[...]
We'd all love smarter, more engaging AI. But it's a beautiful fantasy to assume that there is some magical quick-fix available such as "just give them healing abilities."
I know diddly about real programming other than my years of modding and working with StarDock, Ironclad and some other developers as a "Friends and Family" helper since the 90s and even you folks for that matter with STO but I never got into code aspects - just concepts. My masters is in game theory after all but I digress...
What that said, I'm very curious about how the AI works in STO. I keep thinking it is a "if/then" scrip system, which is to say it has no real tactical dimension but I have no clue. I would love for a detailed Dev Journal on just how it works.
I keep thinking there are triggers which fire based on variables and I assume the different variables have different weighted values for priority but from what Ive seen since the initial testing for STO I've always assumed it only goes down one tier and resets - rinse and repeat.
Anyway, I'm sure a lot of people would love to know in detail how the AI really works and just how complex it can be.
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
Personally I still prefer the dumb Damage Sponge to fighting ships that explode as fast as you can look in their direction
The Time to Kill in this game is so fast most enemies I face are underwhelming and from a in universe point of view they pose a limited credible threat, much like a TV show where the heroes can never die theres no tension for me
But I'd still prefer enemies to be smarter, Better armed more in line with player ships, and have access to more Abilities, including appropriate Reputation Powers, and new upcomming Ship traits, but I know thatds a lot to be asking for
The thing is, some ships should die that fast. Go back and watch the space combat in DS9. When the Defiant used the quad cannons, what it shop at died. I agree with the fact that things should be a little more inline with the show. The Kazon might have deleloped more since Voyager saw them last, but in the show, 1vs1 yoyager was more than a match for a single ship, they usually only had problems when they had to fight multiple ships. That should still be their same tactic in game, and just have some kind of mechanic to help curb the FAW spam.
What that said, I'm very curious about how the AI works in STO. I keep thinking it is a "if/then" scrip system but I have no clue.
The following is greatly simplified, but I hope it helps shed some light.
There are four primary levels of what could be considered "AI" in STO:
1) Core AI
This is basically a series of weights for different attitudes, actions, preferences, movement patterns & preferences, and a certain number of 'hard' triggers.
At this level, everything an AI decides to do is balanced against one-another based on a complicated web of weights. If Action A is weighted more highly than Action B, the AI is more likely to perform Action A, but it's not a guarantee. Few guarantees can be made at this level, but we can get close by forcing certain weights to skyrocket/plummet under certain circumstances by adjusting weight multipliers.
This level of the AI is engine-level, controlled almost exclusively by our Software team(s). Much of this code is shared among Cryptic's multiple projects, but it doesn't always have to be.
Examples: Pathfinding, Threat Responses, other various Default Behavior
2) AI Configs
This is where most of our Weight Multipliers live for an individual critter, which 'urge' them in certain behavioral patterns. A few Weights/Controls can also be turned on/off at this level, in order to give us more defined control of a type of enemy, which differs from the default Core AI.
This level is still what might technically be referred to as "code" but it's pretty well-documented for use by non-programmers. The Systems Team often works hand-in-hand with Software when these need tuning, or new functionality needs to be introduced.
This is where we get into the finely-tuned and very specific behavior our AI performs. Almost exclusively built around complicated If/Then statements (arranged into "States" linked by "Transitions") arranged in sort of a Flowchart with multiple paths and loops.
The term "Finite" simply means it must be a closed loop, or a path with a defined end. It cannot create new States for itself, and any entity following an FSM cannot decide to stop doing so on its own, unless given a defined exit parameter.
FSMs are extremely powerful tools, but must also be built entirely by-hand. This means the Designer must think of every potential contingency, and build in responses to the FSM manually. They also override/ignore Core AI and AI Configs, if any conflict arises (the FSM wins these fights).
Entity FSMs are almost always written by the Systems team.
Examples: Carrier Pet behaviors, some NPC groups (Vaadwaur, e.g.), some Boss Fights
4) Finite State Machines - Content
These are built in the same manner as the previous entry, but they're an additional layer put in place by specific mission content. If this conflicts with the Entity FSM, this behavior is given priority.
Content FSMs are almost always written by Content Designers.
Examples: Special NPC Behavior in Missions (Worf, Tuvok, etc), Mission State Transitions (Battlezone Open Missions, etc), some Boss Fights
---
There are additional layers of AI controls, including certain Abilities that modify NPC behavior (Taunt is an obvious example). But ultimately, it all boils down to the above layers.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
The following is greatly simplified, but I hope it helps shed some light.
There are four primary levels of what could be considered "AI" in STO:
1) Core AI
This is basically a series of weights for different attitudes, actions, preferences, movement patterns & preferences, and a certain number of 'hard' triggers.
At this level, everything an AI decides to do is balanced against one-another based on a complicated web of weights. If Action A is weighted more highly than Action B, the AI is more likely to perform Action A, but it's not a guarantee. Few guarantees can be made at this level, but we can get close by forcing certain weights to skyrocket/plummet under certain circumstances by adjusting weight multipliers.
This level of the AI is engine-level, controlled almost exclusively by our Software team(s). Much of this code is shared among Cryptic's multiple projects, but it doesn't always have to be.
Examples: Pathfinding, Threat Responses, other various Default Behavior
2) AI Configs
This is where most of our Weight Multipliers live for an individual critter, which 'urge' them in certain behavioral patterns. A few Weights/Controls can also be turned on/off at this level, in order to give us more defined control of a type of enemy, which differs from the default Core AI.
This level is still what might technically be referred to as "code" but it's pretty well-documented for use by non-programmers. The Systems Team often works hand-in-hand with Software when these need tuning, or new functionality needs to be introduced.
This is where we get into the finely-tuned and very specific behavior our AI performs. Almost exclusively built around complicated If/Then statements (arranged into "States" linked by "Transitions") arranged in sort of a Flowchart with multiple paths and loops.
The term "Finite" simply means it must be a closed loop, or a path with a defined end. It cannot create new States for itself, and any entity following an FSM cannot decide to stop doing so on its own, unless given a defined exit parameter.
FSMs are extremely powerful tools, but must also be built entirely by-hand. This means the Designer must think of every potential contingency, and build in responses to the FSM manually. They also override/ignore Core AI and AI Configs, if any conflict arises (the FSM wins these fights).
Entity FSMs are almost always written by the Systems team.
Examples: Carrier Pet behaviors, some NPC groups (Vaadwaur, e.g.), some Boss Fights
4) Finite State Machines - Content
These are built in the same manner as the previous entry, but they're an additional layer put in place by specific mission content. If this conflicts with the Entity FSM, this behavior is given priority.
Content FSMs are almost always written by Content Designers.
Examples: Special NPC Behavior in Missions (Worf, Tuvok, etc), Mission State Transitions (Battlezone Open Missions, etc), some Boss Fights
---
There are additional layers of AI controls, including certain Abilities that modify NPC behavior (Taunt is an obvious example). But ultimately, it all boils down to the above layers.
All I ever seen them crtters do is flight straight then shoot the weapons. I wanna see some Dark Souls / Demon Souls style AI at Elite that will react to my moves and tear me a new one if I make a poorly timed attack or defense.
In other words - if infinite healing is a problem, don't let it become infinite.
But where's the value in healing then? If it becomes limited after a certain point all you've done is create an NPC whose health scales according to how much DPS you're capable of delivering. If high, its going to have less opportunity to heal and therefore it'll have less effective HP. If your DPS is low, then that NPC's health effectively increases which isn't the respones you would want for a player who is definably struggling to make it through that fight as effectively.
