[V7.3.0 - ground combat] - AI feedback - psyon, faced with xenonaut in cover in smoke, reacts by moving closer, taking cover, looking away from threat & not reserving enough TUs for reaction fire

[fusion-waffle]

Description

Psyon, faced with xenonaut in cover in smoke, reacts by moving closer, taking cover, looking away from threat & not reserving enough TUs for reaction fire

 

It's probably not fair to class this as a "bug" - to tune the AI you need to evaluate what it does across many different scenarios & it's probably best to focus on "does it make reasonable/fun moves 'on average'" rather than caring too much about any specific scenario.  I saw there were some AI changes in 7.3.0, so here's some feedback (sample size 1) from a scenario where it did something that looked a bit silly.

 

What Happened

Curious AI behaviour

Here's a composite showing start-of-alien-turn & end-of-alien-turn positioning of a pair of psyons, call them pyson A & B:

At start of alien turn, no xenonauts are within line of sight of any alien.

Psyon A starts at position a0, jumps the fence and makes a right 45 degree turn once 1 tile forward of the box. After this 45 degree turn, the shield xenonaut in smoke should be within Psyon A's 90 degree vision cone.

But, Psyon A appears to ignore the shield xenonaut & ends its turn behind a shrub, facing away from the threat & without reserving enough TUs for a fusion rifle snap shot.

I'd expect Psyon A to react to seeing the shield xenonaut. Maybe it was really looking forward to strolling over to a1 and staring at a shrub, but after seeing an enemy it could replan its move to prioritise reserving enough TUs for a snap shot & rotating so the known threat remains within its vision cone,  & ideally standing behind cover (e.g. it could have taken cover behind the crate it is next to, or the fence, when the shield soldier entered its FOV cone).

 

Further Info

These AI moves seem reproducible when repeatedly loading the save.

Note: the AI didn't move the psyons like this the first time I saw this situation. The first time, both psyons A & B moved to the right making "a1" type moves and staring away from the xenonaut toward the shrubs!

 

Please see attached f11 bug report zip  bug_report_2026-02-27-07h44_gc_7.3.0_user_f11_0.zip

 

 

Edited February 27 by fusion-waffle

[Kouki]

18 hours ago, fusion-waffle said:

Description

Psyon, faced with xenonaut in cover in smoke, reacts by moving closer, taking cover, looking away from threat & not reserving enough TUs for reaction fire

 

It's probably not fair to class this as a "bug" - to tune the AI you need to evaluate what it does across many different scenarios & it's probably best to focus on "does it make reasonable/fun moves 'on average'" rather than caring too much about any specific scenario.  I saw there were some AI changes in 7.3.0, so here's some feedback (sample size 1) from a scenario where it did something that looked a bit silly.

 

What Happened

Curious AI behaviour

Here's a composite showing start-of-alien-turn & end-of-alien-turn positioning of a pair of psyons, call them pyson A & B:

At start of alien turn, no xenonauts are within line of sight of any alien.

Psyon A starts at position a0, jumps the fence and makes a right 45 degree turn once 1 tile forward of the box. After this 45 degree turn, the shield xenonaut in smoke should be within Psyon A's 90 degree vision cone.

But, Psyon A appears to ignore the shield xenonaut & ends its turn behind a shrub, facing away from the threat & without reserving enough TUs for a fusion rifle snap shot.

I'd expect Psyon A to react to seeing the shield xenonaut. Maybe it was really looking forward to strolling over to a1 and staring at a shrub, but after seeing an enemy it could replan its move to prioritise reserving enough TUs for a snap shot & rotating so the known threat remains within its vision cone,  & ideally standing behind cover (e.g. it could have taken cover behind the crate it is next to, or the fence, when the shield soldier entered its FOV cone).

 

Further Info

These AI moves seem reproducible when repeatedly loading the save.

Note: the AI didn't move the psyons like this the first time I saw this situation. The first time, both psyons A & B moved to the right making "a1" type moves and staring away from the xenonaut toward the shrubs!

 

Please see attached f11 bug report zip  bug_report_2026-02-27-07h44_gc_7.3.0_user_f11_0.zip

 

 

Thanks for the bug report! I'll forward this to our programmers as they're currently making AI improvements and I'm sure the feedback will be appreciated.