Blocking doorways with immobilized enemies should really be looked at.

[Tamior]

At least on DOMINATING.

The problem: by using a combination of root/stun/incapacitate/freeze on an enemy in the doorway, player can effectively prevent ANY number of enemies from being able to attack in ANY way because they can't get pass the immobilized target in the doorway. However, since there are no readied actions or overwatch mechanic, the player is still perfectly able to attack the enemies (by going into line of sight at the start of the turn and hiding behind cover at the end of the turn). This effectively makes player invulnerable.

Why this is really bad: with proper rotation of immobilization effects (most easily achieved by psion or trapper, but practically any build can pull it off to some degree), there is no limit to how long you can keep the doorway choked, or how many enemies you can control this way. Having a single target permanently immobilized is already somewhat of an issue, but the REAL problem is that it effectively makes it so that immobilizing ONE enemy is the same as immobilizing ALL of them. This makes combat hilariously easy and risk-free even of dominating.

Potential solutions:
1) Give all mobs an ability to push immobilized targets, give mobs capable of advanced item manipulation (those that can open doors) an ability to switch places with immobilized targets. Something like 20 AP action to push/switch places with a target of smaller size (human pushing a dog, etc), 50 AP with a with a target of the same size (human pushing human) and impossible with target that is much larger/heavier (human vs industrial bot). Maybe only enable this on higher difficulties (looking at you, dominating).
2) Improve mobs AI to the point where they don't fall for that (seems extremely unlikely to be actually possible to code, but theoretically it would work).
3) Remove choke-points from most maps or make enemies capable of taking down walls (another unlikely solution because this would require a great amount go map re-design).

P.S. While we are at it, force field also needs to be looked at for similar reasons, see: https://steamcommunity.com/app/250520/discussions/0/1744480967004247900/

[ciox]

The most elegant way to handle this would be to make enemies AI behave more like the player would, and have them pull back to cover so that they can't be sniped anymore... they already do this sometimes as they have some code that makes them take cover and break LOS after they shoot at the player, but being able to shoot at the player at least once seems to be a pre-requisite.

Forcefields have always felt fine to me and their invulnerability is great at letting you direct enemies on a certain path and so on, all that would go away in a flash if they can be shot at. If there's anything I would change about forcefields is allow the player to cast forcefields of different durations.

[Tamior]

As much as I'd love an AI solution, I don't think it's possible to code, because it would basically require for the AI to have actual situational awareness and long-term memory/planning.


As for force field, it's just too good.
With "force user" even the most basic use of force field effectively gives you 4 turns of complete safety to rest/heal/recharge/refresh cooldowns/wait out negatives/etc/etc + you get to start a turn with full AP/MP even if you used FF as the last action on the turn you created it.
Also, if you want to "direct enemies on a certain path", you can still do it via creation of damaging tiles (acid/fire).

[Styg]

As you guys assumed, in order to really fix this through AI, it would require a complete AI overhaul where the NPCs would be able to strategies in mid and long-term. And, of course, at this point that is not going to happen.

Some sort of push out option (where an NPC can push his comrade out of the way if he's stunned/incapacitated) might be at least relatively effective, so I'll look into that when I get the time.

Forcefield - I'm considering making it destructible with its health scaling with skill.

At the very least, in the future, we're going to avoid encounter design where many enemies can be lured to such choke points easily.