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How do you abuse the AI? v19 stable edition


lemm

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I was wondering the little tricks, no matter how small, that people have discovered to abuse or exploit the AI. This involves identifying situations in which the AI will behave repeatedly, then exploiting these situations at every possible opportunity.

There's a lot of piecemeal ground combat balance, but I think it might be better to approach it in a holistic sense, because AI and alien weapon power are inextricably connected. It's hard to balance one while ignoring the other.

Anyway, here's a few to start things off:

1. Using alien's super hearing abilities to avoid reaction fire.

At the end of the turn, aliens usually face the closest Xenonaut soldier, even if he is behind an insurmountable wall. You can use this to make the alien face away from the door if you know.

2. Using your vehicle as a scout.

Kinda obvious, but aliens don't care to attack alien vehicles. Free scouting.

3. Hiding in smoke clouds

The elites in the carrier command room rarely leave their room to attack. Have your shooters stand in a smoke cloud behind the left door, and your scout with a riot shield behind the right door as the spotter. Repeat for 5 turns until aliens are neutralized. Spotter closes door at end of turn. Aliens rarely investigate a smoke cloud, even if they have the numbers and should "know" that you couldn't have moved anywhere else.

4. Using Foxtrot as missile bait.

If a Foxtrot is moving perpendicularly with afterburners through the missile launch arc of an alien fighter, the alien missiles will always fall behind it.

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Not sure I (intentially) use any of those except smoke, though not specifically for the purpose you indicate - simply using smoke can feel like an exploit because the AI can't handle it very well!

Some more:

5. Air combat kiting.

This, really, is an AI exploit since it would become 90% less effective if the AI simply turned around to attack whatever was shooting them from behind.

6. Aliens (almost) never come out of the UFO

This is so obvious it probably doesn't need saying. Interestingly, reloading the game seems to cause the AI to come out sometimes.

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When facing overwhelming odds such as taking out a scout in the GC in the 2nd week of September when you have a few Jackal armors at best, I try to sneak to the ship directly and then try to set up ambushes behind sparse cover an wait for the reinforcements to come in they tend to stay out of cover on their trek back. To trigger the AI to rush back to the ship, I've found just opening the door was enough.

Ive tried twice, It worked nicely with Sebilians, but didn't with Caserians, on that mission all the guys in the ship were dead, so I wonder if that's why no one came back, or if it's just the Seb's AI which is different.

Wouldn't call it an exploit, but it sure can make all the difference in a tough fight.

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When an alien is in cover I use smoke grenades to conceal my troops, which causes them to run out of cover for some reason.

His AI was telling him to take cover based on him being able to see your soldiers while maintaining a line of fire on their positions. When you popped the smoke, he can't see them anymore, the same as if they'd run off and hid behind a wall. He doesn't know where they are now, and can't get a shot on them, so he displaces.

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His AI was telling him to take cover based on him being able to see your soldiers while maintaining a line of fire on their positions. When you popped the smoke, he can't see them anymore, the same as if they'd run off and hid behind a wall. He doesn't know where they are now, and can't get a shot on them, so he displaces.

The same works the other way around - throw some smoke on an alien in cover ( or anywhere ) and they will run out and give you some reaction fire fun.

I also abuse doors a lot, set up a firing squad, open, shoot, close.

The final thing is probably cheating - if you throw a grenade you can still give other commands while its in the air, so you can throw a grenade into the final room and close the door before it lands = no reaction fire.

Other than that i just make sure to flank them when they try to run away, but thats just tactics.

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Opening and closing doors.

Breaking LoS whenever possible.

Taking advantage of the seemingly buggy AI in bases. In the command rooms there are usually several aliens that will do nothing other than stand still and reaction fire if you stand in the furthest away square that grants vision. Put enough fire on them to suppress them once, then park a LMG/sniper in that square and just have them shoot, end turn, repeat until dead.

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Not sure if its an exploit

But you can heal an injured soldier to full if you send them on back to back missions. Their hp bar will fill to full with grey, missing hp, with they touch down. You can have your medic heal to full with a med pack and a wound that should have taken days if not weeks is fully healed in 2 hours.

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The last two are definitely exploits. I know for sure the med kit one will be fixed, but I didn't know about the Preator problem until now.

It does it on Base Missions also not just battleships. I see it cycles though the random names but it doesn't deduct the TU's. When it does it speeds though pretty quickly. Just seems like the Prats need a little more work is all.

Also you can resupply your team in the air. I justify it as "Hey they'd have extra stuff on the plane"

Edited by Jossis
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Not sure if it's an exploit or just wonky AI but I keep getting Sebilians and Caserians trying to rush me but then not having enough TU to actually attack. So they end turn standing two squares away infront of my heavy machine gunner. It doesn't end well for them.

When facing overwhelming odds such as taking out a scout in the GC in the 2nd week of September when you have a few Jackal armors at best, I try to sneak to the ship directly and then try to set up ambushes behind sparse cover an wait for the reinforcements to come in they tend to stay out of cover on their trek back. To trigger the AI to rush back to the ship, I've found just opening the door was enough.

Wouldn't call it an exploit, but it sure can make all the difference in a tough fight.

I think thats a real improvement over the original X-com, it feels like it brings the mission to a head with a big all or nothing fire fight in and around the ship. In the original Xcom You'd just finish a tense and exciting 5 turn assault of the UFO only to spend the next 5 turns combing the other two thirds of the map to find the one grey who fell asleep in someone's shed.

Edited by Bhazor
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Hmmm. It happened again, a Sebilian ambushing me without actually attacking me. It's almost like they didn't see my guy there and just sort of bumped into him. It seems to keep happening on night missions. Can the aliens not see flares? Because I'm certainly not getting sniped in the flare patches nearly as much as I did in the original Xcom night missions.

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Hmmm. It happened again, a Sebilian ambushing me without actually attacking me. It's almost like they didn't see my guy there and just sort of bumped into him. It seems to keep happening on night missions. Can the aliens not see flares? Because I'm certainly not getting sniped in the flare patches nearly as much as I did in the original Xcom night missions.

It doesn't seem so - a lot of games tend not to have the same vision rules for the enemy as they have for you. (As some of the exploits already in this thread suggest, the enemy has goldfish memory/no concept of object permanence, so if they can't see you, you stopped existing as far as they know. Hence, they hack LOS for the enemy so they can see you more often than they should.)

It is mentioned in the Xenopedia, however, that aliens probably don't see in the same spectrum as humans do, so there may be something to that - if they only see in infra-red or something, then a flare is more blinding than illuminating.

(Of course, the question can be reversed, as well - why does a flare right in front of your guy's face not quash your soldier's ability to see anything BUT the flare right in front of them?)

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