AI - monster tactics
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Some people have said some of the tactics the monsters the use are 'bogus' or 'stupid' or whatever.
This is a chance to list what kinds of reactions you class as 'sensible' 'smart' or 'good' or whatever.
This is not a chance to say how crap the AI is and how stupid the DMs are for not listening to you when you tell us the same thing over and over again. It's not a place to rant about dying due to the AI, or a place to say that no one should play anything but a full plater fighter because the DM's have set up the server to only support that play style on purpose because they suck.
Now the rules are down, please help me improve the AI, with constructive, positive discussion.
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I would say just use the Monster Manual as your rule of thumb. Most monster entries describe how the monsters fight. I always think it's best to go to the source material for this sort of thing.
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Thanks for the suggestion but this is AI, and it's extremely unlikly the sourcebooks descriptions can be followed, even if they did describe their behaviour in the kind of way we'd need (which they likely dont')
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The one thing that doesnt make sense for me when a monster is engaged with one char and suddenly charges to the mage who has done nothing to invite such aggression and standing quite a distance form this monster to invite any kind of AOO.
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Different A.I. for different foes would be nice, even if its only two set up.
"Dumb" - go for closest target.
"Smart" - go for squishys!
Humanoids and demons should be smart, but brown bears and earth elementals should be dumb.
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Priority for Targeting - Dumb AI (Int scores from 1-10)
- What is closest? - 75%
- What is hurting me the most? - 25%
Priority for Targetting - Average AI - (Int 10-13)
- Where is the damage coming from? - 60%
- How close are the targets? - 20 %
- What is the AB of the targets 15 %
- Where are the easy targets? - 5%
Priority for Targeting - Smart AI (Int 13+)
- Where is the damage coming from?
- What is the (Touch and hit) AC of my targets?
- What is closest.
- What is the easiest to hit
The idea here is less intelligent creatures are more apt to just, "SMASH PUNY!" or as in the case of animals just start clawing. Turning their attention if being hurt
Average intelligence will eliminate high damage threats first, if the target is close enough to get too. But if they can't get to the damage dealers, they turn on low AC just to take SOMETHING out before they die.
High Int still deals with highest damage output threat first. But if they can't do any damage to it due to AC, they move on to the next closest. Then the squishy people.
It's 0600 and I just woke up, so this could obviously, I'm sure, sue some tweaking. But I hope you see the general premise.
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I also like that the weaker enemies/animals/vermin sometimes get scared of you and run away (maybe only some have this behavior implemented, but it adds flavor to the AI).
I like the magic user AI tweaks, the only thing I see here is a fixed sequence of spells cast… Can be exploited and often valuable time is spent casting defensive spells that will only help them in certain situations.
Melee AI tends to be unpredictable, which I like. But as everyone have mentioned they may be impossible to stop if they go for the squishy characters. I've seen more and more of the squishy characters stay so far back that they can't possibly take part in any battle at all.
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I like Organized_Chaos suggestion
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@Alice:
Different A.I. for different foes would be nice, even if its only two set up.
"Dumb" - go for closest target.
"Smart" - go for squishys!
Humanoids and demons should be smart, but brown bears and earth elementals should be dumb.
There is actually a lot more than just two 'mindsets' for monsters, some is based on intelligence, some on their class, some on their skill sets (archers, will use the archer mindset, for instance, though, theres actually three segments of that mindset itself) some even on race.
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One improvement, I'd like to see spiders not smart enough to open doors.
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One improvement, I'd like to see spiders not smart enough to open doors.
Agreed. When dealing with vermin/animals, using doors is perfectly legit, IC. Only, they open them. Like lockpicking chickens. <_<
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I agree with the post above, I have run across problems like this where supposedly "dumber" animals can do stuff that technically, only humanoids ( pretty much any creature with hands and the intell to open doors) can do, I would like to see some of the vermin/ animals dumbed down in this sense.
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What about Wizard Familiar..Chicken we get for pixie, every time you use it to disable traps and open locks, IC reactions are funny but thinking about it a chicken opening lock with its beaks and claws in quite hilarious, but you can always argue that they are magical creatures in the shape of chicken
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I would like to see heavy damaged Mobs actually try and flee to save themselves.
You know bandits are opportunists and will not fight to the death.
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Make mosters react to threats properly so if the magic man shoots glowing hurty lights at the big troll it tries to eat him if the magic man does it while the metal man is hitting it with the huge firey sword and is cutting huge chunks out of it make it rip his arms off first.Then eat the magic man.
But really i have no issue with the AI most of the time. -
Trolls aren't that stupid. They realize the guy with the pointy sword and metal isn't going to be as easy to eat as the fleshy guy wrapped up in a napkin.
People need to get over the fact that you just can not stand behind the tanks, essentially taking the occasional pot shot at an enemy and still level up safely like you use to do. It should be harder for unarmored, low HP characters to survive combat. It should require more thought to how you play the game than "I'm going to stand here, do nothing and get XP" which is what 90% of squishies did for 10 years on CoA. That won't work anymore, you need better survival skills. I've seen people who have them, and they have no problem with the new AI because they are rogues who wear a bit more armor and have some tumble and understand flanking, they are wizards who realize they can get the highest AC in the game with the right spells or great mobility with other spells.
