Thank you for your reply! I will have a try.

I could see that result in an enemy not acting, but it shouldn't cause crashes. In any case, i suggest unsubbing from ABAI (keeping only ABA) and then doing an ini file refresh following the instructions here: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/1126623381/1474222595301114193/

Wait a moment.... I just realized that A BETTER ADVENT already includes A BETTER AI? I have been playing with two mods enabled simultaneously for a long time..... Um, Mr. DerBK, I still want to ask, could this be the reason why the enemy units don't act in the enemy's turn，enemies in patrol state are incorrectly playing combat state animations for certain actions and the game crashes inexplicably from the transport ship into the mission in the mid-game?

I am not familiar with specifically the 2.0 of YA. but see my exchange with obama just below for YA+ABAI in general.

Hey Der! do you recommend using this with YA 2.0? I liked all the changes in ABAI but I have some doubts about mixing it them

if you don't manipulate the load order with a tool (not sure if the AML can do it, but if you have to ask, then you probably didn't) then it's in order of subscription on the workshop. The mod you subscribe to last will load later in the order and thus be able to overwrite what came before. That's why I suggest to sub to big mods first and detail mods afterwards.

For ABAI und YA the load order is not going to matter in any meaningful way but if you want to be super safe about it, sub to ABAI first, then to YA. That will give YA changes priority over the ones from this mod.

that makes sense, but how do you define the load order (i'm using the aml) and which mod should come first?

Yes, i can confirm this working with YA, i used that myself for a while.

Doubling up on changing those variables is no problem, the game will just use whichever is last in the load order.

@obama
I've used this and Yellow Alert Gameplay in a couple of campaigns, they work well together.

how would this work with something like yellow alert gameplay and other mods that also change throttling variables?

I don't know how much AI work is done in that other mod.

You can refer to https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/1126623381/1644290549121467976/ for a manual on how to turn of the changes from ABAI to a certain enemy. So you could use ABAI, deactivate the Priest changes and let the other mod take over for that part.

If I have [WOTC] Adv Priest Revamped, will this mod be affected by it or can it work seamlessly fine?

The resistance AI has some crossover with the general AI, so there's bound to be some side benefits. But nothing that was explicitly targeted at them.

does this mod improve the resistance AI too?

nvmd. its XComAI.ini

Which file do I need to modify to change the number of engagement squads? 20 is a bit much for me when playing higher difficulty troop types mods ;(

FYI, this doesn't seem to be tagged as WOTC wrt Workshop search filtering.

ah awesome thanks for the info! Will give it another shot with some lower values. You are right it doesnt happen all the time but when it does its quite jarring. My personal opinion is that spacing trumps full cover. I always lose my best soldiers when i've accentally put them too close during a fight and a muton frags me etc. It's something that is so easy to punish grouping up should always be a last resort

If this bothers you a lot, you can easily fix it for yourself, though. It's just 3 numbers that you can tune up and down to determine their cover discipline.
In the XComAI.ini that comes with this mod, Ctrl+F for "CALC_MID_COVER" which will bring you to a set of six lines. The first three lines, starting with a "-", are the original values. Don't touch those lines. The next three, starting with a "+" are the values i set them to. The one you probably want to adjust is the middle one, the "full cover factor" for non-leaders. I changed that value from 1.1 to 2.5 which is indeed quite heavy handed. Maybe try a 2.0 for a more moderate but still noticable adjustment?

My apologies i misunderstood you. You are right that the aliens will prefer seeking cover over not grouping up. That seems reasonable, though. You don't want to just have them stand in the open and take flankshots, right? This should only really matter when there is not enough cover around anymore in the first place, though. In the vast majority of cases they will just spread out and be in cover.

That's what i am saying; they prioritise full cover over being spaced apart which makes the game easier when the full cover is multiple tiles wide and has room for multiple advent, since they all huddle together behind it with no regard to grenades. The base game AI almost never groups up for this reason. The other changes are good it's just this part that ruins the immersion and difficulty for me

That is just patently untrue, the AI prioritizes full cover and it does so in a very noticable way.

