AI Diffaculty or Stupidity Level. Depending on how you look at it.

[RoyalWolfe]

ok this is something I think is needed to be brought to the very forefront of discussions. right now the game is in alpha I get it dont rub it in, we've all heard it before, you do not need to respond like the robot automatic answer. "the game is buggy, thats alpha." we arent stupid like the npc's of this game we can see reason where they cannot. so dont bother saying it.

what I want to bring out is just whats great about the npc's in the game can be. right now pirates do not go out of thier way to obliterate shops in fact they usually spaz out and stop cold when getting too close to them. this is a neat example of intelegent enemy reasoning. because what thier AI is telling them is, that if they shoot the shop trade faction ships will come and attack them. thats just intelegent mob programing. althought if you do test the dev build with the new NPC mobs, they will kill them without consequence, I assume this will be fixed by flagging them as attacking a shop itself eventually.

but, here is a problem, what they end up actually doing is spawn camping players, forever and ever and ever. at some point they need to realize that hanging out here is going to become pointless and stop waiting, otherwise the gut reaction of a player, will then be to log out and reset the fucking universe so they can actually resume play.

Even notch when programing minecraft realized that its not how smart mobs are, its how focused they are at what they do. in minecraft if you run far enouph from mobs eventually they stop chasing you and go about thier business. he did this not beacuse he wanted the mobs to act like real creatures, but because he realized that players would not play (ultimately stop buying the game and he goes fucking broke) if they couldnt do something to stop dyeing. the pirates of this game do not work this way at all, and thats the problem.

 

[saibot]

The reason pirates don\'t attack shops is that they can\'t go within 200m of a shop, its in their programming to allow people a relatively safe spawn point and early ship building areas.

 

[RoyalWolfe]

Yes, but the problem is they can go there and kill the new npc running around the shop. as i said i assume that will be fixed as well later on, but right now this hasnt been an issue because there werent NPC\'s for them to kill.

the new ai diffaculty option aims to make it even worse. I have obseved personally through the dev builds that they do attack the NPC, Also they do spawn camp playewrs, this is an A.I. error, they arent programed to quit, ever, even if it means the player will. that is an obvious and reguardless of argument otherwise a clear problem. even Notch understood that mobs camp spawn + players inability to cope, = players leave and tell others not to buy the crappy game. it comes down to profit, even a complete moron understands that.

you can argue for the sake of arguing all you want, play it and see for yourself it is an issue.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

I\'ve seen this too. Within 2 minutes of starting a fresh server and client; me (with no ship) and NPC sitting in a shop, surrounded by 8 pirates constantly firing at me and the NPC (and hitting glass instead). As soon as I moved out from behind the glass I died, respawned, died, respawned, died (then shutdown the server and wiped the universe).

Now I just use admin powers to set the Isanth to \"not usable by enemy/AI\" in the catalogue. This prevents pirates from spawning (no ship they can use).

I\'m fairly sure that\'s not really ideal... ;-)

 

[platinum467]

diffaculty

 

[RoyalWolfe]

i dont understand? what exactly are you getting at?

 

[RoyalWolfe]

well as much as we can debate about the ability to use admin commands to either troubleshoot or depending on perspective, cheat the system. lets try and find a truly ideal solution to the problem.

to do this we need to define the problem. is it really a diffaculty issue? I dont think so, not if you truly define what diffaculty is in terms of gameplay. what we have is simply a case of stupid computer doing what its supposed to.

think about it this way, Pirates are characters, they have a goal, a simple one but it is the definition upon which thier character acts upon. This one goal, is to kill the player. this means they are esentually STUPID.

while you and I as intelegent beings would try to then do, is to understand why? see to us the word PIRATE has a meaning. we understand it is a title. we analyze it and associate the meaning towards what the character associated with this title should be. we understand a Pirate is a thief. they do not kill thier prey, to do so is to defeat thier own purpose, why you ask? well, simple, they dont want to kill the merchant, they want to steal his wares. If they kill him they could get his loot, but he cannot then bring them more loot for them to plunder later. you see where im going with this right?

If a player shoots a shop, a fleet is eventyually dispatched to kill the player, they are only hostile until they do kill the player. so once they do they will allow the respawn player to go on without further transgretions. ok so these ships which are usually the same as some of the pirates. they are characters too, ones that act apropriately according to thier programing. this dosnt mean they too arent STUPID, however they give the illusion of intellegence, because a specific exclusion was programed into thier behavior.

so based upon this analysis we can see one plausable solution to the problem, shops can call for help. so why cant we as players do the same? well, this goes into the diffaculty issue players would cheat by calling for aide all the time, and this would spoil the point of pirates all together so not an ideal solution.

but what about another solution, if the shops have an NPC in them, what about them having a ship bodyguard. the trade fleets already act accordingly towards pirates so it makes sense that they would hire defense to protect them and thier shops. this could even mean another faction for the game itself a mercinary guild that handles just this problem. but also would be hirable for quests as well. think about it if you want to go places that are dangerous, hire a ship to protect you. it just makes common sense.