I think this particular line of "additional combat abilities" is something that we can let go. Healing works for players because being able to (potentially) indefinitely survive combat is desirable. For AI's its (potentially) ruinous (see. those CCE runs that go wrong. Healing can easily become a failure gate without offering any practical benefits to gameplay that high HP wouldn't [while being easier for the devs to control and scale].) What would be preferable are more resistance and interference abilities (like those used by the Heirarchy and Voth), particularly those that involve interactions between AI units (like we see for ground Vaadwuar and [according to the dev blog, haven't seen this happen yet myself] space Hazari).
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
This is where we get into the finely-tuned and very specific behavior our AI performs. Almost exclusively built around complicated If/Then statements (arranged into "States" linked by "Transitions") arranged in sort of a Flowchart with multiple paths and loops.
The term "Finite" simply means it must be a closed loop, or a path with a defined end. It cannot create new States for itself, and any entity following an FSM cannot decide to stop doing so on its own, unless given a defined exit parameter.
FSMs are extremely powerful tools, but must also be built entirely by-hand. This means the Designer must think of every potential contingency, and build in responses to the FSM manually. They also override/ignore Core AI and AI Configs, if any conflict arises (the FSM wins these fights).
Entity FSMs are almost always written by the Systems team.
Examples: Carrier Pet behaviors, some NPC groups (Vaadwaur, e.g.), some Boss Fights
this would be a good time to point out, if you aren't aware, that the vaadwaur evasive away, turn around and attack behavior needs a bit more work. it seems that at about 7 range, they turn around to attack, but if they never get that far away from you, they will never stop running from you, no mater what. they need something to tell them to give up after they have covered a distance of say 15 or 20.
otherwise i hope to see this code added to every npc that has any front biased weapons, DBB, DC and DHC, without it they all have a serious inability to ever point them at you. this would be especially good on carrier pets i would think too.
would probably be hard to miss what im talking about in this vid i shot the other day http://youtu.be/N-f_flCQ5-I
All I ever seen them crtters do is flight straight then shoot the weapons. I wanna see some Dark Souls / Demon Souls style AI at Elite that will react to my moves and tear me a new one if I make a poorly timed attack or defense.
I can get the idea of more advanced movement (favoring downed shields in space, attempting to flank on ground, attempting not to be flanked on ground, attempting to protect their own downed shield in space) but I'm not sure what abilities in STO this other part would reflect. I don't know of abilities that punish the player for healing or attacking other than counter attack. You seem to want NPCs to do something that not even another player could do. This is less about AI I think and more about special situational NPC abilities, perhaps?
I personally think the biggest failing in STO's AI boils down to aggro. WoW style aggro heavily weights crits over sustained damage for aggro which I'm not sure I've seen in STO. Certain WoW encounters favor attacking certain targets by class. CoH style aggro meanwhile allowed you to selectively aggro targets rather than the whole group they belonged to.
I think a number of games have also weighted aggro by facing and similar things.
If I had STO to design over again, I'd have probably (based on the IP) gone for what I call Scooby Doo tanking. More commonly called evasion tanking. It deviates more from the classic trinity we see them try to represent here but basically involves the smallest and frailest targets being the primary tank.
Think of a typical Scooby Doo scenario. Scooby and Shaggy act as the "tank" in RPG terms while Fred, Velma, and Daphne set the traps.
Evasion tanking is generally an unintended or niche thing in fantasy games. Fantasy games have the armored guy distract the dragon while the little guy with poison daggers attacks from behind.
However, space fiction tends more towards the Scooby Doo model where the smallest and most nimble ship maneuvers to distract the enemy (despite low fire power) while the bigger ships wail away at the enemy. Dodge chance is the primary tanking stat in these scenarios.
It's probably a bit late to consider that too much for STO but I think more advanced aggro is a big piece of the puzzle for more engaging content and making roles relevant.
I'm not saying this to dismiss the argument that Post-50 critters may have too many hitpoints currently - that's actually something under investigation at the moment -
Glad to see the over-inflated HP values is currently being investigated
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
thats not all it does. it makes them vulnerable to debuffs, when their ability to heal and resist is delayed or taken away. this gives an entire captain type a reason to exist, that it does NOT have right now in pve. it gives higher effective hitpoints only if they survive long enough to use abilities, and spike builds can see to it that they don't. sudenly 2 of the most important play styles in pvp can work in pve too.
Exactly. The only time subnuc is worth using in PvE is when the queen is using FBP; against other NPCs, it may as well just be playing a visual effect that does nothing notable. Photonic Shockwave in PvE is just a once-every-45-second defense against heavy torps. CPB and Tachyon Beam do nothing when the enemies have 100k shield HP.
I could say something about engineering captain powers but I'm already depressed. Sufficed to say an engineer can tank the NPCs' damage all day but if I wanted a game that bored me to sleep, I'd play Eve.
npcs that just have only bloated hitpoints= debuffs do nothing, the peeks and valleys in DPS for spike builds is counter intuitive, game play favors nothing but tac and dps, everything else is lesser or worthless, super boring
The following is greatly simplified, but I hope it helps shed some light.
There are four primary levels of what could be considered "AI" in STO:
1) Core AI
[..]
2) AI Configs
[..]
3) Finite State Machines - Entity
[..]
4) Finite State Machines - Content
[..]
[..] But ultimately, it all boils down to the above layers.
Thank you so very much for the informative explanation. :cool:
In my previous notion I was blending three and four together as well as one and two for that matter. It seems things are more complicated than I considered by at least an order of magnitude. I can see now why it is so difficult to get exacting tactical patterns developed and implemented let alone flavor variants developed for particular species or even ship arc types.
On a side note, for what it is worth, if you folks would be interested in setting up a small detail oriented test team for development of AI scripts feel free to message me as I would be willing to commit five to six hours a week. I enjoy doing such stuff immensely. I had great fun doing such stuff for [space] Sins , and ground for RTW, A o C and TSW as well as a couple others.
Nonetheless thanks again for your time and effort. It is greatly appreciated. :cool:
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
Photonic Shockwave in PvE is just a once-every-45-second defense against heavy torps. CPB and Tachyon Beam do nothing when the enemies have 100k shield HP.
I agree, one way to would make them more effective would be a percentage based depletion rate, instead of hard numbers.
So it doesn't matter how much shield HP the npc have for that skill.
While pure dps will have trouble with just punching through the shields, tayon beam can deplete lets say 33% in one go higher on the the higher tier skills (maybe up to 100% or more for 3)
This would also work in pvp since there are hard counters like scramble sensors that break it immediately.
The following is greatly simplified, but I hope it helps shed some light.
There are four primary levels of what could be considered "AI" in STO:
1) Core AI
This is basically a series of weights for different attitudes, actions, preferences, movement patterns & preferences, and a certain number of 'hard' triggers.
At this level, everything an AI decides to do is balanced against one-another based on a complicated web of weights. If Action A is weighted more highly than Action B, the AI is more likely to perform Action A, but it's not a guarantee. Few guarantees can be made at this level, but we can get close by forcing certain weights to skyrocket/plummet under certain circumstances by adjusting weight multipliers.
This level of the AI is engine-level, controlled almost exclusively by our Software team(s). Much of this code is shared among Cryptic's multiple projects, but it doesn't always have to be.
