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The AI is cheating but I guess that's ok


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On the topic though I have found some holes in the AI but not come across anything that makes me think the AI is blatantly cheating. I also don't see it as much of a problem if it does cheat, as long as it provides a challenge beyond just having bullet sponges charging at my troops.

I've seen some questionable stuff--was clearing a carrier, and had my men inside the bottom deck with every alien outside dead. Then I had a guy MC'd with no aliens in sight. The same turns some wraiths teleported in amongst my men, so I assume the AI somehow knew it would be able to see the unit later? Or maybe it was a LOS bug.

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The intention of the chance for aggressive behavior when xenonauts are nearby is good, but it results in a very predictable AI once you know about it. And yeah, it gives the feeling that the aliens are cheating, i.e. they know you are close.

I think the random behavior should be independent of xenonaut position. For example, it could be like changing the role of passive aliens to aggressive, making the aliens send out search parties.

I also do not get why the number of the different roles (passive/agressive) is not random. The fixed amount means that you will always have the mission play out the same way.

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The part you quoted out is missing the smiley. I did put it there for a reason :) Now that part looks sortof agressive :)

Re the aliens: I admit, I am playing Xeno for just a couple days, and I can already notice some patterns emerging, how they move, they 'tactics' and how to use that against them. At the very start it was horrible: most of my X-com tactics didn't work at all, and I had to adapt. Still not sure if the aliens know 100% the location of each of my guys. If they have no clue, it would be easy to ambush them.Their agressiveness is their destruction. If they could camp and stay put, they could be more dangerous.

Sorry the smiley got lost in the copy paste somewhere, wasn't my intention to alter the tone of your post.

The aliens used to cap and stay put, parts of the community hated it as they were too static.

I've seen some questionable stuff--was clearing a carrier, and had my men inside the bottom deck with every alien outside dead. Then I had a guy MC'd with no aliens in sight. The same turns some wraiths teleported in amongst my men, so I assume the AI somehow knew it would be able to see the unit later? Or maybe it was a LOS bug.

Mind control doesn't need line of sight as the alien detects the thoughts of your soldier with its own mind (or whatever justification you prefer for this game mechanic) but once controlled the soldier provides the aliens with squad sight, they can see what he does.

I could see the situation you describe happening without any AI cheating being required.

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I don't think the AI cheats, just that it has actual use of tactics and sometimes even dumb luck can occur it. Situations I've seen in my current round include..

1: A Sebillian tossing a grenade from a covered position, with the grenade getting 'blocked' and landing at his feet.

2: Aliens engaged in fighting my own people, only to get outflanked and finished off by civilians/local authorities.

3: A full on Sebillian 'Strike Team' that was moving into a position on me after just landing and getting out of the helo, with one laying down suppressing fire, two moving to flank and the leader rushing in to drop a grenade. While I won that battle, about half a dozen turns was spent on that terror mission simply fighting at the doors of my chinook.

4: Base Defense Mission - With my main team forming a bottleneck and keeping out forces from breaking past two chokepoints, and having my most wounded, high ranker guard the command room by herself, a lone Sebillian snuck AROUND the group, heading to approach from an entirely opposite direction and rushed into the command room. He died from a reaction fire salvo, but he died right at the very doorway of my command center.

For some reason I keep expecting the aliens to rush for the command center/UFO once my people have taken it, yet they never seem to. Still, I always keep two guarding the main door while the rest of my team sweeps and cleans. But I've yet to see the aliens move to retake the ship.

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For some reason I keep expecting the aliens to rush for the command center/UFO once my people have taken it, yet they never seem to. Still, I always keep two guarding the main door while the rest of my team sweeps and cleans. But I've yet to see the aliens move to retake the ship.

Love to hear things like this; and I added it to my list of things to look at.

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Love to hear things like this; and I added it to my list of things to look at.

Never, in every UFO capture mission I've done, crashed or landed, have I seen the Aliens roaming the map ever turn to retake the ship. Usually there are 1-3 stragglers, and they are all out hiding cause I also don't hear them exchanging fire with civies. Guess they all want to pull ETs and wander off and hide among the populace. Time for me to invest in Reeses Pieces.

Also, the Vehicles work very well as weapons fire magnets. The aliens always get fixated on them, and stand out in the open constantly firing. What follows is usually lots of pinging sounds, then machine gun fire then my cackling.

If I was an alien, and I saw one of those vehicles driving up, I'd be saying "Oh shit" instead of standing there like an ant screaming "Bring it!" at an M1 Abhrams.

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I don't know. Since my first Shrike finally went online and operational, I started using tanks. The scimitar is now part of my team. The thing is awesome at discovering aliens and dispatching them quickly. Saved my guy's bacon many times now. And yet, I still have to see the aliens prioritize my tank instead of soldiers. Even if I park him in front of the UFO, and blow the door off with it, and nex turn an alien pops up in the corridor, the tank won't get an interrupt, nor will the alien. In fact, even if the tank is right there in plain view, the alien will rather try to shoot one of my guys outside the UFO, even if he has to shoot through the indestructible UFO hull.

Maybe the Alien 'knows' he cannot terminate my tank in one turn? No idea but it IS strange.

Second example: my Scimitar is camping a crossroad (industrial) and two aliens are stuck on the 2th floor of a large building facing the ctossroad. Turn by turn they are just milling around the room, taking cover behind windows, in plain view of my tank. The moment I bring along ONE of my guys, the aliens suddenly become frisky and start shooting at him (the xenonaut)like mad. Not even targetting the tank, which needed just one shot from its laser gun to obliterate that building corner together with the aliens in it. Weird.But hey, I'm not complaining. The supply of killable aliens is not going to be depleted, is it? :)

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The AI takes the "effectiveness" of a weapon into account; and it does prioritize based on "value".

Value being a pretty long formulea; which I documented in aiprops.xml! :)

If I increase the tank's armor and/or it's HPs, would that affect that obscure formula outcome? Just wondering.

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Gijis_Jan: If you made retaking the control room of ships and bases a high priority that would also help speed up ground combat by making the last few aliens come to you instead of having to search the whole map to find them. The base reveal function currently doesn't show you where the aliens are, it shows the map which really doesn't help the player like it was supposed to, but the control room priority would mostly fix that. It would also reduce the possibly of the map being prematurely revealed because the aliens went out to fight.

Edited by StellarRat
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I wonder if my team just camps inside the dropship and do nothing, will the aliens come to play at my place? Looks like they don't have any kind of strategy (..purify the crash-landing site of Carbon-units...purify..purify..purify..). Rather they apear to have a couple tactical options, all of them reaction-triggered, like if we 'invade' their sensor-defined area of action etc. Yes, they will romp around a bit, but not make an coordinated collective effort to actually endanger my team as a whole. Not moaning, just speculating. Just got my energy bar and my brain is fuming..

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