[2.14 beta] KO Non-Elite AI after Flash

[STiFU]

As was suggested in this discussion, non-elite AI can now be KO'd from any direction for a brief duration after being flashed. That duration is subject to balancing, which is one of the goals of this thread. The reasoning here is that we did want to make the flashbomb and flashmine a little more useful, but not overpowered in the way that you could clear out entire rooms with a single one.

The default value for this duration is currently 1500 ms, i.e., 1.5 s. You can change it via the cvar tdm_ai_ko_susceptibility_after_flash_duration in the unit of milliseconds. If you set the duration to "infinity", non-elite AI can be KOed for the full duration of the flash.

Bugtracker: #6636.

2.14 Beta

Please post issues and feedback related to KO after flash here. Please also try out some different values for the duration (tdm_ai_ko_susceptibility_after_flash_duration) and give feedback if the current default is suitable or if and why it should be changed.

 

Pinging some players that previously showed interest in this feature: @chumbucket91, @chakkman, @Epifire, @nbohr1more, @snatcher

[wesp5]

Shouldn't this time be connected to the duration of the animation they show? Is this about 1.5 sec long?

[STiFU]

The animation should be looped until they are not blinded anymore. This is currently not the case apparently (#6636), but since it should ultimately loop, we should not tie this duration to the animation.

[Wellingtoncrab]

6 minutes ago, STiFU said:

The animation should be looped until they are not blinded anymore. This is currently not the case apparently (#6636), but since it should ultimately loop, we should not tie this duration to the animation.

Yes this is quite annoying and does a pretty bad job communicating the state of the ai when they are blind.

I posted a revised script here to loop through the animation a few times, but it’s very hacky and I presume there is a proper way to make it loop through for the whole blind time:

[chakkman]

I'm probably missing something, but, isn't the duration quite a bit longer than 1.5 seconds? I just tried in the training mission, and, it seems like I can knock out the guard as long as he doesn't enter the alert state where he draws his weapon?

And, yeah, like @Wellingtoncrab mentioned, the big issue with the current implementation is the lack of feedback when the guard exits the "blinded" state. If that animation could be as long as the blinded state, it would be perfect.

Edit: Another weirdness: If you alert the guard so that he draws his weaoon and searches, and then drop a flash bomb, the guard will be blinded ("blinded" animation plays shortly), and, when you blackjack him then, the blinded animation will play again shortly. You can repeat the blackjacking then, and, every time you blackjack him, it will play the blinded animation again.  

Edited February 1 by chakkman

[STiFU]

21 hours ago, chakkman said:

I'm probably missing something, but, isn't the duration quite a bit longer than 1.5 seconds? I just tried in the training mission, and, it seems like I can knock out the guard as long as he doesn't enter the alert state where he draws his weapon?

As long as the guard was not alerted, he will be blackjackable for the full duration. Being flashed currently does not raise the alert level, as far as I am aware.

21 hours ago, chakkman said:

If you alert the guard so that he draws his weaoon and searches, and then drop a flash bomb, the guard will be blinded ("blinded" animation plays shortly), and, when you blackjack him then, the blinded animation will play again shortly.

That is exactly the situation where the change should be active. Flash an alerted guard,  and he should be blackjackable for 1,5s afterwards. Was that not the case?

Please note that we are not going to fix all flash bomb issues in 2.14 beta like that lacking looping of the flashed-animation. Let's focus on the change at hand in this thread, please.

[chakkman]

Weird. I'm pretty sure I tried blackjacking the guard after flashbombing him in the training mission before v2.14, and, it never worked, regardless of the alert state before dropping the flashbomb. And, I thought that was what this change was about, making guards blackjack-able after they've been blinded with a flashbomb. I thought flashbombing them actually raised their alert state, making them immune to blackjacking.

Edited February 2 by chakkman

[wesp5]

2 hours ago, STiFU said:

Flash an alerted guard,  and he should be blackjackable for 1,5s afterwards.

Isn't 1.5 seconds really short? How long is the AI internally blinded, even if the animation isn't correct?

[STiFU]

30 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

Isn't 1.5 seconds really short? How long is the AI internally blinded, even if the animation isn't correct?

It is spawnarg "blind_time" (default=8s) ± a random value on the range of spawnarg "blind_time_fuzziness" (default=4s), but mate, how about you just playtest this rather than theorizing about it?  The whole point of this thread is to find a decent value for the duration based on player experience:

On 2/1/2026 at 8:12 PM, STiFU said:

That duration is subject to balancing, which is one of the goals of this thread. The reasoning here is that we did want to make the flashbomb and flashmine a little more useful, but not overpowered in the way that you could clear out entire rooms with a single one.

 

[wesp5]

9 hours ago, STiFU said:

It is spawnarg "blind_time" (default=8s) ± a random value on the range of spawnarg "blind_time_fuzziness" (default=4s), but mate, how about you just playtest this rather than theorizing about it?  

I have disabled ko-immunity in my patch for years because I think this is the most stupid idea of TDM in the first place :). Still with those numbers going from 4 s to over 8 s, only 1.5 s really looks too short.

[chakkman]

nevermind

Edited February 3 by chakkman

[chumbucket91]

Ack! This was my pet issue but I was out on vacation when the 2.14 beta dropped. I will take some time to play around with flashbombs soon.