Examples: Pathfinding, Threat Responses, other various Default Behavior
2) AI Configs
This is where most of our Weight Multipliers live for an individual critter, which 'urge' them in certain behavioral patterns. A few Weights/Controls can also be turned on/off at this level, in order to give us more defined control of a type of enemy, which differs from the default Core AI.
This level is still what might technically be referred to as "code" but it's pretty well-documented for use by non-programmers. The Systems Team often works hand-in-hand with Software when these need tuning, or new functionality needs to be introduced.
This is where we get into the finely-tuned and very specific behavior our AI performs. Almost exclusively built around complicated If/Then statements (arranged into "States" linked by "Transitions") arranged in sort of a Flowchart with multiple paths and loops.
The term "Finite" simply means it must be a closed loop, or a path with a defined end. It cannot create new States for itself, and any entity following an FSM cannot decide to stop doing so on its own, unless given a defined exit parameter.
FSMs are extremely powerful tools, but must also be built entirely by-hand. This means the Designer must think of every potential contingency, and build in responses to the FSM manually. They also override/ignore Core AI and AI Configs, if any conflict arises (the FSM wins these fights).
Entity FSMs are almost always written by the Systems team.
Examples: Carrier Pet behaviors, some NPC groups (Vaadwaur, e.g.), some Boss Fights
4) Finite State Machines - Content
These are built in the same manner as the previous entry, but they're an additional layer put in place by specific mission content. If this conflicts with the Entity FSM, this behavior is given priority.
Content FSMs are almost always written by Content Designers.
Examples: Special NPC Behavior in Missions (Worf, Tuvok, etc), Mission State Transitions (Battlezone Open Missions, etc), some Boss Fights
---
There are additional layers of AI controls, including certain Abilities that modify NPC behavior (Taunt is an obvious example). But ultimately, it all boils down to the above layers.
So, would it be possible to give NPCs access to counters, then place additional weights that provide them with incentives to use those counters at higher difficulty levels?
For a general example, if a NPC loses a shield facing, it gets a major incentive to trigger Tactical Team or Reverse Shield Polarity if it has them, and if not some other shield heal... and at the very least Distribute Shields at the (rather crummy but present) standard rate rather than leave the shield facing down entirely. For a more specific example, if a NPC Raptor gets hit by an Engine Disable or -Repel CC, it gets a major incentive to trigger its Emergency Power to Engines. Oh, and at Elite the NPCs should not be hobbled by nerfed versions of player abilities like the lowered duration of Emergency Power to Engines... just make sure they also come back and try to shoot the players, maybe by placing a "last known coordinates" zone that the NPC returns to if it loses aggro entirely?
I'd much rather see enemies exercise their abilities with increasing degrees of AI tactics than see them with increasingly over-inflated hitpoints that only turn the battle into one of attrition.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
So, would it be possible to give NPCs access to counters, then place additional weights that provide them with incentives to use those counters at higher difficulty levels?
(etc.)
Yes.
But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
And on and on and on...
And in the end, would all of our players enjoy it, or not? And if not, why'd we do it?
There are a lot of multi-level decisions that go into deciding whether or not being ABLE to do something necessarily means you SHOULD or NOT.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
I honestly hope these are serious, non-rhetorical questions.
But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
And on and on and on...
And in the end, would all of our players enjoy it, or not? And if not, why'd we do it?
There are a lot of multi-level decisions that go into deciding whether or not being ABLE to do something necessarily means you SHOULD or NOT.
Those are exactly the type of questions I and I'm sure some others here would love to try to develop answers for if enabled properly.
Of the cuff, I can easily see a general set of tactics developed for each difficulty level with a "basic" ship build then variants plugged in for faction or race abilities and then solo and team options developed as well. After all the variable set we have is finite and really only two or three general tactical responses are practical given solid situational awareness for the play or AI methinks. Shoot "personalities" could be developed for particular ships or even faction operations and a synergy dimension could even come into play but I digress....
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
....
For a start, how about packages for the different difficulty settings?
On normal, you get the usual where each race has their keystone behaviors, but is otherwise light on counter-tactics.
At Advanced, standard debuff counters come into play - including ally-cleansing(Spheres throwing tac/eng/sci teams or hazard emitters at a cube being focused down).
At Elite, no holds barred. If you can't lock down targets, you're going to have a bad day(RSP, GDF, Miracle Worker, etc.).
But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
And on and on and on...
And in the end, would all of our players enjoy it, or not? And if not, why'd we do it?
There are a lot of multi-level decisions that go into deciding whether or not being ABLE to do something necessarily means you SHOULD or NOT.
Would it be something on the critters that could be triggered by content, along the lines of how they're scaled for content - is it something where a separate level of AI options could open when they're scaled or would that be outside the realm of what could be done reasonably (heh, not my or anybody on the forums and their reasonably, but for you guys reasonably)...?
Cause if so, could that be something perhaps done down the road in tweaking things such as the mobs in Advanced and Elite queues without affecting them in Normal queues or normal gameplay?
And even there, starting with something "simple" like Shield Distribution - "simple" not as in the requirements for you to be able to do it, but as far as it not requiring various other abilities from the player to counter the counters/etc/etc/etc.
Those are exactly the type of questions I and I'm sure some others here would love to try to develop answers for if enabled properly.
This. Right here.
Best thing to do, borticuscryptic? Make a thread dedicated to do it, much like this thread. Lay out the parameters for us. I guarantee you that you'll get enough information to kick off that dev project.
Assuming that this element of the issue is what would be one of the most time-consuming for you guys, that is.
Well, he has spoken. Its not going to happen because its not worth the resources. At least he answered. Thanks for telling us.
Basically, if you're looking for challenging AI that actually require skill and a wide variety of captain/bridge officer abilities you will not find them. Most of the player base doesn't care.
iLvL doesn't make as big of a difference as you think it does. Its module 6, get with the program.
Whenever you're tempted to think otherwise, watch this video.
These last few replies are missing an important point, so let me blunt:
Yes, there's a lot we can theoretically do to flesh out our AI behaviors.
No, we really don't have the time to do it to the degree anyone would be satisfied with.
It's a frustrating answer - I know. But this is the reality of a live game with limited resources.
Let me try to steer this topic around demand because I can see that the player here (however small a group) really want something more. But I really appreciate your honesty and can get your perspective here.
When you added C-Store console powers to enemies, is that the kind of thing that could be used to boost enemies?
I'd like better aggro mechanics but I'm trying to think "where's the beef?" in terms of the capital budgeting that the leads probably have to do.
If you revamped BO traits or abilities, would that likely be able to filter over to enemies? Is this something where smarter BO powers on specialist BOs could translate to enemies? (As in a BO trait or skill revamp? Or more ship traits?)
Those sort of things probably bring some meaningful money into the game as well as activity. And enemies can inherit those kinds of upgrades, I'd imagine, easier than designing enemy AI upgrades from scratch.
What about if we had a player ship that used AI? Like... say... A Bynars-modified ship? Or a Cytherian-modified ship?
In the episode The Nth Degree, Barclay got strapped into the ship and took control of it solo. So I could see a ship-type (it would have to be a class more than a single type for this kind of work) either with the player becoming fused in with AI replacing some BO functions. Or a ship with a fused in bridge officer who behaves autonomously. Heck, New Frontier books gave the ship a personality that manifested as a hologram. Several episodes had things like sentient ships acting independently of the Captain.
These are all things you could sell as lines of ships or lockboxes. Would that general KIND of thing get more traction and translate back to enemies easier?
