Tycus

Now I remember, where I have seen that before, but I should leave tinkering with this to coding experts (like you), because I'm far far away from pulling off guru stuff like that :no:.

Is good addition, as it adds a bit of unpredictability to the game. So were are those values listed? And can we tweak them as well?

The stun may fail anyway and I meant overwatch as response to situation, where trooper with stunner is not yet close enough (because if he is in range, shot will have more than 1% to hit due to close range bonus and alien would have just shot him point blank to the face). Let's just not continue this pointless debate (and agree that this is matter of personal opinion on a subject) and do something useful instead (like Amineri just did, when I was writing this reply).

Like we don't already remember all damage values for all alien weapons (I do), and just as likely we know about their aim values (for most alien types), so I don't see any "cheating" in that fix/change, at least with that AI can make some valid decisions.

I have to disagree on that "valid option" (mostly, because I play differently, and my mod is played differently). If alien has still functioning weapon - it should shoot (overwatch) anyway, if has not - well, tough luck for that alien. Besides, in my mod I don't think any alien would have 1% shot against target at stun range (even if said target is in high cover, and alien is being suppressed) because of close range aim bonus. Otherwise overwatch is valid option. However aliens should flee out of flanked/exposed position, if overwatch/reaction shots have low percentage to hit (65% or lower), or damage on successful hit is not guaranteed kill (ie if it is non-crit).

Well, this is clearly an exploit (never have done this particular combination of actions myself). And what I mean in previous post, that I just do not want for aliens to try to flee and then senselessly die under massed overwatch/reaction fire (and undo all my hard work to not just kill them outright already). However, I am perfectly okay with alien attempting to do something against his would-be captors (like shooting, using grenade or taking out whatever trick they still may have up in their sleeve).

This is why I am not putting this fix into my mod (because it is already fairly challenging task (in my mod), that require multi-turn luck-defined plan(ugh, there is a lot of things, that may go horribly wrong already), with rolls for stun is being generated once per turn and are excluded from normal sequence of actions (so if game rolled that you fail this stun in this turn - you fail, no matter what you do); and with this "fix" it just overkill (I do not want to penalize player for bad rolls); however, I would like to this tactic employed by aliens in intelligent manner (when they have non-zero chance of survival, say 15%). Once I was attempting capture of Muton, so he was suppressed, had his weapon disabled, and had assault with Close Combat Specialist standing next to him (just failed to stun him), and has been overwatched by 2 supports, so on alien turn he decided go all kamikaze on my troops, pulls of grenade and blows himself up along with my assault (this was actually good move, and surprised me); this happened with no fixes applied.

This has left me wondering for ages as well, but later I just wrote-off it as nanomachines patching armor (who knows what else can be in that spray :wink:). This makes much more sense, but I would like it apply to aliens as well, after their "armor" has breached (sort of seperate health tresholds for each alien type, say Muton Elite (of total 30 HP) has 14 base HP and 16 "armor" HP on top of that; could we use balance HP bonuses as sort of "armor" HP, and use basic unit HP as "health"?). This way it can combine best of both approaches (also create unique and distinctive experience with each type of alien).

m_bHasSeenEnemy should be named: "is seeing enemy right now?"(because what it basically does), this is why it is bad idea to change its default state and it doesn't do the trick anyway, because AI starts assigning targets, that are in sight, if that value is true, if there is no target in sight AI director simpy changes that value back to false, and defaulting m_bSeen to true would simply put everyone in 'Roam' state at Aliens turn. My solution is kind of better, because aliens become activated as soon as possible for AI to handle them in any intelligent manner and it is sort of does the trick, because it is very possible to activate on your very first move/turn multiple pods of aliens (as well have them chainactivating on next turns), and then they will come down on you hard on their turn (or not, depends on aliens in question; they may just as well sit back and overwatch, till you come to them). Basically, difference with my solution is minimal from already activated aliens, and some missions will be already very hard (and enjoyable) because of that change (I've yet to run mission with this change active with no one wounded/dead; partly of it could be responsible my mod and really unlucky map choices like Graveyard and such). Edit: From theoretical point of view this could be only real way possible (other than changing native functions) to make pods activated, because this will allow pod-reveal-move launch sequence. However, what do you think will happen next? Have you ever breached contact (and I mean completely, like not even hearing sounds from that unit) after activation of pod (because I have seen what happens in that case). Usually will happen precisely nothing, unit will just sit tight and listen to wind, until it hears sound tracking cues coming from XCOM squad movement (yes, aliens getting them as well), after it will be assigned special 'Hunt' /'Tracking' tactic/behavior and it will slowly begin movement from cover to cover (choice of cover may be questionable) in that general direction. Basically end results will be same as my "fix", if not worse (for activated units sitting somewhere on the map and not moving at all, until player finds them). And with my "fix" aliens will be activated at same hearing distance as mentioned above, but will also move on map as normal, and as you see pod reveal cutscene - they catch glimpse of position of your soldiers, and take cover accordingly. However, difference with my fix from activated pods lies in yet another AI shackle/restraint - aliens will not use AI behavior after pod reveal but before XCOM turn, even when reveal happened on their turn (they still may use theirs predefined behaviors, like sectoids using mind merge, or chryssalids have theirs behavior completely overridden by theirs predefined behavior and will not be affected in any case; look more to this in R&D AI Improvements topic). Perhaps I should wrap it all in single statement: AI simply cannot handle activated units very well (or at all), nor they can be activated easily (because entire game mechanic is tied to this pod-reveal sequence).

