[35.12] BGEE AI weirdness

[Opipo]

Ok there are following issues with the attached picture

First of all, the Stun ( and this is not the first occurrence). Unlike in the unmodded game, where getting stunned is a death sentence , enemies here decisively ignore stunned party members, in fact enemies explicitly switch targets, to the point where i started to classify Stun as Damage Immunity.

Secondly, The Charm. My MC got Charmed and then proceeded to stand there, doing absolutely nothing for the whole duration, and i feel like this another case of Ultimate Protection.

Next, Nimbul could prioritize targets(switched targets to charm the MC), but then switched back to the Tank(Viconia) and proceeded to attempt to backstab her despite not having a slightest chance of hitting her despite having one-shottable high AC targets right next to both sides of him.

So what happened here Nimbul went in, stunned one dps, charmed the other, and then suicided on the tank, despite easily being capable to delete the encounter. And i feel like this is not how it  should have played out.

I have only CDTweaks and SCS installed

 

 

WeiDU.log

Edited May 5 by Opipo

[jmerry]

37 minutes ago, Opipo said:

Secondly, The Charm. My MC got Charmed and then proceeded to stand there, doing absolutely nothing for the whole duration, and i feel like this another case of Ultimate Protection.

There are different kinds of charm. A PC hit with Charm Person will just stand there doing nothing. A PC hit with Dire Charm will attack their former allies. Charm Person is on some of the offensive spell lists SCS uses, so that's certainly an option. I'm guessing this version of Nimbul was an Enchanter, using Hold Person to disable one PC and Charm Person on the other.

Now, the combat log there ... Nimbul has issues with trying to backstab, as he's carrying both throwing axes and a +1 short sword. Same damage, and the "choose highest-damage melee" action picks the axes every time. Which can't backstab, so oops. The SCS thief AI just isn't set up for thieves that have non-backstab melee weapons. He could have tried a spell, but I doubt he had any offensive spells left with a decent chance of breaking through Viconia's resistances.

Having enemies attack non-disabled targets preferentially is ... a choice. It (in theory) improves their odds of winning the encounter outright and completely beating you, while reducing the chances of them taking out some of the party and dying. Here, up against what looks like a warrior Viconia with ankheg plate armor and high strength, he really didn't have any realistic chance in that fight. Though if he had switched to the short sword and backstabbed properly, that stab gets +4 to hit and ignores DEX ... effective THAC0 10 versus AC -1 or -2 (is that a plain shield or a +1?), for close to a 50% chance to hit and (1d6+1)*3 damage - that kills more than a quarter of the time, if she started the fight with those 12 HP.

But Nimbul can't actually backstab because of his weapon mixup, so that's moot and the worst he can do in melee is a max-damage critical for 14 points.

[polytope]

The Charm  issue, as jmerry says, is an opcode-level thing, there's a distinct difference between Dire Charm/Domination and regular Charm when cast by the AI in terms of how much control they get over the victim (Charm simply leaves the character unable to act, effectively Feebleminded for the short duration), that part seems okay, it's a 1st lvl spell or 2nd for druids, what's worse is that it's more powerful when cast by the party as you can give them orders, it breaks parity.

Enemies ignoring held/stunned party members if there are active ones in their field of view was a design decision, but as you noticed it actually makes it easier to kite enemies so long as one person makes their saves or has immunity and still remains visible to the enemy. When I first downloaded SCS so many years ago I noticed it helped me avoid potentially TPK scenarios against Spirit Trolls (the spell-casting version).

3 hours ago, jmerry said:

Now, the combat log there ... Nimbul has issues with trying to backstab, as he's carrying both throwing axes and a +1 short sword. Same damage, and the "choose highest-damage melee" action picks the axes every time. Which can't backstab, so oops. The SCS thief AI just isn't set up for thieves that have non-backstab melee weapons. He could have tried a spell, but I doubt he had any offensive spells left with a decent chance of breaking through Viconia's resistances.

