Prevent AI cavalry from raising their shields against missiles

[sjblack2014]

As the title says, I'd like to change the AI cavalry behavior, so they do not raise shields against potential missiles, instead they should keep their couched lance state or do whatever they would otherwise do. This would help a lot with cavalry effectiveness in the mod I'm making.
Any help appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

[xenoargh]

You can probably do this by either:

1. Removing their shields when they're in <state> or under <orders> and put it back into inventory when done.
2. Writing a really complicated watcher that looks at their animation state and swaps back whenever they attempt to switch when in <state> or under <orders>. Based on previous experience, I don't recommend this option; the AI will continue to try and pull out shields. It's actually easier to take them away and put them back into inventory.

 

[sjblack2014]

Thanks for replaying. Is there no way to directly modify the AI behavior? The "state" that I'm thinking of is whenever they're under missile threat but not under melee threat. They could be couching or preparing a stab, don't want them to raise the shield and break this, but do want them to raise shields during this against melee attacks like they currently do.

 

[xenoargh]

I don't think you can access or modify the AI state-machine directly very easily. I don't want to say, "this is impossible", but it won't be easy. Take a look at how you access the AI from any given Agent, you'll see what I mean.