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Skitso's Xenonaut noob friends thoughts


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Maybe the alien is not wasting its fire against a unit in cover that it has little chance of damaging and instead hoping you move out of cover in its turn for an easier shot?

From adjacent tile? ;) Oh well, seems G-J is fixing this as we speak! :)

Sounds good, is this in the current stable candidate or is it going in soon?

As Chris said above,

"...but I think GJ has put in some changes to the AI that might affect the TU reservation behaviours in the next build."

Edited by Skitso
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Thats what I thought but the phrasing of GJs later post was confusing so thought I would ask for clarification.

Last weekend a set of fixes for the AI went in

You initially said 'relatively close' in your previous post which was what I was referring to.

At point blank range then yes shooting should be a preferred action but further out that may not be the case.

The situation should definitely affect the aliens actions.

Plus I don't object to the aliens shooting at me more as long as I can shoot back at them more as well :P

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No no, you miss understood me. Of course AI can move while in Xenonauts' FoV. I meant if they move aggressively to relatively close and after that still COULD shoot, they always absolutely should, instead of reserving those TU's for reaction fire. What's the point in reserving for reaction when you could shoot right away, especially if neither is in cover? Just to give your enemy a chance to shoot first?

I've had multiple occasions where an alien moves few tiles so that it stands a tile or two away from my unit and just ends it's turn there, reserving rest of it's TU's for reaction fire it'll never get 'cos I'll easily shoot it to swiss cheese on my turn.

OH! Well, now I understand your concern! Yes, you're absolutely correct, the AI should never run up to a couple tiles away from an enemy and not fire (if it can.) That's just stupid. The only time that should happen is if the AI didn't know your soldier was there. Like it came around a corner and you ambushed it. There is no point in charging out of cover and closing unless you are going to attack. Maybe I missed something in one of your earlier posts because I thought you were talking in a much more general sense. It sounds like Gijs-Jan may already have addressed the issue based on the post above. Edited by StellarRat
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Bots are much more aggressive now: they run up close and shoot. Also I've actually witnessed androns and harridans teleporting in from second floor to first on a landing ship. Harridan went for suicide bombing.

Sadly close range accuracy is still not good enough - a caesan soldier shot 2 times from an adjacent tile on a sitting soldier and still didn't hit the soldier both times. I could believe about 1 time miss, i.e the five percent which happens, but 2?

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Bots are much more aggressive now: they run up close and shoot. Also I've actually witnessed androns and harridans teleporting in from second floor to first on a landing ship. Harridan went for suicide bombing.

Sadly close range accuracy is still not good enough - a caesan soldier shot 2 times from an adjacent tile on a sitting soldier and still didn't hit the soldier both times. I could believe about 1 time miss, i.e the five percent which happens, but 2?

Bear in mind that kneeling applies an accuracy malus to enemies, so it's unlikely that the hit chance was actually 95%.

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Sadly close range accuracy is still not good enough - a caesan soldier shot 2 times from an adjacent tile on a sitting soldier and still didn't hit the soldier both times. I could believe about 1 time miss, i.e the five percent which happens, but 2?

Yeah, I still see this occasionally. I just hope Chris would investigate this with a thought rather than dismissing the problem. I've had such missing sprees from AI that it's really hard to just blame "dice".. for example 4 sebillians each shoot multiple times single shots and bursts no further than 3-4 tiles away and not a sigle one hit. Next turn was the same. After that, everything was normal again...

It seems to happen more often at the ufo door so that aliens inside shoot at my guys standing just outside, adjacent to the door.

Edited by Skitso
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Skitso - I'm not sure what you want us to do here. The debug output suggests all the calculations are being performed fine, it's just sometimes people roll a string of very high or very low numbers.

You have just as much access to the debug numbers as we do, so you're free to look at the calculation and see if you can spot an issue with it or if the game is incorrectly classing a hit as a miss. We don't see anything going wrong, so the only other possible explanation for a bug would be that the RNG isn't working properly....which is pretty much impossible to prove one way or another (and afaik the game uses the default C++ RNG, which I assume is pretty reputable).

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Yeah, I still see this occasionally. I just hope Chris would investigate this with a thought rather than dismissing the problem. I've had such missing sprees from AI that it's really hard to just blame "dice".. for example 4 sebillians each shoot multiple times single shots and bursts no further than 3-4 tiles away and not a sigle one hit. Next turn was the same. After that, everything was normal again...

Best bet might be to collect some data. It's be easy enough to set up using a light scout map: at the UFO, move soldiers next to the aliens inside, save, and end turn. Record number of hits and misses. Repeat this until you have a reasonable sample size (~100 should be sufficient to notice something as large as a missing +60 to hit bonus; statistical tests could be used to assist, though).

(If I have time, this might be my evening.)

EDIT: Or what Chris said! Might still be worth testing on the off chance that there's an issue with the debugger showing values which aren't actually being used, or something.

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Skitso - I'm not sure what you want us to do here. The debug output suggests all the calculations are being performed fine, it's just sometimes people roll a string of very high or very low numbers.

You have just as much access to the debug numbers as we do, so you're free to look at the calculation and see if you can spot an issue with it or if the game is incorrectly classing a hit as a miss. We don't see anything going wrong, so the only other possible explanation for a bug would be that the RNG isn't working properly....which is pretty much impossible to prove one way or another.

