AlifeTactics next

Test build. Changelog: doc/changelog next block.

AlifeTactics 1.2.0

1.2.0
Summary: Difficulty rebalance, Tracking Lock, Gear, Vision Range, Reload Cover, cover posture, Perception menu, maneuver fixes, Useful Idiots compatibility, Ballistics Overhaul compatibility

Combat
Maneuvers
- Changed Reload Cover to send the reloading stalker to the nearest cover that breaks your line, not the best-hidden spot anywhere in reach, so he clears your sights fast while his gun is down.
It now triggers whenever you have him in view with a raised weapon, not only when you aim straight at him.
- Fixed stalkers not using low cover they could shoot over. The shot check now uses eye height, where the gun fires from, instead of chest height,
so a low wall no longer reads as blocking the shot.
- Fixed a cornered stalker taking a kite step under a metre that did nothing. A kite now runs only when its end puts the enemy back outside his minimum weapon range,
so a cornered stalker holds and fights instead. The kite path is checked for obstacles, so he no longer runs into a tree or crate.
- Fixed a maneuver driving a stalker after he collapsed wounded. It ends the instant he goes down, and the wounded behavior takes him over cleanly.
- Fixed maneuvers starting on, or re-applying to, a body mid-animation: a hit stagger, a script pose, or the hit flinch where the exe exposes it.
The animation finishes first and the maneuver waits, so AlifeTactics never moves a body that is still animating.
- Fixed the combat takeover freezing companions in place during emissions when Useful Idiots is installed, so a companion caught in a surge runs for cover again.
The takeover used a reserved planner id that mod also uses for its emission-shelter scheme, so it moved to a free id and no longer installs on companions it never drives.
Conduct
- Fixed cover posture crouching a stalker while he moved to cover. The crouch now applies only when he holds position, so a stalker walking or running stays standing
instead of crouching the whole way.
- Changed cover posture so a stalker crouches only when he can still hit the enemy from the crouch, checked against the real shot line instead of a rough reading that could leave him firing
into the wall he ducked behind. He crouches only past 20m, and only some stalkers crouch by nature, so a firing line mixes standing and crouched shooters instead of the whole squad dropping at once.

Effectiveness
Accuracy
- Rebalanced every per-rank curve, accuracy, aim tracking, and vision, using data collected from players. NPCs are calmer and less jumpy: the whole range now sits in a tight band around the base game,
with the top ranks a small step above it instead of the old aggressive spikes.
- Changed the per-rank aim spread so a novice shoots exactly like a vanilla stalker instead of spraying wider, and a legend is tight but not pinpoint.
Aim spread applies only against an exposed or still target, so it rewards holding cover and does not penalize a player who keeps moving.
- Changed the Moving Fire defaults to keep a visible movement penalty at every rank. A legend now keeps about a third of the moving spread instead of removing it,
so firing from a fixed position is more accurate than firing on the run.
Reaction
- Added Tracking Lock, a per-rank control for how tightly a stalker holds a moving target. A novice's aim still lags and you can dodge it exactly like vanilla.
A legend keeps the barrel on you across the firing window, without the locked-on aim of the game's hardcore option, so movement always matters.
- Changed Tracking Speed to control barrel move speed alone, now paired with Tracking Lock. Every rank starts at the vanilla speed and a legend tops out well below the game's hardcore aim,
so no stalker tracks worse than the base game and none tracks perfectly. (xray-dependent)
- Changed Burst Size so a high rank fires a shorter, tighter burst, since only a burst's opening rounds hit true and the rest spray.

Perception
Sound
- Fixed heard noise producing no reaction on modpacks that mute NPC sound perception. The alert now wakes the danger scheme on its own, where before it fired only when the engine happened
to perceive a danger of its own at the same moment.
- Changed movement and landing noise to scale with the installed pack's own NPC hearing tuning, so a stealth rebalance that deafens stalkers quiets your footsteps by the same ratio.
Vanilla and GAMMA tuning are unchanged.
Vision
- Changed Vision Speed, how fast a stalker turns a glimpse into a confirmed threat. Every rank now confirms at least as fast as the base game, a novice matching vanilla and a legend at +21%,
so a high-rank squad is more alert with no rank detecting slower than vanilla. Point-blank detection is unaffected.
- Added Vision Range, alongside Vision Speed: how far out a stalker begins to notice a threat, a novice at vanilla and a legend at +15%. Vision now has its own page holding both curves.
(xray-dependent, inactive on older exes)
Danger
- Changed the menu. The old Danger tab is now Perception, the vision curves moved out of Reaction into their own Vision page, and the Hit and Fixes pages folded into one Danger page
with the always-on crash fixes shown as locked toggles. Affected settings reset to defaults once.

