Good news, one of the programmers has implemented a preliminary fix that may solve the issue of non-player entities unable to attack large structures (Borg transwarp gates, for instance).
or totally turn skynet on:cool: outsid eof that i'll believe it when i see tons of dead big borg from my bops:D
Good news, one of the programmers has implemented a preliminary fix that may solve the issue of non-player entities unable to attack large structures (Borg transwarp gates, for instance).
Thanks for the news! This will make a lot of us happy!
Good news, one of the programmers has implemented a preliminary fix that may solve the issue of non-player entities unable to attack large structures (Borg transwarp gates, for instance).
Sweet! Any idea when this may hit the main servers?
Sweet! Any idea when this may hit the main servers?
-Quiiliitiila
Generally this sort of patch must pass QA testing. If it passes it will go in the next build, assuming that we don't have any other critical patches that might require special handling. So, if it passes and if we have no other issues with the next update, probably a week or two.
Your best bet, as always, is to keep an eye on Tribble patch notes.
Generally this sort of patch must pass QA testing. If it passes it will go in the next build, assuming that we don't have any other critical patches that might require special handling. So, if it passes and if we have no other issues with the next update, probably a week or two.
Your best bet, as always, is to keep an eye on Tribble patch notes.
This sort of patch probably means any patch, right? Otherwise, I start to understand a couple of issues that cropped up in the past. :eek:
Is it possible to know if you guys will return the BoP attack patters to their old version? It has killed the BoP uniqueness, damage and created a host of problems that were not present before.
Quite frankly I've stopped playing STO altogether because of the new attack run. I really don't see the point of using BoPs if they just do attack runs like ToDujs high on weed.
Generally this sort of patch must pass QA testing. If it passes it will go in the next build, assuming that we don't have any other critical patches that might require special handling. So, if it passes and if we have no other issues with the next update, probably a week or two.
Your best bet, as always, is to keep an eye on Tribble patch notes.
Next time you come to Orlando I'm buying you a beer!
Any idea when the ai that tries to get the pets away from exploding ships will be coming?
This x10! It is the single most frustrating thing with saucer sep. I can pretty much gurantee that when my Oddy Saucer "nuzzels" a cube it is going to explode when the cube explodes. In addition, the AI for the escort is terrible and it keeps getting stuck on space objects. All in all, if the AI to these other pets does not get fixed soon(tm) I will be seeking a refund on my Oddy purchase as they are definately not working as intended and are broken.
This x10! It is the single most frustrating thing with saucer sep. I can pretty much gurantee that when my Oddy Saucer "nuzzels" a cube it is going to explode when the cube explodes. In addition, the AI for the escort is terrible and it keeps getting stuck on space objects. All in all, if the AI to these other pets does not get fixed soon(tm) I will be seeking a refund on my Oddy purchase as they are definately not working as intended and are broken.
Week or so ago they mentioned a fix for that was found but I haven't ears of anything since
Initial trials of warp core breach avoidance were not successful. Will require going back to the drawing board. May not be possible without the assistance of a team programmer.
Initial trials of warp core breach avoidance were not successful. Will require going back to the drawing board. May not be possible without the assistance of a team programmer.
I hope that eventually this can be addressed. I lose more Scorpion fighters and MVAM sections this way
Initial trials of warp core breach avoidance were not successful. Will require going back to the drawing board. May not be possible without the assistance of a team programmer.
Initial trials of warp core breach avoidance were not successful. Will require going back to the drawing board. May not be possible without the assistance of a team programmer.
You could always attempt to make it act like a pro bop player does and when it hit 5%-10% hull health to fire one last time and hit emr power to engines.
Could the pets just not be susceptible to exploding ships?
That is why the pets of the new flagships are useless is stf's and the tried and true hanger pets are better (still don't know why you didn't make it a hanger rather than an ability).
Initial trials of warp core breach avoidance were not successful. Will require going back to the drawing board. May not be possible without the assistance of a team programmer.
maybe if you could add some direction like, upon killing players of borg npc, fly in the direction you are pointing at full speed for 3-5 seconds. they seem to like to point blank range their target, thus the explosion problems, something as simple as this might work. as long as they don't fly strait for the exploding ship.
(still don't know why you didn't make it a hanger rather than an ability).
Well the ships don't have hangers for a start, half their backside comes off when they deploy :P
Well the Ody has a shuttle hanger but the Aquarius looks like twice the height of the hanger doors on the rear of the saucer.
