Turning on Alien Pods by Default

[Amineri]

I've also seen a post on the main 2k forums where someone activated most aliens and had them teleport off onto the map.

 

The poster (and quite a few others) came to the conclusion that it made the game less fun, because the mission took about 5 times longer than normal to complete, continually inching forward afraid of overwatch fire.

 

In the OG, with squad sizes of 14+ it was pretty much expected to lose men on every mission, and those losses could be absorbed. In the NG, with squad sizes of 4 to 6 having unavoidable losses can quickly lead to a tactical defeat that is purely based on luck.

 

That said, if it could be configured dynamically from the strategy side, it could create essentially a new type of mission.

 

1) Create a weaker than normal alien squad -- for example, in late game create a squad of only Chryssalids

2) Launch mission and activate every enemy pod

 

This would be a form of "swarm" mission where the XCOM soldiers are just trying to survive. It could be fun occasionally (maybe once every month or two?). It would be great as a Special Mission, after you find the civilian, a swarm of alien rushes at you. Stuff like that.

 

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I also recall seeing a condition for activation that if an explosion went off within 4 tiles of a pod-member then the pod would activate. Might be able to increase this number to help things out a bit. I can't recall exactly where it is, but I -think- it was somewhere in XGAIBehavior.

Edited May 17, 2013 by Amineri

[Andeerz]

Oh! Thanks for clarifying the Lurk stuff! My bad. But I should have been more clear about what I meant by "tactical AI" which is probably in retrospect not the right definition... so sorry for my stupidity. By "tactical AI" I meant the AI that is engaged when the pod is active. From my understanding, the lurk variables do not change the alien behavior in atual combat (or am I wrong?). I know that changing the lurk variables to zero will make all pods patrol, and that's nice. But it doesn't make them active, as in, actually engaging their combat AI. From my understanding, the scenario Yzaxtol mentions is an artifact of this. They are all patrolling without any regard for cover or being conscious of your troops, so all you need to do is sit back in overwatch until they find you, often just one or two pods at a time, and mow them down. If multiple pods come in at the same time, it gets a little more challenging maybe, but still, the pods could arrive within sight in a situation with no good cover for them to run to upon activation. Like I said, the patrol movement does not seem to take into account the positions of your troops (I hope I'm wrong). However, if their actual combat AI was active from the get go, perhaps they would be more defensive and creep along the map seeking cover (and maybe even just staying there waiting for you) and you would encounter them while they are in overwatch more often. Would I be right?

And, for what it is worth, the game currently pretty much plays like this:

1. Send one or two people to scout ahead

2. Activate alien pod and have scout run away

3. Find Heavy Cover

4. Shoot at the three or so aliens that are coming towards you

5. Repeat step 1 through 4 until all aliens are dead

6. Win

I guess the current scenario is more interesting than what Yzaxtol mentioned... but not much better I think. In any case, it's all about just getting full cover and killing them as they come at you and exploiting rather immersion-breaking game-mechanics (arbitrary patrols and inactivity). The game ends up being about not activating aliens that should be active in the first place... as things are, there is hardly any risk in approaching an alien position so long as you stay close enough together to only activate one pod at a time. Any inactive lurking pod that could (if actually active and seeking you out) flank your position won't and just sit there as their comrades are dying. And any patroling inactive pod that does manage to find you probably won't be in a good position to attack you anyway.

[Andeerz]

Hmmmm... good points Amineri. But another thing I would like to see is expanded squad sizes anyway, among other things. :smile: And I still think that inching forward being afraid of overwatch fire is much better than inching forward being afraid of activating and arbitrarily inactive pod that ends up being an annoyance more than a tactical challenge (oh yay... three whole aliens... how threatening). And so long as it takes five times longer because the aliens are actually trying to flank and kill me actively or trying to maneuver me into a compromising position, then I'm more than cool with that! If the AI is such that that would not happen when all AI starts off as active, then the AI needs to be changed.

EDIT: Maybe I'm misunderstanding what the 2k forum guys were doing... were the aliens teleporting to the player's troops upon activation? If so (and forgive my ignorance) are active alens that are not in sight able to teleport wherever?

Edited May 17, 2013 by Andeerz

[johnnylump]

Ah, gotcha! Misunderstanding. We've been calling the small-unit combat part of the game the "tactical" game as opposed to the "strategy" game with the geoscape and so on. And right, from what I can the lurk stuff becomes irrelevant once a pod is activated; it just governs pod behavior before it sights X-Com -- rolling around or sitting tight.