Just one question: can we set threshold of HP for armor aliens supposed to be wearing as well? Because, while idea to applying Red Fog effect to soldiers only when they start to losing their actual HP is good (I'm totally supporting it), but making aliens susceptible from start to its effects is kind of unfair (and once again shifts balance in XCOM favor; thank you, I have seen enough of that) and how Vanilla applies Red Fog effects is just stupid and don't make sense (this is why I never selected this SW option before). Anyway, thank you for improving this SW option (to what it should have been, no less).

By looks of it game uses 'patrol', 'roam', 'hunt' almost interchangeably, when it should have been different sort-of-tactics, but it looks like this part of the game was never finished properly. Unless you can write completely new function to handle just that, I'm afraid it is not possible.

Wow, lots of replies in this topic recently.//Surprise, surprise... Anyway... UPDATE: While my progress on a mod has been put on backburner for a while (mostly due to RL reasons), I am happy to inform you all, that my mod steadily closes in for open beta test status, as I am adding much needed features to it, most recent being me finally being able to add perks for aliens (thanks to Amineri, who was awesome as always and shared workable code with me with for that). Here it is for anyone interested: Also I realised (a while ago, actually), that my concern for increased mission load times has been moot (because there is fix for that, here is the link http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1001468-forcing-game-to-load-from-defaultgamecoreini/?p=8404760) (how I could missed it? :confused: ). Anyway, with that possibility in mind I decided to split my mod into two versions: Lite (basic version, that was planned from start) and Extended (where I go crazy with as much of awesome stuff as I could find and put into it; of course, balance would be adjusted accordingly). Now, I'm am just waiting for code to make certain perks-to-items, and possible solution to improve cover. After that mod would be ready for test launch. However, this mod needs appropriate name for that to happen ("Combined mod" being a work title), so I'm open for suggestions. Also here is short tactical guide for it (which is as incomplete as mod itself): And here is changelist (which I made to form, that one can easily apply and modify any features/changes as needed):

Okay, I have done some research on issue and found out that basically aliens cannot be "turned on" by default, because game was written around pod-reveal mechanic, not other way around. So when pod created, it becomes active (sort of enabler, that allow pod to do anything at all). After that pod is being assigned default behavior (which is none by default) and it becomes dormant (or pod manager assigns some sort of behavior, like patrolling). Anyway, there is sort of sequence for alien pod to become activated (do not confuse with active); first, there is check, if pod seen by player (changes boolean value m_bSeen), after that pod is changing state (by pod manager assigning to it state "Roam" at aliens turn), if value m_bHasSeenEnemy is false (for situations when player sees aliens, but they are not seeing player-controlled units);if m_bHasSeenEnemy is true (which can only happen, if they actually see enemy units, there is condition to deactivate units, if it is not the case), after that AI DM adds pod reveal move to sequence of actions of pod, and after pod reveal move(cut-scene is optional) AI fully activates pod in question. So short answer is that: no, game simply cannot handle activated units by default (there is lot of procedures about that running in background, that I have yet to fully comprehend). However, I have managed to get as close as possible to getting activated pods in current game state: in <XGAIBehavior> there is function, that looks like this and in that function I have changed 'false' to 'true'. HEX code for this: So instead of being put in useless dormant 'state' (not an actual state by in-game definition of it) they are being put in "activating" state, and activation happens as soon as possible (usually at hearing distance, which is roughly 40 units/tiles), so aliens will remain hidden in fog of war for your turn, unless you will dash in their direction or use battlescanner. However, activation may not happen, if pod manager assigned some behavior for that pod already, but that is usually patrol/roam anyway, so either they run into you, or their state will be cleared again (and thus become "activating"). Now please keep in mind, that this "dirty hack" has not been extensively tested, and if your results differ of my experience or you have contradicting information on the topic - feel free to inform me about it.