So try to continue to focus on things the AI does that isn't actually "smart" but simply makes no sense. Killing wizards makes sense, even 8 INT half-orc PCs have always hit the wizards first on CoA, so will the 8 INT trolls when they can.
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Priority for Targeting - Dumb AI (Int scores from 1-10)
- What is closest? - 75%
- What is hurting me the most? - 25%
Priority for Targetting - Average AI - (Int 10-13)
- Where is the damage coming from? - 60%
- How close are the targets? - 20 %
- What is the AB of the targets 15 %
- Where are the easy targets? - 5%
Priority for Targeting - Smart AI (Int 13+)
- Where is the damage coming from?
- What is the (Touch and hit) AC of my targets?
- What is closest.
- What is the easiest to hit
The idea here is less intelligent creatures are more apt to just, "SMASH PUNY!" or as in the case of animals just start clawing. Turning their attention if being hurt
Average intelligence will eliminate high damage threats first, if the target is close enough to get too. But if they can't get to the damage dealers, they turn on low AC just to take SOMETHING out before they die.
High Int still deals with highest damage output threat first. But if they can't do any damage to it due to AC, they move on to the next closest. Then the squishy people.
It's 0600 and I just woke up, so this could obviously, I'm sure, sue some tweaking. But I hope you see the general premise.
This is good, constructive suggestions.
Much of this is already in place, though the percentages might be a little off. there's actually even more than what OC has suggested here as well.
I'm going to just start explaining as much of the AI as I can so you guys all know we're not just trying to make stupid stuff.
It's complex to explain though really.
Firstly it will check somethings race, things like humanoids, dragons, and other intelligent stuff is given a decent base AI intelligence roll, which then has its own intelligence added onto it. So the same creature type with the same int score, could be smarter, or stupider than the one next to it.
This AI intelligence score is used all the way through to decide lots of things to do with combat, and opening/unlocking doors etc.
There are several settings for using special skills like parry, taunt, etc. Stupid things wont use these skills (most likely) whereas intelligent ones might well do, should they have decent skill points in them.
If the creature is particularly stupid, they will just target the closest thing to them that they can see.
This same behavior is also applied (one in three chance) to creatures that are set as being 'Defensive' in mind-set. This is mostly creatures with high AC. So these guys will run up to the closest thing, and attack it, then keep attacking the closest things to them. essentially setting up a high AC wall.If something has a base attack bonus less than 3, it will look for something easy to hit (low AC, or 'squishys') as it's going to have trouble hitting much.
Every monster has a maximum time to attack the same target of up to 4 rounds. Though it's possible they will select the same target (such as when there is only one to choose from)
Spell casters will try and figure out if enemies have wards up, and if their spells cant penetrate them, and they have no way of removing the ward, they'll look for someone they can actually hurt. This is only for smart casters, really smart ones might even look at saves (which is like AC for spells) and also strip the fighters of their wards first (if they have a chance of doing so) They'll also target AoE's in highest concentration of enemies, while taking into account how badly they might damage their own people with the spell.
Archers have a higher chance to fall back when they have allies to support them. Smart ones might move in closer if they judge they can do more damage in melee.
All of these things involve dice rolls though, so even the smartest caster might not always target the best spot for an AoE, or might dispell someone that doesn't matter too much (or indeed, has nothing to dispel), similarly, high AC characters might not use the 'defensive' mind-set, and go into a more aggressive one, while archers might decide to charge in close regardless of their support. This is so it's not -so- much of a machine you can predict every time. There is a little more to the targetting (and this is -only- the targetting I'm talking about, as there havent bee complaints about anything else much) but the rest is very tough to explain without quoting code, which, most wouldnt get anyway (I admit I don't fully understand the inner workings of all of it, but I get the general jist)
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@Zargen:
I would like to see heavy damaged Mobs actually try and flee to save themselves.
You know bandits are opportunists and will not fight to the death.
They have a chance of doing this already, in fact, some monsters that are particularly cowardly, might just run away when they see you coming
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Also, I just found the code that makes things buff themselves and swarm you for no reason when you log in without full hitpoints.
It was designed to try and make creatures react to nearby battles that they aren't techincally a part of (yet), so, they see/hear a fight going on nearby, and buff, and sometimes they will charge in to investigate.
This really doesn't work for our server however for various reasons, so I'll be turning that behaviour off next chance I get.
I also found the stuff that makes them walk up to people who went stealthy (or invis, or whatever) and search for them. People were bugged about this, so I'll take that out as well, though I thought it was pretty cool, whenever I go invis with my NPCs, players always rush to the last point they saw them, this is the same thing here.
I think, there may be a problem however, with monsters having already set you as the target, and so they move up to you even if you were stealthed in the first place, that'll take more looking into, so I'll turn the whole thing off for now.
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I would say remove any targeting associated to listen checks. But allow them to go "investigate" based on the listen roll.
Listen 1-10, fail. Wanders.
Listen 10-19, checks to see if target is within 10 feet.
Listen 20-25, 15 feet
Listen 26-30, 20 feet, etc..If they "Hear" combat or a sneaking character they then roll a secondary check. Then the secondary listen roll is checked against the distance to the "Heard" character. If it falls out of range, it's ignored. If it falls within range, they wander to a random area within 10 feet of the noise heard. But do not target. Then if they can spot the source, they can target.
Oh. Snakes have parry.