Fun with AI

[Gauddlike]

The game will have other victory conditions so that the last alien will not always be one you need to hunt down all over the map.

Having the aliens respond to these other victory conditions would be nice though.

For example when you have to take and hold the UFO having some of the aliens return to retake it.

[JonVanCaneghem]

You should probably still have to deal with the alien that gives up imo. Don't just automaticly give him a neutralized status.

I'm not sure how I feel about the suicide option. it feels somewhat dissapointing and would be REALLY annoying if your xenonauts can get cornered as well. What about makeing him faint for one or 2 rounds (giving you a chance to take advantage of the situation but if you dont he wakes up in guns blazing mode)? or have him take the alien version of the suicide pill (which turns him into a chryzalid zombie)?

Definitely should still have to neutralize the surrendering aliens. That option would mean they drop their weapons and walk out of cover. If you had no need of the alien you could always choose to gun it down, or you could be merciful.

I see your concerns on the second point, but I'm thinking that this "cornered" status is basically a special form of panic mode. It would only trigger near the end of battles, meaning probably the last guy or maybe the last two guys (make it an increasing % chance the fewer remaining allies there are). Otherwise I imagine they would stay holed up in cover hoping for a rescue from allies. You'd have to put in some other conditions on top of that, of course. Maybe only if all exits are covered, preventing escape.

I like the Chrysalid idea. Maybe different races could have unique options when cornered? Maybe you wouldn't want to corner some of them...

Edited March 24, 2012 by JonVanCaneghem

[Sunshard]

JonVanCaneghem, I like where you're going with this (if only because of that visceral sense of elation and gloating I engaged in when I get the message "The Alien Commander is panicking!").

Provided we don't get too crazy with how we *depict* the reaction, having an additional state in the aliens FSM / decision tree / behavioural construct of choice for "last man standing" would be a potentially interesting wrinkle.

Not sure how the alien would communicate its surrender though. I would be very amused if research on live aliens or something odd like "alien language" would yield the possibility of that particular option.

[JonVanCaneghem]

Not sure how the alien would communicate its surrender though. I would be very amused if research on live aliens or something odd like "alien language" would yield the possibility of that particular option.

Well, I'd imagine the alien in question would also be clueless as to how to communicate its own surrender. Best I can come up with is them just walking out unarmed. I'd also imagine the term "surrender" wouldn't be in the vocabulary of a muton-type alien, them opting for the "blaze of glory" option every time.

I like the idea of being able to research alien language in order to use communication against them. Maybe it would just translate into getting a better "cornered" result against a particular type of alien after the research is completed.

Maybe you could structure it somewhat like Apoc did with the bio-toxin research. After you capture aliens of a certain set group, you get the first level of alien language, which gives a bonus of some kind against that type of alien.

Another way to structure it, unprecedented in previous Xcom games, is you make understanding of alien language a sliding scale, requiring constant research. So while you'd still get the standard benefits of capturing a live leader, engineer, and what have you, every live alien studied would contribute to an overall knowledge base of alien language. In this way, it would always be optimal to capture as many as possible, as every live alien studied would contribute to an overall pool. At increasingly large intervals, you would get different bonuses. One could be better chance to have aliens surrender, you could intercept transmissions to gain info, etc.

Edited March 25, 2012 by JonVanCaneghem

[Gauddlike]

I feel this would actually detract from the missions for me.

(Not the communication research, that is an interesting idea)

Especially if your elite troopers started killing themselves.

In Xenonauts hunting down every last alien on the map is an option, not the only way to win.

It will probably have the greatest reward because of the extra gear, experience, and reputation awarded for doing it that way.

It should be the hardest way to win as well to compensate for the extra rewards.

Making enemies surrender or kill themselves when you start to win just seems like an anti-climax to the mission in that case.

Aliens used to go berserk and fire at anything in sight (or nothing), throw down their weapons and run away, or just freeze on the spot.

That is pretty close already to the berserk and surrender options, nothing really new there.

The real tweaks could be to allow unarmed aliens to find new weapons after panicking (or waking from stun) or if someone goes berserk they should deliberately target enemies instead of blasting away at nothing, although with reduced accuracy.

Desperation at being on the losing side could be a good motivator for more aggression from the AI.

That gives a bit of risk to hunting them down to a man (type thing).

Being cornered is a tricky distinction to make.

If you are holed up defending an objective while surrounded are you cornered or in a strong position?

What if you like to take small teams and play defensively?