Mechanics
Healing
- Fixed the bandaging gesture playing on a walking stalker, which froze his legs and made him slide. The gesture now waits until he stands still.
Gear
- Added Gear: the items a stalker carries give him combat bonuses, each read from its own game data so any artefact from any mod works. Gravity, chemical, and armour-plate artefacts cut
the damage he takes, thermal artefacts tighten his fire, and electric and quest artefacts raise the damage he deals, each up to 10 percent and never stacking so the strongest source wins.
An artefact carrier distorts the air around his body, so you can spot one and kill him for the artefact. Binoculars and night-vision extend his sight range (xray-dependent, inactive on older exes).
- Added chemical-artefact regeneration (xray-dependent): a chemical carrier slowly heals over time, in place of the damage cut it gives on older exes.
- Added Ballistics Overhaul and Close Quarter Combat compatibility for Gear: their shared grok_bo hit system recomputes a hit you land on an NPC from the weapon and applies it itself, which cancelled the NPC's artefact damage resistance.
AlifeTactics now reapplies the resistance to the damage grok_bo dealt, so a geared NPC resists your shots there as it does anywhere. It hooks whichever of the two is live, and is inactive when neither is installed.

Development
- Changed the two world recorders into one. The Ballistics toggle is gone, and World behaviour debug now records both the slide watchdog and the shot-outcome tables into alifetactics_world.log.
- Added a combat-escape warning: if another combat brain takes a stalker out from under an open maneuver, the log names the foreign owner once,
so a modpack conflict is reportable instead of invisible.
- Added over-speed detection to World behaviour debug: a body moving faster than its own config allows is logged with the measured rate, catching a slide while walking that the slide watchdog cannot see.
- Added a maneuver-pass timing line: with debug on, the combat monitor times each full pass over the tracked stalkers and logs a periodic average and peak, so a slowdown reads as a measured cost
instead of a guess.
- Added a flush-every-line log option that writes each line to disk at once instead of buffering, so a crash keeps its final log lines for a report.
- Added wounded-medkit logging: when a downed stalker spends a medkit to get back up, one you gave him, a rescuer's, or the automatic one, the log names which medkit it was,
so a heal vanilla does silently is no longer invisible in a report.

AlifeTactics 1.1.6

1.1.6
Summary: Reload Cover, Pickoff, Cover posture, Movement and handling noise, neutral gunfire alert, cover pinning, combat-paused healing, target lead, fire discipline, world-behaviour debug

Combat
Maneuvers
- Added Reload Cover: a stalker caught reloading in your line of fire runs to the nearest cover, and his weapon finishes reloading on the way.
It fires when you could actually hit him - you hold a weapon, face him, and nothing blocks the shot. Reloading out of your line stays put. Needs demonized 20260722 or newer, inactive on older exes.
- Fixed maneuvers interrupting reloads: a maneuver's fire order no longer cancels an NPC's reload in progress,
ending the rack-restart-rack loop visible when pressing a reloading NPC at close range. He walks weapon-up until the reload finishes, then fires.
- Changed Snipe into Pickoff, now for any weapon: a stalker who has his enemy outranged in a standoff stands his ground
and picks him off with deliberate single shots, 1 aimed round every 1.5-2 seconds, tighter at high rank.
He plants only comfortably beyond his enemy's effective range and breaks off the moment the enemy closes back in, takes fire, or lands under your crosshair.
Shots follow where his weapon actually points, with recoil, and his accuracy comes from the rank curve alone.
- Changed maneuver fire to vary like the engine's own: burst length and pauses roll fresh each burst inside the per-weapon ranges
and follow the Fire Discipline rank curve, so a maneuver-held master fires tighter than a rookie.
Commitment
- Added cover pinning: a stalker firing with a clear shot keeps his cover instead of sliding to a marginally better one, ending the mid-fight cover strafe.
Its own toggle. Needs demonized 20260722 or newer, inactive on older exes.
Conduct
- Added Cover posture: experienced riflemen and snipers crouch when real chest-high cover stands toward their enemy and stand when it does not,
replacing vanilla's blind posture picks (crouching behind random bumps and firing into them). Reads the game's own cover map.
They crouch only at a range that suits the weapon - a rifleman past about 24m, a sniper past about 45m - so they never drop to a knee at your feet in a close fight.
Needs demonized 20260722 or newer, inactive on older exes.

