DR_Mechano

Aww I was hoping that there was little notes in the file from the devs saying that like kind of notepad post-it notes. Also has a thought Valance, a better pet to look at would be the Lich, it also has no melee attacks and doesn't run into melee but it also doesn't have any buffs to give out IIRC.

Your best bet is to probably rely directly with William Valence when he's available, dude seems to know what he's doing with regards AI and power modding. I tried to look up guides and could find things for tweak FX and animation but couldn't find any documentation for Pets specifically.

Gotta say Valence, you're doing the lords work and I hadn't realized you were already taking a look directly at the code, I thought it was speculation, my apologize. If I may be so bold as to ask you, what is the difference in config between say Protector Bots and Assault Bots? As mentioned Protector bots don't have any melee attacks and don't randomly run in to melee, they sit at max range all the time so could you, in theory, give the rest of the bots the AI config for Protector Bots or does it not work that way?

Or we could just make it so all the pets con at the same level as you, I mean it's a blunt fix and has other ramifications (like massively upping the damage of the tier 1 and 2 pets). Currently it seems like Masterminds have a whole host of problems with them...

Fair enough I'm still curious, Like I said, we have pets who have no melee powers who don't engage in melee and they function perfectly fine so we need to find the key difference between those pets and other pets. Someone pointed out to me that Cast Decoy is a ranged power so it that can't be the problem on why the Phantasm is going into melee range despite not having any melee powers. We need to pin down WHY certain pets do it and certain pets don't. Is it a case that removing the melee powers from pets causes them to act like the Phantasm and just run into melee anyway, which might very well be the case. Lets be honest, what he did was a massive bodge job, it was needed because melee pets were unplayable but the way it was done comes across as incredibly clunky. Like I said, once I've gotten everything set up and actually know how to remove powers from pets I can actual test this stuff.

This is true...still I'm trying to pin down why things work the way they work and in that regard I'm looking in to setting up my own private server (as in, just for myself) for testing purposes.

In which case it might be an option to take whatever it is that guides those pets and transplant it to the rest of Robotics. I'm also slowly start to disbelieve that removing a power would break the AI, I have my suspicions that it was just something the devs didn't want to do instead of couldn't do. Currently I'm looking in to the rather complicated option of setting up my own CoH private server for testing purposes but there is a ton of documentation to go through and very little on how to modify pets so it'll be a while before I get everything set up and I'm not a programmer so it will be a lot of trial and error.

Thats the thing we're discussing in the current thread about Masterminds. The question is WHY does the Phantasm, who has no melee attacks, go in to melee when other pets who don't have a melee attack do not (Lich and Protector bots). My own personal current theory is that its to cast the Decoy Phantasm,

Yeah I keep doing that when I first take a character in there...thankfully it's a moment of "Oh bugger..." quit the arc, pick the right options and go back in. very little time lost.

The thing is we can see it doesn't break the AI for a pet to have no melee powers, The Lich and Protector bots sit at their max range and pew pew since they have no melee powers at all, so the simplest solution may be to just strip melee attacks out of them, like I said, it's something that if I had any knowledge (is there a good place to learn?) where I'd set up my own private server and tweak with the Pet Powers using the Pineapple style test set up to be able to auto-50 on command so I could work my way through all the pets. I'd also test if the decoy casting was the cause for Phantasm running in to melee range, which if that is the case, well we're just going to have to live with it.

It honestly speaks to how much of this games coding is just awful that Castle had to basically break ranged pets to make melee pets worthwhile. In a perfect world the team would have been sensible enough to have two different 'pet brains' depending on whether they were ranged or melee and each pet would be given a set of behaviors depending on what it was (so the Bruiser would be melee, the thugs and enforcers would be ranged). Instead we have a generic AI for all pets. The whole thing is a massive mess. As mentioned it seems like a pet having no melee powers at all (for example the Lich and Protector bots do not have any melee attacks and thus tend to stay back at the max range for their abilities) IS a work around, since we can see it working on several examples so the question becomes, why do the Lich etc. stay at range with no melee attacks while the Phantasm runs in thinking it has a melee attack despite it not having one, I think the answer may be its running in to cast the Decoy, which is interesting. Ok having a look at the pet powers list, Battle Bots and Assault bots all have a specific melee power called 'Smash'. What if we just removed that option from them during testing to see if it reverted them back to their original selves.

Yup this is an over all problem with Pets at the moment. It was a bodged job by castle so that the melee focused pets wouldn't stay at range and just hurl their crappy ranged attacks but actually get stuck in and do things. Unfortunately he broke it for all other pets, meaning Robotics, Mercs and many of the 'ranged only' controller pets now decide to herpaderp their way into melee because it was a generic bandaid fix and not a targeted one.

As pointed out this isn't just effecting MMs, it causes problems for controllers as well. Prior to the change my Phantasm would sit back and just hurl ranged damage downwind towards the enemy staying just out of AoE range. Now it seems intent on running in to brawl and then proceeding to get smooshed by AoEs. Now I know ill/rad isn't exactly a combo set in need of buffs but it is rather annoying to see the Phantasm running in all the time.

We're going off of speculation BUT with a little logical thinking to back it up that all pets share a generic AI script. If MM pets had their own script and Castle 'fixed' this then we wouldn't see Phantasm having the same problem of trying to use brawl and getting smooshed by AoEs constantly. The fact that this change affected ALL pets, whatever their AT implies it is indeed a generic fix to a single basic AI coding. As mentioned there are ways around this using the upgrade powers, the first and second upgrade for Bots and Mercs would simply remove brawl from their power list, we know it can be done. Tier 1 Demons, during their middle upgrade, lose all their melee attacks IIRC (I may be wrong on this front it has been a very long time since I played a Demons MM) but gain it back with the third upgrade.

