PANPC 2.1-dev3: First Test Video
Thanks to Terragon for making this. First solid test video for the in-progress PANPC 2.1, now in -dev3 test release.
All I can say is, this is what I was working toward in Starfield with PAST. Unfortunately, Bethesda was determined to go another way with that, so I'm happily leaving that to them and doing it in Fallout 4 instead. This test release contains all of the significant PAST upgrades, making PANPC 2.1 a sort of amalgam of the two. A lot of FO4's PANPC was removed in PAST because either Starfield didn't support the code or SFSE wasn't sufficiently developed. PANPC 2.1 will have all of it.
The backported features have also been improved. The enemies now accurately detect whether or not they are currently in cover, and their tactical decisions change accordingly. They'll be a lot less likely to boldly jump out of cover like an idiot, when the smarter move is to camp and wait. I think you can see that happen regularly in this video.
I also found an elegant way to effectively emulate Starfield's ConditionForm feature, allowing me to let the game engine handle multiple NPC state checks that previously were done the hard way, in cumbersome Papyrus script function calls. That means faster, more accurate state detections, practically happening in real time. As a result, NPCs can now change their minds in the middle of a single AI decision cycle as the game engine reports a real time state change. As of -dev3, this is mainly being done for out-of-ammo behaviors and stealth checking, but I plan to expand it into more things before 2.1 is ready for public release.