[V20.7 - Ground Combat] Aliens mostly sit idly and get shot at

[llunak]

Saved game: http://ge.tt/34XpLo71/v/0

During this terror mission, most aliens just sit in one place (in the corner of the park), shoot only rarely if at all, do not flank, do not try pretty much anything. I actually managed to win this seemingly hopeless mission by simply sniping them one by one (there must have been at least 5 dead aliens in the spot in the exact corner of the park). One alien eventually appears more to the north, but then keeps shooting from there. Two more aliens apparently stay at the other side of the map. Given that this is veteran difficulty, they could have tried at least a bit harder. With 3 soldiers left I was so badly outnumbered that they could have flanked them with ease, and would have probably managed to win even simply by storming them.

[Selvhan]

They were trying to send SMS on their cell phone... give them a break would you ?

[llunak]

I actually did try to give them a break. Even after skipping a turn, so that they wouldn't be supressed etc., they still kept sitting there. 3 wounded soldiers simply shouldn't manage to win by just turkey-shooting 15 aliens.

[Chris]

EDIT: just read the post properly. Does this affect all missions or just the terror site?

[llunak]

First of all, just to make this clear, it's a question if this is really a bugreport or a suggestion for enhancement. I understand the AI can never be perfect and that an intelligent human should usually have the upper hand, it's just that I think that in this specific case the AI did a horrible job and lost a battle that the aliens probably could have won merely by pointing their guns in the direction of my soldiers and spraying wildly, or something equally trivial. I don't remember having ever coded anything that'd resemble AI, so I have only a vague idea, but I'd guess that even rather simple additions to the AI could avoid the aliens getting slaughtered like this.

As for your question, that's a bit harder to answer, as that has so far been the only mission where I was in this situation with having 3 soldiers pinned down in a corner by 15 aliens, yet eventually winning. I think that in my usual missions I sometimes see aliens doing similarly poor decisions, but there it's not so blatantly wrong. I usually try to flank aliens, pin them down somewhere and snipe them from afar, so if it sometimes looks to me like they just keep their heads down or run around like headless chicken, they can't really do much better anyway. In other words, in all other missions I've played so far, with the exception of this one, aliens don't do very well either, but that's because I do not let them. Here they didn't do well and they easily could have. So I can't quite say if it was a problem of just this map.

Maybe let me explain a bit what actually happened. There were 4 aliens at the street facing Chinook's back, so I had problems unloading (and no smoke grenade, bah). On the side towards the park I could get only as far as the street, as there were aliens in the park. The only somewhat safe were 3 soldiers in the corner of the map, covered by the Chinook. Then one alien tossed a grenade into the Chinook, killing two, soldiers started panicking and running around, and aliens easily killed another 3 soldiers. That left me with just those 3 soldiers behind Chinook, and I expected a very definite failure of the mission soon. But, to my surprise, from my position I could kill few aliens at the street and the rest ran away towards the park, where more of aliens were, just sitting there, instead of advancing. So I quickly moved and took position on the street at the edge of the map. Few aliens (really only few, like 2 or 3) came closer, trying to get the soldiers, but I managed to kill them (that's some of those dead bodies next to where Victoria Gagne is in the save). After that, I moved to the positions where the soldiers are in the save, and noticed several (5 at least) aliens in the corner of the park. And the save is actually done several turns later, after me repeatedly shooting at those aliens and noticing that they don't really do anything, except for new aliens taking places of the ones I shot. I shot one alien in the spot right in the corner of the park, another one took its place, and every turn kept just standing up, looking at my soldiers, and sitting down again. Shoot it, another one will come to take its place, repeat.

Things that I think the AI did (very) poorly:

1) When I had 3 remaining soldiers in the corner of the map, in the cover of the Chinook, those aliens in the park didn't advance. They didn't see my soldiers, but could have known (from my firing at the aliens towards Chinook's back, for example).

2) When I killed some of the soldiers towards Chinook's back, the one(s?) remaining there ran towards the park instead of those in the park reinforcing them. My soldiers were surrounded, but aliens opened a hole for me to run away.

3) By the time I moved my soldiers to the position in the save, most of the aliens were just sitting in the park, they could have flanked the soldiers, but they didn't do anything, they all kept mostly in their places.

4) (The definively worst one) The aliens stayed in their places in the corner of the park, they almost didn't shoot back, and just kept getting shot at. Which just didn't work and I killed them one by one. They could have run away, they could have tried to storm me, they could have tried to flank me, nothing.

And I think at least some of these could be solved with (hopefully) simple logic. For 1), it can be "I know there is enemy that way, I don't see anybody myself, so I'll move closer". For 2) and 3), it could be something like "there are many of us, enemy is there, let's spread out and make a circle around them". I have no idea why the alien in 2) ran away or why they didn't shoot back in 4).

[llunak]

I have no idea why the alien in 2) ran away or why they didn't shoot back in 4).

Heh, ok, I might after all. I replayed from the save again, checked the spot where I killed most of the idle aliens just to count how many I killed there, and there's a load of weapons on the ground, all of them empty. And there's also a load of plasma batteries. Do the aliens know how to reload?

That would very well explain 4), aliens apparently get very dumb if they have nothing to shoot with. It might also explain the running away in 2) and not flanking/advancing in 2) and 3). It still doesn't explain why those in 1) didn't advance or why those who still had ammo didn't do much in 2) and 3). As I had limited vision, I don't know for sure what they were doing.

So it looks like the real bug here is "aliens don't know how to reload", and a suggestion for improvement is "aliens should try to spread more and try to flank enemies".

Also, are plasma weapons supposed to work for my soldiers? I've never tried to use them so far, but there are some strange things when I try to play with them:

- My soldiers can reload them, but that does strange things to the ammo count (999 shots).

- My soldiers can fire them, even though I haven't researched any plasma weapon except for plasma pistol yet (maybe it's ok, but it wasn't possible in U:EU, so just checking).

- I have researched plasma pistols, and there were some on the battlefield, but they don't end up in my stores for me to use again.

At least some of these look like bugs to me (either I should be able to use them, including using them later, or not at all).

[llunak]

Now that I know that aliens have a problem with reloading weapons, I start noticing that this is actually not that uncommon. For example I had an alien which spent all 9 shots from its plasma rifle on killing two NPCs and then it and a 3rd NPC kept staring at each other from opposite sides of a crate. I could safely walk up right to it and execute it on the spot.

It looks to me that aliens may be way too short on ammo in general. It takes 2 bursts to empty a plasma pistol and 3 for a plasma rifle. Even with reloading fixed, with just 1 plasma battery in reserve that's not a lot of shots, compared to 60 bullets carried by a rifleman. I don't know if it's a consequence of this, but aliens rather often don't take shots that I would have - I often kill aliens by taking cover, showering them with bullets and eventually managing enough hits while they often don't fire back at all. I have a save with an alien not taking any shot at a soldier taking cover behind just a wooden fence, being less than 10 spaces away from it. Similarly, if there's some cover outside of a Corvette's entrance, I can quite safely shoot at aliens running inside without any significant return fire. The aliens would feel much more menacing if they sprayed plasma shots back rather than waiting until I finally score enough hits.