Uh, sorry I didn't mean to imply you don't do your job properly or anything. :(

But yeah, could you remind me how to activate the debug mode. I could take a quick look. :)

Edited by Skitso
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Best bet might be to collect some data. It's be easy enough to set up using a light scout map: at the UFO, move soldiers next to the aliens inside, save, and end turn. Record number of hits and misses. Repeat this until you have a reasonable sample size (~100 should be sufficient to notice something as large as a missing +60 to hit bonus; statistical tests could be used to assist, though).

(If I have time, this might be my evening.)

EDIT: Or what Chris said! Might still be worth testing on the off chance that there's an issue with the debugger showing values which aren't actually being used, or something.

You would really need to collect data in different situations as well.

People are suggesting that sometime there are places or situations where a string of misses seem to occur which testing in a single location would not uncover.

Everyone remembers the statistical anomalies though.

Missing high accuracy shots several times in a row is quite possible, although statistically unlikely.

Without adequate data recording it can't really be identified though so the more people willing to collect data on this the better.

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You would really need to collect data in different situations as well.

People are suggesting that sometime there are places or situations where a string of misses seem to occur which testing in a single location would not uncover.

Yes, although I was only suggesting testing for short range bonus. Searching for tiles/areas where shooting isn't working would take a vast amount more effort!

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Also, the loud "denied" buzz made him almost crap his pants. (we played in the living room with big screen and a home theater)

Just recovered my account here to say how much I agree on the denied buzzer..

I'd love to see it replaced by something just a little less annoying. Perhaps my old PE teacher yelling at full volume: "WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO ADD MORE ENGINEERS WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MORE?? CAN'T YOU SEE THE 0?? YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MORE ENGINEERS YOU UTTER TIT!!!"

:) No offence meant devs! I love how this game is turning out and the only reason I haven't played more is I don't want to burn out on it before its released. I really don't like that sound though.

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Just recovered my account here to say how much I agree on the denied buzzer..

I'd love to see it replaced by something just a little less annoying. Perhaps my old PE teacher yelling at full volume: "WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO ADD MORE ENGINEERS WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MORE?? CAN'T YOU SEE THE 0?? YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MORE ENGINEERS YOU UTTER TIT!!!"

:) No offence meant devs! I love how this game is turning out and the only reason I haven't played more is I don't want to burn out on it before its released. I really don't like that sound though.

Ah that made me chuckle :P

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Just recovered my account here to say how much I agree on the denied buzzer..

I'd love to see it replaced by something just a little less annoying. Perhaps my old PE teacher yelling at full volume: "WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO ADD MORE ENGINEERS WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MORE?? CAN'T YOU SEE THE 0?? YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MORE ENGINEERS YOU UTTER TIT!!!"

:) No offence meant devs! I love how this game is turning out and the only reason I haven't played more is I don't want to burn out on it before its released. I really don't like that sound though.

Haha, funny! :D

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I'd love to see it replaced by something just a little less annoying. Perhaps my old PE teacher yelling at full volume: "WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO ADD MORE ENGINEERS WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MORE?? CAN'T YOU SEE THE 0?? YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MORE ENGINEERS YOU UTTER TIT!!!"

:D Reading that and my mental picture shows Monty Pythons John Cleese in rage with his voice overturning (hope this is the correct expression). :D

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Yeah, I still see this occasionally. I just hope Chris would investigate this with a thought rather than dismissing the problem. I've had such missing sprees from AI that it's really hard to just blame "dice".. for example 4 sebillians each shoot multiple times single shots and bursts no further than 3-4 tiles away and not a sigle one hit. Next turn was the same. After that, everything was normal again...

It seems to happen more often at the ufo door so that aliens inside shoot at my guys standing just outside, adjacent to the door.

Did you want to see hard kick ass aliens? Try Xnats - Into Darkness mod, I mod lot of aim calculations for the same reason you put here. :cool:

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...it's just sometimes people roll a string of very high or very low numbers.

Try playing a few games of Risk (the actual board game) and you'll see what rolling does to the outcome of battles. I don't know how many times I've cursed the dice for never going higher than a 3 while my opponent plows through my army with consecutive 5's and 6's. So while it may be frustrating, it's perfectly reasonable to see the enemy miss multiple times.

Edited by frank_walls
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The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the mistaken belief that if something happens more frequently than normal during some period, then it will happen less frequently in the future (presumably as a means of balancing nature). In situations where what is being observed is truly random (i.e. independent trials of a random process), this belief, though appealing to the human mind, is false.
.
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Really this thread does list my initial impressions of the game, particularly the AI stuff. The AI has been soooo passive throughout these latest builds. Ground combat is ridiculously easy mid-game because of this. Wolf armor + laser rifle/sniper on all soldiers cept shields enables you to just wreck the shit out of non promoted harridans, androns, ceasans, and sebillians, because the AI usually only has either the initial reaction shot to kill (even if it hits it usually does NO damage at all.) my soldiers, or the turn after, which they usually spend shooting once, and then moving 2 tiles randomly to reaction fire something. Even Sebillians suffer from this.

I can SEE the AI preferences for individual castes but in general I think the AI is generally too passive, and could massively benefit from more AP and more damage, or the nerfing of wolf armor. Don't get me wrong, the game is great, and the work put into it and the frequency of updates is fine and dandy, but my concerns listed have bothered me. I don't know if they're fixed in the latest build (only played a bit last few days.) the last one I did a longer runthrough on was uhh, experimental build... 5. I suppose it was an experimental build so everything I'm saying could be irrelavent but that has been an on/off problem since I got the game.

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