Project Gap Close - NPC Sprint Attacks and Dynamic Combat Pathing Revolution.

Melee NPCs are only ever threatening when their opponent, stupidly decides to face them in close-range. Otherwise, their opponents can be moving back, at pace of my grandfather, and still fail to engage. Eventually, they get evaporated by some fancy spell their opponent is casting.

Breakdown:

- Melee NPCs are much more responsive in chasing after their fleeing, falling-back, or skirmishing enemies.

- They sprint effectively at stationary and moving targets alike, without slowing down unnecessarily, as if their life isn't at stake.

- If they're close enough, depending on their Aggression, Confidence, and weapon reach, they can decide to use a sprint attack to catch their opponent.

- Frenzied enemies (Lvl 3 aggression), have the highest chance to use sprint attacks. Besides that, the confidence level determines the chance (their normal, offensive combat style multiplier also has some influence; this isn't managed by this mod directly).

- Now, blindly sprinting away from melee enemies can be very dangerous if they have the stamina to pursue you.

Dynamic Combat Pathing Revolution:

This is an experimental/work-in-progress part of the mod.

Instead of having CPR's elements always on, or tied to anim move-sets which are hard to individualize for actors, I dynamically switch them on/off, for each actor in the plugin, based on their confidence, aggression, combat threat level, personal survival time estimate, group strength, and enemy group threat level.

The logic is based on the question of "realism" to reflect human intelligence (AI in the case) or battle stakes.

Enemies first instincts may be to charge a foe in numbers to quickly kill. However, if the foe easily dispatches 1 or 2 of their comrades, then it may cause the remaining to take the fight on a more cautious basis (e.g., disabling advancing behaviour, and enabling circling or fallback behaviour).

Another example is when facing a dragon. Since a dragon would likely have a high threat value, this would increase the chance that NPCs would use CPR's circling behavior.

Frenzied enemies only respond to advancing behaviour, since they're supposed to be crazed, without much of a tactical mind.

The distance, time, and radius that NPCs use within these behaviors, depends of their confidence (e.g., less confident NPCs keep a greater distance), aggression, and weapon reach.

You can see the source or mod screenshots for more details.

Showcase: