Allow MM pets to fly.

[ZeeHero]

Give them jetpacks or something. It's kinda annoying that while any hero may fly, their pets never can.

[biostem]

Go far enough away and they'll teleport to you.  You can also use grant invisibility on them, then put them in passive follow, to make things a bit easier.  Their recharge is about a minute, so if it's going to be that long until your destination, then just unsummon/release them.  You can also take group fly, (though you'll need to let them catch up to you).  None are perfect, but there are ways to work within the system.

[PaxArcana]

Or you can just dismiss them all, and resummon when you get inside your next mission.

[ZeeHero]

I'm not asking for workarounds I'm asking for QoL.

[Shazbotacus]

I think I got an idea.

 

Increase the radius of Group Fly, not sure by how much exactly, and have it emit a flight speed boost to everyone except the character maintaining the power so others can catch up easier.

[Lost Ninja]

I used to use Group fly on my Bots/Dark and it worked fine. I think the issue is more about the poor pet AI than about functionality of Group Fly though.

[ZeeHero]

15 hours ago, Shazbotacus said:

I think I got an idea.

 

Increase the radius of Group Fly, not sure by how much exactly, and have it emit a flight speed boost to everyone except the character maintaining the power so others can catch up easier.

I tried group fly on bots. it did not work even if they were right next to me. extremley dissapointing that group fly doesn't work on MM pets.

[Steampunkette]

Part of the problem is that NPCs with fly are on a binary. Either they're flying or they're not. There's no AI protocol for 'Toggle on Fly now.' and 'Toggle Fly off, now."

 

And creating such an AI routine would be an INTENSE pain in the ass.

 

Group Fly does work on pets, it just takes a few seconds for it to get them. The problem is their Follow AI keeps them on a bungie longer than Group Fly's area of effect so that they don't crowd doorways as bad as they otherwise would. So once you start flying it's only a matter of time before they plummet.

 

There is no solution short of a targeted fly buff power with a longish duration.

[ZeeHero]

MM pets have super jump... why can't they have fly? makes no sense.

[Steampunkette]

2 minutes ago, ZeeHero said:

MM pets have super jump... why can't they have fly? makes no sense.

Superjump doesn't have them floating off the ground at all times.

 

Zombies that permanently fly. Every Thug off the ground by 5 inches.

 

It might fit for a "Drone" or "Robots" powerset, but the rest? Not so much.

[Chance Jackson]

2 minutes ago, ZeeHero said:

MM pets have super jump... why can't they have fly? makes no sense.

Pet super leap enhances jump height not so much speed that said I think "group fly" should impart a flight power on all pets that is separate from the radius buff that group fly gives players.

[ZeeHero]

Yeah at least make group fly actually viable for using with pets. the fact it sort of works now isnt really a help.

[WumpusRat]

6 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Group Fly does work on pets, it just takes a few seconds for it to get them. The problem is their Follow AI keeps them on a bungie longer than Group Fly's area of effect so that they don't crowd doorways as bad as they otherwise would. So once you start flying it's only a matter of time before they plummet.

What about instead of trying to dig into the pet code, just look at the Group Fly code, and see if it could be adjusted to increase the radius when it comes to pets. Or even just give it infinite range when it interacts with pets. That way you wouldn't  constantly run into the issue of the follow code causing the pets to lag behind and drop out of the GF radius and falling. 

[Weylin]

I suggested before that Group Fly should have a 2nd aura that only applies to pets but at a much much greater range

Will anything ever be done about it? I doubt it, because nobody except MM's care about MM's, except for the person who replies and says I'm wrong.

[srmalloy]

7 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Group Fly does work on pets, it just takes a few seconds for it to get them. The problem is their Follow AI keeps them on a bungie longer than Group Fly's area of effect so that they don't crowd doorways as bad as they otherwise would. So once you start flying it's only a matter of time before they plummet.

The solution that worked back on live with Group Fly was to set yourself to follow one of your pets, then use the Goto command to send your pets in the direction you want them to go. Because you're following them, they stay within the Group Fly radius. It's not a smooth 'just fly around' solution, being more like teleport, but it works.

[Lost Ninja]

6 hours ago, srmalloy said:

The solution that worked back on live with Group Fly was to set yourself to follow one of your pets, then use the Goto command to send your pets in the direction you want them to go. Because you're following them, they stay within the Group Fly radius. It's not a smooth 'just fly around' solution, being more like teleport, but it works.

Or use group fly and group teleport, set the bots to passive/follow so they stay close and jump around like that.

 

It's a long time since I played my Bots/Dark to fifty and I'm struggling to remember the issue being as bad, the smallest bots died a lot, but I assumed that that was expected, the protector bots less often and the big guy even less. So summoning them back unless the whole team was wiping (mission/TF too hard) I don't recall an issue on that side of things. For travel again I don't recall the issues I had, perhaps because I generally have the toe bombing blaster mentality so always (always) ended up too close to whatever I was facing, perhaps because unless you're fighting a GM/AV getting positioned prior to engaging just means the rest of the team has already killed that mob.

[srmalloy]

13 hours ago, Lost Ninja said:

Or use group fly and group teleport, set the bots to passive/follow so they stay close and jump around like that.

Group Fly fails with your bots following for the reason Steampunkette stated -- they don't follow you close enough unless you keep stopping, and as a result fall out of the Group Fly radius when you move away before they start to follow you. That's why the 'send your bots where you want to go and follow them' workaround was developed.

[Steampunkette]

Honestly... breaking the Cottage Rule for Group Fly seems like the best idea. Turn it from a Toggle into a 45 second pulse that is, out of the gate, permanent with an 8 second overlap, make the cost 1/3rd of your bar, make the end cost ignore external changes or even internal changes. Have it apply a fly buff to all targets within the area like it's Mind Link or something, allow Flight Speed Slotting, and away you go.

[PaxArcana]

Oooooor, just give it a radius that's good for about 20% of a typical zone's width, for Pets only.

[Lost Ninja]

20 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Group Fly fails with your bots following for the reason Steampunkette stated -- they don't follow you close enough unless you keep stopping, and as a result fall out of the Group Fly radius when you move away before they start to follow you. That's why the 'send your bots where you want to go and follow them' workaround was developed.

If you use Group Teleport and Group Fly you and then move from point to point, they don't fall out of group fly because when you move they move with you. I have used this for a while, I didn't like at the time needing three powers to get a useful travel tool, plus while outside or in large spaces it worked great (especially with the shorter range of Group Teleport) in smaller spaces it sucked.

 

Now it's possible that this no longer works but it certainly used to work, and while I appreciate that this suggestion pertains to Homecoming and not the few issues after CoV that I used my MM, it was a solution to this specific problem. I thought that my posts and context would have indicated that.