[Chris]

A quick update re: AI - we have now got a good AI coder who is working on the AI at a decent rate. It took him a few weeks to get into it prior to V9.1 but things are now coming along well.

Basically the AI is going to be fully customisable and moddable based on the existing behaviours. The behaviours and preconditions will be hardcoded in the code (and I'm not overly interested in how they work as long as they do), but you can edit how they interact with each other in the XML files as they are all data-driven.

Basically, should be easy to customise what triggers an alien to, for instance, throw a grenade. Or change their targetting priority for a given weapon.

The AI coder initially sent me this Gamasutra article as a way of explaning the basics of the AI model:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1862/creating_all_humans_a_datadriven_.php

[Sunshard]

Excellent, thanks for the reply Chris!

That looks to be a solid, and most importantly moddable interface template. The old tried and true FSM, with enough complexity (hierarchical behaviour, blocking/non-blocking distinctions, the ability to generate behaviour, building-block style) to keep things tweakable.

This of course boils down to correctly selecting each atomic action, tieing in with the engine's animation sets. It also allows set up of group behaviour via emergence, so stigmergy is possible too.

Good example would be spreading panic in really hard civilian AI terror missions; ripples of fear as the shooting begins, before the crowd breaks and dissolves into chaos.

Send the AI coder our best regards, and I hope everyone continues to stop by.

@Gaulddlike: Yeah. Anticlimax is NOT what we want players to feel. I like the idea of surrender being a very hair trigger thing, where you cross your fingers and weigh risk-reward. If that alien really means to surrender and a nice payoff for it, or he plans to get close enough to cause damage.

edited for language.

[licker]

In Xenonauts hunting down every last alien on the map is an option, not the only way to win.

It will probably have the greatest reward because of the extra gear, experience, and reputation awarded for doing it that way.

It should be the hardest way to win as well to compensate for the extra rewards.

Uggghhhh... Making the player perform tedious actions, which lets face it, getting that last bug quickly becomes, is not something I would recommend be 'rewarded'.

Making enemies surrender or kill themselves when you start to win just seems like an anti-climax to the mission in that case.

I dunno, usually by some point in a mission you realize that it's mop up time and then it's anti-climatic to say the least. Just turns of running around trying to find whatever is left so you can gun it down. Designing the missions with specific alien behavior modes (hunter/hunted as an example) means that at the start you need to be careful to determine if you are outnumbered/outgunned, or if you have the advantage, and once you've determined that the battle is joined on the terms dictated by you or the alien force.

Of course there is a line to find between 'fun' and 'realism' [realism in the sense of how the aliens should react] in any game. I side on fun pretty much every time. I've played more than enough missions of XCom to have become frustrated to the point of quitting the games due to that stupid little hiding bug taking me 10 extra minutes every mission to find. It's not an example of good game play.

Alternatively, assuming any of the fruits of this discussion are going into the game , why not make the 'surrender' option optional? That sounds like a way everyone can profit from being able to enjoy the game in a manner they wish.

[Gorlom]

Uggghhhh... Making the player perform tedious actions, which lets face it, getting that last bug quickly becomes, is not something I would recommend be 'rewarded'.

The reward is hardly enough to call it "rewarded"... It's an extra weapon and point. and assuming the AI coder does it right it wont be tedious.. Some people migght find it tedious but most likely they would find anything tedious and be in a minority.

I dunno, usually by some point in a mission you realize that it's mop up time and then it's anti-climatic to say the least. Just turns of running around trying to find whatever is left so you can gun it down. Designing the missions with specific alien behavior modes (hunter/hunted as an example) means that at the start you need to be careful to determine if you are outnumbered/outgunned, or if you have the advantage, and once you've determined that the battle is joined on the terms dictated by you or the alien force.

I'm surprised that you assume that the aliens can't be made dangerous enough to prevent it from being a tedious task of killing the last alien without some sort of special mode. To see it from Guaddlikes point of view (and to some extent mine) can you imagine a map where you know there are 5-6+ aliens. You might engage in a firefight with up to 3 at the same time... but as soon as you kill one they all beam up to their spaceship err.. they just suddenly dissappear. It's that kind of anticlimactic Guadlike is talking about. I'm not sure I would call mopping up anticlimactic. It might hamper your fun or bring you out of the immersion because of how tedious you find it but it still wouldnt be anticlimactic imo.

That beeing said I don't mind special modes. But im against flat out mission ending surrenders and suicides that make you go "what happened?"

Alternatively, assuming any of the fruits of this discussion are going into the game , why not make the 'surrender' option optional? That sounds like a way everyone can profit from being able to enjoy the game in a manner they wish.

