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MOB aggro ranges and reactions


Gwahir

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The biggest issue I find since playing this in live, is the aggro generation of MOBS. I used to, as a JD be able to summon 1 mob out of a pack, and solo it. Now, not only do I pull the full pack, but they generate more until I am totaly surounded.

This isnt just one mob, this is Mushrooms in VG, Jelly fish in Grissom, Chavez anywhere. However, the crystals in VG seem to behave correctly.
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i'll add that they swarm / follow you in a rather peculiar way.

when they follow you, they will at pack together, without respecting distances between mobs, so it will look like a chunk of mobs all in the same position or relatively not very far from each others

when they swarm you, they disperse around, but before they do it, they go to 0 range, clipping/passing by you, as if you were not there

basically, lack of collision detection, something that is hard to do.


also, perhaps too many aggro at the moment.
instead of aggroing every mob when you hit one, why not do it by chance?
add rules that dictate how many you aggro, and those by chance too.

one mob might call a friend, or two, or most of them, but shouldn't call all
not all of your friends help you when you call them anyways - plus, you're diverting attention from other targets. there might be other people hunting in the area, that aren't grouped with you.

i've made up the following rules as template.

[b]while getting within range: [/b] fixed 5-10k? depends on mob lvl? (increments of 1.3k per 5 levels, lvl 75 = 20k), min: 2k
[list][*]80% chance to agro lightly[*]60% chance to agro normally[*]40% chance to agro aggressively[/list]-
[b]while shooting at one target (first shot/debuff/skill on target, first aggression only):[/b]
[list][*]90% chance it will call in 1 friend[*]70% chance it will call in 2 friends[*]50% chance it will call in 3 friends[*]30% chance it will call in 4 friends[*]10% chance it will call in 5 friends[/list]-
[b]while shooting at second target, or any subsequent targets ([/b][b]first shot/debuff/skill only[/b][b] on target):[/b]
[list][*]50% chance it will call in 1 more friend that hasn't aggroed yet[*]25% chance it will call in 2 more friends that haven't aggroed yet[/list]-
[b]each time a target dies (if aggroed to you):[/b]
[list][*]100% chance it will call in 1 more friend that hasn't aggroed yet[b] (think revenge as it dies)[/b][/list]-
these calculations would be done upon hitting the target, not upon firing/activating.

[b]extra conditions:[/b]
[list][*][u]mobs won't aggro you automatically when in sight if there is a 15 or 20 lvl difference in CLVL[/u] (unless you aggro them deliberately) - this is useful to prevent *stupidity/silliness* and to prevent power leveling[*][u]mobs that are CLVL >=45 will always aggro you[/u], if in range or shot, no matter what[*][u]range to call in friends from[/u]: fixed 15-20k? depends on mob lvl? (increment 2.5k / 5 levels, lvl 75 = 37.5k), min 2.5k[*][u]can't call in more friends than there are around[/u][*][u]can't have more than 15 friends aggroing you with subsequent calling[/u], unless you deliberately shoot at the others[*][u]can call in N friends < total number of friends in the range[/u] (if there's 10 mobs, up to 9 will aggro you by being called in)[*][u]mobs will forget that they aggroed you if you don't shoot at them for 5-15mins[/u] (make it random), so if you get aggroed, then go out of sight for N minutes, or simply keep running for N minutes, or ignore the mob for N minutes, it will forget you[/list]-

(edit, type on chances to aggro on sight/range)
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You left out all references to the players signature. Gwahir said he was a JD. This quite often indicates a very small sig and he pulled the mob away from friends. How far away can they call friends? Can "calling friends" assist even if they can't see the sig of the attacker?

I don't think they should be able to call friends after being pulled 4 or 5k from other mobs and even if called they wouldn't come if they could not detect (see the signature) of the attacker.

Jenquai spend a LOT of time and effort to get a very small signature. It should count for something.

As a side note, rather than making up a lot of general "rules" for all MOBs, I think that different MOBs act differently. Some will mass agro, like fish schooling, while others may scatter, like a flock of birds. I would thing that ship MOBs (which presumably have human/alien operators, would act much differently than organic MOBs.
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true, i did forget about signature. will need to think about it.

i also didn't mentioned summon. but consider this, if the mob gets pulled 5k away, and his friends are 6+k away, then he can't call them in

there could be rule sets for each case scenario, like you mentioned. i just gave out a general example, which might be or not balanced.
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There is a piece of work that needs doing around class development here as well.

For instance a TE can pick a mob at 6k and kite it to death, as this is one of there primary abilities. So far it seems to work. There are only a few mobs in the game that grav link, summon you or can indeed out run a TE.

Pw's have specifically designed thick hull and damage controls with endless reactor power and a lot of guns. But as a cl20 pw, overall 75. I can't take on a group of Chavez in Odin Rex, cl20, as they mass swarm and force me after a short time to warp away. However I sat and watched a cl 20 TT at the same Nav, take on an endless amount of Chavez, by simply shield rebuffing and hull repairing repeatedly, while firing 2 missiles every 7 or 8 seconds. Which didn't quite feel right.

The JD seems to get the week deal here. As non of the 'assassin' skills really work. Summon, attracts every mob, not just one. Taking out one mob, using sig reducing skills and then cloaking doesn't easily work, as every mob automatically attacts you at what feels like maximum thrust. Then, when you do manage to get a kill, frantically refreshing psi shield, then combat cloak to sneak away and regen your shield, when you go to loot, you pop out of cloak! Hardly an assassin, more of a scavenger class.

