Arklan guardians are now running away when they take damage. Used to toe to toe till either it died or you died.

Observed in multiple arklan guardian sectors around pelatus o15.

I can't say i recall seeing this particular bot in queen escort or anything else that they'd need to behave in this new way. And they're certainly not pushovers on their own with their many ten thousands of health, gat(s), and sometimes suicidal behavior lol.

Here's to hoping arklan guardians can be cured of their new, silly, behavior and return to their old selves :)

I can't say I know of other particular cases where the behavior change perhaps should not have applied

Arklans appear in queen escorts in certain systems. Might be why they are affected.

certain systems? You mean whenever a gemini static queen starts (Where one queen enslaves another)?

Some hive bots actually hang around in "wings", they always have. Usually in these wings there will be a Transport bot present, or a hive queen, and before the AI was messed with the first time around, they did actually gank if you accidentally attacked one of the transports (who would attack one on purpose), and with this change the entire wing is defending itself. So this is a welcome change to me, and is in the right direction at least. Also Arklans are a Grey hive bot, they should be hard to farm! If you want easy Guardians go kill Rtypes.

Now if only Tycorps attacked in pairs, and higher assaults in trio's again. Ah... I best leave this thread well alone!

[edit]

Message a bot with "wtf" and it will tell you what it is defending, whether it wants credits or whatever. Just a FYI.

That transport bit goes right out the window when an entire sector is nothing but arklan guardians.

& I've downed quite lot of queens... Have seen lesser guardians escorting but not Arklan.

Far as difficulty of the bot in question.. They have something like 60k health and gat(s). It's not like they're pushovers by any measure lol ( and no i didn't go check the wiki for their health just going off memory which isn't perfect)

The extra armour just makes them take longer to kill, they really are not _that_ much harder than blasting collectors once you know how. So yes, they should be harder, especially because of the better drops compared to their lesser kind. Of course if you had trouble killing them before, well get better because from what I have read, Grey is going to get harder all around, not just the hive there.

You do get Arklans guarding queens in nation space as Yoda says.

Never said *I* have trouble with em.
Besides, not the point of this thread. Inc suggested I put this topic in the bugs section so here it is as a bug report. Not a let's debate the topic.

Plus there's this:

Improvements to behavior of npcs that are defending others, patch notes said. emphasis on defending others.

wtf an arklan in an arklan guardian only sector

[Fri Dec 15 16:56:25 2017] ->*Arklan Guardian DC-9173h: wtf
[Fri Dec 15 16:56:25 2017] **Arklan Guardian DC-9173h* 10000100010111110100001001111111
[Fri Dec 15 16:56:25 2017] **Arklan Guardian DC-9173h* For Great Justice! r?:nil [1000209623,
{mine,undefined},
{dockme,undefined},
{dest,undefined},
{park,undefined},
{defendtarget,undefined}, <--------
{followtarget,undefined},
{done,undefined},
{flock,undefined},
{friends,undefined},
{targets,undefined},
{newblackboard,undefined},
{defendtargets,undefined}, <----------
{shield_recharge_rate,undefined},
{shield_max_strength,undefined},
{mission_type,undefined},
{subscribe_to_lua_health,undefined},
{aggression,undefined},
{bravery,undefined},
{drift,undefined},
{defendposition,undefined},
{disabledtag,undefined},
{docking_whitelist,undefined},
{wantsmoney,undefined}]

Bug from the change because a cluster of arklan guardians are not defending eachother. I'd not be surprised if other bot sectors of all "fighter" npcs would give the same result

/thread.

For Inc & team:
Please fix when ya can & thanks for the awesome game that is VO, which as this and many other threads have shown - many are passionate about :)

I seriously love the new tweak, and also the roaming bands of hostile NPCs! So much boom! Fighting 3-5 arks at once is amazing!

xXxDSMer: you are mis-interpreting information. The printout you posted has nothing to do with anything here. Yoda doesn't understand how the bots work either, or what the commands really do.

Just stick to reporting observed behavioural changes and specific locations.

Locations I've seen the change is multiple sectors in the asteroid belt that runs through (or right by) pelatus o15

Behavioral change observed in arklan guardians where they used to fight till death, they were observed running away after some amount of damage inflicted by player

:)

Ok. The change in Arklan Guardian behaviour is noted.

I'm not going to call it a Bug at this time, as it may be net-positive overall.

We'll continue to evaluate the ramifications of bot behaviour changes, as they take place.