Thanks DerBK. I need to learn how to do that. I want to do a little light modding myself, and maybe adjusting mods I'm already using is the gateway. Which means I need to get comfertable messing around with ini files.

Would the Reptile AI actually know if they are immune from past knowledge of failed poison? Like does it save the state of it happening in the current encounter from any units? It's not like it would be immediately obvious that medikits are carried.

some suggestions:

Reptiles venom spit: They ALWAYS go for it, even if they are open. There is no point on it since having a medkit makes player inmune to venom. also seems it doesn't have cool time, since can spit venom 2 or 3 times in a row. Would be cool to see they use their guns

Commando: they always throw smoke to his allies, even if you have an agent open for a shot they doesn't take it

Purifiers: They DONT attack civilians. If they are chosen to attack a vip, they just ran in circles

Biggest difference between the difficulties probably comes from the enemy stats. On higher diff's the enemies have more crit, aim and hp. Some mission parameters are also different (for example, the mission where two enemies per turn are trying to flee is lost if 3 enemies escape on highest diff. On lowest, it is only failed if 6 escape. Timers, number of reinforcement waves, that kind of thing.Starting resources and rewards scale by difficulty. There's a lot, and it's not exactly hidden. The ini files have most of the values and they can easily be changed or looked up. Feel free to explore yourself :)

What I mean is, are these shackles on all difficulty levels except impossible, or are they, in vanilla, slowly released as you increase in difficulty?

Because if it's A and not B, that leaves me asking what the differences are between all the other difficulty levels. Not to mention wondering what else is hiding under the hood like what you've found here. Hmm.

I'm not sure i understand your question.

There are a few "AI shackles" in the vanilla game that make the AI play worse intentionally on lower difficulties. On Impossible those are usually not there. This mod makes it so they are never there.

The most important one is the thing about spreading your fire around instead of finishing off wounded enemies.

Wait, those shackles are only removed on Impossible? They're all in place except on the highest difficulty?

i see. Ty

Yes it's a pleasure to lurk in the threads of all your mods DerBK

I like yoir approach. You always speak to your subscribers. Thank you!

If you want to tweak this yourself, you could check out the "cover factors" in the XComAI.ini that comes with this mod and maybe change them a bit. There are three factors, one for mid cover, one for full cover and one for full cover that is used by pod leaders. Vanilla factors are 1.0, 1.1, and 2.5. The higher the value, the more the units will value cover in their calculations. ABAI:BD changes those values to 1.2, 1.8 and 3.0. The old ABAI for WotC used 1.5, 2.0 and 3.0 here, maybe those work better for you?

Note that this will never really go away. There are other factors than just cover going into enemies movements. Units that get special mission related orders ("Kill that VIP", "Flee through that door") will override normal movement, for example. And there are movement routines that have specific goals like "Move to a place where you can throw a grenade/cast Nulllance/hit most people with an Energy Shield" which also have other primary goals
Finally, the maps are small enough that better spots that still allow for a useful attack might just not be available.

So just looking at cover is not the best way to look at it.

Ah, Also wizards lots of times warps to a open place

Ty for your feedback.
True, Berserkers just ran withouth do anything, even attack civilians on anarchy misions
Hitman also run like thughs sometimes, to get a your they became open

I am currently playing a bunch of different games, so i didn't even finish XCS yet. Having played through Progeny and half of Grey Phoenix, I don't really see a lot of things that warrant much attention, though.

One thing i looked into is what Latis mentioned: The line of units with riot shields do indeed run into the open to get flanked, but that is actually on purpose. They have a shield ability that gives them half cover, even when flanked. They want to draw your fire.

@Lancelot:
Since i am currently in the middle of Grey Phoenix, i should see Berserkers soon. I'll keep an eye out if i see what you mentioned about them.

@vohich:
That mind control thing is not an AI problem.

Same here about Zerker when his position far from my guys

Beserker often move and move back end turn.

DerBK, can you upgrade little bit your mod please? There is a strange thing in vanilla - when your man is getting mindcontrolled or bleeding out just at the very end of the match - you get a victory screen saying your guys are just wounded.
I think that is bullshit and your mod could change it.

steel with this the AI is so stupid :(
Still get open just because. When a Ai enemy flees it get open also
Thugs got open just tu ran to another unit and and attack or cast his +1 shield
Jeez, this game needs a seriuous re-work on AI, its easy as hell

This is great and so quickly developed, thanks!

Sure.

Thank you for one more ABAI, man. Like your mods. Will that one work midcampaign pls?

