StellarRat Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 (edited) Would aliens ever be smart to come out of a door when there are Xenonauts around? That usually always mean running into a virtual firing squad of Xenonauts. I have had them come out occasionally and it's never good for them. I know for a fact they will move reinforcements toward any fighting in the area (that's why there's so many of them in the initial fighting in a base), so they have to be coming through doors at some point and I've had them swarm down to the bottom floor while trying to take a cruiser or landing ship and totally surprise me. That's happened with Sebs, Androns and Caesans. Edited June 17, 2014 by StellarRat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kabill Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 Would aliens ever be smart to come out of a door when there are Xenonauts around? That usually always mean running into a virtual firing squad of Xenonauts. I have had them come out occasionally and it's never good for them. I know for a fact they will move reinforcements toward any fighting in the area (that's why there's so many of them in the initial fighting in a base), so they have to be coming through doors at some point. It's highly advantageous to them when they just open the door, since opening the door itself doesn't provoke reaction fire (just like for the player). I've had my squad shredded before as a result of this and it means you need to be a lot more cautious when approaching the UFO from the front (i.e. you can't just safely stack all your guys next to the door). But is also applies to interior doors, since if the AI could open them, they could shoot your soldiers at point-blank range if you've stacked them next to the door. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TacticalDragon Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 Aliens can open the doors, thats for sure. In other hand, yes aliens will open the door to explore. You can set a psrticular alien that only scout, open de door and see whats nearby. Stellar rat, mayne you say that because you have never see aliens using doors even better than Xenonauts player can Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ventuswings Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 AI should really be adjusted that alien ALWAYS open the door before moving through it, since it does not cost any more than simply moving through the door as they are very liable to do. Not sure how difficult it'll be to code but think it's valuable effort. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skitso Posted June 17, 2014 Author Share Posted June 17, 2014 Aliens can open the doors, thats for sure. Of course they can - as long as there's no one at the other side if the door. If that's the case, aliens sure are unable to open doors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TacticalDragon Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 Of course they can - as long as there's no one at the other side if the door. If that's the case, aliens sure are unable to open doors. Nop master Skitso I already probe thats wrong. In XNT:ITD, if you block alien door your doing a great mistake, they open the door and blast all your team with Vortex Launchers. I can take a video if you want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kabill Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 @TD: Out of wonder, does this happen only with the external UFO doors, or does it happen with the interior ones as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skitso Posted June 17, 2014 Author Share Posted June 17, 2014 Hmm, I wonder whats the value one needs to alter to get aliens to open blocked doors. Any ideas TD? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TacticalDragon Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 They open internal UFO doors, Im very sure that this is a mix of behavior scripts on "ground combat" folder and Probabilistic Search, Nearest Enemy, Allied/Enemy Influence and Shoot potential. In the mod I build portholes for internal doors, they work as cover of 75% and door at the same time. In both of my test with or without portholes aliens explore the interiors. The Portholes promote aliens explore better the internal UFO or stay on defensive key positions in the door. Let me run some test om vanilla version + UFO Hull Breach. Setup AI is time consuming... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gijs-Jan Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 So, apologies for not showing my face in this thread before. As you can imagine, we've been quite busy the past few days. After reading the thread, it looks like the issue was introduced somewhere around 1.0; We made a decision that Command units should stick to the command room, which can lead to odd behavior at times. This coupled with the new preference for upper floors could lead to some passivity. You can "solve" the sticking to command room by adjusting Decision::ChanceForExpansionFromGoalTiles for Command units in aiprops.xml. Together with upping the ProbabilisticSearch & ShotPotential, this should solve a lot of issues. I'm looking at the issue as well Setup AI is time consuming... Hehe, yeah it is. Once things are settled down and I have some time to burn, I might make an AI mod aimed at above-insane players. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinHann Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Great news! Things, settle down already! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
llunak Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Once things are settled down and I have some time to burn, I might make an AI mod aimed at above-insane players. Aaaah ... gimme gimme . Hmm ... on a somewhat (un)related note: Is it possible to have more than 16 soldiers on a mission? That might be useful if the AI does way too good . I've managed to get 17 soldiers onto a transport, but they do not appear in GC, so it looks like there's a limit hardcoded somewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kabill Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Yeah, I think it's hard-coded. Although I think the game can support 3-4 vehicles at the same time *as well as* the 16 soldiers, if that's useful to know? @Gijs-Jan: Thanks for the information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SQW Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Registered just to post on this thread. Bought the game @ v1.0 and witnessed on several occasions aliens existing scout craft to engage my soldiers. Fast forward 3 days and v1.30 came out. Still the same game and there's been zero incidence of aliens exiting craft since. I totally agree with the OP. Currently, UFO breaching is almost effortless due to passive aliens and the only thing to watch out for is aliens teleporting down from upper level in corvettes to throw grenades. I'll definitely play around with the xml file tonight. On a completely different topic: Devs, can we please make the soldier roster clipboard bigger? The main menu is an excellent example of resizing the clip board in order to respond to user action. