Heh, funneh stuffs, and if this is intentional, well, i guess my days of easy bounty grinding are over, hehe.

http://wonkydonkey.com/degobar/WTF.mpg <-- thats the best way to describe what im talking about, bear in mind, im in a hog, thats backrolling...

It did that to me as well in serco land earlier tonight. Maybe its a strange new synchronized dance they do?

I experienced the same thing. It's pretty dangerous for a vulture, especially when botting for an hour or so, since you have to boost away for a clean coup de grâce, so as not to receive splash damage, and that oftentimes leaves you vulnerable.

That being said, it's an improvement over their old behaviour. Also, they are easily taken out when they boost towards you. Plus, it makes you get a better feel for splash damage range.

They act like they wanna hug and kiss you lol
they're easily taken out thou

I hate that... never seen it in SF before, but yea, the bots seem to have a new affinity for going kamakaze on your ass - getting to within 1-2 meters of your ship and blasting away so you can't dodge, and then dealing collateral damage when you pop them in a hurry (at this point, if you let the BP toasters get that close, you have to either kill them immediately, or die - It's impossible to back off to a favorable distance, and boosting away will only get you killed if you're flying anything other than a cent or valk)

lol at least you got one of em

yea, the bots have NO notion of personal space... and that wouldnt be so bad except that because they ARE bots, they react instantly to any course change or speed change you make, plotting a perfect intercept so you just cant get away from them.

BPing is all but impossible if they get on top of you.. and the worst part is the collsion code seems messed up because a centurion pushing on the nose of a fully loaded moth (i filled one up with steel) STILL knocks your point of view around. Its much worse with say... a rag or a prom.

It's kinda odd when they do that...

I expect the hive to get in my face... but not nation bots!!!

LMAO,... it was like watching a retard hump a door knob..... *Dogdeball reference*

ROTFL

lol! w00t!

I bet you'll figure something out... you usually do! :)~

What you're seeing is actually a bug. Andy inadvertantly introduced it and somehow it wound up on the production server before we noticed. We found out when players started saying stuff like "The new AI r0x0rz!" People seemed to like it more than the old code, so we left it. We hope to come up with some compromise between the buggy state and something that looks less dumb. It would be helpful to hear what people like about this way, the old way, and any other thoughts you have on how it should be. At some point we'd like to completely revamp the low-level AI, but small modifications are all we are going to do in the very short term.

Bots are now more AGT fodder, and lmine fodder, I like nothing about this way, what I would like to see is more randomness, maybe one bot doing that, one hanging back at 50m (like before this bug) and maybe even bots acting the really old dumb way. Just to be honest. :P All the bots acting *one* way is really really boring.

p.s.

They are now popcorn fodder too.

sooo... he modified the AI code again?

I mean, the first time he did it, I rather liked it, the bots stopped hanging out at 150 m, and I could actually interact with them.

They seemed pretty good a couple weeks ago.

No shape, he changed a number that affected AI, its a bug, it wasnt supposed to happen, i reckon.

yea, the larger bots and NPC character bots need to hang back more like they used to... I can see maybe Arties and Denteks, and some of the smaller assault hive bots getting up-close and personal, but with the large bots (like Apies)a passive bots (like Oruns/Kanniks), it doesn't make sense, and really seems stupid/annoying to have them bumping you around, while no human character would ever be so reckless as to get in your face like that.

sooo... for a compromise, with the smaller, more aggressive hive bots, keep them close, but it would be better to have the larger bots and 'human' NPCs give you some more space... I'm all for close combat, but a toaster sticking it's nose 1m from the side of my hull? that's just lunacy...

no, Shape, I haven't touched it. This is still the "first time"...

That's what's weird, really. Maybe there's a new bug where they somehow get the idea that they need to fight from 0 distance or something...

update: oops, I found a new bug! I added a "protect" behavior a while back and in the process I goofed up the old code path and it's using an uninitialized variable and they are, indeed, trying to fight from 0 distance sometimes. Oops! Should be fixed on the test server at least within a few minutes.

Anyways, is there any chance of using this bug as a feature? and maybe making the odd 1 bot in a 100 going crazy on you or something? cos that would be kinda neat, as long as an entire strikeforce doesnt suffer from it :P its more retarded than the first guardian trying to dock :P

[moved to bugs?]

I agree with yoda. Adding some variation would actually make all bots more dangerous because you couldn't predict their behavior until half way through the fight. Just adding a little randomness to a few parameters like this one will keep us on our toes a lot more.

randomness is good.