Well the ships don't have hangers for a start, half their backside comes off when they deploy :P
Well the Ody has a shuttle hanger but the Aquarius looks like twice the height of the hanger doors on the rear of the saucer.
You are saying that it is just because of the animation.
Possible but laaaaama!
Realistically the tac carrier's ships are too big to be deploying from it as well.
If the flagships all had the hanger (and can deploy anything) and only one of the flagships actually had the special ship (and the animation only worked when that she was deployed) that would be awesome.
Because, admit it or not, the flagships are just poor flight deck cruisers
"Bird of Prey Carrier Pet AI improvements:
This pet will no longer stay cloaked for too much of any encounter.
Limited cloak to only be used during a specific "Retreat" phase of their attack runs, which should only trigger when they get too close to their target.
o NOTE: They will only use this phase if the player is using the "Attack" Carrier AI command.
Reduced innate damage boost slightly.
Resolved an issue which caused these pets to sometimes get stuck in an AI loop that was less effective in combat."
I tested this today via Pi Canis Sortie and the patch notes are correct and all of these seem to be working correctly so far. Note: All tests were made in either aggressive or intercept depending of I was on a transport ship mission.
Notes and insight on my play test:
Cloaked Retreat The BoPs now after making an attack run cloak and retreat back out X range and then retreat the attack pattern. The BoP will decloak and start the turn to reengage the combat. This event seems to trigger 30% to 25% of the time for the cloak retreat.
Personal opinion Im fine with this as I know the BoPs will never be as good as player BoP but the pattern works fine and I would give this current change a green light.
Large targetable space objects For the Pi Canis run this would be the satellite stations in the Kern system and the shield generators in Erikson. The BoPs still do not attack these objects BUT they do attack patterns around them as if they were going to attack these objects.
Personal opinion This is a great step in the right direction now we have the pets doing mock attack patterns is better than my BoP hugging those objects. I hope the pets will start attacking these objects in the next few patches.
New attack pattern not listed in patch notes So the attack pattern has changed and I like it. The BoPs attack at full speed that means they dont do crazy damage on a single run but the speed gives them a little more defense. Now turning is interesting to see the BoPs when making a sharp turn will vastly reduce their speed to turn (I have found a bug in this and want to make a suggestion). The new attack pattern will take the BoPs past the target 65% of the time my guess this has more to do with the target making it harder on the BoP to complete the flyby. Also the alpha strike aka my BoPs just entered Red Alert is still a little goofy as they normally still turn to the left or the right to flank the target but after that point the attack pattern does improve a good amount. An interesting thing I have noticed from the visual and audio that the pet BoPs now have the Evasive Maneuvers power.
Bug BoPs have a chance to get stuck in the turn if they make the turn close to the target. At first I thought it was just stopping but it was slowly turning left or right. The is the reduced speed turn to be clear made close to the target and my guess it would be 4km or closer to the target when I saw it happening. Also this should not be hard to replicate as it would happen two or three times in a battle.
Note of interest The new attack pattern seems to have increased the damage output of the BoP, it has also doubled to tripled the use of the duel cannons but that is not saying much as in the old attack pattern they almost never fired them. By no means did they make them OP and they are still no wear close to player BoP combat effectiveness or intelligence but I put them currently getting close to the sweet spot that they need to be in.
Suggestion I would look into increasing the turn rate of the BoP and this might fix a few issues. It could increase the damage output by reducing the long hang time of the reduced speed tight turns. The change would help the ships orient on the target quicker when making the high speed turns. It has the potential to fix the turn/stuck bug they are getting but that is more a guess.
Personal opinion I really like the changes and I think the team has done a great job. The dev team is getting very close to having the BoP in the correct place of creating a strong combat pet for the squishy space slug without having people cry out that it is over the top.
Recap:
-I like the patch changes
-Fix the turn bug
-BoPs has a better attack pattern
-Work on BoP red alert turn to flank goofiness on the Alpha attack
-Look into increasing turn rate of BoP
-BoPs are close to attacking large space objects
FYI, a change that was intended to make the charged To'duj and Peregrine pets (from the Ferengi lock boxes) work wound up interacting in an unexpected fashion with the data for the To'duj carrier pets. I'm fixing this at the moment. I'm also going to attempt to implement a change to BoP AI so that they stay under cloak when starting an attack run, and don't come out of cloak until ~5 km. (This should also increase their proclivity for facing the opponent and using their dual cannons.)
A side effect of updating this is that we decided that the Scorpion fighters (from the Vault feature episode) will now also respond to carrier commands, and will take formation with your other fighters. If you're not flying a carrier, they will just attack your target.