Effectiveness
Accuracy
- Changed the Accuracy page to independent switches for the Dispersion and Moving Fire curves, replacing the single master.
Disclosure
- Changed disclosure so the squad turns on the shooter: he enters their seen memory, the class target selection ranks first.
Before, a distant visible enemy always outranked him. A toggle keeps the softer disclosure. Needs demonized 20260722 or newer, previous behavior on older exes.
Reaction
- Added Target Lead: NPCs lead a moving target by the round's real flight time, computed from range and bullet speed as they fire.
Top ranks lead on the mark and hit movers, low ranks over-lead and overshoot, and the error scales with range instead of the old fixed overshoot.
- Added Fire Discipline: higher ranks fire crisper short bursts at a tighter cadence, low ranks stay vanilla.
Defaults keep every rank's rounds per minute at or above vanilla. Needs demonized 20260722 or newer, inactive on older exes.
- Changed the Reaction page to independent switches with per-rank curves for Tracking Speed, Vision Speed, Target Lead, and Fire Discipline.

Danger
Sound
- Added Movement noise: hostile stalkers hear you move. Footsteps carry by stance, surface, and weather.
Crouched movement is silent. A 5m walking base, x1.6 sprinting, a 10m jump landing. Surfaces: metal x1.25, wood x1.15, water x1.35, grass x0.7, dirt and sand x0.8. Rain cuts carry by up to 40 percent.
Reaction follows the evidence: a heard walk turns him weapon-ready toward the sound, a sprint or a landing sends him walking over to check the spot.
A sound never reads as a confirmed enemy: he investigates at a walk, never charges, does not learn where you are, and combat is untouched.
- Added Handling noise: a reload racked nearby or an empty click sends a hostile checking the spot, an item used turns him weapon-ready, all at shorter reach than movement.
- Added Neutral gunfire alert: neutral and friendly stalkers go weapon-ready facing shots you fire close to them.
They never turn hostile and settle down when the shooting stops.
- Added a carry distance slider scaling all noise.
Fixes
- Changed Player ranges to apply only when the installed danger script itself uses the separate actor tables,
so a config that ships the section unused keeps its own tuning.

Mechanics
Healing
- Changed self-healing to pause while a stalker is actively fighting - weapon in hand on a live enemy, or an enemy at contact range.
Healing resumes when the fight lets go and no charge is lost. A fight can no longer be healed through faster than the damage arrives.
- Fixed limping in combat: a hurt stalker's limp is dropped the instant a fight starts, so one pulled into a fight while limping no longer keeps the hurt pose or slides when shot mid-limp.

Development
World behaviour
- Added World behaviour debug: a toggle that watches the combat NPCs near you and logs anything visibly wrong -
a body sliding without a walk, crouch and stand flickering, aiming off the target it sees, a reload that never finishes, or an animation pinning the body during a hit.
Each line names the system driving that NPC (maneuver, Commitment, or vanilla). Its own log, off by default, free while off.
Debug HUD
- Changed the debug HUD to colour every row by which combat system holds the NPC: green a maneuver, blue Commitment, mauve Conduct, plain vanilla,
with the active state named in its own cell.

AlifeTactics 1.1.5

1.1.5
Summary: Counterflank, Reaction, Commitment, player-only maneuvers, no dead windows, danger from your setup, performance, fixes

Combat
Maneuvers
- Added Counterflank: a stalker firing at a distant target wheels around when you close to contact range instead of giving you his back.
- Added per-weapon-kind fire: pistol and rifle bursts, single sniper shots, in place of the uniform 5-round burst.
- Changed targeting: maneuvers now weigh range, angle, line of sight, and cover, run only in fights you are in, and drop those that would change nothing.
- Changed retreat and flee: retreats reach real cover behind the stalker, cornered stalkers hold their ground, and cowardly factions flee before they fight.
Commitment
- Added Commitment: stalkers see a fight through instead of twitchy strafing and cover-hopping.
A stalker keeps his fire, presses a flank, or finishes a reload rather than dropping a good action for a marginally better one, breaking off only when it stops making sense.
Needs a recent engine build.

Effectiveness
Accuracy
- Added Moving Fire, a per-rank curve: fire on the move scales by rank, so low ranks spray while repositioning and top ranks stay steady.
Danger
- Changed detection to read from your installed config instead of overriding its tuning.
- Fixed enemy gunfire to alert stalkers even when not aimed at them.
- Fixed scripted danger carrying over to a reused id on respawn.
- Fixed a corpse-investigation crash when its reaction fired before its stage was set.
Reaction
- Added Tracking Speed, a per-rank curve for how tightly the barrel follows a moving target.
- Added Vision Speed, a per-rank curve for detection speed at range.
Both are set per stalker at spawn and need a recent engine build.

Mechanics
Healing
- Fixed the master toggle only applying after a game restart.
Jamming
- Fixed it to stay inert on engines without the misfire hook instead of failing when disabled.
Ammo
- Fixed armor-piercing rounds reverting on the wrong weapon after a mid-fight switch.

