Literally ANYTHING to stop ranged henchmen from brawling

[William Valence]

So I got some testing done over the weekend. Specifically stuff I wanted to test with the Oni. Not as much as I was hoping, though, because a previously cancelled D&D session got un-cancelled. My next step in testing is to replace a pet in the "Pure" Ranged sets, with a melee pet, and see what happens. If this causes the non-melee pets to behave as it seems to with Zombies, and sometimes thugs/ninjas then I can soft-confirm a theory.

 

As to simply saying where the stuff that controls things is:

 

It's everywhere. Multiple times. I've found three different functions all doing the thing I think is the problem. In three different sections. Each written, it appears, by different people. It's so messy that it's easier for me to first see if these have any influence on the pets by trying to manipulate the AI with purpose made pets than to try and manipulate the pets first with changes to the AI.

 

I don't plan to test any pet immobilization stuff.

[DR_Mechano]

Yeah having actually looked at this stuff now I always considered 'spaghetti code' a bit a joke but it really is a complete mess of things. So you're telling me you've also got three things, all doing the same thing but written by three different people in three different areas?

 

Hoooo boy...yeah I think I'll leave this to people who actually know what they're doing...

 

Have you thought about putting the melee attacks for pets on a massive long recharge or would that basically be like 'removing their melee attacks' and completely pointless?

Edited September 23, 2019 by DR_Mechano

[Black Zot]

18 minutes ago, William Valence said:

 

It's everywhere. Multiple times. I've found three different functions all doing the thing I think is the problem. In three different sections. Each written, it appears, by different people. It's so messy that it's easier for me to first see if these have any influence on the pets by trying to manipulate the AI with purpose made pets than to try and manipulate the pets first with changes to the AI.

 

 

Was this game made by Cryptic or Dilbert's office?

[Lazarillo]

1 hour ago, Black Zot said:

Was this game made by Cryptic or Dilbert's office?

I mean, from the sound of things, the code is indeed pretty cryptic.

 

...I'll just see myself out.

[William Valence]

1 hour ago, DR_Mechano said:

Have you thought about putting the melee attacks for pets on a massive long recharge or would that basically be like 'removing their melee attacks' and completely pointless?

So I don't believe a henchman having a melee attack affects anything other than, eventually there may be enough gap in it's ranged attack chain that it decides to use it and run in. I don't see it affecting the henchman in the "Let me run in and love you" behavior that's seen with say the Medic, Battle drone, or sometimes the Arsonist.

 

So hopeful end result stuff would have ranged henchman each selecting it's proper team role, with no mandated melee role assignments. Should that happen, there shouldn't be a need for ranged henchman to even have Melee attacks.

 

You also gave me an idea for something else to test though, I should flip the configs for Necromancy and see what happens. Lich has no melee attacks, and it'll refresh my nightmares of Zombies and Grave Knights hanging back at range. It would be interesting to see what happens.

[PaxArcana]

2 hours ago, Black Zot said:

Was this game made by Cryptic or Dilbert's office?

... you think the two are not one and the same place ...?

 

HA!!!

[Burk]

Just to add my two cents as someone who doesn't play masterminds, but does play illusion. Phantasm has exactly 5 powers: Resistance and Fly which are not relevant, Power Bolt a 70ft single target attack, Energy Torrent a 40ft cone attack, and DecoyPhantasm a 60ft summon "attack". There is no melee at all. Just messing around with testing right now, a freshly summoned Phantasm summoned his decoy, used Power Bolt and then ran into melee before using Energy Torrent. He didn't wait until he had no powers to use. In fact, it doesn't seem like he cares what part of his attack chain he is in and just randomly decides to run closer. The decoy acts the same way, though it's harder to see since he gets summoned in melee and it really doesn't matter where he is.

[PaxArcana]

8 minutes ago, burk314 said:

In fact, it doesn't seem like he cares what part of his attack chain he is in and just randomly decides to run closer.

Sounds to me, like maybe Castle's "fix" was to add a routine that prompts some (but not all...!!) pets to run up to melee range no matter what they're doing, nor what they're able to do.

 

If that's true, and we can find it ... maybe there's a way to focus it only on pets that actually WANT to be in melee ...!

[Weylin]

Day 9, food is running low, I still find myself trudging through the tangled strands of the ancient source code.

They warned me, they told me I shouldn't go, I thought I knew better.

Never mind, I have to keep going, I've come too far to turn around now, I know I'll find the root of all this evil eventually.

I may die, but I will leave a note for anyone who stumbles across my bones - "just play petless MM lol"

[EmmySky]

1 hour ago, Weylin said:

Day 9, food is running low, I still find myself trudging through the tangled strands of the ancient source code.

They warned me, they told me I shouldn't go, I thought I knew better.

Never mind, I have to keep going, I've come too far to turn around now, I know I'll find the root of all this evil eventually.

I may die, but I will leave a note for anyone who stumbles across my bones - "just play petless MM lol"

Eat the spaghetti code!  That may help.

[Crysta Clear]

All jokes aside, petless mastermind is a build that can work! You can apply -58% Resistance debuff on your primary target by combining the whips from Demon Summoning and the tar-patch from Dark Miasma (but only -30% to non-primary targets in an AoE, who don't get your whips, only the tar patch). The fact that your own damage will be relatively low should be countered by the fact that your enemies' Resistance will also be relatively low. And the lifesteal in Dark Miasma makes for a really neat vampire concept!

 

Edited September 24, 2019 by Crysta Clear

[Black Zot]

42 minutes ago, Crysta Clear said:

All jokes aside, petless mastermind is a build that can work! You can apply -58% Resistance debuff on your primary target by combining the whips from Demon Summoning and the tar-patch from Dark Miasma (but only -30% to non-primary targets in an AoE, who don't get your whips, only the tar patch). The fact that your own damage will be relatively low should be countered by the fact that your enemies' Resistance will also be relatively low. And the lifesteal in Dark Miasma makes for a really neat vampire concept!

 

 

This would ALMOST be viable as a support character if resistance debuffs weren't resisted by the very stat they're targeting - which means the more you need that debuff to make up for your weak damage, the less effect it's going to have.  That combined -58% number will only happen versus targets with base 0 resist.

[Bossk_Hogg]

3 hours ago, Crysta Clear said:

All jokes aside, petless mastermind is a build that can work! You can apply -58% Resistance debuff on your primary target by combining the whips from Demon Summoning and the tar-patch from Dark Miasma (but only -30% to non-primary targets in an AoE, who don't get your whips, only the tar patch). The fact that your own damage will be relatively low should be countered by the fact that your enemies' Resistance will also be relatively low. And the lifesteal in Dark Miasma makes for a really neat vampire concept!

 

Depends on your idea of "work". Captain Power Pool or Mr. Training IO's can also get to 50. That combo is just a weaker dark/sonic defender that pays way more endurance just to have whip graphics. 

[Crysta Clear]

The whip graphics are half the fun.

[William Valence]

17 hours ago, burk314 said:

Just to add my two cents as someone who doesn't play masterminds, but does play illusion. Phantasm has exactly 5 powers: Resistance and Fly which are not relevant, Power Bolt a 70ft single target attack, Energy Torrent a 40ft cone attack, and DecoyPhantasm a 60ft summon "attack". There is no melee at all. Just messing around with testing right now, a freshly summoned Phantasm summoned his decoy, used Power Bolt and then ran into melee before using Energy Torrent. He didn't wait until he had no powers to use. In fact, it doesn't seem like he cares what part of his attack chain he is in and just randomly decides to run closer. The decoy acts the same way, though it's harder to see since he gets summoned in melee and it really doesn't matter where he is.

Just noticed this.

 

So when I was looking at Illusion to see what it was doing I made an Ill/Dark on Pineapple. The behavior that I saw with consistency was that two Decoys stay ranged, one goes in, Dark Servant goes in, and Phantasm/Phantasm Decoy go in. The Phantasm will use whatever powers it wants, because it has no ranged preference setting so it just uses what it has.

 

To sound out my working theory at the moment, and give some examples explaining why, is that I believe the team role assignment functions that decides how many mobs in a group attack you at ranged vs melee is applying to MM pets. What one of the ones that I found does, pools the health of the AI team, and splits it up assigning a percentage of team health that has to be melee or ranged. With a reduction of Melee requirements by the number of onlyassignranged pets. However a reduced requirement doesn't seem to be an eliminated requirement, and you can't just modify that willy-nilly because it's important to NPC enemy behavior.

 

• Example #1 -> The previously Described Ill/Dark. With no pets that are onlyassignranged, there is 1 pet (dark servant) that is onlyassignmelee and 4 pets that are basic config with no ranged preference (3 Decoys 1 Phantasm). A percentage of the required health assignment to melee is the DS, with Phantasm and a Decoy taking the rest of the assignment as none have a onlyassignrange flag. This leaves 2 decoys to stay at ranged, which from my observation they do. <- this is something that can be observed now by building your own Ill/Dark on pineapple and going to the RWZ dummies.
• Example #2 -> When configs are swapped the proper ones on Thugs (Bruiser given the correct Pet_Melee, and Arsonist given the correct Pet_Ranged though less important) the Bruiser stops rotating hurl on occasion, and the arsonist behaves more like enforcers/thugs staying back and creeping forward only during breaks in its attack rotation. Which is likely the power selection saying hey I have nothing to do I should try my melee attack, oh ranged attack is back up use it.