FYI, a change that was intended to make the charged To'duj and Peregrine pets (from the Ferengi lock boxes) work wound up interacting in an unexpected fashion with the data for the To'duj carrier pets. I'm fixing this at the moment. I'm also going to attempt to implement a change to BoP AI so that they stay under cloak when starting an attack run, and don't come out of cloak until ~5 km. (This should also increase their proclivity for facing the opponent and using their dual cannons.)
A side effect of updating this is that we decided that the Scorpion fighters (from the Vault feature episode) will now also respond to carrier commands, and will take formation with your other fighters. If you're not flying a carrier, they will just attack your target.
Additionally, I'm setting up support craft (sep. saucers, fighters, BoPs, etc.) to return immediately to formation in front of the owner when there are no more enemies to fight -- that is, nobody is attacking your team, and nobody on your team has a valid enemy target selected. This should keep them from sitting around waiting for warp core breaches after blowing up the last enemy ship.
Additionally, I'm setting up support craft (sep. saucers, fighters, BoPs, etc.) to return immediately to formation in front of the owner when there are no more enemies to fight -- that is, nobody is attacking your team, and nobody on your team has a valid enemy target selected. This should keep them from sitting around waiting for warp core breaches after blowing up the last enemy ship.
A side effect of updating this is that we decided that the Scorpion fighters (from the Vault feature episode) will now also respond to carrier commands, and will take formation with your other fighters. If you're not flying a carrier, they will just attack your target.
I take this includes the new consumable To'Duj too?
Also, I haven't seen the Scorpion fighters on the Exchange the past few days, have they been changed to bound or something?
Additionally, I'm setting up support craft (sep. saucers, fighters, BoPs, etc.) to return immediately to formation in front of the owner when there are no more enemies to fight -- that is, nobody is attacking your team, and nobody on your team has a valid enemy target selected. This should keep them from sitting around waiting for warp core breaches after blowing up the last enemy ship.
I'm fixing this at the moment. I'm also going to attempt to implement a change to BoP AI so that they stay under cloak when starting an attack run, and don't come out of cloak until ~5 km. (This should also increase their proclivity for facing the opponent and using their dual cannons.)
A side effect of updating this is that we decided that the Scorpion fighters (from the Vault feature episode) will now also respond to carrier commands, and will take formation with your other fighters. If you're not flying a carrier, they will just attack your target.
Please also have the BoPs slow to half speed when they decloak to fire. Otherwise they'll remain at top speed, unable to keep nose on target and hence wont fire their dual cannons more than a couple of times (aka, useless).
And please, please, please remove whatever AI tells them to break off in wild directions to do the attack run. This is only making the BoPs useless as alpha strike damage since they end up hitting the target in multiple shields at the same time. This fact alone makes them significantly less effective than using ToDuj fighters.
The BoPs original attack run approach flight path was absolutely perfect. Bring it back please!
So kindly:
1- make them slow down to half speed after decloak so they can fire their guns
2- Bring back original BOP attack run approach to target.
Additionally, I'm setting up support craft (sep. saucers, fighters, BoPs, etc.) to return immediately to formation in front of the owner when there are no more enemies to fight -- that is, nobody is attacking your team, and nobody on your team has a valid enemy target selected. This should keep them from sitting around waiting for warp core breaches after blowing up the last enemy ship.
I don't see the point of such formation. You (or team) are never... ever... outside of combat status except for the very first minute of starting an instance. This fix only saves them from the very last enemy in the entire map and that is not the issue..the issue is pets dying to warp core breaches in the midst of combat.
Why not simply automatically trigger an emergency power to engines..or evasive maneuvers ... on all AI pets the moment they detect any ship near them reach 0 hull? That should slingshot them out of harm's way.
Also of note is the formation only works when under attack mode... and when in that mode the pets will pick up team-mate aggro no matter how far away they are. So really, this formation thing makes no sense at all.
Can you guys not simply just make the pets fly in such a formation when under recall mode? Its the only mode where the pets will actually obey you during combat... and having them in formation helps a LOT when ordering a new target since the formation has them all facing in one direction rather than clusterfraking behind your ship and bumping into your engines and each other and ending up pointing their noses in random directions.
My suggestion:
Carrier Pets:
Have each hangar fly in formation to the left and right side of your carrier about 50m above. Behind and in front is not recommended because it interferes with carrier weapons (aka breen cluster torpedo breaks up when it flies through a pet formation in front of you). If they were to fly to either side it would let you visually know which pets belong to which hangar (#1 left, #2 right) but also looks darn cool. Putting the pets to fly above the carrier also removes any issues of them bumping into the carrier when an attack order is given.