Makeing certain functions "optional" seems to be a popular idea on this forum. Although if the devs put in every "optinal" suggestion us forumgoers come up with the options menu is going to be very cluttered as well as give the impression of undecisive devs that doesnt know what they want.

Edited March 26, 2012 by Gorlom

[licker]

The reward is hardly enough to call it "rewarded"... It's an extra weapon and point. and assuming the AI coder does it right it wont be tedious.. Some people migght find it tedious but most likely they would find anything tedious and be in a minority.

If there is a reward then you are rewarded. If the reward is meaningless then there's no point in having it in the first place. If the reward is more subjective, like some people want to hunt the last hiding bug, while others do not, then make that part of it optional. This is entirely an issue of game play to me, I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but I've been around XCom and other alike games enough to have seen the complaints about how boring and tedious many people find it (I among them) to have to do repetitive combat missions which are only made longer due to having to catch that last hiding bug.

I'm surprised that you assume that the aliens can't be made dangerous enough to prevent it from being a tedious task of killing the last alien without some sort of special mode.

I'm not sure I said that, but what is tedious is having to catch that last alien in every mission. Aliens being dangerous is a good thing. Having to spend 10m to find and then exterminate the last one on every map is a bad thing, no matter how dangerous. But I don't think we know yet what the mechanic Xenonauts is going to use, so much of this is speculation, coupled with people expressing their likes/dislikes/concerns.

To see it from Guaddlikes point of view (and to some extent mine) can you imagine a map where you know there are 5-6+ aliens. You might engage in a firefight with up to 3 at the same time... but as soon as you kill one they all beam up to their spaceship err.. they just suddenly dissappear. It's that kind of anticlimactic Guadlike is talking about.

I can imagine that and it doesn't bother me, but I'm not sure I would chose to implement it as you described. To me the issue isn't so much some threshold where the aliens suddenly surrender, it's setting up the missions so that you don't have aliens scattered all over the map each acting on their own. An occasional mission along those lines would be fine, but the big complaint I recall from XCom was that each mission turned into this when that trigger flipped and the last remaining aliens would all just run where ever and hide. Yes, there is some suspense in going and finding them, but after you've done that a few hundred times? The suspense to me would be in finding the alien position, implying that the majority of them are there, and there will be a big fire fight. Or having them find your position. Flanking and scouting and such is all to the good as well, but that is still different from just putting an alien in each corner of the map and making you sweep the entire map to catch them all.

I'm not sure I would call mopping up anticlimactic. It might hamper your fun or bring you out of the immersion because of how tedious you find it but it still wouldnt be anticlimactic imo.

Well that's a personal opinion everyone will have. Anticlimactic or not isn't the issue, is it fun or worth your time is. Games like this have dozens of missions if not hundreds. At some point repetition will become an issue, and in particular players may prefer that the missions are able to be finished 'quickly' as opposed to spending a lot of time and turns simply moving their troops around to find the last alien. Again, scouting at the beginning of the mission is critical and enjoyable (one assumes anyway), after the big fight... having to run around all over again just seems a tad unnecessary.

That beeing said I don't mind special modes. But im against flat out mission ending surrenders and suicides that make you go "what happened?"

Well... then don't choose that option. I'm not going to get into a debate on how a game should be played though. Everyone is free to enjoy their own preferred play style.

Makeing certain functions "optional" seems to be a popular idea on this forum. Although if the devs put in every "optinal" suggestion us forumgoers come up with the options menu is going to be very cluttered as well as give the impression of undecisive devs that doesnt know what they want.

I'm not worried about this. Too many options isn't necessarily a good thing, but this is one option I don't really see a down side to.

[Gorlom]

licker: I'm going to answer your whole post by just answering the first part. For you skipping the mopping up part is a reward that far outweighs getting a rifle and corpse huntingdown and killing the last alien. Therefore the gun+body/corpse is not a reward compared to the time you saved.

Secureing the UFO is already what you want as far as I can tell. Am I wrong? If so why is the alternative objective not enough?

I can imagine that and it doesn't bother me, but I'm not sure I would chose to implement it as you described.

I wasnt suggesting to implement it like that I was trying to give you a situation that you would percive in a similar way to how me (and possibly gauddlike) would feel when faced with a sudden "stolen" ending to the mission. I guess I failed to convey my point so nevermind it.