Or is it really honestly just something you think wouldn't get any traction in any form for the foreseeable future?
All that giving critters access to those abilities does, is end up giving them a higher Effective HP value. And in the case of that particular power setup, a potentially infinite one (if the player can't out-damage the healing).
It might 'feel' a bit more engaging in the moment-to-moment gameplay, but ultimately it's setting the player up for failure, which isn't generally considered strong game design. The same goal (longer fights, where choices matter more) can be accomplished without that risk, by increasing Actual HP instead of Effective HP.
I'm not saying this to dismiss the argument that Post-50 critters may have too many hitpoints currently - that's actually something under investigation at the moment - but just to point out a potential design flaw in some of the proposed solutions being discussed in this thread (and others).
We'd all love smarter, more engaging AI. But it's a beautiful fantasy to assume that there is some magical quick-fix available such as "just give them healing abilities."
The root problem is that you dont have any kind of resource-based model, so there's no way to prevent a heal, or make them use it up, or anything else, because you cant attack the resource that does not exist. Also why killing somebody in PVP requires swarming them, to overpower the healing.
Well, he has spoken. Its not going to happen because its not worth the resources. At least he answered. Thanks for telling us.
Basically, if you're looking for challenging AI that actually require skill and a wide variety of captain/bridge officer abilities you will not find them. Most of the player base doesn't care.
That is not the case, at all. As I'm sure Bort himself would say, it is never a matter of them not doing it, ever - maybe he can't do it yet, but the future is always up for grabs.
Right now, there isn't time, due to everything else he and the devs work on. But if it were deemed an important part of a future update, or Bort decided to do it little-by-little on his spare time, or something else, it could still happen. It's not technically impossible, after all.
And doesn't care? I really wouldn't say that
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
And on and on and on...
And in the end, would all of our players enjoy it, or not? And if not, why'd we do it?
There are a lot of multi-level decisions that go into deciding whether or not being ABLE to do something necessarily means you SHOULD or NOT.
Start with the simple stuff.
For each type of space NPC, determine a stripped down set of powers that are in theme for whichever faction it belongs to. We're talking one to three powers.
So for example, Borg Cubes. Since the Borg are famous for adapting and for their hull regeneration, let's give them Tactical Team 1 and Hazard Emitters 1. Whenever a shield facing drops below 50%, the Cube activates tactical team if it is available. Whenever hull drops below 75% the cube activates hazard emitters.
It doesn't need to have more complex logic than that, it doesn't need to activate the skills in response to player use of powers- because that very basic logic coupled with it having those abilities at all will mean that the typical tactic of everyone just firing until it dies is harder to implement. Now players might actually care about shield stripping, or focusing on one facing to get torpedoes through. The question of weapon type effectiveness comes up, since the Cubes have a power that removes the plasma debuff, meaning you can't turn them into flaming wrecks quite so easily.
But it doesn't have to stop there. Let's say that every escort gets tactical team, every science ship gets sci team, and every cruiser gets engineering team. Just having those powers, and using them on a set and common condition, makes fights against those enemies more difficult. It means that, even if it's simplistic, players actually have to take actions to account for these abilities.
We're not asking for enemy ships to act as though they were top tier pvpers, but since you can clearly make NPCs use offensive abilities, like attack patterns and weapon enhancements, I don't see why you couldn't give them basic logic for one or two defensive abilities.
Yes, there are thousands of enemies in the game. So focus on the end game, when players are interested in more than just massive HP sponges and want a little more out of their game. We aren't asking for you to set aside a month of nonstop ship AI upgrades, but spending a little bit of time once a month on it would really be great. Even if the only thing you update is Borg Cubes, that's still a huge part of the endgame, and once you've made that update it future proofs for any time you want to use those enemies again.
The part that bothers us, as a community, is how it seems that 'there are issues we would need to work out' means that you can't even begin to consider, or spend any time working on even the smallest fraction of something like this, and would instead just... forget about it and never do it. If you set aside even one hour a month to work on this, you would still have something done in a year's time that you wouldn't if we just accepted what you've said and you guys just never bothered.
borticuscryptic - Thanks for your candor. For what it is worth, if you started thread or forum for discussion on the topic it would in theory mostly cost player time with some of yours and maybe other devs electing to get involved in your spare time should you chose not so expensive an investment in resources methinks.
Furthermore it would also provide a much needed avenue of feedback methinks. Which in and of itself surely is a good thing but I digress....
Nonetheless if the product or output from different discussions about AI functionality and capability -etc... proves to be a valuable soundboard resource maybe upper management will consider it a worthy investment of limited resources and something official could be developed. Just thinking out loud....
@illcadia - you have the same basic idea as me. I was thinking basic orientation - O/D/M , then racial flavor for taste, then personality for style, then a unique dimension - if any for that special somethin' somethin'.... But I digress again....
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But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
And on and on and on...
And in the end, would all of our players enjoy it, or not? And if not, why'd we do it?
There are a lot of multi-level decisions that go into deciding whether or not being ABLE to do something necessarily means you SHOULD or NOT.
Forget extremely smart tactics for a while, playing around with weights.
I think the first thing to actually look at is to figure out if all those crowd control and debuff abilities can help you more against a foe than adding a ship that replaces crowd control and debuff abilities with straight damage buffs.
Have NPC abilities that, say, get blocked in warp plasma. A time-delayed explosive torpedo that can't escape a Grav Well. An NPC popping a defensive abiltiy that can be subnuked.
It's not like you absolutely, 100 % need to counter these NPC abilities to beat them - but if you do, you should feel like you really contributed.
There is a simple example like the NPC Scimitars that cloak. No counter against that works. That's lame. Without its cloak counter, Charged Particle Burst is just some area damage ability. Torpedo Spread, Beam Fire AT Will, Scatter Volley, they all do this better.
Those Barrier Fields from Voth ships - how much nicer it would be if there was some power that could dispel them - perhaps not subnuke (because "counters everything" is also lame), but something like Tachyon Beam (which without any secondary effects is just damage. Damage that you could also have with Triple DHCs + Cannon Rapid Fire).
You see where I am going with that?
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But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
And on and on and on...
And in the end, would all of our players enjoy it, or not? And if not, why'd we do it?
There are a lot of multi-level decisions that go into deciding whether or not being ABLE to do something necessarily means you SHOULD or NOT.
as long as they can point narrow arc weapons, the AI is good enough. that, and the equivalent of bind everything to space bar is a quantum leap over current. what the vadwuar are running on is good enough, AI isn't the problem so much now, its depth. npcs need more abilities, but not just abilities, up time on abilties. they should be useing these skills multiple times befor they die, and they should just plain be less numerous. give each intuitive builds that would be good on a player ship, even some special doff effected abilities and console abilties.
give the npcs some simple if/then statement, like if your damaged use a heal, if debuffeted use a team skill if you have it, if tac skills are cooled down and ready, do that little fly away and attack maneuver wile activating tac skills, with that alone the battle 10 times more interesting.
were do you start? id say start with federation npcs as a baseline, and update npc factions one by one. get rid of ugly placeholders like the typhone, and other crappy stuff that should be replaced by newer and more attractive ships
odyssey and galaxyX should remain the npc dreadnaughts of course, but federation battleships should be the galaxy, nebula, avenger, and the new guardian. each should have their own style, avenger uses mainly cannons and moves like a cruiser, galaxy is more of a slow tank that launches TS3 and BO3 mainly, nebula should be limited to TS1 and BO1, but high level sci skills and guardian maybe level 2 of what both run, but the only one of the 3 with FAW.
cruiser level npcs should consist of the akira, vesta, ambassador, sovereign, patrol, MVAM, steamrunner, dauntless and intrepid, all with their own unique style and setup. forget the miranda triplets, just trash those from the spawning tables. frigates that swarm you in random groups of 3 should consist of the nova, defiant, aquarius, saber, cheyenne and the hospital ball ship.
i think some basics should be in place when setting up every new npc. heres a basic guideline
-every frigate npc and up should have 1 EPtX skill that it can cycle with full up time. battleship and dreadnaught npcs should be able to run 2 different EPtX skills at all times.
