Setting rudeness aside, I've played with this mod off and on over the past few weeks and it has been a mixed bag for me. I understand it is a WIP, so I'm not complaining, just giving feedback about the AI behavior.
Some of the behavior is really interesting and innovative, like when units surrender to other units. Sometimes they will actually give medical attention to enemy units who have surrendered, and then arrest them, which is excellent.
That said, the AI does tend to do some rather odd things almost every time I play with this mod activated. I've used the "TroopMon2" mod to monitor the AI with SLX in different situations and I've noticed that sometimes AI's can be looking right at each other, but not seem to be aware of each other until one AI finally realizes that there is an enemy 10 feet right in front of him and finally decides to shoot him. Other times, the AI rushes head on into bullets firing in their direction which makes no sense. The behavior is different every time, which makes it hard to pin down recurring patterns to help troubleshoot. I'm trying to find a particular recurring pattern that could be corrected, but I haven't narrowed it down enough yet.
Finally, I have two suggested improvements to the "vanilla" AI which I think would go a long way toward making them seem more human. Whether this is something that Solus thinks he could tackle or not, I have no idea, but they are just ideas.
1. Awareness of which directions are likely or unlikely positions for enemy units to be. As humans, we know that if we just cleared a southern town, and then start taking fire from a large group of infantry north of the town, there is very little reason to be watching the southern direction or to be cautious about moving in that direction to take cover. It would be nice if there were a way for the AI to figure out on its own if a particular direction is likely or unlikely to be a possible attack vector, and adjust behavior appropriately. If this can't be done dynamically, having a way for mission designers to designate these areas would also help. I notice that a lot of the time I'm monitoring the AI, when they are actively being shot at from the north, sometimes every single unit in the fireteam chooses to watch the southern direction, even with the AI skill turned all the way up. I don't know how much memory it would eat up or how much performance would be affected, but it would help if the AI could at least keep a running memory of recent areas it has been through and likely to still be relatively safe.
2. It would be nice if there were a way to modify waypoints and tell the AI that when moving to this waypoint, there is no need to follow a straight path. Try and work out a more tactically advantageous path to take to that waypoint. This would be especially useful if the AI had some awareness of where enemy locations are likely to be. It would be nice to set a waypoint toward an enemy position and have the AI dynamically choose on their own to take a longer, but safer route towards that point where they can have the best access to cover, concealment, or both along the way. It would be an even neater trick if the mission designer could tell the AI "this is where enemies are likely to be", and the AI would attempt to position themselves in the best spot around that position to fire on them from as much cover/concealment safety as possible, and to attempt gaining an elevation advantage.
I realize this is WAY easier said than done. But it really would be something to see it happen.
---------- Post added at 05:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:56 PM ----------
Also, I just want to add that sometimes, it is difficult for us as humans to understand why an AI is behaving the way it is. Sometimes, we might think the AI is doing something dumb, when it is actually doing something pretty smart. The TroopMon2 mod helps, but it would be really useful if we could get some kind of running debug output while monitoring an AI that says "This is what I'm doing and why" kind of thing:
Taking Fire from North
Enemy Not Spotted
Looking for Cover from direction: North
