AI - monster tactics
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I can fix the snakes. The rest is too complicated, I'm working with someone elses code which only as so many possibilities without me going back to university to learn about AI again.
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Another suggestion.
I also think some of these targeting choices should be attached to Wisdom, not intelligence. But I'm still formulating a full suggestion on it. Coming in time.
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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
nods there might be rare cases like this but im speaking in the general sense, familiers ( if you are possessing them) have the same intelligence as the controller, thus they might try to open locks and get rid of traps, so that might be an exception. im concerned about npc creatures with no pc ( or dm )interference opening doors and stuff.
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I'll work on what creatures do with doors, theres a whole bunch of stuff to play with there, I'm fairly confident I can get it to make sense 90% of the time at least.
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I was rather impressed the other day after a monster encounter and let other players know about it via tells, I have not let the DM's know..till now
I had run into a specific monster, with a glaring weakness, my summon at the time uses that specific attack, and the monster did something I did not expect, when a creature slightly larger than the monster showed up and started using its main attack…. the monster fled..and not just a little ways..it fled as long as the summoned creature was near it, i let it escape and recalled my summon (i actually ..felt sorry for the monster....really hope it did not snack on some poor explorer later on......)
That surprised me..and also...made me more cautious now when I wander in Arabel, knowing monsters will be acting more realistically
I know I have grumbled about the new AI at times, but I have tried to now simply view it as part of the game, and adjust my actions accordingly in the past.
when the AI seemed to do be in need of minor adjusting,and that time I had complained to the DM's via tells I was informed that the issue was not the AI but DM sight on some monsters, other times i have not complained when the AI seemed out of whack, but it seems to have been adjusted thanks to the hard work of our DM's (I was also given advice via tells by the DM's and several other players which I have taken to heart)
thank you for your hard work in the server and with the AI (I still am amazed at that one encounter and it still leaves me with a big smile on my face)
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Hehe, it seems like a lucky co-incidence, rather than the monster knowing that particular summon had it's one weakness ready to kill it with!
It's likely it saw you, and a high level summon, and though 'No way!' Rather than seeing the summon, knowing it's attacks, and thinking the same.
But that's a cool story.
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Not all animals are dumb though, magical beasts often have INT at aroud 10, which is normal human intelligence
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I'll work on what creatures do with doors, theres a whole bunch of stuff to play with there, I'm fairly confident I can get it to make sense 90% of the time at least.
smiles thanks zool! also , near the bottem ( so far) it says that " not all monsters are stupid" I acknowledge this since because this is a fantasy world, some creatures are smarter then others, but im speaking of the smaller ( or larger sometimes) creatures like spiders that should not be able to. ( sometimes when there is like a "Ancheint rat" that might be smarter it might open the door but that is scripting… you can't be perfect.
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i was invisible at the time, the creature could only see my summoned "rock" to its "scissors"
perhaps merely a coincidence….and it was a monster, not a animal, which run away i know if they make a save fail..and it did run..a long distance before i realized it was not chasing someone else..it was fleeing
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Noticed a Drider standing around doing nothing while being chopped to pieces. Cant say if it was lag or something else, only came across one lately. Also noticed bolt attack from various "vomiting" undead don´t grant any saving throw (less AI, more scripting though).
On the weak mages, etc. topic - i find it kind of silly when anything runs after a something while a whole group tries to hack it to pieces. Saw a mage casting a mage armor on himself and the monster going after him while the rest of the group hacked it to pieces. Mage didn't survive. Maybe worthwhile to take a closer look at spell durations when expecting e.g. mages to be fully survivable. When your basic protection spells run out at half the quest and leaves you with your crossbow, you are kind of screwed. Or you could metagame your way through and wait for the final bosses which isn´t too cool either. I would love to see a balanced spellcaster that can protect himself adequately for the whole duration (like a warrior wears his full plate) and still be able to help out with at least a basic form of magic attack independent of the number of spell slots available. Make e.g. Magic Missile unlimited or the Cantrips with a bit of a boost so that they deal similar damage as a small melee weapon 1D6 or so. Wouldn't it be be nice if the mage wouldn't have to carry a crossbow around? Having said that, scripting that and balancing that out is surely a headache.
Oh, and one more topic - if somehow possible, adopt the scripting so that someone entering an area has a couple of seconds before being attacked. My new character entered West Arabel, was immediately attacked by the Rift Cultists, lagged back out of the area and was dead. Perhaps on the onEnter for an area put a 5 second duration sanctuary on the character or something?
