For anyone who is unaware of the term, aggro is used to refer to when an enemy is attacking you. If they're attacking you then you have aggro on them.
What I have found about it is this:
In between each attack, the enemy will re-evaluate their target.
In the TC thread I mentioned roughly every 3 seconds, but it seems that the enemy will just do it once they finish one attack cycle. For the Assault Trooper the AI would look something like this:
> Fire 1 burst of 3 to 5 shots.
> Re-evaluate target
> Fire 1 burst of 3 to 5 shots.
> Re-evalutate target
and so on until it runs out of targets or it dies(occasionally it will also decide to throw a grenade).
For a full list of attack cycles, you can find them on my Enemy Damage spreadsheet. One attack cycle consists of the number of bursts that the target has, which can vary but are fired rapidly back to back.
For an enemy such as a Husk, which has no weapon to burst fire, it will have a new cycle about once per second. This will not interrupt a melee attack.
Enemies will cheat on line of sight
This is a minor one, but still note worthy. Occasionally enemies will cheat and take a look to see where the players are. This is primarily done upon spawning, and is done so the enemy will know where on the map they should go to find the players so they aren't just aimlessly wandering.
The enemy also appears to cheat when they cannot find a target. If a melee unit is chasing you and you cloak, they will continue to run to the spot where you cloaked. Once they reach that spot however they now will look for a new target. If there isn't one they will just cheat and see through your cloak.
The part that is mainly noteworthy here is that this will see through everything, including Tactical Cloak as though you do not have it on.
Invisibility and aggro
When you go invisible you are no longer in the line of sight of the enemy so they'll often choose to attack another target(more on exactly how this works later in the post).
However if you are the last one left alive the enemy will try to shoot you anyway. They will continue to fire at the spot where they "think" you are. This is generally the spot where you activated Tactical Cloak.
It's covered more in my Tactical Cloak thread, however getting too close to an enemy will let them see you until the next attack cycle.
Your footsteps make sound
This game does have sound mechanics in it, and your footsteps can give away your position. This only really applies while cloaked(they can clearly see you if you aren't =P), and running makes it worse.
What this means is that if an enemy hears you while invisible, they wont immediately know where you are but they can re-evaluate their next attack cycle to be at the spot where they heard you.
Players spotted via sound appear to be of the lowest priority, and if there is another target that is actually visible the enemy will often choose to go for them instead.
How dropping aggro works
Since there's no threat table it's not as simple as not attacking for a second or using a threat reducing ability like it would in an MMO. The enemy will however, re-evaluate targets based on a few things:
> Distance to target
> Do they have a good line of sight on the target
> How injured is the target
> Who was their previous target
> Can they see the target
Enemies will favour shooting their current target provided that they can, though they will target an injured player if they think they can kill them.
In order to drop aggro, the best way to do this is to simply not be seen by the enemy that is targeting you anymore. Tactical Cloak is of course the easiest way of doing this, but simply running away also works.
This is why playing with 3 Infiltrators makes it feel like you have a target painted on your back, and why following a Krogan Vanguard around can make it feel like the enemy just doesn't care all that much about you(He's very close and a very easy to hit target).
Abilities and the re-targeting cycle
This is the big one. Using Tactical Cloak does not immediately cause all enemies to re-evaluate their target. The enemy will continue to fire on you until their next re-targeting cycle, which in part is what leads to the "My Tactical Cloak doesn't work :crying:" posts.
No ability will trigger a re-target cycle, which also happens to lead to the "My Sabotaged targets still attack me :crying:" threads as well. A hacked enemy will finish their attack cycle before re-evaluating their target and realizing that their targets are now their former allies for the next few seconds.
I should also note that while CC abilities like Stasis wont trigger a re-target cycle, they obviously will immediately cause the enemy to stop firing at you, unless it is the Geth Hunter that is mid-attack(this has to do with charged weapons rather than targeting cycles) =P
If you want to maximize Tactical Cloak and the AI Hacking half of Sabotage, then use it right when the enemy has a break in their attack rather than when they're mid-burst.
This is what I've observed from messing around with aggro in the game, though aggro in Mass Effect is hardly a thing that is set in stone, and the enemy AI has certainly been known to break on occasion, so feel free to discuss any variations you've come across on what I've laid out here.
Edited by Cyonan, 16 January 2013 - 11:13 PM.
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Good info to know!
