thugthrasher

Well, now I feel kind of dumb. But, hey, at least I learned more of how the source files handle AI.

So, I've been looking around a bit and I can't find anything that should set it's priority higher. I even grepped all the files for the word "beacon" and then the word "mimic" and looked at every place they're mentioned and, if it's there, i'm missing it. Closest I can find is in XGAIBehavior. First this is declared: var int BTPriorityTarget; // Priority Target specified by Behavior Tree for use in movement profile scoring. and then later: // If a visible mimic beacon exists, all destinations must have LoS to it.if( BTPriorityTarget > 0 && bScoringPriorityTarget ){TilePosition = XWorld.GetTileCoordinatesFromPosition(vPosition);PriorityTile = XWorld.GetTileCoordinatesFromPosition(ScoringPriorityLocation);if (!`XWORLD.CanSeeTileToTile(TilePosition, PriorityTile, VisInfo)){return false;}} Because of that, I did a bit of looking in some of the behavior tree files (X2AIBT*whatever* and X2Effect_RunBehaviorTree) and can't find anything specifically there. There are a bunch of scoring methods based on stats, so maybe there's a stat which the Mimic Beacon has an abnormally high value, but I can't find something like that anywhere (took another look through the various mimic beacon files and X2Action_CreateDoppleganger and didn't spot it). I didn't look as well as I possibly could have, so it's possible there's something there and I missed the line, but I figured since I spent a little time on that I should mention it, in case it gives you any ideas of where to look. And to give you a heads up there's nothing in any of the source files that ever DIRECTLY says to give the mimic beacon priority (at least not that uses the word "beacon" or "mimic" that I could see). Oh, and apparently mimic beacon is the only unit that is set bNeverSelectable, which I got from a few lines like this:if( bSkipUnselectable && CurrentUnitState.GetMyTemplate().bNeverSelectable ) // Currently includes only mimic beacons. So maybe there's a check for THAT somewhere in targeting priority, but I don't know. And now I'm off to do my real work. :)

I'm not sure how helpful this will be, but at least it might give you an idea of what to search for (I'm not able to search right now, so can't help much), but for #2, there is an X2Effect_GrantActionPoint (or something very similar) that grants action points of different types. Off the top of my head (so these may not be the exact names in game), I've seen the StandardActionPoint, RunAndGunActionPoint, and a couple related to the Viper's bind ability (I think they're similar to BindActionPoint and EndBindActionPoint). If you can somewhere find a list of all of those, there might be a MoveActionPoint or something similar that does what you want (may be what they give with implacable, I'd start checking there, but I'm guessing if it was that obviously there, you'd have seen it). If that exists and you can figure out what the actual name is, then you can just make the ability cost 2 action points and grant an additional move point to the shooter as part of the ability. If there isn't a move-type action point, then things likely get trickier.

This might be as hard to do, but it's an idea: Would it be possible to add an 'evac all XCOM soldiers' objective to EVERY mission? That way, you wouldn't complete the mission until you called the skyranger and got out of there, even if everything on the map was already dead. Like I said, might be more difficult than it's worth or than implementing it some other way, but it's the most obvious thing to come to mind for me.

For #2, I think it would be rather difficult. I looked into it a good bit, when trying to deal with a situation in a different mod (that I'm still working on). It looks like they initially had it set up to allow an ammo-only slot, but took it out. Maybe someone has a better idea than I do, but from the way it's currently set up, it would be tough. If I ever think of a way to do it, I'll probably release something standalone for that, as it seems to be a popular request.