Non-carrier pets: Have them fly above and in front of your ship about 50m above, 100m in front. Look great and doesnt interfere with weapons fire.
Birds of Prey from Vo'quv carriers should tend to circle about until they are facing opponents while cloaked.
This way they can make attack runs with their forward cannons.
Combat support craft have better detection of when there are no enemies left and will return to their owner immediately.
This will help to keep separated saucers, fighters, and other support craft from hanging around next to warp core breaches at the end of a battle.
Resolved an issue that was impacting the ability of To'duj fighters to receive carrier commands.
Scorpion fighters will now accept carrier commands, and will join formation flying with other fighters from a carrier.
Space pets of all kinds should have much less trouble with falling behind the player, and even if left behind, should catch up now instead of falling further behind.
Prometheus MVAM components will now follow in formation.
Resolved an issue with formation spacing when companion small craft were very close.
Birds-of-Prey carried in launch bays should be more likely to use their dual cannons now.
Fast pets with slow owners, for example Birds-of-Prey with a Vo'quv, are no longer capped to a low speed after going into Follow mode.
This means theyll no longer continue to be slow even when switched to Attack mode.
Slightly reduced the damage output of all Dreadnought-class NPC ships, game-wide.
The Tellarite ground trait, Pig Headed, has been updated to reflect its description and now works on the ground only.
Updated Target Subsystems: Shields, all ranks
Updated magnitude of Shield Drain and Shield Energy Drain on Dual Beam arrays to match Single Beam arrays in functionality.
Rank 3 of these powers no longer causes them to heal shields instead of damaging them.
Added an HP buff to Horta combat pets to compensate for the fact that they do not have shields.
The tooltip for Cardiopulmonary Respiration should now clearly indicate that the revived target comes back with 25% Health.
The Ketracel timer UI no longer stops counting down after a certain amount of time.
The actual timer always worked properly, but the UI will no longer fail to update with the correct time.
Reverse Shield Polarity Damage Trigger tooltip no longer reports an incorrect magnitude.
Viral Matrix has had its duration improved.
A small amount of this increase in duration is on the base duration, but most of it is from application of the associated skill.
Corrected spelling of hanger item "Tachyon Drone".
[/LIST]
Well that was the 16th's test server notes on AI but I can't get on and test for a few days so I was hoping to pass the info around and get you carrier lovers out there testing.
Once again Im using the Pi Canis sorties as my testing grounds. This gives me access solo targets, groups, attack transport missions and stationary structures like satellites and power generators.Also Im using BoPs for most of the combat as I sit and observer the damage, flight patterns and power activations.
Im going to cover ester eggs, high points, the current attack pattern, AI/coding triggers and my suggestions and opinions.
Ester egg!:
(Edit: I was wrong and had a Trekkie moment this morning and thought I had found bigfoot so I apologize it was an Exeter that bugged into a Tier 5 mission.)
-Can anyone say tier 5 constitution retrofit named the Kirk? Well it seems to be a constitution retrofit at least and very small next to my Voquv. I took on about 5 of them so far on the test server and will be sending some poor screen shots to STOked. Good amount of hit points and had quantum torpedoes.
Here are the links but as I said they are small in the pictures as I was flying a huge ship.
(Note: They do have a kirk ship listed on STO wiki so it could have been that one maybe.)
High Points:
-The Alpha Strike is very strong compared what we have had over the last few months.
-The BoP AI now can attack structures namely the satellites and the power generators that I came across. The trick was to have the carrier commands set to aggressive and fire at least one shot at the structure so the AI can ping it as a target.
Current attack Pattern:
-The red alert state starts and AI kicks in.
-Alpha strike is rock solid slow strafing run comes in hot and slow! Duel cannons work great on the attack run and do strong damage to target. Be advised the BoPs cannot kill a target in a single run but should do strong damage between 40% and 60% on the alpha strike.
-BoPs begin the retreat to setup for another attack run and continue with large slow turning arcs and will get an ok number of attacks on second run.
-At the end of the second run the cloak retreat will trigger and the BoP will make the loop again BUT will not de-cloak until they have use of the duel cannons. That leaves the BoP at less than 3km consistently and on average one shot is fired before passing the target. Sometimes you can get as much as three shots and others the BoP does not fire at all on that run because of the extreme close range.
-Pattern continues on and off until the target is dead or the BoP/carrier is dead.