This is why my next test is to summon a melee pet with the "Pure range" MM sets and seeing if that fixes stuff. If it does then it's reasonable to try and adjust that for controllable pets. Or just get scared, chicken out, and say that Mercs now has a shotgunner henchman and bots gets a blade drone and there's no such thing as a pure ranged MM set anymore.

[Steampunkette]

Iiiiiiiiiiiinterstink!

 

So one of my quasi-educated guesses was right, there is an absolute limit of melee and ranged pet AI per set...

[PaxArcana]

I'd actually see that last bit as a reasonable fix.  If behavior can't be corrected, then, make it so that the sets have one guy who definitely goes into melee and has the tools to survive it.

[DR_Mechano]

To be honest I wouldn't object to the first tier 1 bot or Merc being melee and the others being their current ranged self, I mean at low level it's going to end up in melee range anyway since it can't kill things quick enough. Though you'd have to give it new upgrade power options and maybe increase the survivability of said melee bot (give it inherent AoE defense and resistances ala the lore pets).

 

We know that different levels can give different versions of the basic pets. Thugs gets an Arsonist at level 18 and Mercs get a Medic at level 18. Now for Mercs since they're using a human NPC model can be given pretty much any weapons animation and it'll work fine so giving them some Broadsword attacks using the Machete model.

Basic:

Brawl.

Slash.

 

Equip Mercenary:

Hack.

Slice.

 

Tactical Upgrade:

Whirling Sword.

Headsplitter.

 

Obviously these version would be toned down a touch from the player version otherwise you've basically got a scrapper pet and this is just a basic, throwing it out there, not very serious suggestion.

 

The only problem is Bots...unlike Mercs they're a completely unique model and giving them melee powers is going to look a little funky so we'd have to work something out.

 

[Shazbotacus]

Actually, if Mercs were just given better melee in the absence of making them stop running in for it, I'd like to see that WW2 rifle the Banished Pantheon use taken, have a bayonet put on it, give it to the Soldiers, and have them use an aimed shot power with Brawl but it's actually good followed by Bayonet on the first upgrade and Rifle Butt on the second, all raw damage. Give them another ranged attack? How about a rifle grenade? Not like long-range cone attacks are any good in melee anyhow.

 

But that's kinda off topic.

Edited September 24, 2019 by Shazbotacus

[MetaVileTerror]

I'd be happy with a Shotgun Medic if he also got an uninterruptible Aid Self.

[DR_Mechano]

13 hours ago, MetaVileTerror said:

I'd be happy with a Shotgun Medic if he also got an uninterruptible Aid Self.

It wouldn't be the medic that got the shotgun, I imagine it'd be the first soldier would be your melee/CQB dude because at low level those tier 1s ain't going to be killing much from range anyway. BUT if its a case that we have to sacrifice one of the tier 1 pets to be dedicated melee if it means things like the Medic not running in to melee range I'd take that trade.

[Shazbotacus]

Well, the M1897 Trench Gun can take a bayonet. Shotgun blast followed with stock and bayonet thrashings sounds delightful.

[EyeLuvBooks]

On 9/16/2019 at 3:52 PM, krj12 said:

One if the reasons I quit on MMs after trying Thugs back in the day.   The "ranged" fire blaster running in every time and

getting splatted, while my brute henchman hung back and threw rocks.

 

Drove me absolutely nuts,  and I've had zero desire to try the AT again.

 

There were whole threads and guides based on arcane combinations of keybinds that would enable you to select a specific Pet and give it specific commands JUST to get around this. Yeah...this shouldn't be necessary. I don't code but you'd have to work long and hard to convince me that this isn't fixable with the right combination of changing the power ranges, recharge times etc. I'm not looking for MMs and their pets to be OP I'd just like them to work as intended.

[EmmySky]

6 hours ago, Shazbotacus said:

Well, the M1897 Trench Gun can take a bayonet. Shotgun blast followed with stock and bayonet thrashings sounds delightful.

Hard to 'arrest' them after that.  

[PaxArcana]

1 hour ago, EmmySky said:

Hard to 'arrest' them after that.  

Not all of us "arrest" the badguys.

 

Ask John Castle what he does to 'em ... 😄

EDIT TO ADD: also, some characters are villains ... not heroes.

Edited September 26, 2019 by PaxArcana