Comments - Rifle_Infantry

Once again a supremely good mod. Have had immense fun with it so far.

Some suggestions regarding the Combine Soldiers, after having fought them through a fresh playthrough:

There are two particularly annoying behaviors in stock HL2 that soldiers do. As I'm aware, they are programmed to charge the player in two situations: if they have no cover, and if the player hides behind cover (even if for a moment, say passing a pillar between you and them).
The result (particularly from the latter condition) is that soldiers bumrush you one by one in every single firefight, which gets quite annoying. Finding and removing these parts of the soldiers' AI routine would make them far less brainless. Soldiers charging with no cover could be replaced with them simply crouching.

Soldiers in stock HL2 are also pretty unresponsive to being shot. They either crouch, or just sit and take it. Since they don't have a lot of health this ends badly. Having them run for cover when injured would be more preferable (and last longer in combat). To help this they could have a running speed increase; matching the player's speed would mean they'd be quite a bit more mobile and dynamic, just like the Marines from HL1.

Other behaviors in making them last longer could include suppressive fire, self-healing (after all they seem to carry those med-vials) or subtypes like medics or officers that could call in dropships carrying reinforcements.

Thanks for your time and for the awesome mod!

Honestly, the three biggest things soldiers would benefit from AI-wise would be:

- Removing their charging behavior. Soldiers are coded to move to a spot where they see the player if they ever (even for a moment) lose sight of them. This means that soldiers often charge straight into kill zones simply because the player hid behind a crate for 2 seconds. Removing this and letting soldiers stand back and be defensive would be significantly better for combat, as the player would now be able to take cover without having the entire enemy squad immediately rush them.

- Soldiers work on a slot system (you probably already know this) where each squad has two attack slots, one reload slot, one grenade slot, etc. Increasing the number of attack slots and making soldiers not using slots hide behind cover would significantly enhance combat, as it would reduce the amount of soldiers that simply stare at the player and do nothing.

- Soldiers that know where the player is but are standing off from him (i.e. the player is behind cover) should enter a "suppression" slot in which they simply spray at the player's last known location to pin him down while other soldiers try to flank him. If you ever feel like adding some kind of AR3-esque light machine gun you could make soldiers wielding it do this very often. Soldiers could also try to throw grenades more when the player is behind cover, to flush them out.

This looks incredible. Some suggestions:

- There should be options to selectively enable and disable AI usage of weaponry. For instance, you could enable an option that replaces all Combine AR2s and level-spawned AR2s with OICW rifles (if you don't like the Combine using an energy weapon instead of a ballistic rifle). The same could be said for the Rebels and the AK-47.

- Enemy AI could be improved a lot if you're skilled enough to tackle their spaghetti code. Combine soldiers would be a lot harder if their squads had more attack slots, they took cover more often when they weren't doing anything, and they ran a lot faster/were a lot more reactive to being shot than they are in vanilla HL2. Making them more defensive and reducing their tendency to charge forward in combat would also massively help. You could even put in new behaviors for them, like suppressing fire (which they don't do) or covering squadmates.

- Metrocops could use a different palette of weaponry. Metrocops would benefit a lot from firing their MP7s from the shoulder like Rebels, and some could fire shotguns like the Combine shotgun soldiers. Metrocops could also use a few AI enhancements too, including things like reactiveness and cover taking. They could benefit from having a melee attack like the soldiers; perhaps they'd use their weapon's butt, or even take out their stunstick.

- Rebels should be shootable or at least not solid to the player after a second or two, to keep them from blocking doors. They could also use a bit of variation; perhaps rebels might rarely have an Overwatch body armor vest on, improving their health to soldier standards, or some might throw grenades or even Molotov cocktails if those are present.

- Combine soldiers should no longer instantly die from Antlions, just take around 10 or so damage. The Antlions make most of Nova Prospekt pathetically easy normally due to their instant-kill properties.

- Elite soldiers should be able to throw grenades just like regular soldiers. They could also benefit from some kind of command effect; perhaps increasing the accuracy or durability of nearby soldiers as long as they are alive.

RIP BLOODCRUSHER II: AN UNUSUAL TUESDAY

THE FIRST GRUNT ON E1M1 SEEMS TO HAVE GOTTEN IT