Ground Combat Balance Discussion V20 Stable Candidate 1

[jeon]

There is definitely an impact from grenade throwing range and aliens shooting. I was playing around with all kinds of numbers in the aiprops and weapons_gc and could not get the non-combatants to shoot more than about 8 squares away. I bumped BaseThrowingRangeLimit up to 24.0 in the config.xml and now they shoot at me. Now all I have to do is put a -20 range on all of the grenades and I should be good to go... lol.

Edit: wow, that little change and suddenly the aliens start doing things I've never seen them do before. The seb non-combatant shot at my shield guy and got reaction fire from him, so then the seb turns and shoots my sniper in the back who was standing about 8 tiles farther away.

Edited December 26, 2013 by jeon
More Info

[StellarRat]

I get the definite feeling something besides the chance to hit calculation is causing problems. Otherwise the BaseThrowingRangeLimit wouldn't/shouldn't have any affect on shooting direct fire weapons.

[Ol' Stinky]

OK, you guys are going to think I'm crazy, but when I'm programming I like fixing bugs and optimizing code for speed the most of any of my IT duties. Most programmers like writing original stuff the most, I guess I'm more of mechanic and less of a composer. It could stem from the fact that I find working with government bureaucracy very frustrating at times. Projects take forever and the users (the real experts) usually can't / don't help you much.

Nah, I can understand that.

There is definitely an impact from grenade throwing range and aliens shooting. I was playing around with all kinds of numbers in the aiprops and weapons_gc and could not get the non-combatants to shoot more than about 8 squares away. I bumped BaseThrowingRangeLimit up to 24.0 in the config.xml and now they shoot at me. Now all I have to do is put a -20 range on all of the grenades and I should be good to go... lol.

Edit: wow, that little change and suddenly the aliens start doing things I've never seen them do before. The seb non-combatant shot at my shield guy and got reaction fire from him, so then the seb turns and shoots my sniper in the back who was standing about 8 tiles farther away.

I didn't take that approach because I was afraid that I'd be back to square one, so I bumped up alien strength (pretty easy, replace Strength="60" in aiprops with a suitably high value given that 10 STR = +1 throw range) in aiprops.xml and disabled alien grenades.

---

I mentioned light drones doing nothing in a previous post, that's not entirely true. I've gotten one to fire at me, but for some reason it's at extremely short ranges. Their gun doesn't seem inaccurate and I'm playing with the alien weapon penalty turned off. It should be at 30% chance to hit on exposed ground (x0.3 accuracy mod for light drone blaster as specified in weapons_gc.xml, light drones' stat of accuracy="100" as seen in aiprops.xml) and I have the AI's minimum accuracy to fire set at 25%. Light drone blasters have a range of 20, too, so that's not it.

[StellarRat]

I mentioned light drones doing nothing in a previous post' date=' that's not entirely true. I've gotten one to fire at me, but for some reason it's at extremely short ranges. Their gun doesn't seem inaccurate and I'm playing with the alien weapon penalty turned off. It should be at 30% chance to hit on exposed ground (x0.3 accuracy mod for light drone blaster as specified in weapons_gc.xml, light drones' stat of accuracy="100" as seen in aiprops.xml) and I have the AI's minimum accuracy to fire set at 25%. Light drone blasters have a range of 20, too, so that's not it.[/quote']I've noticed they hardly ever shoot at my guys. They used to be vicious now they're just clay pigeons. I've had them fly right up to my guys and do zero shooting. The bigger ones don't shoot either.

I have a feeling there are more bugs in the AI/Game interface than Chris and Gjis-Jan aren't aware of, yet... I hope everyone will make a real effort to report them and save they're battles so they can get them fixed quickly. It's going to be much harder to patch all the time one the game is released.

What scares me is how much tougher the game will be when they're all fixed. Close quarter fighting is already much tougher now that the aliens are using grenades.

Edited December 26, 2013 by StellarRat

[jeon]

I didn't take that approach because I was afraid that I'd be back to square one' date=' so I bumped up alien strength (pretty easy, replace Strength="60" in aiprops with a suitably high value given that 10 STR = +1 throw range) in aiprops.xml and disabled alien grenades.