Notes about the attack pattern: The flight speed stays close to the same during the combat and sometime evasive maneuvers will trigger but seems to be a little buggy with that power on how it is acting.
AI/coding triggers:
-The trigger for the decloak seem to only work when the BoP has the target in the duel cannon arc of fire.
-If no carrier commands are active the pets will not follow you.
-I have seen one or two the BoPs trying to keep up with the carrier but are much slower and cant keep up when Im flying at full impulse.
-The AI for attacking structures is fine. The fact that the player needs to attack the structure to flag it as a hostile for your pets is acceptable. Aka the way intercept worked with mines at one point.
My suggestions and opinions:
-DO NOT RELEASE THIS BUILD ON THE LIVE SERVER!!! There is a major flaw in the triggering for the decloak that prevents the BoP from doing much damage after the alpha strike. In this current build and flight pattern I found it to be very hard for four BoPs to take out a single ship even over an extended span of time. I believe a build between the last one and this one might be what we are looking for.
-Coding trigger suggestions: As I have stated before Im not a coder and may be butchering terms and methods but I have an idea and maybe it will work or you all or you might be inspired from it.
Im going off the decloak trigger of that I have seen in this build.
IF target is in duel cannon arc, THEN slow to current builds attack speed unknown value
IF target is outside of duel cannon arc, THEN accelerate to something closer to the last builds attack speed . Unknown value
Even with the current build I would like the devs to consider changing the retreat protocols and this might even fix the decloaking trigger issue. Can you make the BoP retreat to a certain distance before the code tells them to turn and start the attack run? If so, have the BoP retreat to something between 10km and 12km before making the turn in hopes to put the BoP in the duel cannon arc at around the 9km or the 8km range. The turn distance might need to be more like 13km or 14km depending on the turn rate.
Wrap-up:
-Tier 5 Constitution Kirk .maybe I stopped big foot
-BoPs can attack large space structures!!!
-Good Alpha strike
-AI and decloak still needs work
-Pet follow issues
-No carrier command active issues
-Attack pattern needs adjustment to deal with decloak do the BoP flight speed/turning rate keeping them to close to the target to act correctly.
-PLEASE DO NOT RELEASE THIS ON THE LIVE SERVER!
Even if I dont think this should be released I believe this was step in the right direction working out some different ideas and interesting tricks with the AI code.
Even if I dont think this should be released I believe this was step in the right direction working out some different ideas and interesting tricks with the AI code.
Oh Hai! Guess what went into live server? :rolleyes:
Absolutely horrible BoP AI routines now. The alpha strike is nonexistent..why? They hit different shields.
...and after the 'alpha' strike run.. I... I really dont know whether to just sit down and silently sob in the dark or uninstall this game.
The BoPs perform the most epileptic attempts at circling the target and rarely, EVER fire the dual cannons unless their circling has somehow taken them far away enough from their target that during their turn the target happens to magically be in their firing cone.
BoP AI does not obey target change anymore either. Oh yes, change to new target, RECALL them (to reset whatever order they have) , give them a new target and... watch them ignore you as they pick a random ship and start attacking it. Yes..even when the new designated target is 2km away from your carrier.
And to think the BoPs attack pattern was PERFECT before they started TRIBBLE with it... I mean seriously, WHY the hell did the attack pattern had to change? It was never asked to be changed..all we asked was the g-damn BUGS be fixed. That meant the transformer-gate issue (fixed this patch), the no following orders issue (fixed a few patches back but it has returned this patch) and the no dual cannon firing time issue (still not fixed and all that needed to be done to fix it is to SLOW the BoPs to half impulse when they decloak to fire in the original attack run so they have enough time to fire them).
As of 2 weeks ago i'm not even bothering to play this game. I just come back to test any 'bop' fix that appears in the patch notes.
Comments
or totally turn skynet on:cool: outsid eof that i'll believe it when i see tons of dead big borg from my bops:D
Thanks for the news! This will make a lot of us happy!
-Forjo
Sweet! Any idea when this may hit the main servers?
-Quiiliitiila
Generally this sort of patch must pass QA testing. If it passes it will go in the next build, assuming that we don't have any other critical patches that might require special handling. So, if it passes and if we have no other issues with the next update, probably a week or two.
Your best bet, as always, is to keep an eye on Tribble patch notes.
Is it possible to know if you guys will return the BoP attack patters to their old version? It has killed the BoP uniqueness, damage and created a host of problems that were not present before.
