NPC

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NPC

Postby CHARON EMPIRE » Fri Jan 23, 2015 4:08 pm

Bring back the NPC fleets/empire aggressive defense platform! Maybe more players would join together to defeat them, rather than attack each other. If you can't defeat a small band of NPC carriers and warships then you would have no chance against the Cybers of the galaxy! If your destroyed by a computer, well then your destroyed! You start over as I have done, and you improve you strategy to combat this attempt to defend a world or move on.

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Re: NPC

Postby Knights Of Rancor » Fri Jan 23, 2015 7:13 pm

Begin Transmission:

As I under stand it. Gone are the Days when 1 position can in secret wear down an NPC turn after turn by it's self and take over that really high Tec AC. If NPCs are allowed to rebuild and call in reinforcements (fleets). Your going to have to do it all in one turn with help before the NPC can do that, even then the NPC fleets may still show up. So the game changes once again and you just have to play better and smarter.

End Transmission:

The Knights of Rancor have been reactivated and on the move and the constant broadcast on all known com channels fills the vast darkness of space of the Estra Galaxy once again ........

"Who cares if the Bios' hate they are all to be exterminated. The Galaxy must be cleansed!"

From the C.C.C. (Collective's Central Core) of the KNIGHTS OF RANCOR (KOR)
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Re: NPC

Postby R. Ritnour » Sat Jan 24, 2015 7:08 am

We are working on it.

The main issue is making sure that the brand new player does not get crushed by an angry NPC two turns into the game.
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Re: NPC

Postby Thom » Sat Jan 24, 2015 4:33 pm

Unfortunately the last part of the code made NPC's a little too good. First NPC empires vary wildly from below tec level 10 to tec level 90+. Since there are 119 NPC empires in the game a planet has to be 'owned' by one of those empires. Unfortunately for the player the tec level of their planets vary as like a normal players planets. So just because you run across a tec level 1 world does not mean it's not owned by a high tec empire. NPC empires are also not quite as strong as players might think but some are fairly well off. The average RU income for an NPC empire might be in the 20,000 - 30,000 range per turn but again some are better and quite a few are less.

But that's not the problem. When the diplomatic relations were opened up it tied in with the NPC reactions as well. Had to or getting the diplomatic end game so to speak would not work. For the most part an NPC world once the diplomatic level was increased sufficiently the planet might do things for you. But that included a 'smart' NPC and probably some fleet actions that would make sense, i.e. a pirate planet possibly sending out raids on your enemies for instance.

So I wrote the AI to be smart but not 'cheat' so to speak. They only have what a player would have for info. Can't look into the data base and get info they are not entitled to. So they had to plan out the following turn much like a player did. They did not react immediately on the same turn. In that light when a planet was attacked they might react like an aggressive player, might not as well but that's another story, and send out fleets to engage and defeat a players fleets, and possibly take back the world. And that's where the problem arose. One higher tec empire, but not too high in the 30's I think, did not particularly like a player attacking one of their worlds, hunted down and killed every fleet the player owned in the sector sending in a carrier fleet to first take out opposing carriers, and then a battle fleet that swept through a systems routinely destroying the players fleets. Nothing survived. Transports full of marines, etc. were massacred. No trace left. Yeah maybe just a bit too good.

So end result is that I have to rethink the NPC AI just a bit. While it doesn't bother me that established players get to interact with NPC's there is one consideration we all have to acknowledge as a problem. A new player that finds an NPC world in his home sector almost always tunnel visions himself on it and attacks it. Honestly I don't get that as NPC planets defend my systems just as well as my own installations and I don't have to pay for it but that's just me. For most players they immediately try and take that world come h**l or high water. So a player that has not even ventured out of his own sector yet attacks an NPC world that just happens to be part of a high tec empire and that said empire just happens to have a couple fleets not too far away that they send next turn and completely destroy every fleet the player owns in the sector or at least in the systems the player attacked. Well you see the problem.
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Re: NPC

