<font size="">New feature: AI gets medics and officers, and we learn how to spot them</font>
Enemy soldiers are pretty nondescript. Wether or not they become a primary target for us mainly depends on the threat (=gun) they pose. Boring. We also do not know that until they use this. More boring. Even worse, observing what the enemy does does not result in any additional information on them. Boo-oring. :sleep:
Another problem is that in the few cases where an enemy should become a high-value target (mortar guys, snipers, radio operators) we do not know that until its too late. We can use tooltips, but that might feel like cheating, and we have to hover over each guy, which is tedious.
I've now changed that. Now, if your mercs see an enemy, they might gain a bit of information on him. If your team has collected enough information, they know his role. Think of it as seeing a guy with an antenna, and then deducting that he might be the guy that radioed artillery on your squad. Or the other guy, with that shiny uniform and the medals? He might be an officer of sorts. Taking him out might sow confusion among enemy ranks.
At the moment, the following enemy roles have been defined:
1 - officers
2 - medics
3 - snipers - anyone with a sniper rifle (trait not required)
4 - radio operators - anyone with the radio operator and a working radio set
5 - mortar guys - anyone with a mortar (trait not required)
What is an officer you ask? Well, if the enemy team size is high enough, a soldier with the squadleader trait might become an officer. His officer rank equals the number of his squadleader traits, so there are 2 stages. The highest-ranking officer grants boni to suppression resistance and morale to the entire enemy team in the sector. So these guys are very, very high-value targets.
Another new addition are enemy medics. These guys are enemies that have a first aid or med kit and the doctor trait. They will seek out wounded comrades and bandage and heal them: they perform surgery on them, like your doctors can do. For balancing reasons, they perform it slightly different, can do surgery just with a first aid kit, and drain their kits less. A medic can restore a lot of enemy health points if 'not taken care of', thereby greatly increasing their chances of survival.
A medic in action (you might want to view this in fullscreen). You can also see how to turn the symbol display on and off via the [Ctrl] + [c] menu.
Relevant ini settings:
[Tactical Enemy Role Settings]
;******************************************************************************************************************************
; These settings allow enemy soldiers to gain certain abilities that will allow them to play a number of roles and make combat harder.
;******************************************************************************************************************************
; allow enemy roles, required for the following settings
ENEMYROLES = TRUE
; If player mercs observe enemy soldiers, they can uncover their role once they have been seen a least this many turns.
; The following roles will be indicated by small icon next to the soldiers (can be toggled in the [CTRL] + [c] menu):
; - officers
; - medics
; - radio operators
; - snipers
; - mortarmen
ENEMYROLES_TURNSTOUNCOVER = 6
; allow AI medics for the enemy team. A soldier spawning with a first aid or med kit can become a doctor.
; AI doctors bandage their wounded comrades and perform surgery on them. They do so much faster than the player mercs.
; Requires ENEMYROLES to be TRUE.
ENEMY_MEDICS = TRUE
; As the AI will likely have a much higher consumption of medical supplies, you can reduce the med kit drain
; This allows the AI to heal more wounded before its medkits run out
; 0.1 means drain is only 10%. Default 0.1, values between 0.01 and 1.0.
ENEMY_MEDICS_MEDKITDRAINFACTOR = 0.1
; radius in which a medic searches for patients. Targets farer away are ignored. It is required that the medic sees the patient
; Default 20, values between 5 and 60.
ENEMY_MEDICS_SEARCHRAIUS = 20
; allow AI officers for the AI team. An officer is a soldier with the squadleader trait. There are two stages of this:
; a officer with squadleader trait is considered a lieutnant, an officer with squadleader(expert) is a captain.
; For now, a officer grants 2 boni to the entire enemy team present:
; - a bonus to suppression resistance
; - a percentage bonus to morale
; Important: Only the bonus of the highest officer present counts.
; Requires ENEMYROLES to be TRUE.
ENEMY_OFFICERS = TRUE
; for every officer, the enemy team needs at least this many soldiers total
ENEMY_OFFICERS_REQUIREDTEAMSIZE = 10
; maximum number of officers the enemy team may ever have
ENEMY_OFFICERS_MAX = 4
; The boni listed here are for lieutnant, they are doubled for captains.
; bonus to suppression resistance of the entire enemy team if officer is present. Default 10, values between 0 and 50.
ENEMY_OFFICERS_SUPPRESSION_RESISTANCE_BONUS = 10
; bonus to morale of the entire enemy team if officer is present. 0.1 means a 10% bonus. Default 0.1, values between 0.0 and 1.0.
ENEMY_OFFICERS_MORALE_MODIFIER = 0.1
Does not break savegame compatibility.
This was added to the trunk in r7072 and GameDir r1987.