Smarter AI Mod v1
http://www.mediafire.com/?229sgrregu2wju3


I created this mod to enhance the AI. In particular, the combat AI. For now, this mod makes it so the AI will defend themselves more effectively during fire fights. This results in less micro-management for the player. You can now expect your soldiers to do a decent job at defending, especially when grouped together. I'm planning on changing more aspects of the AI, but no promises.

Some effects of the new changes are that terrain plays a larger role. It's sometimes better to position your forces behind a crest unless you are feeling very confident. The positioning of your units now has much more meaning because a group of units can fire at the same target, whether with effective or suppressive fire. You can now watch the mayhem and respond accordingly, allowing you to strategize more and babysit less.


Things that have changed:

- The AI has a longer effective fire range when shooting targets in clear view.

- The AI will return effective fire from a longer distance when being under fire and looking in the direction of the threat.

- When facing in the direction of the threat, the AI will try to suppress when under long range fire, assuming the AI's weapon can reach that far.

- The AI will try to suppress even through fog of war.

- The AI will make themselves a smaller target when under long range fire and unable to fire back.

Woah, sounds nice, downloading. May I recommend decreasing AI reaction time too? They are quite slow.

Hmm. Sounds interesting! Currently downloading. Lets see how this goes..

This doth seem interesting indeed.

Might i ask if this only works on Vanilla factions, or does it support mods as well?

As an AI mod, it should work on everything (apart from crabs, mechs, and so on).

I'm still quite new to modding this game, but I'm assuming if the other mod doesn't change the file that I modified in this mod, then it should work.

This is also assuming the other mod doesn't override the default AI behavior some other way.

I just tested this, and
Great job!

Yeah, I gotta say, this DOES make the AI a bit smarter. Not a lot, but noticeably, still.
Good job!

Neat, seems to work pretty good as far as I can tell - I am liking the AI improvements, and this does make the battles a lot more exciting to watch.

Will there be plans to expand the profile of this in the future - i.e. seeing if there are ways to improve the mining AI and such?

I'd like to see this expanded upon as well. One thing I'd like to see is AI responding to sounds nearby. Though you'd probably have to create a sound wave system, unfortunately.

Well, this works fabulously with the War To End All Wars factions.

Good job, my good sir, you recieve a Royal Decree Muffin.

Most enjoyable - after all this time shooting foes offscreen with impunity and mocking laughter I suddenly find myself getting utterly SHREDDED if I stand anywhere in the open. I look forward to whatever else you can improve.

After playing with this mod, it seemed to have done what it pretty much said on the tin! Good job, it for sure made a Cortex Command match for me a lot more interesting.

Plus, for those who wish to see what it does before they download it, heres a mod spotlight video that hopefully allows you to see the difference in the AI. x)


Looking forward to more mods from you BlackAlpha. x)

Nice video!

Just a note about fog of war. The player has fog of war and the enemy AI has their own fog of war. However, in some (if not all) scenarios, the enemy has no fog of war, which means their snipers will try to snipe you from the get-go. Best course of action is to hide or dig yourself in and call in reinforcements, pretty much like you did in the video.

Fog of war makes it so the AI can't engage at their effective fire range, but they might still try to suppress when coming under fire.

This is why the AI sucks so much in the vanilla campaign, because they never scan the surface, so you can shoot before they shoot and often that's enough to take them out without taking any damage yourself. You just need to remember where their fog of war is (how far their units have traveled) and then stay inside their fog of war, so that your units can always shoot effectively, while theirs can't. It's basically a fault in the campaign AI, they should scan the surface sometimes to even out the playing field.

I don't know... the AI being able to shoot the hell out of me when I can't even see them sounds terrible to me...