Hey! Anyone remember when we had the old Hive-AI reaction to players? Today I was reminded what fun it was when bots used to come in bulks at you (fighting 3 Assaults at once, etc.).

So I'd like to suggest to bring exactly that back without hurting the unexperienced new players at all. It's pretty easy:

Bot behaviour could change to the old "hard mode" once you achieve combat level 10.
And if there are people who are afraid that it could get too dangerous for them even when they're combat 10+ then we can add another switch to turn it on: Make it require combat 10 and "Advanced Combat Training"-mission running.

+1 to adding a bot hard mode when people are combat +10

-1 to Advanced Combat Training mission toggling it on. By the time people are 10+, which takes a long while and killing tens of thousands of bots, they have no excuse to not be able to handle bots.

+1

+1 This is a great idea.

-1

Combat missions and hive bots behavior was already nerfed to make them easier for newbies.
Now they only have 1 bot at a time attacking them, we had it far worse before.
Also, changing bot behavior based on levels is silly. Just when some newbie gets confident that he can kill an aputech and gets his combat up, bot changes to 'hard' mode and newbie starts dying like crazy again.

This accomplishes nothing.

You probably forgot how long it took you to get to 10, bojan. By the time you're 10, you've killed tens of thousands of bots. Hardly a newbie anymore.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

@bojansplash:

I don't know if it is just me, but I don't understand your concerns at all.

Combat missions and hive bots behavior was already nerfed to make them easier for newbies.
Now they only have 1 bot at a time attacking them...

Yes, I know. It was a well needed change. I am all for treating new players carefully so that they stick around... But what does my change do to ruin this? This is a change for veteran players so that they have a new challenge in botting. It's meant to be more endgame content while we wait for the big changes. Newbie regulations aren't touched.

Also, changing bot behavior based on levels is silly.

Why...?

Just when some newbie gets confident that he can kill an aputech and gets his combat up[...]

Uhm... "Some newbie" doesn't just hit combat 10 by wrecking some ApuTechs. Even some of the players you meet in B8 and who are fairly good are not even combat 10...
By the time someone has combat 10, they should be capable of handling fighting more than one enemy.

And for those who are in fear that their skill (even with combat 10+) is too low I proposed the Advanced Combat mission fix so that the "hard mode" is only effect when players with combat 10+ start botting with that mission. Much like a switch you could turn on and off.

This accomplishes nothing.

Of course it accomplishes something. The dull and easy botting can be fun again. That's good.

Oh looks like I misunderstood this, so you want to have normal bots mode just for players at combat 10 and above and 'easy' mode for everyone below 10?

This would be even better fast leveling exploit then crackbotting we used to have ages ago.

Anyone who wants to raise his levels fast can do the border patrol mission. No need to kill tens of thousands of bots for raising levels fast.

Bot AI difficulty and equipment should not in some way be based on who they are attacking and what their license levels or equipment might be. It would make far more sense for the AI difficulty to ramp up the further away from capitol systems they are. This follows the idea that the closer to high population centers the bots are, the more likely they are to be kept to a minimum and the most dangerous ones killed by regular patrols. The further out you get the fewer patrols there are, and so the more dangerous the bots become.

I partly agree with draugath, but I also think that difficulty should ramp up based on the number of bots you've killed from that particular hive.

Sure, in a digital world it wouldn't be hard for the hive to disseminate information about who has been killing them, but even then that shouldn't affect how difficult they are to kill. If anything, it should only affect how likely they are to attack you, which doesn't seem to be a mechanic currently supported in VO.

I realize that this isn't Everquest or World of Warcraft, but one of my favorite roles in those games was that of a puller. Each mob/bot in those games (and others) had an aggro radius within which they would attack any hostiles. They also often had an assist radius (often smaller than aggro) within which they would come to the aid of any friendly mobs under attack. Pulling was an art with the most skilled being able to separate even some of the densest concentrations of mobs (unless the devs cheated and permanently linked them).

Along the lines of difficulty of encounter, the number of possible assists you have to deal with should also be considered, not just the difficulty of an individual bot. Addons that could dampen the range at which you're detected or jam bot transmissions reducing the chance of assists would make fights involving NPCs a lot more interesting.

I thought the discussion was about how many bots should come after you under different circumstances, not how skilled those bots should be. I definitely agree that bot skill should not change based on who they're attacking (although bigger threats could result in dispatching more skilled bots).

How many bots come after you could be easily handled with the aggro/assist radii, though what you're suggesting (in your last post), Pizzasgood, sounds a little more like a strike force for the Hive, which would actually be rather cool too. Give some bots a special Call-in-Reinforcements ability that they trigger if they are aggroed and not killed fast enough.

The biggest problem, at the moment, which makes group hunting with people of various skill levels essentially impossible is that there's no hate list. Once a bot picks a target, it doesn't matter who shoots it, they won't turn and attack the more relevant threat.

Tl;dr.

However;

I am in favour of increasing the number of bots that will attack you in a sector at once based on combat level.

It might be an idea to keep nation space static hives the way they are now, so that the newbs do have as easier time of it. If they find they cannot hack being ganked, they can always stick to botting in nation space. Grey hives should return to the old behaviour of attacking in 2's or 3's. You already get a bigger bonus for most of the grey space hive anyway, so this would mean 2 things:

1) Newbs or players that cannot handle being ganked can stay in nation space to bot till their hearts content, but get a lesser reward for it.

2) People who do not mind being attacked by more than one bot, can go to grey and splatter the hive there for a bigger reward, but with more danger.

Also this would require a lot less dev time, so it might be easier to implement.