Maybe function, that limits number of enemies engaged, launches itself only if you have revealed multiple pods at once, or count only specific types of enemies? Do I correctly understand, that function above also autoequips soldiers in barracks? Would it be possible to change that to say, equip each soldier with an Assault Rifle, Kevlar Armor, a Pistol and 2 Frag Grenades (I'm using mod, that changes number of small items on Kevlar Armor). Also, different loadouts? I have not seen it either, but what we did not see don't mean it doesn't exist.

I recently have been using first mission quite a lot (the one you get for skipping tutorial) for testing my mod (using johnnylump's suggestion to idea of changing first mission aliens; original thread http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/957964-replacing-aliens/?hl=first+mission&do=findComment&comment=7730647). And soon realized that this mission is handled differently, that any other mission in game (which should be obvious, but in previous versions of game first mission was different (in a way it doesn't differ much from any other abductions), so I was just not paying attention to changes to it). So purpose of this thread is to collect all knowledge about this mission and how to modify it to any possible extent (for mod testing purposes or otherwise). What I found out so far: - AI is shackled on this mission on any difficulty (even if you unshackled AI in DGC.ini), ie if you engage more than 5 aliens at once, the rest will run and hide in fog of war. - You cannot choose soldiers/or change their equipment for this mission (can someone share any clues on how to change load-out of those starting rookies? Also can be those soldiers changed? I know, that they are generated, but can template/procedure be changed specifically for them?); - On this mission map would be again chosen randomly at the restart in case of failure (but not on normal restart); (haven't been restarting missions a lot, can anybody confirm if this is a normal behavior of the missions? obviously it is only mission that can be restarted on ironman impossible(maybe on other difficulties too, never played any other than impossible difficulty (in principle), so I don't know :wink:) - Obviously, aliens (and their pods) are built through specific function 'DetermineFirstMissionSquad' in <XGStrategyAI> (and it allows assigning any types of aliens for that mission manually); And I would like for somebody to confirm/correct my findings. I know, that this is not a lot (but it is a start), and as any new information becomes available, this post will be kept up-to-date; Maybe also there is some other special rules acting on this mission, that I'm not being aware of (so anyone can shed some light on this?).

Also there is issue, that UI cannot house too many perks at once, or some perks don't stack their effects (like Combat Drugs and Dense Smoke). You can read more about this at http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/XCOM:EU_Perks

No, floaters just tend to use suppression a lot (compared to other aliens, that is), because they have very poor aim, so suppression is valid tactic for them (and yes, shooting for them in that situation may have been better). Problem in that move that floater launched itself, not floaters using suppress (they may have missed anyway). While launch seem like a good ability on paper, floaters (and by extension heavy floaters) lacking survivability/numbers to pull off moves like that; btw does it even landed in cover? I will have to disagree on usefulness of suppression: why it is usually better, than just taking an okay shot? 1. While it deals no damage, it also cannot miss (while with standard shot its all-or-nothing; also reaction fire from suppression will have better hit chances than standard shot on unit in high cover) 2. Suppression may remove cover (and expose that enemy to allies) or set that cover on fire; in both cases targeted unit is pretty badly screwed; 3. It removes overwatch/possibility of reaction fire, and confers nasty aim penalty, which can be only removed along with offending unit, or by taking reaction shot. And 1-tile-move is long known "feature" of the game (as attack triggers/rolls only when unit crosses boundaries of tiles, therefore both tiles on which unit moves must visible, or reaction shot will not happen); On issue of aliens being outnumbered - I think we have Increased Alien pod size to help that :cool:. Sadly, it does not work, and I'm not exactly sure what it ends up doing. :( When I have time, I am going to try mucking around with the states in XGAIBehavior, though I am not familiar enough with what is contingent on what to really make an educated guess beyond that. I can confirm your results; also done some research on that, and actually found function in XGAIBehavior isActive, which always returns true.

