Suppression

The vanilla suppression AI for Mutons and MECs does little more than check for own hitchances and if they are low enough, use suppression on the nearest unit. With A Better ADVENT, this behavior got a rework that takes into account the wider availability of Suppression thanks to ADVENT Captains now also being able to use it.

There are two distinct behavior trees for supression use, one for pod leaders (Mutons and ADVENT Captains), one for followers (MECs, Troopers, Mutons). Followers will not initiate Suppression on their own, but will fall in with any suppression fire that is already happening. Both leaders and followers will use Suppression as a tool to negate enemy Overwatches and Suppression.

Details:

  • ADVENT Captains check if they should initiate suppression based on the number of allies they have. Suppression isn’t worth much without allies to take advantage of it. This check happens after they checked for priority shots and the viability of their grenade, but before they consider their regular shoot/overwatch/reload routine.
  • If there are more than 2 allies on the field, the chance to initiate suppression is 90%
  • If there are 2 allies on the field, the chance is 50%.
  • If there is 1 ally on the field, the chance is 10%.
  • If a Captain can see an XCOM soldier that is using Suppression or Overwatch, the Captain will remove this by counter-suppressing on that soldier. The chance for this is 100%.
  • If there are only bad shots available (all hit chances <25%), the Captain has a 50% chance to initiate suppression on the closest target.
  • ADVENT Troopers and MECs with suppression will not initiate suppression themselves, but they will fall in with existing suppression. The chance for this is 50%, rolled seperately for every already existing suppression source.
  • The enemy will not use multiple instances of suppression on the same target, they will spread out their fire to inconvenience as many soldiers as possible.
  • Mutons use both of these routines, meaning they can initiate suppression like a Captain, but they will also fall in like Troopers.