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.
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.
Just to be clear on something (and not specifically addressed to bluegeek): Cryptic has been adding AI behaviors to the different species for a while now. Every seasonal release has had some updates to the species AI. Voth have their abilities, Breen have their thing, Hirogen were given subnuc and their ship abilities, even the Feds use (some of) the special consoles from the retrofits now, and so on.
None of them heal though, which is what the thread is specifically referencing
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.
Bort you are making it sound more fundamentally complex then what most people here seem to be asking for. If you were to design a new Star Trek MMO from scratch these would be the questions to ask, but since you are not, no use throwing them around like that.
Every NPC faction currently has a damage or control theme. This is more or less coherent, but you can just see what abilities eg. dreadnoughts have available, and what weapon types the use. There isn't an infinite number of CC hand healing options out there. And i can't believe i have to spell them out.
Speed / Defense / (stealth)
Shields: Resists /HP increase
Hull: Resists/ HP increase
as for cc we have
Shield stripper
Disable
Energy Drain
Kinetic Kills
placate/confuse
So yes make each faction good at one thing (breen are into energy drains eg. ) and susceptible to another. Let's say they get aux2sif as a powerful hull heal using both HP and resists, but no shield heals. They have no counters and resists to disables. Et voila. done next faction
This would make so much more interesting endgame in PvE queus like NWS, and actually teach players as they level about the interactions of different powers. Hell it might even make sci/sci ships an enjoyable leveling experience. Provided you adapt your playstyle to the part of the cstory chain you are in.
It would be a much deeper meta where we learn about the specific weaknesses of certain enemies, and learn to adapt pass them on, switch builds and tactics etc.
the current solutions is just subpar. Magical autoresists like the borg have against Sensor based attacks. are neither fun nor challenging, at least make them vulnreable to something else in return via magical negative resists against eg. holds. Now you really want that 3pc borg set tractor..
Picking a theme based on the number of available game types is work, but its not rocket science, and yes its as simple as deciding firgates get this amount of powers, cruisers, this etc. and then go with some flavor that fits the faction as it is displayed in STO.
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.
SOOOOO much this ^^^^ ANything would be more satisfactory then the current design philosophy. Maybe we should remove NPC at all for smaller download sizes.
Just to be clear on something (and not specifically addressed to bluegeek): Cryptic has been adding AI behaviors to the different species for a while now. Every seasonal release has had some updates to the species AI. Voth have their abilities, Breen have their thing, Hirogen were given subnuc and their ship abilities, even the Feds use (some of) the special consoles from the retrofits now, and so on.
None of them heal though, which is what the thread is specifically referencing
I agree with you.
I think the point is, they don't all need a full range of heals/buffs and they don't all need the same heals/buffs.
Maybe they can't entirely offset the need to add HP to level 60 content. After all, they're also adding HP to our ships, too. But it sounds like some balanced approach would be good for future NPC's. Too late to change it up in time for launch.
I can't actually try it out myself until they open up Tribble, mind you, and with everything going on I'll probably end up just waiting for the launch date.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
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 agree with you 100% on this. Even if as you described to have NPCs being a "two trick pony", at least that's something. Anything than just being a punching bag with a lot of HP with relative cookie cutter builds to be successful.
Will everyone like it? No, but it honestly goes without saying in the gaming industry that something that is added or changes not 100% of players will ever like it.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
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.
This, freaking this.
I've always wondered why more NPC's don't do this. Right now the only enemy I can think of are hostile KDF BoP's.
We know for a fact, though, that all Romulan ships can Battle Cloak, and it baffled me that when LoR came out, Romulan NPC ships weren't updated accordingly. Could you imagine how delightfully terrifying it would be for a hostile NPC D'deridex to start incorporating Battle Cloaking strategies into it's already infamous set of tactics?
In the end, while I also understand that you developers are working under time constraints, sometimes it's little things that can help at least alleviate some of the frustrations being voiced here.
For example, I always thought it would benefit certain enemies to have their weapons types be changed to some of the exotic stuff we occasionally get during a big update or new lockbox release.
Such as, let's say, Jem'hadar NPC ships having their basic weapon types changed from basic Polaron to Phased Polaron. Same thing with Hirogen, give them the Destablizied Tetryon weapons. The Borg? I dunno, maybe Disrupting plasma weapons, I guess. Who knows.
Something to give them a bit more bite, y'know? You all did so well with the Voth and their unique take on Anti-proton weapons, just expand it to other enemy factions.