-every ship should have at least 1 beam, cannon, or torp skill it can use at the system cooldown. each cruiser or better ship should have that, with ether a second weapon buff, or APB or APO. battleship and dread should have numerous tac and damage dealing skills.
-each ship should have 1 team skill, battleship or better should have 2 different ones
-frigates should have, not counting any team skill, 1 heal/resist, cruisers 2, battleships 3, dreads 4. that could be PH, HE, TSS, extend, AtS, AtD, or APD
- every ships should have 1 special ability, dreads 2. ether a console power, pets, RSP, SNB, APA, RSF, GDF, MW, SS, etc
-npc ships should have more weapons, and less of a flat damage bonus. frigates a total of 5, cruisers 6, battleships 7, dreads 8
if every npc is built with these basic rules, i think advanced and elite pve would be a lot of fun, and each battle would be a real challenge and be a rewarding experience.
These last few replies are missing an important point, so let me blunt:
Yes, there's a lot we can theoretically do to flesh out our AI behaviors.
No, we really don't have the time to do it to the degree anyone would be satisfied with.
It's a frustrating answer - I know. But this is the reality of a live game with limited resources.
Then let me be blunt here: Literally any addition of defensive powers to NPCs would be better than what we have now. Not 'do it justice', not 'make everyone satisfied' but literally any addition. Giving Borg Cubes a couple defensive powers rather than making them bigger damage sponges, and changing nothing else, would still be a 100% improvement over what we have now.
Then let me be blunt here: Literally any addition of defensive powers to NPCs would be better than what we have now. Not 'do it justice', not 'make everyone satisfied' but literally any addition. Giving Borg Cubes a couple defensive powers rather than making them bigger damage sponges, and changing nothing else, would still be a 100% improvement over what we have now.
They're adding new defensive powers to the new units (Vaadwuar, and Heirarchy especially). That's a big development challenge, create and test the art and mechanics of a good set of abilities and make sure they support (not ruin) gameplay when that content goes live.
If you add an arbitary requirement to revamp borg cubes (which already work) that's another pile of work slung onto the developers involved with this sort of content. And I'm sure you can find people to suggest that the Cardassians, Romulans, Jem'Hadar, Undine, Gorn, Remans, Klingons, Federation, Voth, Hirogen, Orions, Fel'khir (or however you spell that), and so on get attention too (since why stop at just borg?) And keep in mind that each faction has various ship classes that all can't have a standard defensive suite of abilities lumped onto them (since in each case any given ability is going to interact differently with available abilities, stats, and weapons. If you're not paying careful attention you can easily result in something which is meaningless or something which is completely overpowering.) That's an update at the scale greater than anything we've ever seen before for this game (and lumped onto one team within cryptic) and even if they manage to update the combat abilities of some of the older stuff that's inevitably taking developer attention away from new content which is in a better position to maintain player interest in STO.
The point is that you don't seem to be listening when Borticuscryptic says "limited resources." You can imagine a quick add-on to any given ship but producing that [in an equitable manner] is quite a different matter.
Now that isn't to justify the catastrophic over-inflation of NPC health [separate issue to do with level 60 content and the expectations there for], but to explain why not everything in the game gets new and shinier abilities when other content sees an update or gets developed (see. why only the Undine were revamped over the last two seasons or only the Romulans before that. They have to prioritize.)
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But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
And on and on and on...
And in the end, would all of our players enjoy it, or not? And if not, why'd we do it?
There are a lot of multi-level decisions that go into deciding whether or not being ABLE to do something necessarily means you SHOULD or NOT.
These last few replies are missing an important point, so let me blunt:
Yes, there's a lot we can theoretically do to flesh out our AI behaviors.
No, we really don't have the time to do it to the degree anyone would be satisfied with.
It's a frustrating answer - I know. But this is the reality of a live game with limited resources.
I think the obvious answer is that you start with an NPC group that is recently introduced (or is being featured in new content) and is designed for endgame level gameplay.
You don't give them a full range of AI behaviors, just enough to make it interesting. One or two "signature moves" or "power ups" that exploit the capabilities that group is supposed to have. I'm sure you already do this to some degree.
Yes, players will adapt to that and try to build around it. At which point you modify another group's AI with a different limited set of behaviors and start breaking the cookie cutter.
I know I'm being simplistic here. But I think having the goal of breaking some of the cookie cutter builds is a good start. Force players to adapt a little, so they're more effective in some situations than others based on their build choices and play styles.
Because I hear what some of these guys are saying. The game can devalue any player abilities that are meant to debuff or weaken resistances when damage output is all that matters. We can't counter increased HP except with more damage, but we could interrupt the NPC's ability to heal or buff themselves in other ways.
Allow me to present one not-entirely-relevant example based on the idea that NPC's might try to Battle Cloak.
Right now, NPC's that actually use Battle Cloak are rare and use that ability only rarely. There's no good reason for players to build around anti-cloaking tactics except for PvP.
Consider an NPC that occasionally fired up a sequence of Jam Sensors -> Evasive Manuvers -> Polarize Hull -> Battle Cloak that allowed them to break off and set up for an attack. The attack run could then be a second set of behaviors to attack a weakened foe. That unit is basically a "Two Trick Pony" but it's more interesting than a simple pew-pew and it can be countered in a lot of different ways. Even better if you can get two or more NPC's chaining the same behavior one after another.
Eventually you'd have a wider set of units with their own signature behaviors.
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What that said, I'm very curious about how the AI works in STO. I keep thinking it is a "if/then" scrip system, which is to say it has no real tactical dimension but I have no clue. I would love for a detailed Dev Journal on just how it works.
I keep thinking there are triggers which fire based on variables and I assume the different variables have different weighted values for priority but from what Ive seen since the initial testing for STO I've always assumed it only goes down one tier and resets - rinse and repeat.
Anyway, I'm sure a lot of people would love to know in detail how the AI really works and just how complex it can be.
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
The thing is, some ships should die that fast. Go back and watch the space combat in DS9. When the Defiant used the quad cannons, what it shop at died. I agree with the fact that things should be a little more inline with the show. The Kazon might have deleloped more since Voyager saw them last, but in the show, 1vs1 yoyager was more than a match for a single ship, they usually only had problems when they had to fight multiple ships. That should still be their same tactic in game, and just have some kind of mechanic to help curb the FAW spam.
The following is greatly simplified, but I hope it helps shed some light.
There are four primary levels of what could be considered "AI" in STO:
1) Core AI
This is basically a series of weights for different attitudes, actions, preferences, movement patterns & preferences, and a certain number of 'hard' triggers.
At this level, everything an AI decides to do is balanced against one-another based on a complicated web of weights. If Action A is weighted more highly than Action B, the AI is more likely to perform Action A, but it's not a guarantee. Few guarantees can be made at this level, but we can get close by forcing certain weights to skyrocket/plummet under certain circumstances by adjusting weight multipliers.
