AI Morale and its Role in Regulating Gameplay

[NaStral]

From working with the NPC factions iv'e found the current behavior of AI fleets to be not only disappointing from a game-play perspective but also depending on the situation annoying and even damaging from the perspective of a server admin. In it's current form AI vessels just plunk away until destroyed or commanded to stop manually with no potential of relief on the effected loaded areas, even after many drones are destroyed or damaged past usefulness. This contributes to an undue burden on those loaded areas which in many situations can lead to the server grinding to a halt.

What is needed are conditions for retreat for all AI controlled fleets so that upon losses or widespread damage (whichever comes first) exceeding a particular percentage, the ships of that fleet will automatically retreat back to the coordinates from which they were originally sent. These conditions should effect all AI controlled entities, whether they be pirate, NPC or Player fleets/unfleeted bobby ships. If the vessels are not fleeted, they will pick a direction at random and move away from the location where the retreat mechanic was triggered until they exit the loaded area. The values needed to trigger the retreat mechanic should be adjustable in the Server.cfg file.

In addition to this, to address the problem of NPC ships being dropped from a fleet and losing AI control, there needs to be some kind of automatic action that ensures the Bobby is set to on as soon as a ship exits a fleet. Scavenger fleets (Ships marked scavenger in blueprint, not the NPC faction) from NPCs continue to send vessels to player home bases and then simply de-fleet and deposit them with out AI control where they just sit there. Anything fleeted should not do this but at least there should be some mechanic that can activate them so they will function within the scope of their AI rather than just sit there and take up space. The retreat mechanic could activate here too in order to get them to leave without players having to interfere, like say if they want to remain on friendly terms with the NPC faction.

This has been addressed elsewhere but overheated ships need to de-fleet and be salvageable.

TL;DR

All AI ships should have a config adjustable retreat mechanic for both immersive gameplay and more importantly as a form of automatic regulation of entity spam in loaded areas. It also contributes to a grand strategy feel as fleet commanders must consider morale as an important factor in deployment.

NPCs need to stop leaving their ships at places they send them to and automatically move them out of loaded areas. This is a massive yet under recognized quality of play issue. Admins shouldn't have to be constantly called to clean defective NPCs up.

De-fleet and make salvageable overheated ships.

 

[Batavium]

From working with the NPC factions iv'e found the current behavior of AI fleets to be not only disappointing from a game-play perspective but also depending on the situation annoying and even damaging from the perspective of a server admin. In it's current form AI vessels just plunk away until destroyed or commanded to stop manually with no potential of relief on the effected loaded areas, even after many drones are destroyed or damaged past usefulness. This contributes to an undue burden on those loaded areas which in many situations can lead to the server grinding to a halt.

This has come about when they switched to a persistent AI universe. The original Pirates and Trade Guild would spawn out of the blue. Fly on a strait line across a few sectors to a target. Then fly back and despawn.

The Pirates would spawn to engage a human player. Or a wave would spawn to attack a players Home Base. The direction of travel would be originated from the nearest Pirate Station. If no target was found the ships would bump into the home base and then travel back in the same direction. Use none armed ships to see this. This was in early 2015.

Leaving the sector or logging off from the server would also despawn the Pirates. This was a great way to keep a server clean and healthy. As things would never get out of hand. If a player got boxed in by various Pirate waves attacking his station then a simple log off would clear the sector.

This was off course used as an escape. But still much better then today stay around for ever set up.

The Trade Guild operated in the same way. But they spawned a few sectors away from a pilon shop. Then fly to that shop bump into it and partially restocking the items of the shop. They then flew back along the same path as from when they came and despawned. Again logging off or unloading the sector would despawn them.

Part of the problem of today’s NPC is also that the Traders NPC. Not to be mistaken by the Trade Guild. Is given sector 0 0 0 as their main system. Where as the other NPC each take up resident in a quarter of the galaxy. By having system 0 0 0 the Traders become a major load on spawn as that by default is located at sector 2 2 2 of system 0 0 0. Every time a player enters the server the Traders send out fleets to investigate them causing a major traffic jam at spawn. Since the current NPC are persistent they do not despawn and clog up the whole spawn sector. It would be much better if the Traders are also given a quadrant in the galaxy so that the galaxies center is player only. That way players have to reach out to the NPC rather then the NPC piling onto them never to despawn.

 

[NaStral]

NPC factions can be set elsewhere but I do think Schine should revise the starting locations of NPCs to prevent issues like that. Right now, the game suffers from it's vanilla settings for single player and servers and should be revised to provide new users the best possible baseline product rather than something that needs fixing right out of the box.