It's amazing that in all these years no one seemed interested to fix this and just give that guy throwing daggers, which is what you'd expect a mage/thief to carry and (legally) use.

[Opipo]

Ah, a less potent charm? I see. I thought here for a second everything was broken. And ye, the long term strategy of ignoring disabled targets has a merit to exist i suppose, and is easier on player's sanity too.

This Viconia has no magic res (this would be too much for her planned future profession), the sun ate it all away,  but she does have a shield +1 for a resulting -2 AC indeed. They were on their way to the inn to visit free healing  Branwen.

[DavidW]

Right since its creation, SCS has deprioritized attacking incapacitated opponents. The logic (and this is BG logic originally, not BG2 - SCS was written originally as a BG mod) was that the player normally can't reverse incapacitation effects during a battle, so enemies might as well wait to kill incapacitated opponents until after actively-dangerous ones have been dealt with. SCS assumes that enemies are fighting to win, not just to inflict pain on the party, even when we as the players know that they're not going to win. (Killing an incapacitated Player 1 ends the game, but in-world the enemies still don't win if they get killed by CHARNAME's allies after his/her death). It's also true that getting enemies to prioritize the incapacitated tends to mean a lot of tedious resurrection even when overall you comfortably win the fight.

In BG2 it is somewhat easier to reverse incapacitation, and later versions of SCs are a bit more willing to finish off the incapacitated, but the basic design issue remains.

I don't hugely mind kiting enemies away from your temporarily-incapacitated opponents. It's not that unrealistic in the heat of battle, and it's probably more fun.

Yeah, Nimbul should be using something that allows sneak attack. Though I'm reluctant just to swap out his axes - I like the flavor of them. Will consider.

 

 

[boof]

On 5/6/2024 at 12:01 AM, Opipo said:

Ah, a less potent charm? I see. I thought here for a second everything was broken.

You can always edit the spell in Near Infinity and just replace the effect with dire charm instead of charm. That will get charmed people to act when hit with the low level charm spell. That's what I did since getting charmed and then just standing made no sense to me and like you said just seemed broken.

[polytope]

On 5/6/2024 at 1:01 PM, DavidW said:

Right since its creation, SCS has deprioritized attacking incapacitated opponents. The logic (and this is BG logic originally, not BG2 - SCS was written originally as a BG mod) was that the player normally can't reverse incapacitation effects during a battle, so enemies might as well wait to kill incapacitated opponents until after actively-dangerous ones have been dealt with. SCS assumes that enemies are fighting to win, not just to inflict pain on the party, even when we as the players know that they're not going to win.

This makes sense for Feebleminded characters who indeed could be left for last, but most incapacitating effects in BG1 (Tutu and EE anyway, but I know SCS just doesn't work on OBG1) last less than 1 turn. Also, even without BG2/EE spells the player has Remove Paralysis, Free Action, Yeslick's dispel etc. It's true that Confusion can't be removed reliably until BG2, and Confused/Panicked/Blinded PCs should definitely be de-prioritized in scripts. On the other hand, I think the AI of melee fighters (not spellcasters) really should take advantage of auto-hits on the Held, Sleeping or Stunned (even if the latter aren't supposed to be auto-hit) except when responding to melee attacks on themselves, otherwise they tend to be led on a wild goose chase which wastes the duration of the disabling effect.

[zenblack]

I agree, especially in BG1. Monsters should take some advantage on your characters when they were actually able to land a disable. I'm sure you could finesse it so that they do some damage but don't totally go for the throat every time someone is disabled.

[jmerry]

Do you mean "monsters" or "hostile NPCs"? As I recall, the SCS AI varies some.

- Carrion crawlers. Disable anyone that's fighting back, then nibble away.

- Spiders. Absolutely bite anyone that's webbed, because they could easily be free next round. Land that poison now.

- Humanoids. You want to win the fight, so disable everyone you can and focus damage efforts on the ones that are still fighting.