Lemming, indeed. When I first played Vendetta, back in alpha 3.1.x, I thought the bots in sector 6 were pretty engaging when I first ventured out there. The concept of strafing in a space game is totally new to most people. Initially I approached the bots as if I was playing Wing Commander or X-Wing.

-Asp

OK, after trying my hand at three BP missions last night, I can say for certain that the BP bots are MUCH harder to hit. Their accuracy has not improved, really, but in order to KILL them, you must take an inordinate amount of time to get them to run into your streams of fire.

Doing BP with a buddy is recommended. You'll never finish alone. Or, I guess you could go in with a Rag and swarm the little bastards, but what's the fun in THAT?

Last night's BP session reminded me of that frustrating level in Halo2 where you have to jump on the Prophet's throne and beat the crap outta him, since your weapons don't do nuthin.

Anyway, BP Bots are harder, and that's good. But DEFINITELY too hard for most folks.

I think the problem is they seem to keep their distance too well. I've noticed they always back up whenever I fire, so if I keep a steady stream of fire going, I can keep the bot at 200-250m, outside his weapon range which mean he isn't firing at all, just backing up. This seems more frusturating than interesting to me. Everytime I shoot, my target backs up out of either of our ranges. So neither one of us ever does any damage.

*BOTS*

If they were as good as they are now when I first started playing.. Well let's just say I almost died in my first encounter with a mining bot :p The weaker bots like ApuTech5 and friends shouldn't "pwn newbs" or they will never progress from being newbs..

My main concern is that the bot experience was balanced to how they were before, now it takes quite a bit longer to kill them but you get the same reward.. Also the really tough bots become massive chores to kill, for example taking out a FenrisR18 takes a very long time now since they are able to dodge things very reliably and have a ton of hit points yet the reward for killing them is much less than you get for a TyCorp Assault which has about a 1/4th the hit points so is much easier to kill with a few lucky hits it doesn't dodge..

I like the general improvements. I was a bit disappointed with the 'pda' in some areas, but very impressed in others.

The lighting is beautiful. But I still think it could be better. Lighting is now somewhat a part of the gameplay - you have to watch out where you're going in order to dodge asteroids. But I beleive more gameplay could be squeezed out of the lighting aspect. Systems/sectors that are pitch-black and laden with perilous asteroids/floating debris/mines - a player relying on his ingenuity to navigate. Pirates hiding against dark asteroids in order to camoflauge themselves... etc.

The 'smarter' AI is quite good. but could also be better. I agree with some people that in some cases the AI could be too difficult. Perhaps there should be a greater range of AI difficulty. Just take the normal RPG approach. You would have lower level areas... as well as higher level areas.

@Nerde: nono, I know how to do that, but it would be nice if it remembered your proximity alert across sections. Thanks for the lighting pointer!

@Netherby:
1) Bots were not balanced before: As I explained in my other thread, since no bots used to dodge and guardians and assaults did the exact same thing, guardians were way better because they could absorb more hits and shoot much more. Guardians gave less XP though. So they weren't balanced.

2) Bots would be balanced if the devs doubled, or even trippled the XP for killing them, and made the AI on assaults and other bots specific to their type: Oruns and guardians CAN'T dodge very well because of their low manueverability, so new players could run circles and pick on these bots first, (like the current XP numbers suggest) and when they're good enough they can try to take on 8 Valents all at once! That's actually a scary thought now...

@NoOneInParticular: What exactly did they change with the lighting?

-Calder

Everyone seems te be talking about the bots being more of a challenge. But the way I see it, the whole boost to the AI doesn't make them any more dangerous, it just makes killing them take to freaking long. Their shooting still sucks, all that changed is it made them more dodgy. I hate having to spend 5-10 minutes trying to shoot down one bot with my neuts. That's all

Udjuk/Jubjub Marwen

Lighting: Had my doubts about it when I read it, but for the most part I enjoy the change to the game. Scenery looks much better now and I can still see in most of the dark system's sectors.