We know you do pull this off occasionally because, I dunno if everyone else has noticed, but there is a difference between NPC Tal'Shiar ships and NPC Romulan Republic ships: the Tal'Shiar still use disruptor weapons, while the RR ships use Romulan plasma.
Even if you developers don't have the time or the werewithal to come up with every new tactic and enemy AI under the sun, I gotta agree with the other posts here: simply amping up the HP values of higher level enemies doesn't really make for challenging gameplay, and really just encourages everyone to value sheer DPS over all other abilities to simply plow through the hoards of floating bricks you're throwing at us.
Just to be clear on something (and not specifically addressed to bluegeek): Cryptic has been adding AI behaviors to the different species for a while now. Every seasonal release has had some updates to the species AI. Voth have their abilities, Breen have their thing, Hirogen were given subnuc and their ship abilities, even the Feds use (some of) the special consoles from the retrofits now, and so on.
None of them heal though, which is what the thread is specifically referencing
Breen = Use the most broken sci skill of all, EngSiph1, as soon as it attacks. Bad.
Terran Luna Ship = Uses FBP. Nice but could do better.
Voth = Decent Tykens and voth shield. Wish they would all also use the drain console. Nice.
Given the resource issues posed in AI enhancement maybe something like having a queue for Hot Seating would be a nice alternative.
What I mean by this is that players can earn dilithium boxes and/or Mark boxes for participating in X amount of full engagements playing generic npc ships/ground creatures v Player in Elite mode who are playing any elite content space and ground with the set of skills and attributes normally attached to the npc. This could be limited to certain engagements or be offered to a huge swath of episodes/maps depending on how hard/easy the implementation would be.
You could extend this Agent Smith "Matrix" style of game play in a variety of interesting ways, from even allowing players to prepare a stock list of npc ships they collect to take into an engagement as the "enemy" through to even introducing specific traits that dual affect in a "hot seat" mode.
It would add flavour to PvE by ironically involving an element of PvP. Players would not be able to communicate in-game to each other, infact players may not even realise they are playing against other players in this mode. If no one is available for the engagement then standard AI is still there.
It could be possible to involve multiple players fighting in "enemy" ships on the same map against the player. The hot seated ships will have a considerable tone down to the multi thousands of hull and shields on the current 50-60s content etc to balance out the living, breathing, thinking (we hope) element involved. It could extend to all level content at Elite mode.
To say the least it would definitely spice up game play in Elite PvE and give players a new feature to have a heck of alot of fun with as a challenge playing the "baddies" that they have never had the real chance to do yet.
This hot seating is in games like Total War Shogun 2, I am unsure how much of a program challenge it would be to implement in a future iteration of STO, it could offer alot of fun and act as a compromise to many man hours of AI synthesis programing.
ohh and for Smith :cool: as the mention of Barkley's role in a mentioned ST episode on this thread triggered the concept and memory of the Matrix Agent "replacing" Matrix folk for his own purpose.
Given the resource issues posed in AI enhancement maybe something like having a queue for Hot Seating would be a nice alternative.
What I mean by this is that players can earn dilithium boxes and/or Mark boxes for participating in X amount of full engagements playing generic npc ships/ground creatures v Player in Elite mode who are playing any elite content space and ground with the set of skills and attributes normally attached to the npc. This could be limited to certain engagements or be offered to a huge swath of episodes/maps depending on how hard/easy the implementation would be.
You could extend this Agent Smith "Matrix" style of game play in a variety of interesting ways, from even allowing players to prepare a stock list of npc ships they collect to take into an engagement as the "enemy" through to even introducing specific traits that dual affect in a "hot seat" mode.
It would add flavour to PvE by ironically involving an element of PvP. Players would not be able to communicate in-game to each other, infact players may not even realise they are playing against other players in this mode. If no one is available for the engagement then standard AI is still there.
It could be possible to involve multiple players fighting in "enemy" ships on the same map against the player. The hot seated ships will have a considerable tone down to the multi thousands of hull and shields on the current 50-60s content etc to balance out the living, breathing, thinking (we hope) element involved. It could extend to all level content at Elite mode.
To say the least it would definitely spice up game play in Elite PvE and give players a new feature to have a heck of alot of fun with as a challenge playing the "baddies" that they have never had the real chance to do yet.