Quite frankly I've stopped playing STO altogether because of the new attack run. I really don't see the point of using BoPs if they just do attack runs like ToDujs high on weed.
Next time you come to Orlando I'm buying you a beer!
This x10! It is the single most frustrating thing with saucer sep. I can pretty much gurantee that when my Oddy Saucer "nuzzels" a cube it is going to explode when the cube explodes. In addition, the AI for the escort is terrible and it keeps getting stuck on space objects. All in all, if the AI to these other pets does not get fixed soon(tm) I will be seeking a refund on my Oddy purchase as they are definately not working as intended and are broken.
Week or so ago they mentioned a fix for that was found but I haven't ears of anything since
What about the poor pathing of the Escort?
You could always attempt to make it act like a pro bop player does and when it hit 5%-10% hull health to fire one last time and hit emr power to engines.
That is why the pets of the new flagships are useless is stf's and the tried and true hanger pets are better (still don't know why you didn't make it a hanger rather than an ability).
maybe if you could add some direction like, upon killing players of borg npc, fly in the direction you are pointing at full speed for 3-5 seconds. they seem to like to point blank range their target, thus the explosion problems, something as simple as this might work. as long as they don't fly strait for the exploding ship.
Well the ships don't have hangers for a start, half their backside comes off when they deploy :P
Well the Ody has a shuttle hanger but the Aquarius looks like twice the height of the hanger doors on the rear of the saucer.
You are saying that it is just because of the animation.
Possible but laaaaama!
Realistically the tac carrier's ships are too big to be deploying from it as well.
If the flagships all had the hanger (and can deploy anything) and only one of the flagships actually had the special ship (and the animation only worked when that she was deployed) that would be awesome.
Because, admit it or not, the flagships are just poor flight deck cruisers
"Bird of Prey Carrier Pet AI improvements:
This pet will no longer stay cloaked for too much of any encounter.
Limited cloak to only be used during a specific "Retreat" phase of their attack runs, which should only trigger when they get too close to their target.
o NOTE: They will only use this phase if the player is using the "Attack" Carrier AI command.
Reduced innate damage boost slightly.
Resolved an issue which caused these pets to sometimes get stuck in an AI loop that was less effective in combat."
I tested this today via Pi Canis Sortie and the patch notes are correct and all of these seem to be working correctly so far. Note: All tests were made in either aggressive or intercept depending of I was on a transport ship mission.
Notes and insight on my play test:
Cloaked Retreat The BoPs now after making an attack run cloak and retreat back out X range and then retreat the attack pattern. The BoP will decloak and start the turn to reengage the combat. This event seems to trigger 30% to 25% of the time for the cloak retreat.
Personal opinion Im fine with this as I know the BoPs will never be as good as player BoP but the pattern works fine and I would give this current change a green light.
Large targetable space objects For the Pi Canis run this would be the satellite stations in the Kern system and the shield generators in Erikson. The BoPs still do not attack these objects BUT they do attack patterns around them as if they were going to attack these objects.
Personal opinion This is a great step in the right direction now we have the pets doing mock attack patterns is better than my BoP hugging those objects. I hope the pets will start attacking these objects in the next few patches.
New attack pattern not listed in patch notes So the attack pattern has changed and I like it. The BoPs attack at full speed that means they dont do crazy damage on a single run but the speed gives them a little more defense. Now turning is interesting to see the BoPs when making a sharp turn will vastly reduce their speed to turn (I have found a bug in this and want to make a suggestion). The new attack pattern will take the BoPs past the target 65% of the time my guess this has more to do with the target making it harder on the BoP to complete the flyby. Also the alpha strike aka my BoPs just entered Red Alert is still a little goofy as they normally still turn to the left or the right to flank the target but after that point the attack pattern does improve a good amount. An interesting thing I have noticed from the visual and audio that the pet BoPs now have the Evasive Maneuvers power.
Bug BoPs have a chance to get stuck in the turn if they make the turn close to the target. At first I thought it was just stopping but it was slowly turning left or right. The is the reduced speed turn to be clear made close to the target and my guess it would be 4km or closer to the target when I saw it happening. Also this should not be hard to replicate as it would happen two or three times in a battle.
Note of interest The new attack pattern seems to have increased the damage output of the BoP, it has also doubled to tripled the use of the duel cannons but that is not saying much as in the old attack pattern they almost never fired them. By no means did they make them OP and they are still no wear close to player BoP combat effectiveness or intelligence but I put them currently getting close to the sweet spot that they need to be in.