I believe I have found out how squad tactics are implemented (and was really disappointed by that). In <XGAIAbilityDM> there is function <AddOrFilterTeamAttack>, that handles (overrides) basic unit tactics and it launches itself only in 2 cases: on team member being flanked (function PassesTeamAttackFlanker), and on team member being suppressed (PassesTeamAttackSuppress). In all other cases unless unit has some predefined behavior in XGAIBehavior_{alien_type} it tactics will be handled by general XGAIBehavior. (unless I have misread the code) More to that, team attacks aren't being handled very well. It works by increasing targeting priority of enemy doing flanking/suppressing action... and then it usually assigns task of taking out threat to threatened unit itself (which is not very smart; actually, it is so bad, that it could be counted as AI exploit: try it - suppress alien and it will fire at suppressor every damn time). It usually happens because all other units may be "unavailable" for task. In regards of suppression there is so many conditions (most of them are quite reasonable) that completely prevent using that tactic, and it is given incredibly low priority (compared to it usefulness). Also there is so many overrides that forcing alien units to "take the shot", so it is completely unsurprising for me, that some people don't know that all aliens with captureable weapons have suppress ability (but hardly ever using it). Now I would like to add to goals of this thread: 1) Fix priorities, so unit will prioritise standard shot only at exposed/flanked target; in all other cases force to consider other options first (ie 'nades, suppress and overwatch); 2) Fix priority of suppression, so its score would depend on suppression value of a weapon; 3) Fix teamattack to correct response for suppression, ie suppress the suppressor; 4) Reinforce use of suppress on overwatching enemies; 5) Reinforce use of suppress on single enemy in sight; Yes, I love suppression, and while playing aliens in multiplayer was using it quite a lot. Also, I detected a few (possibly) bugs in individual behaviors of certain alien types, namely Muton Berserker not using its BullRush ability as second move (was using only as a first; i believe there is some coding oversight that prevents him from doing just that), also it is coded in such way that it will target only walls with this ability (ability itself works just as well on any type of destructible cover (obviously with exception of cars). And I can confirm that suppressing units being immune to damage from AoE attacks, but not to AoE damage that comes from exploding cover (Bullrush failed to damage trooper, that was suppressing other muton; but other time trooper covering behind elerium power source was killed in its explosion, when suppressed (by this very trooper) outsider shot it and missed shot blow it up).

No, no, you got it all wrong. What I mean I have compiled list of perks (passive perks taken from XCOM soldiers) for aliens, and Damage Reduction should have been just one more in line of them. And no, I was not referring to difficulty levels as a feature (more likely replicated bug) of my mod (was really small feature anyway: basically, what it does, its when new chryssalid spawns from zombie, it stats would be taken from different difficulty level, so I made newborn chryssalids a bit weaker but faster, than "regular" chryssalids; also it will look differently for some reason; same was happening with thinmen, that are dropping from sky in council missions, but only if you loaded mid-mission from save; vanilla bug). By "standard" I mean that every alien on the map will have the same stats. The original dynamic alien progression modlet hooks into the difficulty code to change the root characters from which all units draw their stats. The dynamic progression certainly works well. Sorry if I'm throwing too many different options at you :smile: Why do you keep mixing up my response, people? I was refering for perk-as-items code, not about dynamic alien progression. Yes, I was not happy at losing diffuclty options as well, but the main problem in forcing game to load the DefaultGameCore.ini lies in increased mission load times (which would suck), so I redesigned my mod in a way that such radical changes wasn't needed at all. I think I'm stuck with XGUnit.DebugAnims option to add perks for aliens (btw, is there any limit on how much perks can be granted to single alien type by this method?). Some step-by-step instruction also would be nice (so I would not accidentally mess up). Here is the list (would love some feedback on that perk composition as well): Sectoid: Low Profile, Thinmen: Lightning Reflexes, Opportunist, ** Floater: Damn Good Ground, Aggression, Low Profile Heavy Floater: Damn Good Ground, Aggression, Low Profile, Hardened(s), Vengeance(iq) * Muton: Covering Fire, Tactical Sense, *** Muton Elite: Covering Fire, Tactical Sense, Will to survive, Hardened(s), Mayhem(iq), *, *** Muton Berserker: Tactical Sense(q*), Resilience (s) Cyberdisc: Squadsight(iq), Damn Good Ground, Dangerzone, Mayhem(iq), *, *** Drone: Holo-target (iq), Damn Good Ground, Low Profile (do they even use cover, like ever?) Sectopod: ???, * Chryssalid: Lightning Reflexes Outsider: Lightning Reflexes, Close Combat Specialist(q*), Bring Em On(q*), * Sectoid Commander: Low Profile Ethereal: ??? *Rapid Reaction (and/or Opportunist)//Sentinel for those aliens may be redundant **Thimen are special case, since they are dropped in overwatch state on council missions ***Grenadier perk may be redundant, if number of grenades on aliens can be adjusted manually (can it?; i do remember reading something about that) (s) marks are for consequential/simultaneous upgrades (by upgrade I mean option, not actuall in-game upgrade) (iq) = in question, perks are being tested/not working (my primary concern for unappliable perks; that marks them for priority in testing; can anyone drop any hints about those?) ??? - no ideas (what to give them, that is) (q*) - questionable ideas, may be unfluffy (those most likely be revisioned, if they contradict lore too much) On subject of learning of rescripting: I am sadly aware of it, and judging by his response it looks like tough luck for me.