Something is not working right on your end, this is not something that can be mistaken, it's a very heavy handed adjustment i did there towards cover discipline.

I don't believe i touched the grenade thing.

This mod literally makes the game easier because they no longer try to keep spacing and prioritise full cover, meaning you just take out entire pods with one grenade

@DerBk
Good to know, thanks.

@Dragon: Yes, absofuckinglutely.
I fully stand behind the review i wrote a year ago https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197986016566/recommended/470310/

@DerBK
Would you still recommend Troubleshooter?

@Dragon32, @DerBK, thank you very much for the clarification. This is great news.)

Correct. There are basically two possibilities: Either the third party enemies come with their own AI, then they should be able to do their thing independently from ABAI. Or they use vanilla AI, then ABAI would apply to them.
Most enemies will be somewhere inbetween, using the vanilla movement and general decision making, but their own AI for any fancy abilities they have that vanilla AI can't cover. Many enemies will just be able to use vanilla AI, probably more than you'd expect. The vanilla AI has a surprising amount of stuff covered.

The result of this is that ABAI and other enemies will in the vast majority of cases just work together smoothly without any hiccups at all. And even if there would be hiccups, chances are you wouldn't be able to tell as a player.

@perfect_Prefect
How enemies act is made up of "behaviours", like whether to shoot or move to flank and then shoot. If a mod-added enemy uses vanilla game behaviours then it'll be affected by the changes here. Most enemy mods will add in behaviours so their enemies use their special abilities at the right time.

So, most of the time, basic actions like moving and shooting are affected for all enemies.

How does this mod fit in with third party mods that add new enemies (like "Standalone LWOTC Alien Pack")? As I understand it, the improved AI does not apply to new enemies from other mods? And they will behave according to the standard vanilla pattern?

I see. Thanks for the explanation - and the mod.

The only thing that ABAI does to the Chosen specific AI is replacing their Shoot/Reload/Overwatch selector with the custom one that i added to all units. What that does is checking for Priority Shots (so they will use their weapon to take Flank Shots if available for example) and for smarter Overwatching.

But nothing that would alter their ability use like you describe.

So far I like this mod, first and foremost due to introduced variety to enemies' behavior as you no longer can always predict what are they going to do.
I his FAQ DerBK states that this mod does not significantly alter Chosen behavior and I'm not sure I agree. I don't have any other mods that modify Chosen and so far have only fought the Warlock. In my experience he is now dramatically more annoying and dangerous compare to vanilla, at least at close range where he spams Mind Control and Mind Scorch like there's no tomorrow.
Am I wrong? Could there be some other mod interfering with Chosen behavior?

I dont have any mods that change pod behavior like yellow alert. The only mod that affects enemies right now are A better Chosen and A better AI. Perhaps its a one in a lifetime bug since I didn't have the turrets overwatch in the fog on a alien facility assault and they behaved normally, or maybe its a weird interaction with infiltrate. Anyway, If i see it again, I'll let you know.

That's not something that would be changed by this mod. ABAI doesn't change anything about when enemies trigger, it only influences what they do once triggered.

So if you suspect that a mod changes something for you in that regard, maybe check with something like Yellow Alert or similar mods that do indeed change more than just the behavior trees in the XcomAI.ini.

So i think i might have encountered a bug which im very sure has been reported before. So I had infiltrate active, broke concealment, etc, but then the turrets, despite not even being triggered, went on overwatch. I saw them doing it in the alien turn before I even knew they were there, and I am sure this is unintentional. Is there any way to fix this bug through .ini editing or do I just have to live with turrets ambushing you with overwatch?

It's at least progress, both in the AI reacting to your supression and in using its own.

Not sure i'd really call it "reliable" though.

so is Supression actually reliable now?

