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Two ground combat AI issues: Sorties and line of sight


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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.

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The first one is being addressed in the next build I think. Something about the aliens actually, y'know, attacking. So aggressive aliens might try to find something to shoot instead of just waiting around reserving TU's for reaction fire.

The second is just the aliens being idiots and trying to shoot enemy units without checking for LoF. Being addressed, hopefully in the next build.

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