around. My suggestions: I would ask for as much realism as possible. This means that there should be answers to questions like "Why do the Aliens send one saucer after another instead of bombarding the planet and picking up what's left with a grand scale invasion without such risks and high losses as are to be estimated by sending one after another after another?" or "Why don't the aliens just manipulate the stupid humans into destroying themselves (which has been done by enough human nations before) instead of sending one saucer after another, making the humans aware of the aliens and giving the humans the opportunity to catch up on the alien's technology"? And this means that obvious tactical and strategic choices need to be answered one way or the other in the game too (bombardments, satellites, drones, space, why small teams, why only one defense organization monopoly etc.). Over the years I played all UFO games except for UFO Aftermath. The biggest mistakes that were made are in my opinion: boring and repetitive missions, periods without much felt progress in terms of research or new equipment especially in mid- to end-games, boring or ridiculous or comic-like aliens (especially in Apocalypse I still remember that marshmellow-thingie), not enough different hostiles and therefore boredom and repetitiveness, except for the original UFO:Enemy Unknown and UFO: AI mostly shallow base management, no diplomacy to speak of, ineffectice and therefore unusable vehicles and - finally - mostly a bad or repetitive tactical AI behaviour. I understand you are mostly finished with the game but hope that there is still an opportunity to enhance certain issues should they repeat those grand mistakes. In detail: - please no boring and repetitive missions (either many many maps, provide a map editor and I myself will gladly design some nice maps as I made the most balanced, most detailed, most realistic and best map for "Lords of Magic" or a proper map editor that works on coincidental creation for standard missions; better still a mixture of both) - a feeling of permanent progress meaning that at least every two or three missions there should be something, anything, new, either equipment or research - proper research where every research has some meaning and leads somewhere (I mostly ended up researching some techs like autopsies just to read the stuff and then reload to safe the time) - hostiles: please do design enough aliens and other hostiles (e.g. UFO Aftershock had 24 different hostiles, partly with different weapons and I found that that still was not enough as missions became boring) - please include a proper base management (possibility to have several bases with full options like choosing the position of the lift etc. like in the original, several floors would be nice, why not a special base organization screen, upgrades for certain base equipment would be nice, UFO AFterlight did that pretty well) - diplomacy (nations do have interests - might these even be insane from certain points of view - you know, plus dimensions like religion which I liked about UFO Aftershock a lot this would give the opportunity for special missions too) - please, oh pretty please do involve usable vehicles and - even better - drones. I loved the drones in Afterlight, unfortunately there is no UFO game that implemented any usable vehicle or drone. Ever. They could never make up with soldiers, not in terms of costs, firepower, flexibility - even in comparison to rookies - and I never used them at all except for trying them out and being disappointed afterwards. What about a drone slot in a higher tech level transport that can only be fitted with a drone, being recon or fighting? -AI: aliens and their devices should behave differently and evolve during the game, especially after experiencing failure. Don't you think that the aliens would not adapt their strategy and tactics quite fast? - It would be nice to have certain social or political pressure, too. Why not other, especially private, defense organizations, that want to earn some money too? Nations that try to overpower others if there's a power vacuum or which would grab that oil rich border area? Religious radicals or alien lovers (I liked that about Aftershock a lot)? Such things would certainly happen, don't you agree? - personalisation and identification with your staff is a must - I would love to play at least a few missions real hardball meaning that a lot of firepower is needed to overcome the aliens resulting in great destruction of the surrounding area. And no, I do not want to kill any civilians in the process. Cheers!

Can you have it where the AI doesn't run in front of a tank during its turn? It seems like they have a death wish when they run between me and a hostile alien that's about to shoot the tank. It seems like they run around randomly a little much. Or do they run in a general direction (like away from the aliens)?

I just watched a civilian run through fire. Repeatedly. Until he died. It was an enriching experience.

Hi everyone, I would like to know if it is possible to easily modify the tactical AI of the game, by simply unpacking files and editing text files as for UFO:Extraterrestrials? Wishful thinking: a contest where people would develop tactical AIs and have them fight it out in skirmishes. Basically, a very cool version of the Google "Ants AI challenge".