22. January 2021, 15:43:26

#5

RoSoDudeQuote

Quote by Sir_Figs:

Sounds awesome, is this intended to be compatible with your rebalanced mod?

Yep. It's compatible with vanilla, SCP, SS2-RSD, pretty much any other mod except Secmod, which has its own heavy alterations to AI behaviors. Load above gamesys mods of course.


Quote by ZylonBane:

Perhaps beyond the scope of this mod, but there was a discussion a few years back about making psi reavers more scary to fight. They're certainly lethal enough, but their presentation is pretty bland.

https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?wap2;topic=9454.msg112130#msg112130

Interesting read. My primary goal was to fix melee cheese and make enemies more threatening within their archetypsl designs, but I'm open to ideas to amp up horror via aesthetic presentation. Some kind of visual distortion could add another layer of mechanical engagement as well. I'll think about if this is something I want to include for future versions.

22. January 2021, 15:43:54

#6

voodoo47Quote

we should maybe grab a few bits for SCP. not beta5 though, as I don't think we want any more delays there.

Acknowledged by: Nameless Voice

23. January 2021, 05:13:40

#7

ZylonBaneQuote

RoSo, have you tried playing around with the weapon setting that makes AIs lead their target? It works surprisingly well. I don't know why Irrational didn't use it.

23. January 2021, 06:21:57

#8

RoSoDudeQuote

I had not; "Leads Target" on the "AIProjectile" link, huh? I didn't prioritize making ranged enemies harder since I think they're already plenty dangerous, but there may be a few enemies this is worth experimenting on.

The other major thing I'd like to somehow address is melee enemies standing around like doofuses if you climb on tables, or get any height over them. I'd like to make them attempt to flee if you get the high ground, so you can't just shoot them while they're standing still. But I wasn't able to understand much about the fleeing system, or how I might manipulate the AI to use it.

23. January 2021, 13:49:55

#9

sarge945Quote

Quote by RoSoDude:

Interesting read. My primary goal was to fix melee cheese and make enemies more threatening within their archetypsl designs, but I'm open to ideas to amp up horror via aesthetic presentation. Some kind of visual distortion could add another layer of mechanical engagement as well. I'll think about if this is something I want to include for future versions.

If you decided you wanted to make psi reavers more difficult to fight, this sounds like the right road to go down, but it would probably need to be more gameplay focused rather than being horror focused.

A good example might be for them to be able to create "hallucinations" of themselves, which look and attack normally, but with reduced damage. They disappear the moment the original reaver projection dies. This would be designed to confuse the player, rather than causing more damage, so their damage would be next to nothing.

Simply making them more scary doesn't really make them more threatening or interesting to fight against.

Also, I think some more differentiation between Psi Reavers and Greater Psi Reavers could be done through this system too (although it's probably out of scope.) I bet most people on their first playthrough didn't even know the Greater Psi Reaver was a different enemy. Maybe if it had more powerful support powers, it could be more unique to fight. Imagine a greater psi reaver dropping psi mines (the same ones you get) around itself for protection every so often.

I guess the biggest issue I have with psi reavers in general is that they are the ultimate enemy, encountered last and considered the most threatening by the game's story. Yet they are significantly easier than rumblers (especially your modified rumblers). Although this largely comes down to them being slow to do anything, and their supporting entities being so easy to find and kill that they usually die before doing anything. This is especially true in the brain of the many fight where quick players can take out all of the psi reaver brains without any of them really doing much of value. Then the rest of the fight is easy.


Quote by RoSoDude:

I had not; "Leads Target" on the "AIProjectile" link, huh? I didn't prioritize making ranged enemies harder since I think they're already plenty dangerous, but there may be a few enemies this is worth experimenting on.

I do think focusing on melee cheese was a good idea. Ranged enemies can be cheesed in some ways too, like stutterstepping, but it's a lot more difficult to do, is less directly and obviously abusable, and if you fail it you're in trouble. It's never as simple as just moving backwards endlessly and winning every fight.

That said, having some targets lead their shots could be quite interesting. Especially for robots. I tend to find Military bots a lot less threatening than the Security bots because their projectiles are so slow and so easy to dodge. Leading targets may or may not address this, and could even give them a bit more of an identity as mechanoids with onboard targeting computers. Of course, some aspect of dodging is designed into the game so it's not something I (or I assume anyone else) would want to actually limit or get rid of. I guess it could be argued that, by leading the player, the player needs to be more engaged with their dodges and not just mash the directional buttons, increasing depth. At the same time, it can also make dodges less useful or effective.

Where the melee enemies were broken, I would think that at most maybe some ranged enemies need a handful of tweaks. But even then, this mod is so much of an improvement overall it has still fixed the vast majority of AI cheese without even touching ranged enemy behaviour much (except grenade hybrids and midwives).

Grenade hybrids would probably benefit the most from shot tracking. You've already made them not completely useless, having them actually hit their target occasionally could help even with their higher throw speed.