This hot seating is in games like Total War Shogun 2, I am unsure how much of a program challenge it would be to implement in a future iteration of STO, it could offer alot of fun and act as a compromise to many man hours of AI synthesis programing.
ohh and for Smith :cool: as the mention of Barkley's role in a mentioned ST episode on this thread triggered the concept and memory of the Matrix Agent "replacing" Matrix folk for his own purpose.
That would so amazingly innovative it is double dipped in awesome sauce with that extra special glean! The thing is that Cryptic would have to make anonymous and there should be a scaled reward system built in for the OPFOR player(s). It would really be a super sweet way to do an awesome twist on PvP for the PvE crowd methinks....
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...
A simple way to implement NPC healing for challenge is to add heals at difficulty levels. Normal=no heals, Advanced=2 ensign-levell heals with 1 min CD, Elite 2-3 lieutenant heals with real CD
That would also give people an introduction into some of the counterplay mechanics, ie drain aux to block a heal
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.
Thank you for your answer, it provides some solid insight into how these things function.
It actually makes me wonder, though: is this what you tried with the Elachi? When they first hit they were far different from how any of the other NPCs worked (Wait, what's this "Science Team" you speak of? And you actually want me to move when the rainbow death cone appears? ), to the degree that the forums were rife with complaints about them being too difficult; if this was a prior attempt at improving gameplay and making it more dynamic, I can see why you might hesitate to implement a similar strategy.
As far as degrees of implementation, my basic thought was to take existing NPC abilities and add weights when specific conditions are met... i.e. counter tactics. These weights would themselves need to scale with difficulty (if that's possible... if not the whole idea goes out the window) as a means to provide an increasing likelihood that the enemy would use their abilities in an increasingly clever manner. While on Normal, for example, a NPC Raptor might not be smart enough to EP2E out of a Gravity Well since its AI behavior weights would be such that it might prefer to just sit there and try facing at you and shooting; on Elite, however, if the NPC Raptor doesn't have EP2E on cooldown there is a very good chance it will jet out of the Gravity Well. While a NPC (Normal) Raptor might not always sit there and a NPC (Elite) Raptor might not always try to escape, those would be the most likely outcomes... if I understand correctly how you've described the AI behavior weighting mechanic.
As far as resources... oh okay, that does make sense. Especially with under two weeks until launch I can understand the problem of having to add code to every NPC's AI under the method I described. I still don't really look forward to NPCs that are simply bigger punching bags (I miss the speedballs from ISE... mock me now fellow forum denizens. ), but we do have access to decent DPSer and PvP communities to help us approach the problem of meeting mandatory DPS and/or spike thresholds. I would love to see a suggestion thread much like the Meta suggestion thread awhile back; sure we all have different views on the subject (and almost every subject for that matter), but it would be a really handy resource if you do decide to revise the AI in such a grand manner.
[EDIT] Do the NPCs have a separate ability list from players? If so, would it be possible to tie the AI weights directly to the NPC ability references rather than the individual NPCs' AIs, so that (based on the previous Raptor example) all NPCs with EP2E would have a scaling weight for counter tactics based upon their abilities rather than having to code each NPC individually? This could be especially helpful when looking at it long-term, since it would simplify coding the AI for ability use on all future critters as well.
Then again, that also assumes that NPCs have a separate ability pool... another idea that hinges on exactly how the coding was designed, I suppose, and that contingent on the ability to tie AI weights to the abilities and scale off the Difficulty setting. The more I mull this over, the more I appreciate what you do... [/EDIT]
Thanks again for the explanation of the AI and the issues you face when considering changes to it; that sort of openness is greatly appreciated, and helps keep us better informed as a community. Cheers.
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.
yes. and vadwaur ships are actually disengaging and doing attack runs on you when they get shot at too. but the scripting is flawed, any ship with EPtE can keep pace and they will just fly forward forever, never reaching the distance from you that would trigger them to turn around. this is a good start for npc having behavior at least.
the DQ races are certainly more complex then average npcs, but they aren't a fraction of what the still should be. some might have 3 or 4 abilities, some might even synergize well, but they still got multi minute downtime, NPCS still exclusively rely on huge hitpoints for survivability, and not at all on skills applying resistance or healing. this makes debuffing and skill striping useless, there's a big difference between turning off a skill that provides resistance, and just building it in stock.
dreadnaught npcs should come with 8 weapons and 12 abilities, scaling down from there at battleship, cruiser and frigate ranks. their skills should have up time player ships enjoy, they should cycle EPt skills with full coverage, they should have only 30k to 100k hitpoints, and rely on healing and resistance levels for most of their survivability. making them dependent on abilities like that, gives sci debuffs teeth, the game wouldn't just be about DPS.
the working prototype for this already exists, its called every player ship. give npcs the same capabilities, add some simple if;then statements, for when they activate skills, and bam, engaging pve. pve that takes more then bind FAW to space bar
No matter what, the game's NPCs are not going to act with the AI level of a PVP opponet. As much as You or I want them to.