This level of the AI is engine-level, controlled almost exclusively by our Software team(s). Much of this code is shared among Cryptic's multiple projects, but it doesn't always have to be.
Examples: Pathfinding, Threat Responses, other various Default Behavior
2) AI Configs
This is where most of our Weight Multipliers live for an individual critter, which 'urge' them in certain behavioral patterns. A few Weights/Controls can also be turned on/off at this level, in order to give us more defined control of a type of enemy, which differs from the default Core AI.
This level is still what might technically be referred to as "code" but it's pretty well-documented for use by non-programmers. The Systems Team often works hand-in-hand with Software when these need tuning, or new functionality needs to be introduced.
Examples: Threat Modifiers, Preferred Ranges, Ability Activation weight modifiers
3) Finite State Machines - Entity
This is where we get into the finely-tuned and very specific behavior our AI performs. Almost exclusively built around complicated If/Then statements (arranged into "States" linked by "Transitions") arranged in sort of a Flowchart with multiple paths and loops.
The term "Finite" simply means it must be a closed loop, or a path with a defined end. It cannot create new States for itself, and any entity following an FSM cannot decide to stop doing so on its own, unless given a defined exit parameter.
FSMs are extremely powerful tools, but must also be built entirely by-hand. This means the Designer must think of every potential contingency, and build in responses to the FSM manually. They also override/ignore Core AI and AI Configs, if any conflict arises (the FSM wins these fights).
Entity FSMs are almost always written by the Systems team.
Examples: Carrier Pet behaviors, some NPC groups (Vaadwaur, e.g.), some Boss Fights
4) Finite State Machines - Content
These are built in the same manner as the previous entry, but they're an additional layer put in place by specific mission content. If this conflicts with the Entity FSM, this behavior is given priority.
Content FSMs are almost always written by Content Designers.
Examples: Special NPC Behavior in Missions (Worf, Tuvok, etc), Mission State Transitions (Battlezone Open Missions, etc), some Boss Fights
---
There are additional layers of AI controls, including certain Abilities that modify NPC behavior (Taunt is an obvious example). But ultimately, it all boils down to the above layers.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
All I ever seen them crtters do is flight straight then shoot the weapons. I wanna see some Dark Souls / Demon Souls style AI at Elite that will react to my moves and tear me a new one if I make a poorly timed attack or defense.
But where's the value in healing then? If it becomes limited after a certain point all you've done is create an NPC whose health scales according to how much DPS you're capable of delivering. If high, its going to have less opportunity to heal and therefore it'll have less effective HP. If your DPS is low, then that NPC's health effectively increases which isn't the respones you would want for a player who is definably struggling to make it through that fight as effectively.
I think this particular line of "additional combat abilities" is something that we can let go. Healing works for players because being able to (potentially) indefinitely survive combat is desirable. For AI's its (potentially) ruinous (see. those CCE runs that go wrong. Healing can easily become a failure gate without offering any practical benefits to gameplay that high HP wouldn't [while being easier for the devs to control and scale].) What would be preferable are more resistance and interference abilities (like those used by the Heirarchy and Voth), particularly those that involve interactions between AI units (like we see for ground Vaadwuar and [according to the dev blog, haven't seen this happen yet myself] space Hazari).
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this would be a good time to point out, if you aren't aware, that the vaadwaur evasive away, turn around and attack behavior needs a bit more work. it seems that at about 7 range, they turn around to attack, but if they never get that far away from you, they will never stop running from you, no mater what. they need something to tell them to give up after they have covered a distance of say 15 or 20.
otherwise i hope to see this code added to every npc that has any front biased weapons, DBB, DC and DHC, without it they all have a serious inability to ever point them at you. this would be especially good on carrier pets i would think too.
would probably be hard to miss what im talking about in this vid i shot the other day http://youtu.be/N-f_flCQ5-I
I can get the idea of more advanced movement (favoring downed shields in space, attempting to flank on ground, attempting not to be flanked on ground, attempting to protect their own downed shield in space) but I'm not sure what abilities in STO this other part would reflect. I don't know of abilities that punish the player for healing or attacking other than counter attack. You seem to want NPCs to do something that not even another player could do. This is less about AI I think and more about special situational NPC abilities, perhaps?
I personally think the biggest failing in STO's AI boils down to aggro. WoW style aggro heavily weights crits over sustained damage for aggro which I'm not sure I've seen in STO. Certain WoW encounters favor attacking certain targets by class. CoH style aggro meanwhile allowed you to selectively aggro targets rather than the whole group they belonged to.
I think a number of games have also weighted aggro by facing and similar things.
If I had STO to design over again, I'd have probably (based on the IP) gone for what I call Scooby Doo tanking. More commonly called evasion tanking. It deviates more from the classic trinity we see them try to represent here but basically involves the smallest and frailest targets being the primary tank.
Think of a typical Scooby Doo scenario. Scooby and Shaggy act as the "tank" in RPG terms while Fred, Velma, and Daphne set the traps.
Evasion tanking is generally an unintended or niche thing in fantasy games. Fantasy games have the armored guy distract the dragon while the little guy with poison daggers attacks from behind.
However, space fiction tends more towards the Scooby Doo model where the smallest and most nimble ship maneuvers to distract the enemy (despite low fire power) while the bigger ships wail away at the enemy. Dodge chance is the primary tanking stat in these scenarios.
It's probably a bit late to consider that too much for STO but I think more advanced aggro is a big piece of the puzzle for more engaging content and making roles relevant.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Exactly. The only time subnuc is worth using in PvE is when the queen is using FBP; against other NPCs, it may as well just be playing a visual effect that does nothing notable. Photonic Shockwave in PvE is just a once-every-45-second defense against heavy torps. CPB and Tachyon Beam do nothing when the enemies have 100k shield HP.
I could say something about engineering captain powers but I'm already depressed. Sufficed to say an engineer can tank the NPCs' damage all day but if I wanted a game that bored me to sleep, I'd play Eve.
Thank you so very much for the informative explanation.
In my previous notion I was blending three and four together as well as one and two for that matter. It seems things are more complicated than I considered by at least an order of magnitude. I can see now why it is so difficult to get exacting tactical patterns developed and implemented let alone flavor variants developed for particular species or even ship arc types.
On a side note, for what it is worth, if you folks would be interested in setting up a small detail oriented test team for development of AI scripts feel free to message me as I would be willing to commit five to six hours a week. I enjoy doing such stuff immensely. I had great fun doing such stuff for [space] Sins , and ground for RTW, A o C and TSW as well as a couple others.
Nonetheless thanks again for your time and effort. It is greatly appreciated. :cool:
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
I agree, one way to would make them more effective would be a percentage based depletion rate, instead of hard numbers.
So it doesn't matter how much shield HP the npc have for that skill.
While pure dps will have trouble with just punching through the shields, tayon beam can deplete lets say 33% in one go higher on the the higher tier skills (maybe up to 100% or more for 3)
This would also work in pvp since there are hard counters like scramble sensors that break it immediately.
So, would it be possible to give NPCs access to counters, then place additional weights that provide them with incentives to use those counters at higher difficulty levels?