 

[timmymorrison1]

Leaving the sector or logging off from the server would also despawn the Pirates. This was a great way to keep a server clean and healthy. As things would never get out of hand. If a player got boxed in by various Pirate waves attacking his station then a simple log off would clear the sector.

This doesnt work with npcs they just keep on attacking no matter what, unless you have specific config files. The pirates, and trading guild both despawn, but the persistant npcs dont. they just sit there and attack no matter what. what we need is for them to despawn when they retreat so they dont make the world fille to huge and players dont get spammed until they lag to death

 

[Benevolent27]

You're right NaStral . There really needs to retreat conditions for NPC's which limits the timeframe of wars and such. There also needs to be options for continual war statuses.

There needs to be the following retreat conditions:
1. Retreat Conditions when losing
When too many losses occur, switch from attack mode to defense mode. The NPC faction would then build defensive ships and deploy within their owned systems (up to certain limits for defensive ships), and stop sending attack ships.

2. Limit the amount of NPC ships allowed to take part in an attack squad.
The NPCs should NOT be sending endless waves of attack ships at a player (till the server crashes), but rather should be sending attack squadrons, and then waiting. There should be a limit to how many ships can take part in an attack at once. For example, if set to 20 fleet ships per attack squadron, then once this many are deployed, the NPC faction should STOP sending out new ships to that location. Reinforcements should ONLY be sent as ships in the attack squadron are defeated. There should also be variables to control how many replacements are sent. For example, perhaps one NPC faction will send up to 10 to 40 replacements before they decide to retreat, and they will only send reinforcements if the number of ships left in an attack squad falls below 50%. Another NPC might be set up to only send 5 ships in an attack squad and never send reinforcements. And another NPC faction might have attack squads ranging between 10 and 50, and will send reinforcements every 10 minutes till the max attack squad size is reached.

3. A player defending themselves should NOT add hostility + there need to be time limits on NPC attack campaigns
The NPC faction needs to be able to retreat, EVEN WHEN THE PLAYER KEEPS ATTACKING THE NPC ATTACK SQUAD. For example, if a NPC faction sends an attack squad to battle the player, then the player defends themselves with turrets on their base, the NPC faction should see this as DEFENSE, not OFFENSE by the player. It should have no bearing on the length of the war. Only attacks made against the NPC faction's ships OUTSIDE OF THE NPC ATTACK SQUAD should increase the hostility between the player and the NPC. This will then allow the player to defend themselves without gaining additional hostility. The NPC faction will then retreat if no new attacks are launched against the NPC faction after a certain time period.

4. There needs to be the option to have NPC factions in perpetual war with players
When a NPC faction is at war with a player, there should be rules of engagement. For example, just because a NPC faction is at war with a player, this does not mean the NPC faction would want to send attacks constantly forever. It just means that IF THE NPC FACTION chooses to send attacks and raiding parties out, then they will likely send them to players that they are already at war with. They may also be at war with a player faction but will only send attacks out IF the hostility is above a certain value. Otherwise, they will not send attacks at all.

5. There needs to be expanded options for when a NPC faction will go to war with players
For example, a more aggressive NPC faction may decide to randomly war an online faction and then attack them. How often they do this and how big of attacks they send should be customizable. More passive NPC's may never randomly war anyone, while aggressive NPC factions may be constantly warring players.

6. NPC factions need to stop cheating at knowing where players are
One of the big problems with going to war with a NPC faction is that somehow they always magically know where everybody in a faction is and will then immediately send attack forces directly at them. This should not be possible. This forces anybody in the player faction that is mining to have to return to their base.. Or exploring anywhere in the galaxy has to log off or return to the homebase.. No matter where a player is, they have to either return back to their homebase or log off till the war is over.. What is fun about this? Players SHOULD be able to evade the NPC factions by avoiding detection. NPCs that are at war with a faction should send scout ships to search for players, starting with systems claimed by that player's faction. The scout ships should ONLY detect a player if coming within 2 sectors of them. Till then, the scout ships should roam around different bases and sectors within the systems. If they do not find the player within a certain timeframe, then they should give up on the system and move on to another one. If they do find the player, then they might send attack ships to the last known location. If the NPC faction searches all known systems for that player's faction and do not find the player, then they should look at the systems surrounding the player's claimed systems. If they do not find any players in any systems, then they should keep looking, but do it more passively than when they first went to war. When the war ends, the npc faction stops looking for the player and moves their forces out.