PDA: Work in progress. I like being able to sort by the different catagories. The chat and other text seems to get bigger when I open it, but other than that I like the change. Proximity warning is cool, once we can define certain catagories it will be even nicer. A good work in progress.

Bots: I was working on one of my alts yesterday, and I couldn't figure out why in the world it took me over two minutes to kill a prosus assault. I could only kill about 5-6 bots before I had to run back and repair each time. Even fighting guardians or tycorp assaults can take a long time if you are trying to avoid being hit as well.

IMO I like the change, but I think there needs to be a middle set of AI for the new people to work on. Right now you go from collector bots (easy) to really dodging and difficult bots. ApuTech-5's are ok, but even they dodge a lot and if you want to kill them with any speed it seems you need to expose yourself to the flank attack.

Haven't had the time to log in yet, but I just want to add my voice to those supporting any A.I. improvements that make bots more difficult. If this makes levelling too time-consuming (since having to go back to repair every sixth destroyed bot WILL increase levelling time greatly), instead increase license rewards.

Better bot A.I. is one of the most important improvements VO could get. Aside from providing good combat practice on those lonely nights the only other living soul in Sedina is invulnerable generic alpha combat master #3, it would rebalance the feel and immersion of the gamingverse. As it is now, every player stands out as an extreme elite hero, capable of taking on tens of "normal" (bot-controlled) enemies at once, be they Hive bots, law enforcers or convoy guardians.

I say continue to improve the A.I. as much as possible, even if it does reach near-impossible levels. The day I'm matched evenly with a prosus assault, botting will truly be fun. And that still means the majority of VO players could take down said bot easily ;-) A.I. opposition of this level could of course be excluded for beginner bots, but at the same time, it makes little sense, in-canon, for the Hive to produce such an advance A.I., and not equip even their weakest ships with it. It's only code, after all.

(Unless we assume advanced A.I. in VO is based on some kind of Anderson-equivalent model of synthetical brains, network-distributed intelligence or nano-simulations of nervous systems. Which would be even cooler, of course)

I thik it may be a little early to evauluate the new bots. We are still adapting.
The new bots are easy to gank. Find a partner and practice bushwacking them.

Yeah, give me a week to tweak them a little, too. I've been wanting to do some bot-work for awhile. I have a lot of PDA stuff to do, so I don't know if I'll have time, but I'll at least tone down the basic collectors for newbies.

There's a lot that can be done, without changing any AI at all. Like making certain types attack in groups (limited to deep greyspace perhaps?) and tweaking their standoff distance and strafing behaviours.. as well as their engines and ship masses.

I don't think completely removing strafing would be very good for the community. Maybe there could be a duel option to disable strafing.

Luis, our combat model has been proven and tweaked for many years. For most of the core player base, it's the most fundamental aspect of the game. There are a lot of things I will tweak and change, but fundamentally making our game into Wing Commander or X-Wing, where all combat is based on flying around in circles, is not going to happen.

I remember the Chaos when in Xwing vs. TIE Fighter someone discovered standing still and just turning around made it easier to kill everyone else. The designers responded with a patch that made turning while stopped far too slow. I live VO's ways of combat better.

> Luis, our combat model has been proven and tweaked
> for many years. <snip>

Err... Did a post from Luis get deleted or something? :S

TerribleCabbage, I removed the post myself because it was leading to a flamewar, and that was not my intention, I should have read carefully the Suggestions forums before posting it

sorry for any inconvenience

Luis

Inc, collectors are fine. They STILL can't dodge because they're too heavy. That's good. Now, we just need to make Guardians heavier and valents have better dodging. Right now, Guardians, (even though they are SLIGHTLY less manueverable) dodge better than valents for some reason. They're HUGE, they should also be heavy. Guardians=heavily armored weapons platform. Valents=light, manueverable assault ships. It should be like the differnce between a heavily armed moth and a centurion for players.

-Calder