No matter what, the game's NPCs are not going to act with the AI level of a PVP opponet. As much as You or I want them to.
duh, ive said several times that what the vahdwar is operating with is adequate, they just need more abilities and less raw hitpoints to be more then good enough
duh, ive said several times that what the vahdwar is operating with is adequate, they just need more abilities and less raw hitpoints to be more then good enough
More abilities? Consider how much time you spend in combat against a single vaadwuar responding to something. Anchors, barrages, under-space jumps. That might not be maximally stimulating but multiply that out N times when facing N-1 more ships. Less hitpoints is a definite but you can certainly go too far in overloading a single AI with stuff when the combat that ship is designed for often involves multiple units. As it is in some of the larger fights you can easily be put in the position of continuously responding to something. We don't need to tune that up (and remove the ability of the player to make responses to definite gameplay events through sheer chaos) to compensate for an HP reduction which should come in any case.
The Vaadwuar's behavior I think is well set for STO's kind of gameplay (near enough optimal to avoid trying to tweak things further). All that needs to be done is manage their health.
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!
More abilities? Consider how much time you spend in combat against a single vaadwuar responding to something. Anchors, barrages, under-space jumps. That might not be maximally stimulating but multiply that out N times when facing N-1 more ships. Less hitpoints is a definite but you can certainly go too far in overloading a single AI with stuff when the combat that ship is designed for often involves multiple units. As it is in some of the larger fights you can easily be put in the position of continuously responding to something. We don't need to tune that up (and remove the ability of the player to make responses to definite gameplay events through shere chaos) to compensate for an HP reduction which should come in any case.
The Vaadwuar's behavior I think is well set for STO's kind of gameplay (near enough optimal to avoid trying to tweak things further). All that needs to be done is manage their health.
you spent so much time against the vaadwuar, because additionally to the skills they also have the most hp increase of all npc factions.
you spent so much time against the vaadwuar, because additionally to the skills they also have the most hp increase of all npc factions.
Its not about the length of combat, its about what happens within it. Halve it and the content I'm talking about won't be much affected (only shortened) which is why one can freely endorse a light-to-moderate HP reduction without ruining DR combat mechanics.
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!
duh, ive said several times that what the vahdwar is operating with is adequate, they just need more abilities and less raw hitpoints to be more then good enough
I agree and I'll add, using said abilities smartly(or at least as smart as it can be). Adding abilities isn't enough really, the NPC needs to know when it should activate said ability and not just blindly activate it as soon as it can.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
Comments
Aside from the misuse of the word "literally".
Helpful Tools: Dictionary.com - Logical fallacies - Random generator - Word generator - Color tool - Extra Credits - List of common English language errors - New T6 Big booty tutorial
None of them heal though, which is what the thread is specifically referencing
Bort you are making it sound more fundamentally complex then what most people here seem to be asking for. If you were to design a new Star Trek MMO from scratch these would be the questions to ask, but since you are not, no use throwing them around like that.
Every NPC faction currently has a damage or control theme. This is more or less coherent, but you can just see what abilities eg. dreadnoughts have available, and what weapon types the use. There isn't an infinite number of CC hand healing options out there. And i can't believe i have to spell them out.
Speed / Defense / (stealth)
Shields: Resists /HP increase
Hull: Resists/ HP increase
as for cc we have
Shield stripper
Disable
Energy Drain
Kinetic Kills
placate/confuse
So yes make each faction good at one thing (breen are into energy drains eg. ) and susceptible to another. Let's say they get aux2sif as a powerful hull heal using both HP and resists, but no shield heals. They have no counters and resists to disables. Et voila. done next faction
This would make so much more interesting endgame in PvE queus like NWS, and actually teach players as they level about the interactions of different powers. Hell it might even make sci/sci ships an enjoyable leveling experience. Provided you adapt your playstyle to the part of the cstory chain you are in.
It would be a much deeper meta where we learn about the specific weaknesses of certain enemies, and learn to adapt pass them on, switch builds and tactics etc.
the current solutions is just subpar. Magical autoresists like the borg have against Sensor based attacks. are neither fun nor challenging, at least make them vulnreable to something else in return via magical negative resists against eg. holds. Now you really want that 3pc borg set tractor..