That was really useful reply /sarcasm Ok, so tutorials page definetely improved since last time I seen it, but what I really need is not to "get going", but a sample of very specific HEX code, that I can simply adjust and implement (as I'm no programmer myself, if it wasn't the case I would have done everything required already by myself, and would not be asking for help on this forum).

Wow, bunch of replies in quick succession. Define "standart". And why not just use that code? I mean, I recall reading about that, and it seemed perfectly suited to do what I need. And how do you learn rescripting, exactly? I mean, I can understand, how to change one function, maybe rewrite parts of it - but writing something entirely new from scrap? It seems way over my head. Damage reduction is low-priority (for now), unless it can be made damage specific (resistant to normal weapons, but vulnerable to explosives, something like that), but it is nothing critical. Regarding AI: - I would really like to know more about that. Is it possible, for example, to assign behaviour to standard pod of aliens, such as one of them will suppress, next one shoot, and last one overwatch? Also, as I understand, setting are different for different pod types? If it is, can they be individually tweaked? Regarding value-priority system: While offense and defense seem pretty much self-explanatory, what does intangible score mean? Excellent, with tiny drawback of "This mod eliminates the normal function of the following entries in the DGC.ini", which I do already require for one of features in my mod. Anyway, Damage Reduction is meaningless without perks for aliens, that are supposed to go along with it. And wiki right now is such a mess (not to mention lacking many entries), so I prefer to seek whatever I need on this very forum (even compiled checklist of potentially useful threads). Yes, I did read all threads in this forum (may have missed something somewhere). Also, I will post all changes/features, that are implemented in my mod later, but it will come with some comentaries. Also, as I was writing my reply, Amineri wrote a new post :huh:, so could you give me example of HEX code, that I need to implement? (No dynamic stat adjusments, only predefined set of ablities for each type) I also can post list of intended perks for aliens (would like to see some comentaries on which of them would work or which are redundant/could be implemented differently). Or better send them via PM?

Yes, it is yet another of XCOM rebalance mods... I've been lurking this forum for quite some time, and now I am asking for some help in implementantion of some features in my mod (as I am no advanced modder, was only changing values in functions/using someone else's code): - Buildable items: smoke grenades, battlescanner, HEAT ammo (as item): (only those (and those exist only as items), for now; and yes, i have seen all relevant threads, and no, it doesn't make any clearer to me, how to do it clean and nice); also it is possible for item to give two smoke grenades (4 with grenadier)? - Perks for aliens: as aliens cannot use new active abilities (can't they?), I'll stick with passive ones (for time being), just give selected types of aliens some perks (maybe one of those unused perks as well), thats all; hm, maybe DR on a few would be useful (maybe on Muton Berserker? melee units are in serious trouble in my mod); could it be damage specific resistance as well? and no, currently I am not planning to add dynamic stat adjusment or consumable items to my mod; Also could someone give me directions in AI tweaking (it may be required in my mod for aliens to fully utilize their new capabilities; even now their suppression needs some love). As now mod exist in early closed beta stage, and is very WIP at the moment (just a bunch of fixes and features from here and there) and doesn't have a name yet. I can post full list of changes/features in my mod (if there is anyone interested). And now I want to give my special thanks to johnnylump (for posting upk changes in his Longwar mod), Amineri (for keeping up good work), creator of web based perk tree generator Bertilsson (nice and easy to use), creator of ToolBoks bokauk (most helpful tool so far), and for all others, who have been contributing to this mod community. (and sorry for my English (it is not my native language), feel free to correct me anytime :wink:)