Suggestion I would look into increasing the turn rate of the BoP and this might fix a few issues. It could increase the damage output by reducing the long hang time of the reduced speed tight turns. The change would help the ships orient on the target quicker when making the high speed turns. It has the potential to fix the turn/stuck bug they are getting but that is more a guess.
Personal opinion I really like the changes and I think the team has done a great job. The dev team is getting very close to having the BoP in the correct place of creating a strong combat pet for the squishy space slug without having people cry out that it is over the top.
Recap:
-I like the patch changes
-Fix the turn bug
-BoPs has a better attack pattern
-Work on BoP red alert turn to flank goofiness on the Alpha attack
-Look into increasing turn rate of BoP
-BoPs are close to attacking large space objects
A side effect of updating this is that we decided that the Scorpion fighters (from the Vault feature episode) will now also respond to carrier commands, and will take formation with your other fighters. If you're not flying a carrier, they will just attack your target.
OOoo...that's kind of badass!
THANK YOU!
I take this includes the new consumable To'Duj too?
Also, I haven't seen the Scorpion fighters on the Exchange the past few days, have they been changed to bound or something?
Please also have the BoPs slow to half speed when they decloak to fire. Otherwise they'll remain at top speed, unable to keep nose on target and hence wont fire their dual cannons more than a couple of times (aka, useless).
And please, please, please remove whatever AI tells them to break off in wild directions to do the attack run. This is only making the BoPs useless as alpha strike damage since they end up hitting the target in multiple shields at the same time. This fact alone makes them significantly less effective than using ToDuj fighters.
The BoPs original attack run approach flight path was absolutely perfect. Bring it back please!
So kindly:
1- make them slow down to half speed after decloak so they can fire their guns
2- Bring back original BOP attack run approach to target.
I don't see the point of such formation. You (or team) are never... ever... outside of combat status except for the very first minute of starting an instance. This fix only saves them from the very last enemy in the entire map and that is not the issue..the issue is pets dying to warp core breaches in the midst of combat.
Why not simply automatically trigger an emergency power to engines..or evasive maneuvers ... on all AI pets the moment they detect any ship near them reach 0 hull? That should slingshot them out of harm's way.
Also of note is the formation only works when under attack mode... and when in that mode the pets will pick up team-mate aggro no matter how far away they are. So really, this formation thing makes no sense at all.
Can you guys not simply just make the pets fly in such a formation when under recall mode? Its the only mode where the pets will actually obey you during combat... and having them in formation helps a LOT when ordering a new target since the formation has them all facing in one direction rather than clusterfraking behind your ship and bumping into your engines and each other and ending up pointing their noses in random directions.
My suggestion:
Carrier Pets:
Have each hangar fly in formation to the left and right side of your carrier about 50m above. Behind and in front is not recommended because it interferes with carrier weapons (aka breen cluster torpedo breaks up when it flies through a pet formation in front of you). If they were to fly to either side it would let you visually know which pets belong to which hangar (#1 left, #2 right) but also looks darn cool. Putting the pets to fly above the carrier also removes any issues of them bumping into the carrier when an attack order is given.
Non-carrier pets: Have them fly above and in front of your ship about 50m above, 100m in front. Look great and doesnt interfere with weapons fire.
Well that was the 16th's test server notes on AI but I can't get on and test for a few days so I was hoping to pass the info around and get you carrier lovers out there testing.
Once again Im using the Pi Canis sorties as my testing grounds. This gives me access solo targets, groups, attack transport missions and stationary structures like satellites and power generators.Also Im using BoPs for most of the combat as I sit and observer the damage, flight patterns and power activations.
Im going to cover ester eggs, high points, the current attack pattern, AI/coding triggers and my suggestions and opinions.
Ester egg!:
(Edit: I was wrong and had a Trekkie moment this morning and thought I had found bigfoot so I apologize it was an Exeter that bugged into a Tier 5 mission.)
-Can anyone say tier 5 constitution retrofit named the Kirk? Well it seems to be a constitution retrofit at least and very small next to my Voquv. I took on about 5 of them so far on the test server and will be sending some poor screen shots to STOked. Good amount of hit points and had quantum torpedoes.
Here are the links but as I said they are small in the pictures as I was flying a huge ship.
Link one
Link two
(Note: They do have a kirk ship listed on STO wiki so it could have been that one maybe.)
High Points:
-The Alpha Strike is very strong compared what we have had over the last few months.
-The BoP AI now can attack structures namely the satellites and the power generators that I came across. The trick was to have the carrier commands set to aggressive and fire at least one shot at the structure so the AI can ping it as a target.