---

I mentioned light drones doing nothing in a previous post, that's not entirely true. I've gotten one to fire at me, but for some reason it's at extremely short ranges. Their gun doesn't seem inaccurate and I'm playing with the alien weapon penalty turned off. It should be at 30% chance to hit on exposed ground (x0.3 accuracy mod for light drone blaster as specified in weapons_gc.xml, light drones' stat of accuracy="100" as seen in aiprops.xml) and I have the AI's minimum accuracy to fire set at 25%. Light drone blasters have a range of 20, too, so that's not it.[/quote']

Everything has been working fine for me with the base grenade throwing range at 24 and the grenades being -20, (flares -15 and c4/plasma at -22 of course).

Light drones are weird, I have seen them shoot down civilians from long range across some 50% cover, but not shoot at my troops.

As for difficulty, the aliens put up quite the fight and I'm actually worried about getting shot up while I'm searching the map. I've had quite a few times where I've had a guy out in the open get shot up by 3+ aliens all at once, especially when I'm doing night missions.

[legit1337]

In my experience aliens in general seem to prioritize shooting at civilians rather than xenonauts. Does anyone else notice this?

I'm worried along with StellarRat that when the AI gets fixed the game will be too difficult due to the accuracy buffs and aliens using grenades.

How are grenades assigned to aliens? I have not progressed past guards in my current campaign and am curious to know if the more elite aliens all have grenades.

Once the passive aliens bug has been patched I think we will be able to look more in depth at AI behavior. But as of right now its hard to test anything when half the aliens refuse to shoot.

I still think the accuracy buffs need to be toned down from 1.5 to 1.25

Edited December 27, 2013 by legit1337

[ElMyamo]

I think it's really hard to make any comment about the ground combat balance right now. It is a fact that the AI is buggy, and as long as that is not resolved we can run around in circles screaming about more or less accurate aliens. First get it to work, then make it work better, at least that's what my Grandpa always said

[Ol' Stinky]

Everything has been working fine for me with the base grenade throwing range at 24 and the grenades being -20, (flares -15 and c4/plasma at -22 of course).

Weird. Does that work for non-coms as well?

How are grenades assigned to aliens? I have not progressed past guards in my current campaign and am curious to know if the more elite aliens all have grenades.

I still think the accuracy buffs need to be toned down from 1.5 to 1.25

Soldiers are when alien grenades start appearing, so landing ships are when you'll run into them, iirc.

The accuracy's going to be more of an issue as the bugs get patched out: aliens that take non-snap shots and aren't under a half accuracy penalty are a real shock to the system after fighting passive numpties.

[ventuswings]

So fix for the alien-alien-weapon-penalty bug isn't implemented on V20 Stable yet?

[StellarRat]

So fix for the alien-alien-weapon-penalty bug isn't implemented on V20 Stable yet?

No, it was found after the last release. I think we're going to see it real soon though. Gjis-Jan has fixes ready and more to add to the AI's "game plan".

As far as the AI being too tough to beat: I doubt that will happen unless the aliens have too much advantage in weapons, numbers and toughness, but those are easily toned down. Good tactics will prevail and people are always smarter than computers (still). What will probably happen is that everyone will have to slow down their attacks and play a very careful game, well thought out game. If this were an RTS we'd probably be screwed, but it's not.

I do think that "Normal" is actually "Veteran" in the settings though. I really think someone coming in with some experience is probably going to get their ass kicked on "Normal" the first few times they play. I'd say you have to have A LOT of experience, do some reading or have a mentor to start at "Normal" right now.

Edited December 27, 2013 by StellarRat

[jeon]

Weird. Does that work for non-coms as well?

Yes, non-coms, guards, soldiers, everybody pretty much blaze away at you even far off and act fairly intelligent except for the light drones... I don't know what their problem is. Overall the AI is acting pretty solid for me now and I'm liking it.

[Alturys]

Yes, non-coms, guards, soldiers, everybody pretty much blaze away at you even far off and act fairly intelligent except for the light drones... I don't know what their problem is. Overall the AI is acting pretty solid for me now and I'm liking it.

I confirm that changing the BaseThrowingRangeLimit to 24 change the alien behavior.

I've made the following test:

1/ Saving before an alien turn with an alien (caesan civilian) hidden behind a cover. My soldier are not in cover and are in long range.

2/ With BaseThrowingRangeLimit at 4: The alien stand up and run like a piggeon. He leaved his cover and was killed by reaction fire. Not very smart...

3/ With BaseThrowingRangeLimit at 24 like Jeon said. The alien took two shoots at my soldiers AND kept his cover.

4/ With BaseThrowingRangeLimit at 4: The alien shooted during his turn if i put my soldier in short range. However i havn't to go in 4 tile range to have a shoot. Something like 14/15 tiles and the alien took his chance and shot. I even managed to find the trigger range. One more tile and i was shoot. One tile farther and the alien begin to act like an idiot.