Postby Tregonsee » Sat Jan 24, 2015 6:47 pm

Do the NPCs have a memory? For example, if I took a NPC planet 3 months ago, would they try and get it back?
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Re: NPC

Postby Thom » Sun Jan 25, 2015 12:01 am

NPC's AI has been disabled till I get time to make it more reasonable. But more to the question NPC's do not currently have a memory but it was being written into the diplomatic routines which also were directly tied to the AI. Kind of a full circle. So if you took a planet 3 months ago they won't be coming back.
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Re: NPC

Postby Soelien-Twa » Mon Jan 26, 2015 10:18 pm

Should there be aggressive NPCs. Yes. Was it working before? Not really. There are things that need to be fixed before that should be implemented with the strength it had been. In order to take a planet you pretty much had to do it on one turn to avoid the retaliation fleets. However... sometimes fleets would just refuse to submit to orders. The enemy planet is swept of fighters, FORTs are destroyed by small missile fleets of 5 ships, and then when the big Missile fleet is called in to rain down on the HMUs their attack is thwarted by the activation of the planets defenses (of which there are none left). Fair enough. Murphy's law. You lose the roll of the dice on luck. However... two more attacks have been scheduled with this fleet on the same turn. Those two are aborted due to the activation of the planet's defenses of which there are none. A "turn" is meant to represent days, weeks, months or even years. An action maybe as little as a few hours within that time. It seems that when an action fails it fails for the whole turn rather than just the action. I've noticed this for several things including launching sector probes. One fails so the seven behind it fail. The random fail factor should be re-calculated after each action. Also missile fleets encountering no resistance should still follow orders unless the random "dice roll" says otherwise.

There are all sorts of different players. Cogs in an alliance, loners, warriors, builders, explorers and diplomats to name a few. I don't think I will ever send out a diplomat to an NPC world. It doesn't appeal to me. I don't have enough actions to do the things I want to do now so why would I waste them dealing with NPCs. Their throats look far better under my boots than spouting demands. There are some people sure to say its not about the money but this game is all about non-action income. Non-action income allows you to bankroll RUs to do what you really want to do. The best way to earn non-action income is a string of Terraformed worlds. Unless you are trying to be totally peaceful, many of these Terraformed worlds will be former NPC worlds unless you are an ICB or Nomad (or have close ties to several ICBs and Nomads)... and maybe even then.

Overly aggressive NPCs penalize the loner players (or small alliances) trying to make a go without being tied into relying on ICBs and Nomads. I can understand why the Cybers want the NPC fleets. All of their RUs go into invasion/battle fleets and they get their action income from those fleets. The rest of us are stuck with merchants or tramp mining fleets and really don't have the resources... especially early on... to develop battle fleets. Strong aggressive NPC fleets keep non-cyber players week. I just want to carve out my own little empire in peace (or at least peace with other player characters).

"A new player that finds an NPC world in his home sector almost always tunnel visions himself on it and attacks it. Honestly I don't get that as NPC planets defend my systems just as well as my own installations and I don't have to pay for it but that's just me. For most players they immediately try and take that world come h**l or high water." - Yes this used to be the case. However now those NPC worlds are not in the same sector, nor even the same subsector, but the same system and maybe even multiple NPC Terraformed worlds in the same system as your Homeworld. It used to be etiquette that if you started mapping a sector and you saw all the worlds were owned by one player except a couple of NPC worlds that the sector was considered that player's. However now I'm finding players considering any NPC world free game even though I own the other 99% of planets in the sector and just haven't got to that NPC world yet. Foreign players coming in and taking multiple planets in my own homeworld's system is not a viable "safe" scenario to galactic conquest.

An MP 16 terraformed world as a miner with a trade center on makes 20MCs *20 + 100PCs *20 + 2*100 = 2600 RUs per turn. More if the trade center is nationalized. Alternatively I would have to install and build 130MCs on foreign planets or install and build 260CBs for the same level of income. So what is the best way to make non-action income... Putting the boots to the NPCs. Attacks on NPC worlds are almost inevitable if you want to be successful.
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