Performance
- Changed all combat, healing, and ammo monitoring to run on scheduled passes instead of per-frame callbacks. The whole mod now costs 3 timer compares per frame, whatever the NPC count.
- Fixed a rare freeze of every timed system on mid-maneuver deaths.

Development
Ballistics
- Added a toggleable recorder of shot outcomes near you, off by default and free while off.
It logs per-rank hit rates split by shooter motion, damage dealt, burst lengths per weapon, and per-bullet aim error including lead over/undershoot against a moving target.
Debug HUD
- Changed the HUD to headline the active maneuver in green for the takeover's whole life, with wider name columns and a twice-per-second refresh.

AlifeTactics 1.1.1

1.1.1
Summary: startup fix

Fixed
- An outdated xlibs no longer crashes AlifeTactics on load. The dependency check now shows the
"update xlibs" message instead of a raw script error from the MCM platform footer.

AlifeTactics 1.1.0

1.1.0
Summary: Maneuvers, Crossfire, Danger, Disclosure, Ammo, Jamming, Healing, AOEngine, platform status

Combat
- Maneuvers: an intermittent combat takeover that borrows a stalker for a committed maneuver.
Stalkers kite when crowded, hold sniper aim when stalled, take cover then flee when badly hurt.
A borrowed stalker holds fire when it has no clear shot instead of firing into cover.
Companions are excluded by default. Replaces the old Stance Switch system.

Effectiveness
- Crossfire: a same-faction friendly-fire damage block, default on.
A stalker that hits a same-faction fighter deals no damage, tunable back up to full vanilla.
- Danger: an xr_danger rework, always-on bug fixes plus 3 toggleable improvements.
Hits, ricochets, and gunshots read separate config rows, with weather-scaled detection range.
Sniped or shot-at NPCs react at any range, even to gunfire vanilla left unanswered.
Corpse investigation survives despawned corpses, drives the right stalker, takes its cover.
- Disclosure: a new survivor gate, default on.
An outright kill no longer discloses the shooter, so stealth kills stay quiet.
- Fixed lone NPCs never being alerted to their shooter (disclosure was squad-only).

Mechanics
- Ammo: NPC armor-piercing ammo drawn from the boxes NPCs carry, default on.
Veteran-rank and higher NPCs fire AP with real ballistics until their carried supply runs out.
Each engagement rolls a rank- and fire-rate-weighted chance to burn a carried AP box.
- Jamming: NPC weapon-jam suppression that stops the demonized per-rank jam-and-reload loop.
Actor jams stay vanilla. Default on, needs demonized 2026.6.1+.
- Healing: limping now matches the NPC's weapon and clears after HP recovers or in combat.
Healing NPCs no longer freeze in place or ignore enemies that appear mid-gesture.

MCM
- Renamed the Disclosure, Crossfire, and Healing internals to match their page names.
Saved settings on those 3 pages reset to defaults on update (the reset warning covers it).

Compatibility
- AOEngine v0.55+ support.
- Added dynamic checking of xlibs and xray-monolith/AOEngine versions with a compatibility verdict.
- The Danger rework is a runtime patch, so it coexists with GAMMA AI Rework and REDONE.
- Ammo goes inert while the engine cvar g_ai_unlimited_ammo is 0, so NPC ammo is not drained twice.

AlifeTactics 1.0.0

First release. NPC combat AI organised around a shared per-squad memory substrate.
Four user-facing systems on top of one internal core. Full MCM configuration.

• Hit Sharing: on first faction-enemy hit, force-disclose shooter to every online squadmate. Distant patrols and suppressor victims now engage on hit 1. Disclosure decays after the configured retention (default 2 game minutes of no further hits from that shooter), then re-fires on the next hit. New squad members inherit existing disclosures on spawn. Previously-offline shooters coming back online replay disclosure to every member of the squads tracking them.
• NPC Self-Healing: DLTX overlay restores vanilla medkit and bandage item lists in xr_eat_medkit. Heal rate multiplier, per-rank healing-charge probability (novice, experienced, veteran, master), limping overlay, heal animation.
• Accuracy: per-shot, per-rank NPC dispersion curve replacing the engine's broken rank curve. 8 per-tier dispersion sliders (novice 1.00 to legend 0.38).
• Stance Switch: sniper and launcher carriers crouch when engine selects LookOut or HoldPosition, crouch carries forward into KillEnemy, WaitInCover, HoldAmbushLocation through body_state inheritance.
• MCM reset-to-defaults button (Development tab).
• Console test commands: at_spawn, at_spawn_veteran, at_spawn_master, at_spawn_far, at_dump.