[licker]

I disagree with the way you use reward. It's a punishment if I have to do the mop up to get everything that's available on the mission. That is a sign of a badly constructed game play mechanism as far as I am concerned. But you're right, that the game already has different ways to end missions, so much of this may be moot. On the other hand, I dislike grinding, and what you are describing is essentially grinding, and yes, there is a tangible benefit to grinding if you can stomach the time investment. I'm not sure that building in grinding is a good thing, but some people may enjoy it, though frankly if it weren't there they wouldn't miss it.

Though I'm not quite sure you understand what I would like to see. I'm not so interested in the auto-end of a mission once the aliens are reduced to some number, I'm interested in not having to chase them down as they hide all over the map. So if you have maps constructed where the aliens are all present in one (or two...) locations for the show down then this question is indeed moot. The issue isn't ending faster by routing the other forces, the issue is being able to finish a mission without having to comb the map to pick off stragglers. If some missions will be that, then fine, when all missions devolve into that... not fine. This is the perspective I have gained from playing these kinds of games over the past 20 years. Cripes... yes, really 20 years!

Anyway, the hunter/hunted idea was a way to have some variation in missions while also speeding them up. Hunted is not 'run away and hide' hunted is 'stop advancing and engage from a defensible position. Its all predicated on both forces being interested in engaging each other, not on one faction being interested in trying to hide from the other for as long as possible. We're not playing hide and seek after all.

UFO:ET (I think) had a setting where the last one or two aliens, no matter where they were on the map, would simply charge the player so that the missions would end sooner rather than later. This wasn't a perfect solution (and may also have been considered unrealistic by some), but from just the game play aspect it helped a lot to end missions without having to run all over the map looking for a bug. Granted, you could just sit tight and end turn until the aliens came in sight, but meh, once you were at that point the mission was really 'over' anyway. I don't see the need to even play it out really, that's why I'm not opposed to the concept of 'surrender' or 'suicide' or 'beam me up' or whatever you want to consider it.

If others think that that 'steals the ending' then make it an optional setting. Or just pop up in the mission 'end mission' or 'continue'. You are free to enjoy it in your own way, as am I

[Gorlom]

I disagree with the way you use reward. It's a punishment if I have to do the mop up to get everything that's available on the mission.

That is why to some players it isn't a reward to get some small benefit by killing the last alien. Because the benefit from doing so doesn't outweighs the drawback or "punishment" as you say. If the net result in a negative one, it can't be called a reward imo. For you the reward is skipping the mopping up not the neglible assets gained by killing one more alien.

If others think that that 'steals the ending' then make it an optional setting. Or just pop up in the mission 'end mission' or 'continue'. You are free to enjoy it in your own way, as am I

I'm still not getting how the game doesnt allready have this option for you? What do you need beyond the secure ufo optional objective? Is that one rifle so important that you need to beat yourself up to get it instead of ending the mission early and enjoy the game?

I consider my self an obsessive completionist but I'm haveing problems understanding wanting one more item (that you will get in abundance anyway) so bad you have to kill the last alien, despite hateing it and considering it tedious. So much that the secureing UFO option isn't enough.

Edited March 26, 2012 by Gorlom

[licker]

Are all missions going to involve securing a UFO?

If so, then yes, it's already in there I suppose.

As to the question of mopping up.

If it's a difference between tedious game play and non tedious game play then I will chose the later every time. But you are phrasing it as there is an actual in game reward which requires me to spend more time to achieve it. No matter how negligible the extra benefit of taking out that last alien is.

Not knowing the exact mechanics hinders me in guessing at this, but assume you get more experience by getting that last alien, assume you get more 'money'... bypassing it is a negative on your advancement in the game (hence my notion about grinding). That's not to say that I (or others) wouldn't bypass it anyway, but I see that kind of game design as poor. If the only benefit is the entertainment of hunting down the last bug (that is the experience is the same and the reward is the same) then it's simply up to the individual if they wish to use their time to hunt the bug or move on to whatever is next. As soon as there is a tangible 'in game' benefit to performing tedious and repetitive actions, you encourage the performance of those actions. So, either design the game to not include tedious or repetitive actions, or make those actions optional.

That is sort of beside the discussion of Xenonauts though, it's a more general 'complaint' I would have with any game.

[Gorlom]

If it's a difference between tedious game play and non tedious game play then I will chose the later every time. But you are phrasing it as there is an actual in game reward which requires me to spend more time to achieve it. No matter how negligible the extra benefit of taking out that last alien is.