 

You might set all the lurks to zero and see if you don't get the mass firefights more often -- patrollers are more likely to run into whereever your unit is, anyway.

 

I dug out the code because there was an earlier misinterpretation that the Lurk stuff governed UFO behavior on the geoscape, and I thought you were repeating that. No worries.

 

I'll hold fire on the nature of the tactical game for a bit, but it's an interesting topic.

Edited May 17, 2013 by johnnylump

[Amineri]

Hmmmm... good points Amineri. But another thing I would like to see is expanded squad sizes anyway, among other things. :smile: And I still think that inching forward being afraid of overwatch fire is much better than inching forward being afraid of activating and arbitrarily inactive pod that ends up being an annoyance more than a tactical challenge (oh yay... three whole aliens... how threatening). And so long as it takes five times longer because the aliens are actually trying to flank and kill me actively or trying to maneuver me into a compromising position, then I'm more than cool with that! If the AI is such that that would not happen when all AI starts off as active, then the AI needs to be changed.

 

EDIT: Maybe I'm misunderstanding what the 2k forum guys were doing... were the aliens teleporting to the player's troops upon activation? If so (and forgive my ignorance) are active alens that are not in sight able to teleport wherever?

 

The AI doesn't really have much smarts in terms of maneuvering when there are no enemies in sight. It really is one of the most difficult kind of situations to reason in... trying to make decisions with a near-complete lack of information. Unless the AI cheats and knows where your soldiers are without having to see them.

 

Currently the AI doesn't cheat in this way. There is a distinction between the "overmind" that sets up the units and handles computes arrays of what can see what, and the "AI", which figures out what each pod and alien unit is going to do based on the info it has.

 

I think that the best the current AI could come up with with no enemies in sight is to just sit and overwatch. This isn't much better than the current situation except that when you first see aliens they will be overwatch-firing at you, making for much more defensive advances.

 

Another way to approach this is to allow for larger pod sizes in the later game. That way you don't get to fight 6v3 mini-battles one at a time. If they are 6v6 it will take longer, and if more aliens are patrolling things could get ugly pretty quickly.

 

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I think the 2k forum issue came up because of the new "soft teleporting" that arose with Patch 4, where the aliens briefly appear at the edge of sight and activate, but then immediately teleport off into the FOW.

 

I'm not sure if active but out-of-sight aliens can teleport. I think they can, though. The MoveToPoint function carves up the part of the unit's path that is hidden and warps to the end of it, then moves along the sighted part. I didn't recall seeing any thing about whether the unit was active or not, but I might have missed it.

[Andeerz]

Well, the aliens do, I think, have to have a way to respond to soldiers that are beyond site, as the aliens do move after being activated when I leave their sight. Anybody know where that kind of behavior might be in?

EDIT: I've been looking over the R&D Tactical Bug Hunts thread... I think I see what you mean now. Hmmmm...

Also, don't individual active aliens, regardless of pod, take into account XCOM troops that might not be visible to them but visible to their allies?

Edited May 18, 2013 by Andeerz

[Andeerz]

No input? :3

[dubiousintent]

You might want to take a look at the 'R&D AI Improvements' thread. That's the closest other thread I've seen to what you are looking for.

 

-Dubious-

[Andeerz]

I've looked through that thread... but it doesn't really seem to cover anything related to this. I would seriously love to see this idea explored further!

Is there any way to make aliens see through walls across the entire map for just the first turn so that they can see all of your guys and be activated and then turn off their extended vision?

Edited June 15, 2013 by Andeerz

[johnnylump]

I think this is handled in XComAlienPodManger.

 

In RevealPods, the command that makes them active seems to be as simple as:

 

GotoState('Active');

 

However, pods when pods are created in SpawnAllAlienPods (the functionality I altered to increase pod size was in OvermindSpawn, which is called from here), the function ends with :

 

GotoState('Inactive');

 

I suspect that changing this to GotoState('Active') would put all pods in the active state as soon as they are created.

 

The hex change to do this would be

XComGame.upk

Change XComAlienPodManager >> SpawnAllPodAliens to set all aliens to state "active" on mission load

Change unique hex string
06 05 01 71 21 f3 39 00 00 00 00 00 00 4a 4a 4a 16
to
06 05 01 71 21 55 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 4a 4a 4a 16