AI Omniscience and my changing definition of Bugs.
If I can deal with this crap it stops being a bug, otherwise we will resort to extreme measures.
On reddit I have defended the omniscience of enemy AI. I think it is a decent way to improve the game by making the enemy more competent. Recently I stumbled upon another bug, and it led me to deeply consider how I cope with XCOM bugs, and weird mechanics more generally. And that is what this post is about.
The image above is in Long War 2, and here we have my non-concealed specialist hiding behind a fence and a pod with 2 vipers (not active but on yellow alert). The lightly shaded tiles are from the preview movement mod, and they show the single move range of the nearest viper.
So what happens is that those vipers will move directly towards my specialist because of AI omniscience... which sucks. But what really sucks is that one will move all the way to the red highlighted tile!?! That's 8 diagonally and 2 straight, for about a 13 tile move (diagonal tiles are counted as ~1.4).
This is a bug.
I moved the specialist behind the fence, closer to the vipers, thinking he would be safer... Couldn't believe that this happened by luck and so I reloaded a save to do some testing. What I found was surprising. The vipers move away from me (unaware of my location) if I stay 16+ tiles away . If I get closer they ZOOM to me. I checked this behavior from multiple locations and multiple times. The viper's movement was perfectly consistent. They always move away unless I am 15 tiles or closer, and then they always move right at me with bonus movement range if I get within omniscience range.
What this means is that the AI is omniscient about non-concealed soldiers only within a certain range (~15 tiles) AND if this omniscience detects you, they get bonus movement to zoom towards you. Which is a bug. Or I am going to treat it like one. Which leads me to my second point. My definition of bugs keeps changing. As I learn the mechanics, some of this bullshit becomes acceptable.
I play Honestman, and this is so that I can undo bugs or misclicks. But what counts as a bug? Invisible floaters shooting from weird roof angles? Teleporting pods? battlescanners activating pods? aliens shooting through walls? Weird patrol routes that seem to zero in on my concealed soldiers? Civilians in hidden locations breaking my concealment? Intel raids where an enemy pod starts within visibility range of your resistance team?
Some of the above used to be a bug that justified rolling back a turn or ttc (teleport to cursor) or whatever. Now, none of them are. I just play through all that stuff. I feel like I can handle it because now I know about them, I can deal with it… Also I've gotten better at the game.
My current list of bugs in LW2:
Cover/visibility not being set correctly, often when going through a door, or other environment changes like explosions. Fix with TTC.
Detection radius improperly displayed for Gatekeepers (much larger than it is displayed) and other situations. fix with reload.
My current list of bugs in LW:
When a soldier starts in a weird position off map, and can't move or do anything all mission. fix with ttc.
And that's it.
Also, I sometimes find new crap, such as this bonus movement range for pods that detect you via omniscience when you are within 15 tile range. And while I am going to roll this back, now that I know how it works I will cope with it in the future. Sometimes it's only a bug because you don't know the rules.