[nightmare]

What is considered an elite AI?

[wesp5]

4 hours ago, nightmare said:

What is considered an elite AI?

The guard who has the face covered with a steel grid. It can't be knocked out at all except with gas arrows.

[chakkman]

Just to make sure I'm not missing something: Is this supposed to work in 2.14 build 17456-11132? Because, it doesn't seem to work for me. The guard in the training mission comes after me, I flashbomb him, but can't knock him out after that.

Can you specify again the exact conditions when guards can be blackjacked after being flashbombed again? The way I understood you is that they are supposed to be blackjack-able AFTER being alerted, and AFTER being flashbombed, for 1.5 seconds. Is that correct, or do other conditions have to be valid as well?

Edit: nevermind, it worked now. It was that (excuse my language) completely shitty blackjacking mechanics again, which prevented me from being able to blackjack the guard.

I find that the vastly more pressing issue, by the way. Really wished someone would completely rework the shitty blackjacking.

That said, IMO, the guards should be blackjack-able as long as the blinding state animation longs (if it actually works), otherwise it isn't intuitive. The player can't guess what a developers thought to himself when developing the system, so, the visual clue (the blinded animation) is what he will go for, when determining what can or can't be done in the game. That's my opinion about it.

That's also why the blackjacking system fails so badly, as, even after years, you won't have a clue why blackjacking sometimes doesn't work. Yes, the raised arm animation is a visual clue, but, why does the arm stay low in some situations. And, why do you need a raised arm at all to indicate when you can or when you can't blackjack someone?

Blackjacking in the original games JUST WORKED. 

Sorry for offtopic, but, it's something which should seriously be adressed as well.

Edited February 4 by chakkman

[STiFU]

29 minutes ago, chakkman said:

Edit: nevermind, it worked now. It was that (excuse my language) completely shitty blackjacking mechanics again, which prevented me from being able to blackjack the guard.

Actually, after being flashed, the ai should be blackjackable from any direction, just like sleeping AI, so if you aim at the head, you should be good.

I agree that we ought to revise the blackjacking rules. They are awfully complex. The blackjack helper is a way to counter these complex rules: It raises when you aim at a position from an angle that would get the AI KO'd, although sometimes this did not result in a KO for me, too, sooo.

Maybe we can tackle this topic for 2.15. However, don't expect it to become as easy as in the originals, as that was crazy overpowered.

[chakkman]

That's totally fair. If it improves the current situation, it already would be a big help.

On the topic, I just asked the almighty Google AI, and, it said that the time the AI is blinded in Thief 1 and Thief 2 is 6 to 7 seconds, which, IMO, would be a good time period for the AI to be blinded AND blackjack-able in TDM as well (whether alerted or not). And, for those who think it would make the game too easy, I can only reply that the amount of flashbomb is VERY limited in most missions. IF they provide you with a flashbomb at all. So, the difficulty would still be dealt out by the mission author. Which I think is best.

The flashbomb should be a very limited tool (probably expensive with the black market vendors in The City as well. Probably only get those through stealing from the City Watch, or dealing with shady inventors ). 

Edited February 4 by chakkman

[datiswous]

Also, maybe the flashbomb and blackjack usefulness could be tweaked in settings, the same how ai can be tweaked?

I mean there's also a lockpick setting called AUTO. Someone could say that is crazy easy/overpowered, but it excists and has direct efect on all missions with locks.

[wesp5]

6 hours ago, chakkman said:

On the topic, I just asked the almighty Google AI, and, it said that the time the AI is blinded in Thief 1 and Thief 2 is 6 to 7 seconds, which, IMO, would be a good time period for the AI to be blinded AND blackjack-able in TDM as well (whether alerted or not).

I agree completely, especially as the animation is supposed to be around that long anyway. I'm against a slider for this as it wouldn't fix the inconsistency between what the player sees and what he can do.

Edited February 4 by wesp5

[chumbucket91]

Ok, I did a little playing around with this mechanic by booting up Seeking Lady Leicester, spawning myself several flashbombs, and attempting to flashbomb+facejack the AI.

I think, as implemented, this change does function. I was technically able to flashbomb an alerted ai and then hit them in the face to knock them out.

However, there are so many other problems with blackjacking it was kind of hard to tell. I was about 30% of the time able to get one npc immediately after flashbombing them, and I was unable to facejack a captain no matter what I did. Turning the cvar up to 20000 made slightly easier for me to get one guy, and I think one time I KO'd two - but lining up the blackjack with the head, in a rush, while trying not to actually touch the enemies (which causes them to play another animation, and thus become un-blackjackable) still was excessively silly and difficult even though the cvar gave me 8 seconds.

I also discovered that AIs which get flashbombed once seem to become immune to the flash effect for the rest of the mission for... no discernable reason.

Its way too easy to flashbomb yourself, and way too obnoxious to flashbomb your enemies, in this game.

This change is nice, and in the right direction, but definitely not sufficient to rescue the flashbomb mechanic as a whole. I'm kinda sad that fixing them wasn't as simple as I'd hoped when I filed the issue.

Edited February 6 by chumbucket91