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Thanks for trying Thorkm, but that post isn't all that helpful, as it's mostly about mage survival, not tactics the AI should be using.
I did see the part about creatures targeting things while unable to reach them, and will look into that as it's been mentioned before.
5 second sanctuary after transitioning isn't happening, things like being hit by spawns across transition are just things you have to take as part of the problems of playing such an old game.
Please stay on topic, and try not to repeat things people have already talked about or I'll just lock this and work on what's in here already (which to be honest, I think likely already covers everything I need to tweak already anyway)
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The AI going after squishies is fine, they need risk too. The relentlessness that they will target said squishy despite getting hacked to pieces from behind is where the problem comes in. To illustrate what I mean, an orc warrior targets the mage. The mage doesn't die instantly, makes a few good moves, party comes in and takes the aggro back = risk. However, orc targets mage, then doesn't stop targeting him til said mage is dead = inevitable death. If you can fix that permenantly the AI is fine.
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One minor thing I don't think has been brought up… Maybe not the right place for it.
I still see the occasional monster spamming the same ability over an over again. For example, many creatures that have knockdown or called shot only use that ability.
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I've noticed the archer and mage AI's bugging out. Archers tend to run away from you a lot, and will not attack if you are too near (sometimes, sometimes they just take the AoOs). Skeleton Archers are particularily guilty of this.
Mages tend to go invisible and then not do anything, especially Skeleton Mages, but I've seen this behavior from others as well. Perhaps there's something wonky with the targeting?
Overall, I think the AI overhaul has been a good thing. Now monsters tend to 'roam' a level, and a fight may call other nearby monsters, which is fun especially on the final zone of Home Alone quest, where sometimes you manage to 'pull' the entire area to one big, nasty fight (the ranged casters there are super annoying if they are behind a wall of melees :D ).
As you noticed, there's something a bit hinky with the targeting of invisible/stealthed characters. Could it be that the mobs roll search instead of spot, and the increased (randomized) int value makes that high enough that they can notice stuff abnormally well? And once targeted, they don't seem to let go either, following you around for a very long time, even if you pop invis and are stealthed.
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Especially the casters at the Brewery quest are prone to turn invisible and do nothing.
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@Leaders:
orc targets mage, then doesn't stop targeting him til said mage is dead = inevitable death. If you can fix that permenantly the AI is fine.
You've definately seen this recently? That's odd because things should only be targetting them for a maximum of four rounds, though I guess that can be a long time.
As I said though, I'm looking into some way to make the monsters more interested is switching targets, though from the code this should already exist. Don't fully understand how that part works yet though so I can't really tweak it until I do. It seems to be based on the amount of damage dealt by a single hit.
The invis then do nothing thing I'll try look at too.
@Current:
Swarming/buffing when characters log in with less than full HP. - Think I fixed this (Fix not in module)
Following stealthy seems to good at its job. - Think I fixed this (Fix not in module)
General targeting
Way to 'draw aggro' - Need more research
Casters doing nothing after invis. - No clue about this -
I think the AI is pretty good right now, I am enjoying the challenges and different movements of the monsters. Being an idiot on scripts and general combat, I would like to say that I think it is fine personally and enjoy it. The changes Zool do make are fun and challenging, and I have played all sort of characters with this AI. So, there are my two cents, not helpful but just general feedback.
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Cool cheers. Worth noting though, the AI is off the vault, and Azzmodan originally implemented and tweaked it, couple of others have dabbled, and I've just nudged a few variables here and there so far, though I just found some code at might solve most of the issues people have bought up. Just not sure about mages not doing anything after invis currently.
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Cool cheers. Worth noting though, the AI is off the vault, and Azzmodan originally implemented and tweaked it, couple of others have dabbled, and I've just nudged a few variables here and there so far, though I just found some code at might solve most of the issues people have bought up. Just not sure about mages not doing anything after invis currently.
Could it possibly be something to do with the prioritization of the Invisibility spell that makes them not take any action that would break the inviz? There are apparently some sort of if/then conditionals if they're prioritizing dispels for buffed targets or aoe's for grouped targets.
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Onething ofnote the AI should run off intelligence to but the list mentioned is wrong.any oldplayerss handbook or dm guide gives the proper scale to aid the AI 1-3 is microbe or near non existence intelligence cube or jelly is prime example 4-6 is base animal or vermin and more feral monster 7-8 is monster soldiers 9-11 is normal human and so on