Patching Starfield's AI

I haven't made any secret of my disappointment in Starfield's NPC AI.  The ship combat is okay, but the NPC combat AI is terrible, and one of its worst crimes is leaving enemies just standing there, staring at the wall, while you enter the room and headshot them at your leisure.

Now that XEdit is in an editable state, I've been taking a closer look at the AI. It's going to be a while before I can port PANPC over (a project currently called PAST) - the tools aren't there yet, so that will likely have to wait until Creation Kit is released - but I wanted to see if there was anything I could do in the meantime with what we had.

And oh boy howdy.

I discovered this morning that most Starfield enemies are coded as Unaggressive/Brave, meaning that they generally avoid engaging until they're first attacked, and they will avoid fighting anyone significantly stronger than them. This is almost certainly why they're just standing there: someone at Bethesda coded them to do that, on purpose.

Even Terrormorphs default to Unaggressive/Brave.

In comparison, most enemies in Fallout 4, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 3, and even Skyrim are coded at least as Aggressive/Foolhardy. They fire first, and they do their best to fire last. It's not always the perfect system, but it's a lot better than unaggro-ing everyone.

So that's my first Starfield patch: reflagging enemy NPC templates to at least Aggressive, and many of them to Foolhardy. In initial tests, it definitely seems to bring combat back to life.

I've also made a second patch to improve Vasco and make him a bit more helpful in combat, by cramming Kaiser's combat brain into his white Constellation frame. Vasco's default is to be very defensive, and he is also Unaggressive/Brave. This patch makes him Aggressive/Foolhardy, bumps his health up a bit, and gives him Kaiser's combat tactics. He should now act less like a meek mining droid and more like a repurposed military bot.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Until Creation Kit is released, these should be considered experimental. There's a lot we still don't know yet about this game, and they may have unintended effects. But this is true for any mods released for Starfield right now.

As always, these prototype patches can be found on the GreslinGames Discord, in the #aggressive-enemy-ai and #vasco-combat-ai channels.

Have fun,

- G.

PS: Still working on a PACE update for Fallout 4. Please be patient, thanks!