For a general example, if a NPC loses a shield facing, it gets a major incentive to trigger Tactical Team or Reverse Shield Polarity if it has them, and if not some other shield heal... and at the very least Distribute Shields at the (rather crummy but present) standard rate rather than leave the shield facing down entirely. For a more specific example, if a NPC Raptor gets hit by an Engine Disable or -Repel CC, it gets a major incentive to trigger its Emergency Power to Engines. Oh, and at Elite the NPCs should not be hobbled by nerfed versions of player abilities like the lowered duration of Emergency Power to Engines... just make sure they also come back and try to shoot the players, maybe by placing a "last known coordinates" zone that the NPC returns to if it loses aggro entirely?
I'd much rather see enemies exercise their abilities with increasing degrees of AI tactics than see them with increasingly over-inflated hitpoints that only turn the battle into one of attrition.
Yes.
But then, where do we start? Where do we stop? Do we give every critter a counter to every tactic? If not, which ones do we choose? How reliably can they counter them? And which of the thousands of critters in our game, benefit from this extra developer time and attention?
And on and on and on...
And in the end, would all of our players enjoy it, or not? And if not, why'd we do it?
There are a lot of multi-level decisions that go into deciding whether or not being ABLE to do something necessarily means you SHOULD or NOT.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
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Those are exactly the type of questions I and I'm sure some others here would love to try to develop answers for if enabled properly.
Of the cuff, I can easily see a general set of tactics developed for each difficulty level with a "basic" ship build then variants plugged in for faction or race abilities and then solo and team options developed as well. After all the variable set we have is finite and really only two or three general tactical responses are practical given solid situational awareness for the play or AI methinks. Shoot "personalities" could be developed for particular ships or even faction operations and a synergy dimension could even come into play but I digress....
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
For a start, how about packages for the different difficulty settings?
On normal, you get the usual where each race has their keystone behaviors, but is otherwise light on counter-tactics.
At Advanced, standard debuff counters come into play - including ally-cleansing(Spheres throwing tac/eng/sci teams or hazard emitters at a cube being focused down).
At Elite, no holds barred. If you can't lock down targets, you're going to have a bad day(RSP, GDF, Miracle Worker, etc.).
Would it be something on the critters that could be triggered by content, along the lines of how they're scaled for content - is it something where a separate level of AI options could open when they're scaled or would that be outside the realm of what could be done reasonably (heh, not my or anybody on the forums and their reasonably, but for you guys reasonably)...?
Cause if so, could that be something perhaps done down the road in tweaking things such as the mobs in Advanced and Elite queues without affecting them in Normal queues or normal gameplay?
And even there, starting with something "simple" like Shield Distribution - "simple" not as in the requirements for you to be able to do it, but as far as it not requiring various other abilities from the player to counter the counters/etc/etc/etc.
Yes, there's a lot we can theoretically do to flesh out our AI behaviors.
No, we really don't have the time to do it to the degree anyone would be satisfied with.
It's a frustrating answer - I know. But this is the reality of a live game with limited resources.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Best thing to do, borticuscryptic? Make a thread dedicated to do it, much like this thread. Lay out the parameters for us. I guarantee you that you'll get enough information to kick off that dev project.
Assuming that this element of the issue is what would be one of the most time-consuming for you guys, that is.
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Basically, if you're looking for challenging AI that actually require skill and a wide variety of captain/bridge officer abilities you will not find them. Most of the player base doesn't care.
Let me try to steer this topic around demand because I can see that the player here (however small a group) really want something more. But I really appreciate your honesty and can get your perspective here.
When you added C-Store console powers to enemies, is that the kind of thing that could be used to boost enemies?
I'd like better aggro mechanics but I'm trying to think "where's the beef?" in terms of the capital budgeting that the leads probably have to do.
If you revamped BO traits or abilities, would that likely be able to filter over to enemies? Is this something where smarter BO powers on specialist BOs could translate to enemies? (As in a BO trait or skill revamp? Or more ship traits?)
Those sort of things probably bring some meaningful money into the game as well as activity. And enemies can inherit those kinds of upgrades, I'd imagine, easier than designing enemy AI upgrades from scratch.
What about if we had a player ship that used AI? Like... say... A Bynars-modified ship? Or a Cytherian-modified ship?
In the episode The Nth Degree, Barclay got strapped into the ship and took control of it solo. So I could see a ship-type (it would have to be a class more than a single type for this kind of work) either with the player becoming fused in with AI replacing some BO functions. Or a ship with a fused in bridge officer who behaves autonomously. Heck, New Frontier books gave the ship a personality that manifested as a hologram. Several episodes had things like sentient ships acting independently of the Captain.
These are all things you could sell as lines of ships or lockboxes. Would that general KIND of thing get more traction and translate back to enemies easier?
Or is it really honestly just something you think wouldn't get any traction in any form for the foreseeable future?
The root problem is that you dont have any kind of resource-based model, so there's no way to prevent a heal, or make them use it up, or anything else, because you cant attack the resource that does not exist. Also why killing somebody in PVP requires swarming them, to overpower the healing.
Right now, there isn't time, due to everything else he and the devs work on. But if it were deemed an important part of a future update, or Bort decided to do it little-by-little on his spare time, or something else, it could still happen. It's not technically impossible, after all.
And doesn't care? I really wouldn't say that
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Start with the simple stuff.
For each type of space NPC, determine a stripped down set of powers that are in theme for whichever faction it belongs to. We're talking one to three powers.
So for example, Borg Cubes. Since the Borg are famous for adapting and for their hull regeneration, let's give them Tactical Team 1 and Hazard Emitters 1. Whenever a shield facing drops below 50%, the Cube activates tactical team if it is available. Whenever hull drops below 75% the cube activates hazard emitters.
It doesn't need to have more complex logic than that, it doesn't need to activate the skills in response to player use of powers- because that very basic logic coupled with it having those abilities at all will mean that the typical tactic of everyone just firing until it dies is harder to implement. Now players might actually care about shield stripping, or focusing on one facing to get torpedoes through. The question of weapon type effectiveness comes up, since the Cubes have a power that removes the plasma debuff, meaning you can't turn them into flaming wrecks quite so easily.
But it doesn't have to stop there. Let's say that every escort gets tactical team, every science ship gets sci team, and every cruiser gets engineering team. Just having those powers, and using them on a set and common condition, makes fights against those enemies more difficult. It means that, even if it's simplistic, players actually have to take actions to account for these abilities.
We're not asking for enemy ships to act as though they were top tier pvpers, but since you can clearly make NPCs use offensive abilities, like attack patterns and weapon enhancements, I don't see why you couldn't give them basic logic for one or two defensive abilities.
Yes, there are thousands of enemies in the game. So focus on the end game, when players are interested in more than just massive HP sponges and want a little more out of their game. We aren't asking for you to set aside a month of nonstop ship AI upgrades, but spending a little bit of time once a month on it would really be great. Even if the only thing you update is Borg Cubes, that's still a huge part of the endgame, and once you've made that update it future proofs for any time you want to use those enemies again.
The part that bothers us, as a community, is how it seems that 'there are issues we would need to work out' means that you can't even begin to consider, or spend any time working on even the smallest fraction of something like this, and would instead just... forget about it and never do it. If you set aside even one hour a month to work on this, you would still have something done in a year's time that you wouldn't if we just accepted what you've said and you guys just never bothered.
Furthermore it would also provide a much needed avenue of feedback methinks. Which in and of itself surely is a good thing but I digress....
Nonetheless if the product or output from different discussions about AI functionality and capability -etc... proves to be a valuable soundboard resource maybe upper management will consider it a worthy investment of limited resources and something official could be developed. Just thinking out loud....