I know you've spoken that you're not going to increase the target caps BUT the problem is this does affect certain sets more than others. Assault Rifle (Which is my personal bug bear on sentinels having gotten one to 35 before deleting it) suffers with its reduce cone range because it has maybe 3 single target attacks and the powers themselves need to be rebalanced. Currently Assault rifle deals just awful anemic damage and can't leverage its cone based powers without having a tank really group everything incredibly tightly. Also Assault rifle doesn't get a decent replacement for its snipe, Slug needs to have something done to it, it's a starting choice power several levels higher with very little modification to it. Meanwhile Beam rifle doesn't lose anything for lessening the target caps since it's not AoE based anyway (it has mostly already narrow cones and one nuke) combined with its inherent -res and -regen makes it a clear choice along with it getting a really awesome replacement for its snipe. TL:DR Assault Rifle for sentinels needs a rework.

To be fair back when the game was live only really dedicated farmers and PLers actually multiboxed (especially when you had to pay for a second subscription) and with the hardware available back then (pre-64 bit systems) it could be a bit intensive on the old computer so its understandable why you didn't do it or know you could multibox on the same PC. As for the going cost. I've seen people charge 1 million inf per run (this was on the freakshow world mission map so the person doing the PLing was in for the long haul), I've had people give me PLing for free or just joining the many 50+4 Radio mission groups in PI. I've also done it myself, offering it for free, usually a single mission on a first come, first served basis. So there are many, many variants.

Personally I farm inf AND play the market. With the right AE arc (2915) and with the 'double inf, no XP when exemplared' option I can bring in just over 10 million inf in 5 minutes work on my spines/fire farmer (who isn't even fully IO'd out, thats how easy it is to get one up and running, if I invest in her heavily she'd be doing things much faster but then I wouldn't have inf to spend on other characters 😄) Meaning in about 15 minutes I can afford one purple IO from the market combined with the income from the market I can usually outfit myself in 5 purple recipes in about a hours worth of 'work'.

Being brutally honest on my farmer, I usually just flog the massive stacks to the vendor in the AE...most of the time it isn't worth it to list for the going price and selling for 1 inf usually results in getting like 50 inf per salvage since I'm normally crafting level 35 uncommon recipes and I'm getting level 50 salvage, though I may switch to 41s to save on costs in the future.

Same, my farmer/marketeer character literally only moves from AE to Merit Vendor and back again. They're the equivalent of what most MMOs would term 'banking alts' except these banking alts can also go farm stuff and not just acts a money/item mules.

No I mean its funny that people resort to using RMT when there are guides on the forums that show you how to make the big bucks with ease and a little patience. You could literally do 10 minutes work a day on the auction house and make yourself bank with very little effort and no real money has to trade hands. This isn't like WoW where making money off the auction house is a closely guarded secret.

This is what I find funny. There is a guide, on the forums, available to everyone that basically says "THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE CASH", any more and it would need a neon sign pointing towards it. Buy certain cheap uncommon recipes (the guide lists which ones are best for conversion) at level 31 or 41, craft, convert into a rare via the type conversion, switch over to rarity conversion and convert away. Hell there's even a post in the market forums about how to get yourself set up and making 100 million inf in a week.

Here's the thing though...CoH ISN'T WoW...it's not designed around the same goals, it's not designed around the 'endgame is the only game' philosophy which is what you seem to desire. As mentioned the hardest content is there for YOU and your friends to do. I mean do you have the master of Magisterium badge? Forcing everyone to be like you doesn't work. Loot isn't really a thing in this game either. Face it, the game ain't gonna be WoW. By the time you're character is fully incarnated out with all tier 4s and a fully pimped out 500 million inf IO build...congrats your character is done, its basically like being a high end raider, you've beaten all the content, you've got it on farm and unlike WoW the gear treadmill doesn't reset every 4 months with a new raid...go play and level another powerset combo or a whole new AT. Hell go help other people with taskforces and iTrials to show off how awesome your character is.

Yeah noticed this as soon as the summer holidays ended that demand has really dropped off quite a bit.

This just caused a major problem for us on the Katie Hannon Taskforce an MMs pets would push and shove Amy, which caused her to first be wedged into the ceiling and then wedged into a wall once she got free from the ceiling, with it being late, most people just gave up on the TF because its not like live where GMs were working around the clock. There is a reason why most MMOs don't have player and NPC collision but it's something we're just going to have to live with. IIRC someone WAS working on a fix for this just prior to sunset so there must be something we can do. Unfortunately, like I said, the pets seem to have a very basic and generic AI plastered on to all of the. Without the Castle bodge job of making Brawl a priority (which is what seems to be happening here, that brawl has priority over every other attack which is what forces the pets to go in and use it) then Melee pets would still be just useless. So, speculating here, what we need is someone to go in and rewrite a shit-ton of coding (good luck with that) so that pets have two AI scripts, one for ranged and one for melee. Melee pets would keep the current one and Ranged would have to have a version that is like the pre-fixed version where brawl is used as a last resort. The amount of work this would take since you'd need to go into each individual pet AND their variations to assign to them which of the AI scripts to use. However it is something that needs to be done in my opinion but sadly I've got no idea how to go about or even if such a thing is feasibly possible. Thinking of a MASSIVE kludge fix is, as mentioned on the first page, the upgrade powers can add or remove powers. What you'd have to do is change both the upgrade powers in mercs and bots so that they remove brawl. Thugs is an odd case because it wants its tier 1 and 2 pets at range but its tier 3 at melee.

As mentioned by several people Domination is an inherent AND its a thing you put on your tray so there is precedent for it and it works by, surprise, filling up a bar at which point the button lights up and you press it. So lets not pretend such a thing is out of the realms of possibility.