Picking a theme based on the number of available game types is work, but its not rocket science, and yes its as simple as deciding firgates get this amount of powers, cruisers, this etc. and then go with some flavor that fits the faction as it is displayed in STO.
SOOOOO much this ^^^^ ANything would be more satisfactory then the current design philosophy. Maybe we should remove NPC at all for smaller download sizes.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I agree with you.
I think the point is, they don't all need a full range of heals/buffs and they don't all need the same heals/buffs.
Maybe they can't entirely offset the need to add HP to level 60 content. After all, they're also adding HP to our ships, too. But it sounds like some balanced approach would be good for future NPC's. Too late to change it up in time for launch.
I can't actually try it out myself until they open up Tribble, mind you, and with everything going on I'll probably end up just waiting for the launch date.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I agree with you 100% on this. Even if as you described to have NPCs being a "two trick pony", at least that's something. Anything than just being a punching bag with a lot of HP with relative cookie cutter builds to be successful.
Will everyone like it? No, but it honestly goes without saying in the gaming industry that something that is added or changes not 100% of players will ever like it.
It is nice seeing new tactics being employed, but yeah, damage sponges isn't the way to go.
I wont even get into the monstrosities that the new queued events have become....
This, freaking this.
I've always wondered why more NPC's don't do this. Right now the only enemy I can think of are hostile KDF BoP's.
We know for a fact, though, that all Romulan ships can Battle Cloak, and it baffled me that when LoR came out, Romulan NPC ships weren't updated accordingly. Could you imagine how delightfully terrifying it would be for a hostile NPC D'deridex to start incorporating Battle Cloaking strategies into it's already infamous set of tactics?
In the end, while I also understand that you developers are working under time constraints, sometimes it's little things that can help at least alleviate some of the frustrations being voiced here.
For example, I always thought it would benefit certain enemies to have their weapons types be changed to some of the exotic stuff we occasionally get during a big update or new lockbox release.
Such as, let's say, Jem'hadar NPC ships having their basic weapon types changed from basic Polaron to Phased Polaron. Same thing with Hirogen, give them the Destablizied Tetryon weapons. The Borg? I dunno, maybe Disrupting plasma weapons, I guess. Who knows.
Something to give them a bit more bite, y'know? You all did so well with the Voth and their unique take on Anti-proton weapons, just expand it to other enemy factions.
We know you do pull this off occasionally because, I dunno if everyone else has noticed, but there is a difference between NPC Tal'Shiar ships and NPC Romulan Republic ships: the Tal'Shiar still use disruptor weapons, while the RR ships use Romulan plasma.
Even if you developers don't have the time or the werewithal to come up with every new tactic and enemy AI under the sun, I gotta agree with the other posts here: simply amping up the HP values of higher level enemies doesn't really make for challenging gameplay, and really just encourages everyone to value sheer DPS over all other abilities to simply plow through the hoards of floating bricks you're throwing at us.
Breen = Use the most broken sci skill of all, EngSiph1, as soon as it attacks. Bad.
Terran Luna Ship = Uses FBP. Nice but could do better.
Voth = Decent Tykens and voth shield. Wish they would all also use the drain console. Nice.
What I mean by this is that players can earn dilithium boxes and/or Mark boxes for participating in X amount of full engagements playing generic npc ships/ground creatures v Player in Elite mode who are playing any elite content space and ground with the set of skills and attributes normally attached to the npc. This could be limited to certain engagements or be offered to a huge swath of episodes/maps depending on how hard/easy the implementation would be.
You could extend this Agent Smith "Matrix" style of game play in a variety of interesting ways, from even allowing players to prepare a stock list of npc ships they collect to take into an engagement as the "enemy" through to even introducing specific traits that dual affect in a "hot seat" mode.
It would add flavour to PvE by ironically involving an element of PvP. Players would not be able to communicate in-game to each other, infact players may not even realise they are playing against other players in this mode. If no one is available for the engagement then standard AI is still there.
It could be possible to involve multiple players fighting in "enemy" ships on the same map against the player. The hot seated ships will have a considerable tone down to the multi thousands of hull and shields on the current 50-60s content etc to balance out the living, breathing, thinking (we hope) element involved. It could extend to all level content at Elite mode.
To say the least it would definitely spice up game play in Elite PvE and give players a new feature to have a heck of alot of fun with as a challenge playing the "baddies" that they have never had the real chance to do yet.
