The AI is what it is, and it is beside the point. We all know how it is, how it can be and how it will never be.
Fighters have the same overall AI, which is not much of I and very A. That you dont need a “degree” on Unreal Engine to know. Simplest designs show how it could be better:
(The simulating I keep talking about right there even)
But the fighters are not the problem, or A BIG problem. They can be buffed by admin or mod intervention, and we can deal with it.
Archers on the other hand suffer much more from the problem, and we as modders cannot really make something about it simply by changing stuff “correctly”, because their code inherently ignores changes and behave their stupid selves again.
You need to change the BT and the Blueprint, and a ton of stuff, sometimes hard editing, to prevent them from simply trying to go out and shoot enemies even if you set them up all to prevent them from simply turning their backs to enemies and taking all hits. They dont consider if one enemy that keeps coming at them is there, and they have a nice strong melee weapon, that they should use it.
I have set up my dialogue mod to have a “admin” visor, in which several data from the game are shown, here in the kit, but I can use in the game in my local mods:
There is simply no data on the AI for it to know how to react to circumstances whatsoever. They simply “take the hits”. Even if they are the one fighter facing the one enemy, that is not an archer.
I have seen in the code, both devkit and game, the place in which they SHOULD decide to use another weapon, rush the enemy, flee or etc, but the code to DO IT wont work if they cant be activated to do it by circumstances. Also code that gets them to equip weapon if they have one and need one, does not work in many cases and your thrall will punch a fully armored enemy sometimes even if they have an epic sword.
So what I ask is:
Either make a more flexible AI, or allow modders direct access to the commands of simple actions on the NPCs that we dont need to hard edit on them. Like offering a direct way for us to set up the conditions to “unequip” or “select weapon”.
And before someone mention “Melee distance” measure, I know that exists, we can change it, it does not change their behavior. You can set an archer to use 60 000 as the distance to use melee, they will still have an enemy at 30, 40, and still will WALK (not even run) trying to get in distance and equip a bow.
I often look for ways to mod my game and not care about problems. I have made an editing system for journals because journals scramble your text while editing if certain things happen. I have made a system to prevent thralls from being stuck in doorways because they tend to try to “pass through the wall instead of the door” if there is something else close to the door.
Made a system that happily could be tweaked to prevent them from blocking me in doorways when they are following me:
However I have tried a lot to make a system so archers stop being dumb, and for the most part, unless I rebuild the hierarchy from the Base BP Combat onwards, they keep reverting to the stupid behavior no matter how much the components added, or the changes in even BT (it requires to be compatible with the game’s one, I cant just build a BT from the ground up and apply it to the NPC, as it wont work, unless I also rebuild the whole system that feeds it)
So either the functions given work (like manipulating the hate list, setting dynamically the distance to change weapons, deactivating the system that makes them decide to go somewhere no matter what you tell them, etc), or give more freedom for modders to change the behavior of thralls, like replacing the decisions and telling them “Go here”, “Equip this until I tell you change”, “dont turn your back idiot”, and etc.
The only way I can prevent stupid behaviors and have some use of archers is to use a component to take their bows away when they are fighting and they should not use it, the same way that is done with the shields so the fighters dont loop shield until they die.