@illcadia - you have the same basic idea as me. I was thinking basic orientation - O/D/M , then racial flavor for taste, then personality for style, then a unique dimension - if any for that special somethin' somethin'.... But I digress again....
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Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
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Forget extremely smart tactics for a while, playing around with weights.
I think the first thing to actually look at is to figure out if all those crowd control and debuff abilities can help you more against a foe than adding a ship that replaces crowd control and debuff abilities with straight damage buffs.
Have NPC abilities that, say, get blocked in warp plasma. A time-delayed explosive torpedo that can't escape a Grav Well. An NPC popping a defensive abiltiy that can be subnuked.
It's not like you absolutely, 100 % need to counter these NPC abilities to beat them - but if you do, you should feel like you really contributed.
There is a simple example like the NPC Scimitars that cloak. No counter against that works. That's lame. Without its cloak counter, Charged Particle Burst is just some area damage ability. Torpedo Spread, Beam Fire AT Will, Scatter Volley, they all do this better.
Those Barrier Fields from Voth ships - how much nicer it would be if there was some power that could dispel them - perhaps not subnuke (because "counters everything" is also lame), but something like Tachyon Beam (which without any secondary effects is just damage. Damage that you could also have with Triple DHCs + Cannon Rapid Fire).
You see where I am going with that?
as long as they can point narrow arc weapons, the AI is good enough. that, and the equivalent of bind everything to space bar is a quantum leap over current. what the vadwuar are running on is good enough, AI isn't the problem so much now, its depth. npcs need more abilities, but not just abilities, up time on abilties. they should be useing these skills multiple times befor they die, and they should just plain be less numerous. give each intuitive builds that would be good on a player ship, even some special doff effected abilities and console abilties.
give the npcs some simple if/then statement, like if your damaged use a heal, if debuffeted use a team skill if you have it, if tac skills are cooled down and ready, do that little fly away and attack maneuver wile activating tac skills, with that alone the battle 10 times more interesting.
were do you start? id say start with federation npcs as a baseline, and update npc factions one by one. get rid of ugly placeholders like the typhone, and other crappy stuff that should be replaced by newer and more attractive ships
odyssey and galaxyX should remain the npc dreadnaughts of course, but federation battleships should be the galaxy, nebula, avenger, and the new guardian. each should have their own style, avenger uses mainly cannons and moves like a cruiser, galaxy is more of a slow tank that launches TS3 and BO3 mainly, nebula should be limited to TS1 and BO1, but high level sci skills and guardian maybe level 2 of what both run, but the only one of the 3 with FAW.
cruiser level npcs should consist of the akira, vesta, ambassador, sovereign, patrol, MVAM, steamrunner, dauntless and intrepid, all with their own unique style and setup. forget the miranda triplets, just trash those from the spawning tables. frigates that swarm you in random groups of 3 should consist of the nova, defiant, aquarius, saber, cheyenne and the hospital ball ship.
i think some basics should be in place when setting up every new npc. heres a basic guideline
-every frigate npc and up should have 1 EPtX skill that it can cycle with full up time. battleship and dreadnaught npcs should be able to run 2 different EPtX skills at all times.
-every ship should have at least 1 beam, cannon, or torp skill it can use at the system cooldown. each cruiser or better ship should have that, with ether a second weapon buff, or APB or APO. battleship and dread should have numerous tac and damage dealing skills.
-each ship should have 1 team skill, battleship or better should have 2 different ones
-frigates should have, not counting any team skill, 1 heal/resist, cruisers 2, battleships 3, dreads 4. that could be PH, HE, TSS, extend, AtS, AtD, or APD
- every ships should have 1 special ability, dreads 2. ether a console power, pets, RSP, SNB, APA, RSF, GDF, MW, SS, etc
-npc ships should have more weapons, and less of a flat damage bonus. frigates a total of 5, cruisers 6, battleships 7, dreads 8
if every npc is built with these basic rules, i think advanced and elite pve would be a lot of fun, and each battle would be a real challenge and be a rewarding experience.
Then let me be blunt here: Literally any addition of defensive powers to NPCs would be better than what we have now. Not 'do it justice', not 'make everyone satisfied' but literally any addition. Giving Borg Cubes a couple defensive powers rather than making them bigger damage sponges, and changing nothing else, would still be a 100% improvement over what we have now.
They're adding new defensive powers to the new units (Vaadwuar, and Heirarchy especially). That's a big development challenge, create and test the art and mechanics of a good set of abilities and make sure they support (not ruin) gameplay when that content goes live.
If you add an arbitary requirement to revamp borg cubes (which already work) that's another pile of work slung onto the developers involved with this sort of content. And I'm sure you can find people to suggest that the Cardassians, Romulans, Jem'Hadar, Undine, Gorn, Remans, Klingons, Federation, Voth, Hirogen, Orions, Fel'khir (or however you spell that), and so on get attention too (since why stop at just borg?) And keep in mind that each faction has various ship classes that all can't have a standard defensive suite of abilities lumped onto them (since in each case any given ability is going to interact differently with available abilities, stats, and weapons. If you're not paying careful attention you can easily result in something which is meaningless or something which is completely overpowering.) That's an update at the scale greater than anything we've ever seen before for this game (and lumped onto one team within cryptic) and even if they manage to update the combat abilities of some of the older stuff that's inevitably taking developer attention away from new content which is in a better position to maintain player interest in STO.
The point is that you don't seem to be listening when Borticuscryptic says "limited resources." You can imagine a quick add-on to any given ship but producing that [in an equitable manner] is quite a different matter.
Now that isn't to justify the catastrophic over-inflation of NPC health [separate issue to do with level 60 content and the expectations there for], but to explain why not everything in the game gets new and shinier abilities when other content sees an update or gets developed (see. why only the Undine were revamped over the last two seasons or only the Romulans before that. They have to prioritize.)
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I think the obvious answer is that you start with an NPC group that is recently introduced (or is being featured in new content) and is designed for endgame level gameplay.
You don't give them a full range of AI behaviors, just enough to make it interesting. One or two "signature moves" or "power ups" that exploit the capabilities that group is supposed to have. I'm sure you already do this to some degree.
Yes, players will adapt to that and try to build around it. At which point you modify another group's AI with a different limited set of behaviors and start breaking the cookie cutter.
I know I'm being simplistic here. But I think having the goal of breaking some of the cookie cutter builds is a good start. Force players to adapt a little, so they're more effective in some situations than others based on their build choices and play styles.
Because I hear what some of these guys are saying. The game can devalue any player abilities that are meant to debuff or weaken resistances when damage output is all that matters. We can't counter increased HP except with more damage, but we could interrupt the NPC's ability to heal or buff themselves in other ways.
Allow me to present one not-entirely-relevant example based on the idea that NPC's might try to Battle Cloak.
Right now, NPC's that actually use Battle Cloak are rare and use that ability only rarely. There's no good reason for players to build around anti-cloaking tactics except for PvP.
Consider an NPC that occasionally fired up a sequence of Jam Sensors -> Evasive Manuvers -> Polarize Hull -> Battle Cloak that allowed them to break off and set up for an attack. The attack run could then be a second set of behaviors to attack a weakened foe. That unit is basically a "Two Trick Pony" but it's more interesting than a simple pew-pew and it can be countered in a lot of different ways. Even better if you can get two or more NPC's chaining the same behavior one after another.
Eventually you'd have a wider set of units with their own signature behaviors.
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