FraktalTMG

There seems to be a SCAR issue in the Imperial Guard stronghold that I've seen repeatedly across several playthroughs with the Bugfix mod, on hard difficulty. Just now I've encountered it when attacking as the Orks, with this being the third stronghold battle in this campaign.

So then. The issue is that as soon as I reach the bottom of the ramp leading up to the IG HQ, the endgame cutscene immediately triggers as soon as my commander is done saying his/her/its first line of dialogue. Looking through the SCAR file, this is what creates the HQ:

Entity_CreateBuildingMarker(g_Player2,"eg_IG_HQ", "guard_hq","mkr_NPC_HQ", 1)
EGroup_ForceAddOn("eg_IG_HQ", "addon_guard_hq_2")
EGroup_AddGroup("eg_IG_HQ_Destroy", "eg_IG_HQ")

Interestingly, this function is called twice during the mission. First at the start of the mission, then again when the player crosses the river. There is one check to create eg_IG_HQ_Destroy if it doesn't exist but other than that, there's no condition-checking whatsoever to see if all the stuff to be created exists already.

This is what triggers the end cutscene:

if EGroup_GetAvgHealth("eg_IG_HQ") < 0.05 then
	
	g_Win = true
	
	Rule_AddOneShot(Rule_Closing_NIS, 4)
	
	Rule_Remove(Rule_HQ_Health_Monitor)
	
end

eg_IG_HQ definitely exists because its existence is what's causing the periodic sniper attacks on my commander. But the condition that checks its health prematurely returns true even if I'm nowhere near the thing, as soon as I approach the ramp (that's when the game starts periodically checking it). And this bug sometimes doesn't always manifest; I've seen this part of the mission play out properly from time to time, but I have no idea why.

Question. Is it by design that the DoS AI's response to its base being attacked by the player while its army is away is to go on the offensive against the player, rather than fall back to defend its base? I've seen a Tau opponent do that repeatedly on that desert map with the plateau in the middle the player starts on top of (can't remember the name): while its entire army was tied up by two invulnerable units at the base of the ramp leading up to the plateau, I maneuvered around to the south and hit their base from there; entire army ran past the invulnerable blockade, charged up onto the plateau, took the Relic there, then started engaging the proxy base I set up near the ramp (for counterattacks when defending the map later on).

Next match, this time against Orks: I try setting up a proxy base near them, they sent a Squiggoth after it. I kill it half a second after it kills the freshly-constructed HQ, start building a new one, cue full-hardcap gang of Flash Gitz and Looted Tanks going after it, completely ignoring the invulnerable units rampaging in its base.

Again: is it deliberate behavior by the AI to respond to potentially being eliminated from the match via HQ loss by refusing to defend and instead going on the offense in a "who loses first" game of chicken? Because I've seen it happen too often for it to not feel like a pattern, yet it also feels time and time again as if there is no rhyme nor reason to the AI's actions.

Playtesting DoS in DC's campaign, results are mixed.

• The AI improvements do not appear to be in effect at all during stronghold battles. In regular battles, however, they work as expected. In particular I love the AI moving to assist an ally who's under attack by the player, mostly because it makes defensive battles on well-fortified maps go even faster. On offensive battles against Eldar, however, it's pure hell.
• If I manage to wall the AI into its base early enough, it gets out vehicles very noticeably later, if at all. Not because it doesn't have resources; it has, it's just blowing all of it on nothing but basic infantry suiciding against my barrier force.
• Related: Eres Badlands is a bit tricky because camping home means the AI builds up an overwhelming force, but camping near the AI causes the AI to go hyper-aggressive and fulfill my kill quota sooner than I want.
• The AI's behavior of running away from melee units in the exact opposite direction is fine for the most part, but it doesn't seem to care if does so results in it fleeing towards the rest of my army. Saw it in a Necron vs Tau match: Fire Warriors started picking off Necron Warriors, I teleported the Necron Lord to the opposite side of the Fire Warriors and engaged in melee, Fire Warriors ran towards the Necron Warriors and promptly got gaussed to death.
• The AI's fixation on deploying commanders above all else is even worse than in the unmodded game, particularly with the Imperial Guard. I don't even understand the reasoning; if your base is under attack and the General just got killed before he even got one kill in, what's the point of retraining the General instead of more Guardsmen?
• On the other hand, however, the Imperial Guard AI is now flat-out impossible to rush down early. Attacked with Eliphas, five honor guard units and two full squads of Chaos Marines, entire force got obliterated by the IG HQ's fixed weapons before they even got it down to yellow health and despite having half the map's SPs under my control, I've got zero resources due to the two squads having overwatched it all away.
• Related: I also had trouble as Necrons on the exact same map with the exact same opponent, only difference being the AI having a full honor guard which made any non-cheating tactics on my part useless. However, one time when I wasn't looking (I briefly left the computer after saving, unaware that the game unpauses after saving for some reason), one of the IG AIs got into my base, destroyed everything... and then did nothing. I didn't lose because the Monolith was on the move and halfway across the map, but the AI made no attempt to seek it out, or even go after my half-a-map's worth of SPs; they just stood where my base used to be, moving a few steps in a random direction every once in a while but otherwise being still, as if the AI completely failed to consider that the player might have buildings anywhere other than their starting location and was wondering why the match didn't end yet.
• Also in this same battle, I've seen the AI suddenly run up to a Critical Location my entire army was camped out next to, uncapture it, then engage. That's... a weird move in a match without the victory condition for Critical Locations.