Alien AI

[Kaso]

Sometimes the Aliens act strange.

It happend several times that aliens tried to shoot trough walls. It looks like they dont "see" the wall and fire 3-4 shoots right into it while a target is standing behind the wall. Good for my soldiers... bad for the fun-to-play part...

[Duke]

Please try to produce a screenshot of such a situation (press F12).
If you find several different situations that's even better.
If you can't catch them while shooting, mark the position of the alien on the screenshot.

[erendor]

Hey - I've had this problem a number of times, not sure if you've fixed it yet or not.  Still, here is a screenshot I took - the alien I'm targeting in the screenshot repeatedly tried to attack the machine gunner targeting him from that location a number of times.  There were no soldiers in his line of sight, just the machine gunner.

[rayman86]

I have had the same issue where they try to shoot through a destroyed object or piece of wall.  One thing I have noticed with it is if you try to shoot them back (with no path), you still get a percentage above 0% even though you obviously cannot hit them.  Maybe that is what is causing it...

[Sarin]

shoot them back (with no path), you still get a percentage above 0% even though you obviously cannot hit them.  Maybe that is what is causing it...

Nope, that one is caused by fact that you might not have line of fire on their chest, but you can hit one of limbs. I killed an alien few times that way. But the aliens shoot even if there is solid wall...hmm, ufopaedia mentions that aliens have infravision, perhaps they see through wall so they think they can hit?

[Kobold]

Nope, that one is caused by fact that you might not have line of fire on their chest, but you can hit one of limbs. I killed an alien few times that way. But the aliens shoot even if there is solid wall...hmm, ufopaedia mentions that aliens have infravision, perhaps they see through wall so they think they can hit?

Today i played campaign again and i got 1 soldier in a house hide no window nothing and 1 soldier outside near the wall from the house and that soldier outside was spotted from a alien in line of fire. after i moved with my first soldier from room to room in the house, the alien start RF shooting on my soldier outside, but there was a big wall between the alien and my soldier. this damn alien shouldnt seen him moving but he did, the AI use a wallhack ><

btw that alien wasnt even looking to my moving soldier. buggy buggy buggy

At least if my soldiers got the RF like this aliens would be fair. i dont understand why a AI use a different RF as my troops!?

[Hertzila]

The aliens have god-o-vison, which, according to nonickch, ignores completely every obstacle and cover. They will know where you are all the time.

[dodon]

after i moved with my first soldier from room to room in the house, the alien start RF shooting on my soldier outside, but there was a big wall between the alien and my soldier. this damn alien shouldnt seen him moving but he did, the AI use a wallhack ><

...

 i dont understand why a AI use a different RF as my troops!?

The RF code works for both sides the same way. And there is a test to hit in it.
So you more likely hit this bug: Reaction Fire - End Turn

[Kobold]

The RF code works for both sides the same way. And there is a test to hit in it.

im pretty sure its not the same way for both sides. just to let you know RF dont work with plasmarifle if i use it on my troops but on AI it works. RF works for AI almost to 100 percent not like my troops maybe to 70 percent and my RF dont works through walls like the AI.

So you more likely hit this bug: Reaction Fire - End Turn

i dont got a problem like Reaction fire - end turn and i dont play 2.4dev.

[sionide]

Yeah, I have also noticed this AI bug of aliens sometimes trying to shoot through walls, broken ships parts, tents, and even floors.

I have also encountered my sniper hitting an alien and killing it when it read 0% to hit.

[Kobold]

The Alien AI is still shooting against all possible walls, it happen's almost every map. this should be fixed its not big fun to play against dumb AI. if i remember a older 2.3 dev version i cant remember that this AI act stupid like today.

btw i play standard difficult campaign, maybe this AI is only stupid in this difficulty  level?

this happen in ufoai 2.3 rev.31041

[VoxDissident]

Nope. I played Normal difficulty today in 2.3 and I'm seeing Aliens trying to fire through walls almost every turn.

On a side note, reaction fire doesn't seem to be working for me at all. I've yet to see one of my soldiers fire back when being fired upon, even when an alien comes around a corner at point blank, right up against my soldier, and then fires 3 rounds from a plasma pistol. I watched two of my soldiers die yesterday like this.

[Sarin]

Well, AI is always stupid, it is known issue...and RF is still buggy. In short,RF doesnt work against plasma pistols but work well against bigger guns.

[Kobold]

On a side note, reaction fire doesn't seem to be working for me at all. I've yet to see one of my soldiers fire back when being fired upon, even when an alien comes around a corner at point blank, right up against my soldier, and then fires 3 rounds from a plasma pistol. I watched two of my soldiers die yesterday like this.

There are other treads for RF... and btw RF works for sure.

I just wanted to know if this wall problem for AI possible to fix or if they dont want to modify AI.

[nonickch]

Hello, I'm currently working in the AI from several aspects.
Feel free to drop in the discussion (it's in the 'Coding' section of the forum). I make a fugly introduction to how the AI seems to work and then try to explain why many (including wall-shooting) bugs exists/how to fix em.

Atm I'm working on some fixes for the AI that should improve the difficulty factor and stop aliens from shooting into walls. Specifically on wall-shooting, I actually let them take 10 imaginary shots using the real shooting mechanics so they pretty much know exactly what's going to happen. It makes sense that they would stop shooting through walls, right?

Wrong, kinda. The classic maps where silly wallshooting happened a lot (africa map) has ceased, but now aliens keep shooting through walls in rivertown. Did you notice I skipped the "try to"? Yes, the little critters actually found a bug in the code and are actively exploiting (damn cheaters!). I'd challenge you to cross the river in that map without loosing half your squad...
So the issue may not exactly be an AI one. Also, that shot sampling cannot be used in the real AI since it's too slow.
I'm still looking for someone into the math of simple geometry and the error function (CDF), to fix some math that make that UI hit-predictor behave improperly (so we can use it in the AI).

I know that the alien god-o-vision (call it wallhack if you may), is kinda cheesy. The problem at this point is that if we drop that, the aliens will become even dumber and the workload will be immense just to bring it in line with th current piece-of-cake difficulty. The plan is to buff it as much as we can, then once we can provide a very strong challenge, try to drop things like this (maybe based on difficulty?). All game AI more often than not knows where you are, it's how it uses that information that makes you aware of it. If it wasn't for this wallbug, you probably wouldn't have noticed it.

You can take a look at the new AI yourselves, but it needs trunk ver and/or some minor coding. See the discussion.