Having said all that. It's meant as constructive criticism, I expected to log on in January after 10 years, to be able to fly around Luna Nav and kill scuttle lave. So to find it's actually advanced this far. Bloody hell! Thanks very much to the dev team, the wrinkles just could do with a bit of ironing out.
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Dont know if you have seen the threads about this and the Dev/GM's in General chat saying it as well but they have said more than once that they are tweaking the mob's AI's and stats.
According to one of the DEV's, (Dont remember which) Have said that there are about 2000 mobs in game if not more, and each one has to be worked on one at a time.
Same person also said that it takes about an hour to two hours to tweak that mob, then times that by 2000+ mobs. Its getting worked on but its taking time.
As for the player skills and other stats that too is being worked on and tweaked, I have seen a few of these changes, one is sap for the PW, the recharge time was increased, and damage decreased.
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[quote name='LPCA' timestamp='1299787092' post='36193']
mobs don't need to follow you when you warp. unless some of them warped.
[/quote]
Wouldn't that be a neat little AI trick?

*Get hit by a massive amount if Ten-Gu*
"[b]Oh no Low shields[/b]"
*Hit Warp*
"[b]Yes! Got away Woot![/b]*
*Look behind you and their chasing you in warp*
"[b]OMG, When did they get the ability to warp![/b]"
*Ten-Gu start firing as they overtake you at warp speed*
"[b]AHHhhhhh ZZZtttt[/b]"
*Static*
*Blow up in a spectacular fireball as ship parts and fragments start floating all over Cooper* Edited by Maniac
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When AI is fully implemented perhaps Aggressiveness should have an effect on how quickly mobs attack after seeing you. Say a lower aggressivness meaning that the mob has to get closer before it aggros on you, relative to the maximum distance where it can see you while at it's highest setting the mob aggros as soon as it sees you.

Scan range should also vary from mob to mob, and I suspect it will. Many of the orefield guarding Manes in Live were a pain because of their immunity to energy; however, they did have some weaknesses. They didn't have great scan range, and weren't fast. Fold Space would hit most of the time against them for fold-kiting, but not always. 3 tengu could probably guard an large orefield better than 5 Manes.

Whether or not mobs help each other would likely be determined by the mob's alturism after the devs set this stat for all mobs. Some should, some should not.

Generally I don't think there should be a set behavour for all mobs, but they should vary in their intellegence, scan range, alturism, bravery. Perhaps specific combinations of those stats should result in specific behavours among mobs that have that specific combination of stats.

Mobs should also be different in their resistances & vulnerabilities. Let's say you're a Jenquai, some mobs you should want to equip energy beams against, other mobs you should want to equip Plasma beams for. Would be nice if there were some mobs killable with EMP. If you're a Progen substitute Impact or Chemical for Energy, and a Terran substitute Explosive or Chemical for Energy. The addition of the 3 missing classes, increases debuffer options for groups of Terrans or Jenquai. (The Scout using his Salamander to debuff Explosive, the Seeker using her Manticore to debuff energy).

What's really going to be interesting is when Alpha starts, so the big part of balancing will be done. Can't wait to see what Lannister gets to tell us during that phase.
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a lot of good points here.

I think the most fundamental points are the altruism behaviours (ie mobs assisting when fired upon) and collision detection.

Probably the ranges that mobs assist are too generous (in the mob's favour) currently. The content devs have done a good job adding the correct altruism for the mobs, so there's now a lot more expected variance now compared to when the code was first added.

I'll have a go at implementing something for this, and also a bit more variance in mob behaviour. We need to get these fundamentals sorted before adding scripting or anything like that.
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On the issue of mobs calling for help, is it possible to make a line of debuffers that has some shot at keeping their calls for help from being heard? Something like a communications jammer of some sort. If it can be done, say the best one have a 60% chance, at 200% quality, of muffling MOB's calls for help. The mob can lower those chances by having high psionic resistance.
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In live i remember seeing many messages that popped up on the computer read out window....some of them were buffing and some were debuffing. was curious why this has not been implemented in the emu yet....

you made the mabonae osterae vulnerable to plasma

your reactors are shining with new warp charge...blah blah

it was nice to know who buffed me and with what or who i buffed...or debuffed

can somebody confirm if this was indeed in live or is just part of my imagination...you guys have to cut me some slack here...there was not a single night i remember when i didnt fly my pw ship even after sunset....always shot my fott and fotm from 6.5 to 7 clicks away on the tengu fishies even while sleeping....100% crit...wooohooo

UmaXX
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[quote name='Tienbau' timestamp='1299827825' post='36254']
we haven't got round to it yet ... simple as that!
[/quote]

so it was actually there you saying tb? wow...i remembered....have the worst memory!!
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I noticed this when I was out hunting on my TT earlier today. Don't know if it's intended or not but mobs appear to be very slow at turning. My TT was CL9 and I could easily kill a group of 4 beam-using mobs CL 15-19 simply by flying in circles around them - I hardly even had to use shield recharge. When I was sitting still or flying in a straight line my shield dropped in seconds but with a little turning they almost never fired at me.
I do think it's good that a moving target is harder to hit, but this might be a bit over the top.

*edit* since mob-type probably matters: the mobs were Chavez in Venus and somewhere else I can't remember - but also Chaves. Edited by Kwakila
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All I would say is that the crystals in VG seem to behave as individual mobs, I can summon those out, one at at time. So if your looking for somewhere to learn form, or use as a base, I would try those.

Also, as for the rebuffs, I'm sure you used to be able to see timers for how long a buff would last on the top right corner of the screen, and you could 'dispel' a positive buff by right clicking it.
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