Current attack Pattern:
-The red alert state starts and AI kicks in.
-Alpha strike is rock solid slow strafing run comes in hot and slow! Duel cannons work great on the attack run and do strong damage to target. Be advised the BoPs cannot kill a target in a single run but should do strong damage between 40% and 60% on the alpha strike.
-BoPs begin the retreat to setup for another attack run and continue with large slow turning arcs and will get an ok number of attacks on second run.
-At the end of the second run the cloak retreat will trigger and the BoP will make the loop again BUT will not de-cloak until they have use of the duel cannons. That leaves the BoP at less than 3km consistently and on average one shot is fired before passing the target. Sometimes you can get as much as three shots and others the BoP does not fire at all on that run because of the extreme close range.
-Pattern continues on and off until the target is dead or the BoP/carrier is dead.
Notes about the attack pattern: The flight speed stays close to the same during the combat and sometime evasive maneuvers will trigger but seems to be a little buggy with that power on how it is acting.
AI/coding triggers:
-The trigger for the decloak seem to only work when the BoP has the target in the duel cannon arc of fire.
-If no carrier commands are active the pets will not follow you.
-I have seen one or two the BoPs trying to keep up with the carrier but are much slower and cant keep up when Im flying at full impulse.
-The AI for attacking structures is fine. The fact that the player needs to attack the structure to flag it as a hostile for your pets is acceptable. Aka the way intercept worked with mines at one point.
My suggestions and opinions:
-DO NOT RELEASE THIS BUILD ON THE LIVE SERVER!!! There is a major flaw in the triggering for the decloak that prevents the BoP from doing much damage after the alpha strike. In this current build and flight pattern I found it to be very hard for four BoPs to take out a single ship even over an extended span of time. I believe a build between the last one and this one might be what we are looking for.
-Coding trigger suggestions: As I have stated before Im not a coder and may be butchering terms and methods but I have an idea and maybe it will work or you all or you might be inspired from it.
Im going off the decloak trigger of that I have seen in this build.
IF target is in duel cannon arc, THEN slow to current builds attack speed unknown value
IF target is outside of duel cannon arc, THEN accelerate to something closer to the last builds attack speed . Unknown value
Even with the current build I would like the devs to consider changing the retreat protocols and this might even fix the decloaking trigger issue. Can you make the BoP retreat to a certain distance before the code tells them to turn and start the attack run? If so, have the BoP retreat to something between 10km and 12km before making the turn in hopes to put the BoP in the duel cannon arc at around the 9km or the 8km range. The turn distance might need to be more like 13km or 14km depending on the turn rate.
Wrap-up:
-Tier 5 Constitution Kirk .maybe I stopped big foot
-BoPs can attack large space structures!!!
-Good Alpha strike
-AI and decloak still needs work
-Pet follow issues
-No carrier command active issues
-Attack pattern needs adjustment to deal with decloak do the BoP flight speed/turning rate keeping them to close to the target to act correctly.
-PLEASE DO NOT RELEASE THIS ON THE LIVE SERVER!
Even if I dont think this should be released I believe this was step in the right direction working out some different ideas and interesting tricks with the AI code.
Oh Hai! Guess what went into live server? :rolleyes:
Absolutely horrible BoP AI routines now. The alpha strike is nonexistent..why? They hit different shields.
...and after the 'alpha' strike run.. I... I really dont know whether to just sit down and silently sob in the dark or uninstall this game.
The BoPs perform the most epileptic attempts at circling the target and rarely, EVER fire the dual cannons unless their circling has somehow taken them far away enough from their target that during their turn the target happens to magically be in their firing cone.
BoP AI does not obey target change anymore either. Oh yes, change to new target, RECALL them (to reset whatever order they have) , give them a new target and... watch them ignore you as they pick a random ship and start attacking it. Yes..even when the new designated target is 2km away from your carrier.
And to think the BoPs attack pattern was PERFECT before they started TRIBBLE with it... I mean seriously, WHY the hell did the attack pattern had to change? It was never asked to be changed..all we asked was the g-damn BUGS be fixed. That meant the transformer-gate issue (fixed this patch), the no following orders issue (fixed a few patches back but it has returned this patch) and the no dual cannon firing time issue (still not fixed and all that needed to be done to fix it is to SLOW the BoPs to half impulse when they decloak to fire in the original attack run so they have enough time to fire them).
As of 2 weeks ago i'm not even bothering to play this game. I just come back to test any 'bop' fix that appears in the patch notes.