I've modified nothing more, not even the weapon_gc.xml and weapon.xml

5/ I can throw my grenade much far away. As Jeon said, we have to mod the weapon and weapon_gc to restore coherent value. However, only the BaseThrowingRangeLimit seems to act on alien behavior.

I suspect that the variable BaseThrowingRangeLimit is poorly named/implemented. It seems to act as a sort of base range for grenade not a limit range. And it act as a range limit for alien weapon and/or behavior even for standard weapon. Maybe that somewhere in your code a grenade range is checked before the standard weapon range check ?

[StellarRat]

I suspect that the variable BaseThrowingRangeLimit is poorly named/implemented. It seems to act as a sort of base range for grenade not a limit range. And it act as a range limit for alien weapon and/or behavior even for standard weapon. Maybe that somewhere in your code a grenade range is checked before the standard weapon range check ?

I also think something that is going on. It's possible the grenade range is overriding some other variable in the AI logic OR like you said the value is being used in the wrong place in some calculation that determines when to fire OR the name/value is getting swapped somewhere that is shouldn't be. BTW, that was a good test you did.

[Gijs-Jan]

I confirm that changing the BaseThrowingRangeLimit to 24 change the alien behavior.

I've made the following test:

1/ Saving before an alien turn with an alien (caesan civilian) hidden behind a cover. My soldier are not in cover and are in long range. ?

Could you post this save, or send it to me?

The AI itself depends on the accuracy calculations given by the system, and I suspect something is going wrong there. In general the AI tests a shot for all different weapons it has in its inventory and gives the shot a potential score (taking into account the cost to swap). The weapon with the best score is then switched out and used.

The AI tries to use the core gamelogic whenever possible, so as not to break when people start modding. One of the main problems we've had is that because the AI uses this gamelogic, and searches for the best option (instead of scripting), it exposes some before unseen bugs.

Anyway, send me the save and I'll try to see what's going on

[Alturys]

Could you post this save, or send it to me?

The AI itself depends on the accuracy calculations given by the system, and I suspect something is going wrong there. In general the AI tests a shot for all different weapons it has in its inventory and gives the shot a potential score (taking into account the cost to swap). The weapon with the best score is then switched out and used.

The AI tries to use the core gamelogic whenever possible, so as not to break when people start modding. One of the main problems we've had is that because the AI uses this gamelogic, and searches for the best option (instead of scripting), it exposes some before unseen bugs.

Anyway, send me the save and I'll try to see what's going on

Ok, i've made another one, as i overwrited the original save, ooops

http://www.2shared.com/file/Yd2HsOZd/2013-12-28_141304.html

It's super easy to replicate, all you have to do is to spot an alien from long range...

I've made the following test:

1/ With BaseThrowingRangeLimit at 4: Press end of turn, the alien in cover will move, and do nothing more. In other situation i've seen alien going out of cover in front of my soldiers, but this one seems to be a little bit clever

2/ With BaseThrowingRangeLimit at 24: Press end of turn, the alien in cover will shot on the soldiers in front of him.

I really think that there is a bug somewhere because the throwing range of grenade should not modify the behavior of an alien without grenade... Maybe he is trying to throw me a clip of ammo ^^

Ps: i've played to december month with BaseThrowingRangeLimit at 24. Alien behavior is more logical, they actually try to shot my guys and civilians. I haven't modified anything else, not even the MinimumAccuracy at 0.35 in aiprops.xml. I've kept the weapon.xml and weapon_gc.xml unmodified, even if it created huge grenade range.

I've made that to be sure that the BaseThrowingRangeLimit is involved and i assure you that changing this variable value completly change the alien behavior on my game.

[Gijs-Jan]

Thanks for the excellent write up! :-)

So, I found the bug, and it was located in the accuracy calculation.

For some reason we were checking the throwing range of a weapon for any and all shots.

The main reason why it didn't show up in the UI was because it discarded this check.

This also explains why increasing the strength would allow shots to be made; it increased the throwing range.

[Max_Caine]

GJ, having read the aiprops comments, may I suggest that smoke grenade smoke be a positive weight in ProbalisticSearch rather than.. than... what's the name? I forget. The weight for dangerous areas as smoke grenade smoke is designed to hide Xenonauts rather than cause damage.

[Alturys]

Thanks for the excellent write up! :-)

So, I found the bug, and it was located in the accuracy calculation.