At least 1 team mates on the field, make sense.
If their are only 2 total left, and they have no good shot, taking the cover out is a good choice.

I have mostly seen it been used by a single Muton. That doesn't really do a whole lot.

The use of the ability itself is fine, but i could see introducing some minor checks that would stop the unit from using it when he doesn't have at least 2 team mates on the field or at least 1 more team mate who's up next in the turn order.

The demolition used by the enemies has been mostly useful for them. I would not change it.

I'm an idiot. I meant Demolition, not Suppression.

I did my Gray Phoenix run first without ABAI on Impossible and never saw Suppression used once. But they were the first faction I did, so I don't know if that influences it at all.

@Doomgooey:
Exact same situation for me, different outcome. Took Grey Phoenix first, never did even a single mission without ABAI. Saw plenty of suppression, but often used in a useless way.

FWIW, right now ABAI does not influence suppression at all. I am currently mulling over some options, though. Suppression being used by alerted enemies after the breach could be cool.

Excellent name for this mod

@DerBK Funny you mention Suppression being used for the Gray Phoenix, because on my first campaign(with your mod), I chose them first up. Never seen it used at all, all the way up until I finished the investigation. So I'm surprised it even exists! There were plenty of abilities used by them, don't get me wrong. Demolition, MC, etc. But never that one

Wait, so just to clarify, does this make the game harder than vanilla? God damn, y'all are crazy haha. Still gonna download the mod though! Keep it up DerBK.

@Bambi: It's a reference to FarCry: Blood Dragon, another spinoff with a ridiculous premise. The way i see it, Chimera Squad is XCOM: Blood Dragon :)

non important question but why did you name it blood dragon? great mod tho

Enchanters are frequently teleporting themselves into flanked positions. You might consider that when looking for weird behaviour to fix.

The one enemy that i am still noticing having major issues with sticking to cover is the Bruiser, some dude with a shield. Might be intentional to draw your fire, not sure. But it's weird either way and i will likely fix him specifically.

The other thing that i noticed where the AI could use a little tweaking is enemies with Suppression. Those are somewhat common in the Grey Phoenix campaign and they aren't really all that clever about using their suppression-

Due to my Ironman save getting bricked i have only seen the Grey Phoenix story so far, so maybe i find more in other investigations. Aside from the two mentioned examples i found the AI to be pretty competent, though.

Please feel free to report any other AI blunders that you think might be worth taking a look at.

And God do they not care about spreading fire. Poor Verge almost got killed due to being Supplexed and hit by all the enemies.

Haven't used this mod at all, but I can confirm that without it enemies are often downright suicidal when it comes to walking out of cover.

Ah alright, thanks for the explanation!

In Xcom2, there were some AI shackles that were supposed to prevent fights from becoming too messy. Unrevealed pods were actively avoiding fights if the player was already fighting ("Downthrottling") and if too many enemies would be engaged, the AI would just skip some turns ("Engagement limit"). ABAI for WotC removed those things so fights would develop more organically.

I'll remove them from the description. I think it's safe to say that these concepts don't apply to XCS and that they are only still in the file because the devs simply took the WotC AI file and added their stuff to it.

What exactly is "Removal of Engagement Limits and Downthrottling (if those still apply to the game...)"?

Its range is also significantly shorter than sight range, so it becomes problematic in very rare cases. The game's accuracy is also generally higher than XCOM2 so if worst comes to worst, you can just simply shoot the overwatcher. It's just personal opinion of mine but I'd be happy to see enemy use overwatch over other action, especially since it has much greater damage opportunities with smaller stage.

I haven't seen much of it yet besides the AI using it twice but I presume it's because the overwatch range is highlighted in what tiles it covers which I presume makes it easy to avoid like I was able to for the 2 times I've seen it so far in my 5 hours of gameplay.

Why do you say the AI's overwatch is useless?

Pretty interested to see how your take on AI turns out. Sequential turns, uselessness of AI overwatch, and small area size seem to demand very aggressive style of play for Terrorists (in fact, some selector trees already put shooting ahead of DoIfFlankedMove!)

Game just came out, if you don't see it on the workshop then the mod doesn't exist.

any mods out for "name change" dont like that godmother nickname

@Bodine: Yes, commenting out the lines is the same as deleting them as far as the game is concerned.

thanks for getting this out so quick. im curious to see what you will be able to do with game going forward

thank you for being so patient with all my questions. One last one - if I just comment out the lines I don't want, with the semicolon, will that work, too? As long as I also comment out the section headers [in brackets]?

Why isn't this compatible with Terror from the Apocalyse: Bureau Enforcer 3? Reported