Not knowing the exact mechanics hinders me in guessing at this, but assume you get more experience by getting that last alien, assume you get more 'money'... bypassing it is a negative on your advancement in the game (hence my notion about grinding). That's not to say that I (or others) wouldn't bypass it anyway, but I see that kind of game design as poor. If the only benefit is the entertainment of hunting down the last bug (that is the experience is the same and the reward is the same) then it's simply up to the individual if they wish to use their time to hunt the bug or move on to whatever is next. As soon as there is a tangible 'in game' benefit to performing tedious and repetitive actions, you encourage the performance of those actions. So, either design the game to not include tedious or repetitive actions, or make those actions optional.

That is sort of beside the discussion of Xenonauts though, it's a more general 'complaint' I would have with any game.

I somewhat see your point and I agree with it to a degree. I find that in Deus Ex:HR I'm annoyed that to get max exp you have to do nonlethal melee takedowns and do it on every character and never be seen doing it. But in a game where you already get everything in abundance, that doesn't have a set number of aliens before X progression, where maxxing the game out will be different with each play through. Where the negative impact you mention will not be noticible when compareing one game to another, where the extras you get literally doesn't matter. I'm sorry I simply dont't agree with you. In my opinion Xenonauts design does not encourage grinding. The only benefit from hunting down the last alien IS the entertainment of hunting it down. The gun or point or whatever doesn't matter in the least. Not even in the long run if you do this on every mission.

[Gauddlike]

If you have multiple ways to complete a mission and you choose to hunt down every last enemy then that is your call.

It would be more rewarding in gear recovered and reputation gained I imagine.

However the reward for NOT hunting down every last alien is that you can go do something else with the time you have saved.

You are assuming that the ground missions will be tedious and want to add mechanics to compensate for this.

I prefer to think that the ground missions will be more interesting and not need a tedious method to artificially shorten them.

Once the AI and alternative victory conditions are in place we will see.

[Gazz]

Basically the AI is going to be fully customisable and moddable based on the existing behaviours. The behaviours and preconditions will be hardcoded in the code (and I'm not overly interested in how they work as long as they do), but you can edit how they interact with each other in the XML files as they are all data-driven.

Will the victory conditions be based on the same method and therefore be as customisable?

More creative victory conditions will have to be closely tied to the condition of certain actors so it seems to me like a case of killing 2 brainsuckers with one stone.

The only "external" thing would be a way for the player to know which conditions are currently in effect and if they are currently met (and to which percentage) or not.

Basically a GUI function that queries a static AI function and displays the return values.

What it displays would be determined in the AI part, where the conditions itself are checked.

The AI function would then be expanded if more conditions are created.

[licker]

If you have multiple ways to complete a mission and you choose to hunt down every last enemy then that is your call.

Indeed.

It would be more rewarding in gear recovered and reputation gained I imagine.

However the reward for NOT hunting down every last alien is that you can go do something else with the time you have saved.

And that's my gripe. Perhaps not with Xenonauts, since I don't know how it will handle this, but systems which reward tedium just feel wrong to me, no matter the level of reward. Granted, what I find tedious others may not, yet my experience in 20 years of playing XCom like games, strongly suggests that finding that last hiding bug is *not* considered fun, after you've done it dozens of times at least. The solution to me is not to set arbitrary surrender levels (though that's one idea), but rather to have an AI or mission design, in such a way that there is no last bug to hunt down on the other side of the map.

You are assuming that the ground missions will be tedious and want to add mechanics to compensate for this.

I prefer to think that the ground missions will be more interesting and not need a tedious method to artificially shorten them.

Once the AI and alternative victory conditions are in place we will see.

I'm not assuming anything. I KNOW that missions which frequently wind up forcing the player to do a time consuming bug hunt after the meat of the battle is over are tedious. I hope that Xenonauts avoids that, better by simply not having it happen, but if that's in the design then the alternative VCs will hopefully be well thought out and balanced.

I also don't want to see a VC where you can run one guy to some spot and have him stand there for 3 turns to 'win'. Well outside of a specific mission. I'm more worried about the 'routine' downed UFO missions which compromise a large % of all missions in these types of games. Special missions can be set up however makes sense for them depending on what the goal of the special mission will be.

But, as you say, we will have to wait and see what the missions feel like once the AI/VCs and more tile sets are in.

[Gauddlike]

Best bet is to make a list of interesting victory conditions that you think will work and post it up somewhere (not here, this is about AI).

If you feel strongly about victory conditions and poor AI causing game breaking problems then that is a good way to point Chris in a direction you are more happy with.

He is good at taking on board ideas that fit in with his vision of the game.

I like the direction the AI is moving in now and I can't wait to see a more complete version of it running.