Forums » Suggestions
NPC communications
I did a search and didn't find anything that was similar to this.
I was remembering my days of playing freespace and thought it would be cool if we had mild NPC control ... for those NPC's assigned to us in missions. I was in particular reminded of the simple com set up for this in freespace and how the plugin quickhail visually is similar.
It was pretty straight forward ... as I remember it.
Attack my target.
Protect me.
Protect my target.
& other simple things
and com to group or to individual types.
I was remembering my days of playing freespace and thought it would be cool if we had mild NPC control ... for those NPC's assigned to us in missions. I was in particular reminded of the simple com set up for this in freespace and how the plugin quickhail visually is similar.
It was pretty straight forward ... as I remember it.
Attack my target.
Protect me.
Protect my target.
& other simple things
and com to group or to individual types.
EVN again supplies the ideal functionality model. Make it happen, GS.
This is possible with the mission editor, to a limited extent -- you can tell NPCs to defend or attack things, but only if they're coded for explicitly in the mission.
For example, if you have a small group of wingmen, you can use either the mission log or private messages to tell the wingmen to do specific tasks like defense/offense, but not necessarily towards any arbitrary target. You could set it up so that messages could be sent to an NPC that would make it say, defend your ship, or attack a (mission-defined) target, but not necessarily the ship/object you are currently targeting.
I believe Phaserlight's LAR missions do something like this, and there may be one or two others that do as well. Regardless, it has to be specifically written into the mission by the PCC member writing it, and would be different for every single mission.
For example, if you have a small group of wingmen, you can use either the mission log or private messages to tell the wingmen to do specific tasks like defense/offense, but not necessarily towards any arbitrary target. You could set it up so that messages could be sent to an NPC that would make it say, defend your ship, or attack a (mission-defined) target, but not necessarily the ship/object you are currently targeting.
I believe Phaserlight's LAR missions do something like this, and there may be one or two others that do as well. Regardless, it has to be specifically written into the mission by the PCC member writing it, and would be different for every single mission.
Then it would make sense to implement a more general solution.
We're working on this, and have been for some months. It's an important aspect of our Dynamic Warfare goals (squad command, whether PCs or NPCs).
I made a PCC mission like this... just a test mission really, but it works somewhat, although the "change npc action" on the mission editor's still very buggy.