Nope, there's no specific Lost-mission AI. A couple of abilities do consider Lost (like Vipers not trying to ensnare them), but that is not really all that possible with AoE attacks (like grenades...) because those use a different targeting.

There were 6 advent enemies throwing grenades is all i meant. But is there no advent lost mission specific ai in the base game regarding explosives? I just assumed they didn't use them at all.

it's fine cause they end up in-fighting, but it can get tedious to watch

I mean, each Muton only has one grenade, so it can't be thaaaat bad unless you blew up the pod sizes a lot. It is true that Mutons are more aggressive about using their grenade with ABAI, though! Specifically, they have a chance of using their grenade against single targets now.

mutons are chain throwing grenades at the lost... is that intentional? seems suicidal. i had 30+ lost on the map at one point

Ok thanks. So I guess I just I didn't want to accept that I got so much worse at the game lol. Used to kinda cruise through Commander Ironman runs with no problems. Last run I did before the long break was one without Squad Size upgrades (to complete 100% achievements).

ABAI didn't really change much over its lifetime, no. Some tweaks here and there, but nothing fundamental like what you are describing. To be honest, i think i have to go with this being a perception thing. For example, Alien Relay missions always had enemies start out in Yellow Alert and rush towards the thing. That's vanilla behaviour, you are there to defend the objective so of course the enemy is already on its way there.
That being said, you end up with one enemy per turn shooting at the relay (while the pod isn't triggered yet) and the relay can take quite a few turns of abuse from a Sectoid gun or a trooper. Now, if you are running some sort of mod that puts all pods on active from the start, then i could see that being a bigger issue as you might then have every pod member shoot on the thing.
But that has nothing to do with the ABAI mod.

Did you make significant changes to AI logic in one of the later updates? I've used this mod since it was released and completed many Ironman campaigns with it, mostly on Commander difficulty. Now after a break of several years I play the game again.

Maybe I'm just rusty but I see things that seem unfair that I don't remember from previous campaigns. In the first mission after Gatecrasher that I just played, all three alien pods on the map rapidly sprinted towards the Alien Relay I have to protect and converge there all in one room, so that it's impossible to not trigger them all at once. That makes the mission unwinnable with the starter squad.

That was the first time where I could witness them doing this because I was trying to catch up with my concealed squad. The aliens didn't even just walk, they RAN in one straight line towards the Relay. But on other missions I also found two or more pods clustered together in the same spot so they seem to be doing this a lot.

Grenades do have the highest priority for Troopers on their second action. So if they do have a good way to hurt multiple of your soldiers, they will take it.

The priority shots are checked right before an enemy would take their normal shot, which comes later.

Has an interesting situation where an ADVENT soldier, response to being flanked, ran into a another flanked position where it had flanking shots at two of my own soldiers. However, instead of taking either of these shots, it instead threw a frag grenade at both of them. Not a bad tactical move all in all, as it ended up cascading the situation into disaster for all the my soldiers that were hit, but wasn't aware it would prioritize an AoE attack over taking one of the flank shots available to it. Is that supposed to happen? Are priority shots guaranteed or is there a degree of RNG involved in the decision process?

The priority shots will still go through the vanilla checks and balances for targeting, so i don't think so. To be fair, i am not 100% on this, but if that were the case then the enemy would just *always* shoot on civvies because they are so unprotected.

Yes, it's true what you say about Bradford telling you via radio. But it's weird I never noticed such a difficulty before (I am actually playing veteran to test your AI mods, previous run was completed in commander difficulty setting). Do you think it could be related to this part of your mod: Priority Shot #2: Shoot when Killshot
An alien that has a target that it can kill and at least a 40% CTH is very likely to take this shot.?

I don't think so, no.

Note that some enemies being hyper aggressive towards civilians is a vanilla WotC feature. Bradford even announces it ...."Some of them are ignoring us just to get a better shot at the civilians" or something like that. That's usually limited to just one pod, i think.