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skitso Posted June 19, 2014 Author Share Posted June 19, 2014 I'm looking at the issue as well Lots and lots of back and forth walking inside the UFO. No reactions, no firing. Just walking between one or two different spots. Is there any ETA on the possible fixes for this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gijs-Jan Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Do you have the save of this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kabill Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Do you have the save of this? Did you see the saves I posted on the bug thread about this? You may well have done, but just in case I thought I'd mention them as they demonstrate some of the things Skitso mentions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gijs-Jan Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Yes I have, but I cannot stress enough that the more saves provided; the better I can look into the issue. Primarily my time is spent now in setting up different missions to see how the balancing is affected in different situations. Preset missions I can quickly check cut that time down considerably. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kabill Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Cool, just wanted to check. (I'd like to put up some more, but I'm busy with work stuff at the moment sadly). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gijs-Jan Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Cool, just wanted to check. (I'd like to put up some more, but I'm busy with work stuff at the moment sadly). No problem; you've been a tremendous help to me so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kabill Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Have just been doing some further experimenting. A critical issue seems to be that the AI is programmed to always move on it's turn. I've just spent a couple of hours watching the AI take turns and every single alien on the map wanders 4-5 tiles a turn (with some - aggressive aliens I presume - wandering further). I've mentioned this before, but I think it's a critical issue. While it makes sense for aliens outside the UFO to move around a bit in case they find something to shoot at, inside the UFO they're just wasting TUs walking backwards and forwards over the same spot. Ideally, then, the AI inside the UFO should either hold their ground and not move (shooting if there's something in sight) or move towards player units (or, at least, where there were last-known player units). --- Another thing that's possibly more positive. One of the AI variables controls how close to known player units an alien has to be for it to start reserving TUs for reaction fire. By default, this is set to 35, which is very large. I tried setting it to 5 for all aliens inside the UFO instead, and this made them on the whole much more mobile within the UFO. I've not tested a lot with this, mind, but it seemed to allow them to move further and possibly made them more inclined to come and attack the player units between rooms. I'm wondering, then, whether this is partly to blame for the reduces aggression inside UFOs. What it's trying to do is save TUs for reaction fire, which is why it doesn't move very far and why sometimes it wanders around when there's units in it's sight range. I've done a couple of tests with this reduced, now, and the AI was far more aggressive in its movements around the UFO, with aliens coming to attack from adjacent rooms frequently. (But I still can't get them to open a door that's being blocked.) The problem with this, however, is that it means the AI uses *even more* of its TUs wandering around the UFO, making it even less likely to get reaction fire. It still seems capable of capping the TUs it uses: I've seen the AI wander only a couple of spaces like it was doing previously as well as wandering further. So it's not catastrophic. But it does create something of an issue. (@Gijs-Jan: This couldn't be what's responsible for the odd Reaper behaviour that some people have reported, could it? Trying to reserve TUs for reaction fire, even though that doesn't make any sense for it? Quite probably wrong, but I wondered whether it would be worth testing out Reapers with the CautiousDistance variable set to 0 for them). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gijs-Jan Posted June 22, 2014 Share Posted June 22, 2014 (edited) This issue will probably be fixed in the next hotfix/patch. I uploaded a patch yesterday evening. It should also deal with the infamous "I-can-block-a-door-with-a-unit" bug. @Kabill On debugging: I saw in the save(s) you provided that you used the editor to setup several situations for the AI. I want to warn you that using the editor breaks the game in a lot of places. Especially tweaking the unit values will break a lot of AI effect calculations. This isn't a bug in the AI, but in the Editor in how it incorrectly sets values sometimes. One example is where you placed a unit with a modded high HP value next to the entrance. The Editor didn't adjust the maxHP correctly and set it internally to a negative value, this in turn resulted in the AI thinking that its effects would be positive for the Xenonaut, hence it not shooting. On the moving issue: There are as many opinions as there are people with regards to this. First it was a problem that AI units were crouched in defensive positions and wouldn't move, now it's that units in the UFO move too much. For this reason I've actually made it easy to disable that; just zero out the ProbabilisticSearch value in aiprops.xml. The problem is also that the AI is pretty sensible; it's not going to run into your shotgun equipped, high reaction skilled, Xenonauts waiting to gun it down. Anyway, I'll probably release a mod / patch at some point for more advanced players with an "Unleashed AI" which, among other things, also varies the values a bit more randomly in terms of aggression. Reapers use a planner for their logic; which is completely separate behavior and is primarily influenced by the pathing value variables; not the rest. Edited June 22, 2014 by Gijs-Jan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skitso Posted June 22, 2014 Author Share Posted June 22, 2014 Uuh! Sounds great. Thanks GJ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tulx Posted June 22, 2014 Share Posted June 22, 2014 Anyway, I'll probably release a mod / patch at some point for more advanced players with an "Unleashed AI" which, among other things, also varies the values a bit more randomly in terms of aggression. Personally I would like to see an AI that is desinged around the concept of "always do it's best to win and throw any other consideration out of the window". Frozen Synapse's AI was brutal in that sense, it wasn't meant to give the player a good, casual time but rather focused on winning. Atleast that was my impression of it. I'm very much looking foward to any AI mod that you might be making. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khall Posted June 22, 2014 Share Posted June 22, 2014 The problem with "always do it's best to win and throw any other consideration out of the window" is that overtime it becomes predictable, and makes easier for the player to counter. Occasionally taking the less statistically optimal approach will surprise the player, who cannot rely on the alien doing what it is "supposed" to. A good example is the aliens sometimes charging out of the UFO. The best thing to do would be to have them all camping, covering the door. But the possibility they might counter attack, even though it is more risky and not the optimal strategy, keeps the player on his toes and makes it harder Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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