Forums » Suggestions
ragnorak AI in the BS
warning, venting to follow:
The new AI directing the ragnoraks in the border skirmishes is kind of annoying. Having blinking yellow lights following me around the majority of the time was getting tedious. It is hard to get involved in dog-fighting or just about anything else while getting missile spammed by those things.
Is anyone else on board with this? I know it drove one player to take a hiatus from the game already. Maybe limit the rag attacks on non cap-ships to a single type of engagement?
Note also, small skirmishes don't have the tridents anymore, or at least the mission I took. I kind of liked one.
The new AI directing the ragnoraks in the border skirmishes is kind of annoying. Having blinking yellow lights following me around the majority of the time was getting tedious. It is hard to get involved in dog-fighting or just about anything else while getting missile spammed by those things.
Is anyone else on board with this? I know it drove one player to take a hiatus from the game already. Maybe limit the rag attacks on non cap-ships to a single type of engagement?
Note also, small skirmishes don't have the tridents anymore, or at least the mission I took. I kind of liked one.
Uhh. I don't think any of this has changed. Maybe the trident had been destroyed?
If they gang up like the bots in hive skirmishes now it must be pretty excting.
If nothing has changed, then I am delusional, which is a reasonable scenario.
Ah, wait, I have a hypothesis. It could be, that I had not run into many situations where I was near enemy ragnoraks and I did not have at least one capship in-sector. In the past if there was, then the rags went right after cap-ships. They would completely ignore me even if I was right in front/behind and shooting at them.
In the most recent large skirmish the rags were spamming the fighters. But the cappies drifted pretty far out, maybe far enough for the rags to loose them on radar.
I have to take another look. I had never seen the rag-spam-fighters behaviour before the last few days. Maybe it is just extenuating circumstances.
Ah, wait, I have a hypothesis. It could be, that I had not run into many situations where I was near enemy ragnoraks and I did not have at least one capship in-sector. In the past if there was, then the rags went right after cap-ships. They would completely ignore me even if I was right in front/behind and shooting at them.
In the most recent large skirmish the rags were spamming the fighters. But the cappies drifted pretty far out, maybe far enough for the rags to loose them on radar.
I have to take another look. I had never seen the rag-spam-fighters behaviour before the last few days. Maybe it is just extenuating circumstances.
My guess is because the capital ships were drifting past the radar limit and the ragnaroks thought they were dead so they were dumping their missiles on you. This happens in normal scenarios minus the radar limit and plus the cappies being dead. Say in a small skirmish: if the trident dies, the rags attack the player (perfectly reasonable). The fact that things in skirmishes don't attack other things in skirmishes if they are out of radar range explains a few other problems: big problems with both hive and border skirmishes.
Border Skirmish: Most of the time in small skirmishes you'll see that the Tridents of each team would be sitting still way out of radar range of each other until someone kills one of them. Then when the trident of the team whose trident was destroyed respawns, it respawns in a much closer spot to the other trident and then the two of them go at it like there's no tomorrow (how it's supposed to be in the first place).
Hive Skirmish: Sometimes in a critical mission, especially if it's a very large asteroid sector, the Hive Queen will be mining just right outside of the radar range of the Trident and the Trident would be sitting completely still where it is: which can make for a very long and annoying commute every time you need to reload, enough time for the queen's shields to respawn in some cases: very annoying.
Simple quick fix: make radar range for NPCs infinite. This should probably be implemented as fast as possible, these problems can make skirmishes very very frustrating.
-Chaakin Tockoa
Border Skirmish: Most of the time in small skirmishes you'll see that the Tridents of each team would be sitting still way out of radar range of each other until someone kills one of them. Then when the trident of the team whose trident was destroyed respawns, it respawns in a much closer spot to the other trident and then the two of them go at it like there's no tomorrow (how it's supposed to be in the first place).
Hive Skirmish: Sometimes in a critical mission, especially if it's a very large asteroid sector, the Hive Queen will be mining just right outside of the radar range of the Trident and the Trident would be sitting completely still where it is: which can make for a very long and annoying commute every time you need to reload, enough time for the queen's shields to respawn in some cases: very annoying.
Simple quick fix: make radar range for NPCs infinite. This should probably be implemented as fast as possible, these problems can make skirmishes very very frustrating.
-Chaakin Tockoa
The small skimishes don't have tridents!!
Bloody hell, incarnate! Read my bugs post.
Bloody hell, incarnate! Read my bugs post.
Ok Kierky, duly noted. I try to read Bugs, but General and Suggestions are more of my territory (since usually I can't fix the bugs). I can't do everything, but sorry someone didn't notice.
Lol, but still, ray should have seen it.
Simple quick fix: make radar range for NPCs infinite.
I don't really like that idea because there should be as few real differences between NPCs and players as possible. Also it would ruin several mechanics that exist currently and make a lot of sense. For example, it would make it impossible to go mining outside of radar range in a bot-infested sector.
Making capship radar infinite (or much longer, say 15000m) would fix the same problem without really breaking anything else, I think. Once player-controlled capships are introduced we should also have the ability to hide behind roids and stuff like that, so it wouldn't damage player-to-player interactions involving capships.
Improving the capship AI so they don't just mindlessly drift away from the battle would also help. I think the devs are working on that though, aren't they?
I don't really like that idea because there should be as few real differences between NPCs and players as possible. Also it would ruin several mechanics that exist currently and make a lot of sense. For example, it would make it impossible to go mining outside of radar range in a bot-infested sector.
Making capship radar infinite (or much longer, say 15000m) would fix the same problem without really breaking anything else, I think. Once player-controlled capships are introduced we should also have the ability to hide behind roids and stuff like that, so it wouldn't damage player-to-player interactions involving capships.
Improving the capship AI so they don't just mindlessly drift away from the battle would also help. I think the devs are working on that though, aren't they?