This hot seating is in games like Total War Shogun 2, I am unsure how much of a program challenge it would be to implement in a future iteration of STO, it could offer alot of fun and act as a compromise to many man hours of AI synthesis programing.
ohh and for Smith :cool: as the mention of Barkley's role in a mentioned ST episode on this thread triggered the concept and memory of the Matrix Agent "replacing" Matrix folk for his own purpose.
That would so amazingly innovative it is double dipped in awesome sauce with that extra special glean! The thing is that Cryptic would have to make anonymous and there should be a scaled reward system built in for the OPFOR player(s). It would really be a super sweet way to do an awesome twist on PvP for the PvE crowd methinks....
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
That would also give people an introduction into some of the counterplay mechanics, ie drain aux to block a heal
Thank you for your answer, it provides some solid insight into how these things function.
It actually makes me wonder, though: is this what you tried with the Elachi? When they first hit they were far different from how any of the other NPCs worked (Wait, what's this "Science Team" you speak of? And you actually want me to move when the rainbow death cone appears?
As far as degrees of implementation, my basic thought was to take existing NPC abilities and add weights when specific conditions are met... i.e. counter tactics. These weights would themselves need to scale with difficulty (if that's possible... if not the whole idea goes out the window) as a means to provide an increasing likelihood that the enemy would use their abilities in an increasingly clever manner. While on Normal, for example, a NPC Raptor might not be smart enough to EP2E out of a Gravity Well since its AI behavior weights would be such that it might prefer to just sit there and try facing at you and shooting; on Elite, however, if the NPC Raptor doesn't have EP2E on cooldown there is a very good chance it will jet out of the Gravity Well. While a NPC (Normal) Raptor might not always sit there and a NPC (Elite) Raptor might not always try to escape, those would be the most likely outcomes... if I understand correctly how you've described the AI behavior weighting mechanic.
As far as resources... oh okay, that does make sense. Especially with under two weeks until launch I can understand the problem of having to add code to every NPC's AI under the method I described. I still don't really look forward to NPCs that are simply bigger punching bags (I miss the speedballs from ISE... mock me now fellow forum denizens.
[EDIT] Do the NPCs have a separate ability list from players? If so, would it be possible to tie the AI weights directly to the NPC ability references rather than the individual NPCs' AIs, so that (based on the previous Raptor example) all NPCs with EP2E would have a scaling weight for counter tactics based upon their abilities rather than having to code each NPC individually? This could be especially helpful when looking at it long-term, since it would simplify coding the AI for ability use on all future critters as well.
Then again, that also assumes that NPCs have a separate ability pool... another idea that hinges on exactly how the coding was designed, I suppose, and that contingent on the ability to tie AI weights to the abilities and scale off the Difficulty setting. The more I mull this over, the more I appreciate what you do... [/EDIT]
Thanks again for the explanation of the AI and the issues you face when considering changes to it; that sort of openness is greatly appreciated, and helps keep us better informed as a community. Cheers.
No matter what, the game's NPCs are not going to act with the AI level of a PVP opponet. As much as You or I want them to.
duh, ive said several times that what the vahdwar is operating with is adequate, they just need more abilities and less raw hitpoints to be more then good enough
More abilities? Consider how much time you spend in combat against a single vaadwuar responding to something. Anchors, barrages, under-space jumps. That might not be maximally stimulating but multiply that out N times when facing N-1 more ships. Less hitpoints is a definite but you can certainly go too far in overloading a single AI with stuff when the combat that ship is designed for often involves multiple units. As it is in some of the larger fights you can easily be put in the position of continuously responding to something. We don't need to tune that up (and remove the ability of the player to make responses to definite gameplay events through sheer chaos) to compensate for an HP reduction which should come in any case.
The Vaadwuar's behavior I think is well set for STO's kind of gameplay (near enough optimal to avoid trying to tweak things further). All that needs to be done is manage their health.
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!
you spent so much time against the vaadwuar, because additionally to the skills they also have the most hp increase of all npc factions.
Its not about the length of combat, its about what happens within it. Halve it and the content I'm talking about won't be much affected (only shortened) which is why one can freely endorse a light-to-moderate HP reduction without ruining DR combat mechanics.
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!
I agree and I'll add, using said abilities smartly(or at least as smart as it can be). Adding abilities isn't enough really, the NPC needs to know when it should activate said ability and not just blindly activate it as soon as it can.