For some reason we were checking the throwing range of a weapon for any and all shots.

The main reason why it didn't show up in the UI was because it discarded this check.

This also explains why increasing the strength would allow shots to be made; it increased the throwing range.

Yeah One cockroach eliminated

It was exactly the type of bug i suspected. However, all credits are for Jeon who discovered the variable impact on alien weapon range.

[StellarRat]

Yeah One cockroach eliminated

It may only be one cockroach, but it was a BIG cockroach, Kafka would be proud of you two. This may well have more impact on the enjoyment of the game than any other single change they've made in the last few releases.

[Max_Caine]

Tying into this conversation, having used Stinky's/Jeon's suggestion I think the Shrike tech unlock needs to be moved forward from the landing ship to the corvette. The change in alien behaviour is very striking and the increased types, numbers, toughness and arms of the aliens merit the additional 4 people the Shrike grants. At the moment, with 8 people I tend to get bogged down in firefights where it's hard to move from cover because there are lots of them and not enough of me. This is especially true of fights with Androns and Sebillians, where the toughness of both alien types mean I usually end up blazing away at one alien for a few turns to put it down. An extra fireteam of 4 soliders would help retain tactical solutions, as there would then be enough soliders on my technologically inferior side to use novel solutions to take on the alien menace.

[StellarRat]

Tying into this conversation, having used Stinky's/Jeon's suggestion I think the Shrike tech unlock needs to be moved forward from the landing ship to the corvette. The change in alien behaviour is very striking and the increased types, numbers, toughness and arms of the aliens merit the additional 4 people the Shrike grants.

Are you sure the solution isn't to reduce the number of aliens instead?

[Max_Caine]

Funny you should say that, as if we're looking for a solution to a problem, the solution to the problem that I have identified can also be "water down the aliens" or "buff the weapons". I need to explain myself better than I have.

I'm not looking to fix a problem. What I would prefer is to open up options to the player so he can fix his own damn problems himself. Aliens in corvettes and landing ships can potentially be very large - in a corvette the minimum crew compliment is 8, the maximum hovers around 13-20 depending on the mission type, but you don't face all the aliens at once. Aliens travel in loose squads. A squad in shot-down corvette can vary from 2 to 6. In a landing ship, that squad can be substantially larger - I faced off against a squad of 8 in a recent mission. In terror missions aliens tend to form waves of 4-10, depending on local support. So while globally you're facing a numerically superior foe the aliens don't usually bring all their forces into one spot all at once (although when they do it's the Alamo all over again - dropship terror mission, anyone?). This "think global, act local" attitude would lead to the use of tactics and flanking, especially as unlike EU2012, you're in no danger of pulling aggro that you can't handle. I, for instance, set a flank guard in a firefight because they will try and work their way around me. But, it's hard to work your way around them because each alien requires a lot of work. More soliders doesn't solve the problem that each alien requires a lot of work to kill. Watering the aliens down, might. What it does do is open up options by having additional troops to stand as flank guards, act as flankers or sucide bombers or whatever you need. 12 troops provides a reserve of troops that you don't have in 8. You need every man in the inital squad, but with 12 you can become more flexible, and that flexibility becomes consieranly useful during the tier 2 "era".

[StellarRat]

This "think global, act local" attitude would lead to the use of tactics and flanking...

I still a bit fuzzy on what you're trying to say here, but you should probably bear in mind that the AI will have the ability to rapidly concentrate on the main firefight soon, potentially in the next build. Gjis-Jan is going to enable the ability for aliens to "hear" a firefight. They will be drawn to the humans by noise. He is also planning to implement a "coordination" system for the aliens (probably more worrisome for the poor Xenonauts.) To me that sounds like the "dribs and drabs" coming at you era may soon be over. That's one of the reasons I think reducing the number of aliens might be a good solution. It's also an excellent way to implement the difficulty levels. I expect that the AI will be probably end up being at least as good, probably better, than JA2's in the end. Edited December 30, 2013 by StellarRat

[llunak]

Could somebody please post exactly what changes need to be done to fix the AI? Without my soldiers getting blown up all the time of course.

[StellarRat]

Could somebody please post exactly what changes need to be done to fix the AI? Without my soldiers getting blown up all the time of course.

For now you can just replace your aiprops.xml with the one that Ol' Stinky created in the mods section.

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8494-Stinky-s-sandpit-for-v20-stable-5-(Fighting-against-passive-AI-)?p=95509&viewfull=1#post95509