The Tavern

Atm, the fabled "optimal play" is to e. g. carry around a bag of rocks and throw them at an enemy so that your allies thrash in the right general direction.

Now why is that?
Because telling them to attack something not only has a felt 50% chance of doing nothing and a 25% chance of your allies going completely haywire and attacking anything but the target, but also makes noise. Which can easily kill you, especially very early on where every kobold is one kobold too many.

I can't be the only one who thinks this is extremely silly. I refuse to believe that.

Now that allies shouldn't go berserk on plants anymore I thought it would be a good time to double up on improving ally behaviour! Make hay while the sun is shining! Strike the iron while it's hot!

For PleasingFungus: Now you may think "But the FLAVOUR COST!", but I got you covered, mate. One can simply gesture to issue commands. Has a nice royal touch to it, too.

Alternatively remove allies.

Yes! Remove allies, and also remove the noise system.

I think the best ally improvement would be making the default behaviour "follow me around the dungeon if there are no hostiles in view but attack anything that comes into los".

While we're at it, can we make "t" commands also not take a turn/auts?
Clearly you can gesture or speak while you move or attack....

crate wrote:I think the best ally improvement would be making the default behaviour "follow me around the dungeon if there are no hostiles in view but attack anything that comes into los".

This and also please stop opening doors, changing LOS should be a player and hostile-only action.

"Well boss, I heard some buzzing and thought maybe there would be candy behind this door but nope, just a bunch of bees"

crate wrote:I think the best ally improvement would be making the default behaviour "follow me around the dungeon if there are no hostiles in view but attack anything that comes into los".

This would be good, but only if all allies are changed to allow projectiles to go through them. Otherwise this change would suck for non-melee types.

Also, someone has to explain to me the thinking behind ranged weapon attacks causing allies to attack that target, but spells not doing the same. Surely this should be consistent!

removeelyvilon wrote:For PleasingFungus: Now you may think "But the FLAVOUR COST!", but I got you covered, mate.

why me

i personally sort of enjoy the game of trying to get your allies to do what you want without actually spending a turn + making noise to actually issue orders, but it's dumb and unintuitive and probably should be changed, yeah. you don't even have to invoke gestures: the player has a telepathic link with all their allies in LOS, which is how they can see invisible allies even without sinv. removing noise from orders would be, in some sense, more consistent, not less!

infinitevox wrote:While we're at it, can we make "t" commands also not take a turn/auts?
Clearly you can gesture or speak while you move or attack....

do you want to be encouraged to change your allies' orders, potentially, every single turn? putting turn costs on actions, even seemingly harmless ones, is a way to avoid 'optimal play' involving constant toggling & micromanagement. (compare e.g. tile worker micromanagement in civilization.)

crate wrote:I think the best ally improvement would be making the default behaviour "follow me around the dungeon if there are no hostiles in view but attack anything that comes into los".

if someone has a good enough grasp of the monster ai code to make this change, i'd accept the patch. we'd have to nerf musu to compensate, of course, but that's only fair.

crate wrote:I think the best ally improvement would be making the default behaviour "follow me around the dungeon if there are no hostiles in view but attack anything that comes into los".

aka, do what you are meant to do.

ydeve wrote:Alternatively remove allies.

You guys really wanna fight a losing war.

dowan wrote:
crate wrote:I think the best ally improvement would be making the default behaviour "follow me around the dungeon if there are no hostiles in view but attack anything that comes into los".

This would be good, but only if all allies are changed to allow projectiles to go through them. Otherwise this change would suck for non-melee types.

If you pick beogh, yred or hepl on a ranged character, I'm not sure what you were expecting in the first place. With any other character you don't have permanent allies (or they are plants that you can shoot through) so just, uh, don't make them when you don't want them? The current "tf" behaviour would still exist as a command, I assume.

possibly "t-(p)rotect" vs t-(f)ollow", with the former being the new behavior (and the default)? though i'm not sure how important preserving the current behavior is - it'd probably be simpler to just have the new behaviour, unless people feel really strongly about having allies follow them around but not actively selecting new targets

crate wrote:I think the best ally improvement would be making the default behaviour "follow me around the dungeon if there are no hostiles in view but attack anything that comes into los".

Edit: Nvm, it's actually more of a buff.

PleasingFungus wrote:
infinitevox wrote:While we're at it, can we make "t" commands also not take a turn/auts?
Clearly you can gesture or speak while you move or attack....

do you want to be encouraged to change your allies' orders, potentially, every single turn? putting turn costs on actions, even seemingly harmless ones, is a way to avoid 'optimal play' involving constant toggling & micromanagement. (compare e.g. tile worker micromanagement in civilization.)

I'm actually okay with this. A lot of the time I end up having to do it anyway, and waste turns, because ally AI isn't optimal.
I'm also the asshat that likes tile worker micro in Civ, as it can save me a couple crucial turns in very hairy situations (Fuck you, Catherine, you double-crossing bitch!)
So take that as you will ;p

PleasingFungus wrote:though i'm not sure how important preserving the current behavior is - it'd probably be simpler to just have the new behaviour, unless people feel really strongly about having allies follow them around but not actively selecting new targets

Hepliaklqana stabbers would certainly prefer the current behaviour.

What if you had a switchable "default ally behavior" setting? So instead of saying, each time you summon some dudes "tw" or "ta." or chucking a rock, you'd set ally behavior to "Protect me" or "Engage enemies" or "Stay out of trouble" and all your allies respect that setting until you change it? I don't think this would be micromanage-y, but I could be wrong...

You might keep the "attack this target" and "retreat" and "go back to your normal behavior" active commands, or maybe not. Maybe they just attack the nearest target or the last target you attacked.

I think that would be micromanagey, but I don't really have an alternative. Is there some way to leverage code from a bot (like qw?) to make a more adaptive ally that behaves more like a player would in most situations?

Yermak wrote:
PleasingFungus wrote:though i'm not sure how important preserving the current behavior is - it'd probably be simpler to just have the new behaviour, unless people feel really strongly about having allies follow them around but not actively selecting new targets

Hepliaklqana stabbers would certainly prefer the current behaviour.

Last time I played Hepli was a while ago but in my experience the ally was pretty good about not waking up sleeping monsters at first. The problem is that they stopped caring once the player had done something hostile towards it, so they had no qualms towards immediately waking up the guy the player just cast Hibernation on.

tedric wrote:I think that would be micromanagey, but I don't really have an alternative. Is there some way to leverage code from a bot (like qw?) to make a more adaptive ally that behaves more like a player would in most situations?

Even if that AI was somehow easily transferable, you don't want an expendable summoned ice beast to act the same as a player who gets a game over when they die.
Although now that I mention it you also don't want an Orc Warlord buddy to act the same way as an expendable summoned ice beast. It would be nice if perma-allies had more self-preserving AI than temporary allies.

The Tavern

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