Literally ANYTHING to stop ranged henchmen from brawling

[Black Zot]

1 hour ago, EmmySky said:

Hard to 'arrest' them after that.  

 

Hard to 'arrest' anyone after most weapon sets get done with them.  What's one more?

[Derek Icelord]

Please, yes. Dear God, anything that removes the stupid from my robots.

[DR_Mechano]

We had any updates on how things are going via testing?

[pattycake]

I can just imagine now MMs striking from a distance with their pets; instead of them charging in to give a backhand. Especially in group play, if brawl was removed From ranged based pets they’d probably stick around the MM leaving with a distance. Except for other pets who also have shorter ranged abilities.

 

I like it 🙂

[Bossk_Hogg]

It's worth noting that COXG is testing pet changes and not only removed brawl from ranged minions but also changed pet costumes. Other pet powers and merc rebalance changes were made to. So it seems like it could be done, and easily enough if homecoming and coxg worked together.

 

Link to reddit post below. 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Bossk_Hogg

[Vanden]

I don't really get the impression that CoXG does the proper due diligence on the full effects of the changes they make, and they have a very small population so if that ends up having a major effect, it would probably take a while to be noticed.

[Bossk_Hogg]

2 minutes ago, Vanden said:

I don't really get the impression that CoXG does the proper due diligence on the full effects of the changes they make, and they have a very small population so if that ends up having a major effect, it would probably take a while to be noticed.

Well, that's what testing is for. But there's been a lot of hot air around how it simply can't be done, and it seems that isn't necessarily true. 

[Vanden]

3 minutes ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

Well, that's what testing is for. But there's been a lot of hot air around how it simply can't be done, and it seems that isn't necessarily true. 

Nobody's saying it can't be done. What's been said is that it isn't some magic bullet that instantly solves the problem.

[PaxArcana]

47 minutes ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

Well, that's what testing is for. But there's been a lot of hot air around how it simply can't be done, and it seems that isn't necessarily true. 

It's not whether it's impossible.

 

It's whether or not it breaks other things badly enough to not be worth doing.

[William Valence]

7 hours ago, DR_Mechano said:

We had any updates on how things are going via testing?

I saw enough that I'm willing to try dicking with the AI code. Specifically I'm going to try to exempt henchman from the standard AI team and role assignment. AI pets get the same team list as their owner from what I can see, so there's no reason to dynamically assign them AI teams per target like you would for mobs, other than to piggyback that functions role assignment.

 

However the only real role assignment that touches Henchman is also for everything else, but it doesn't need to be dynamic, so you should be able to assign it when they are created and inherit their team/friends.

 

I've got a nagging feeling that if I just cut Henchmen off from the mobs team assignment code, it will behave like it did before the melee fix, but that would be super hackish as that would basically remove them from everything except power selection if I'm seeing it correctly, and break melee.

 

Also the i2500 build I'm using is super unstable and held together by duct tape and unicorn dreams, so I'm going to swap to the ourodev master build (I think that's called i24, hard to keep track) and I'll make the changes on that version. If everything works I'll have some PMs to send.

[MetaVileTerror]

All the best to you, William Valence!  May you be victorious in the name of Ranged Henchitude!

[DR_Mechano]

Well good luck and god speed William.

[Shazbotacus]

There needs to be a super hero statue for this man.

[MetaVileTerror]

Also . . . I was starting to get anxious about all the stuff I've been hearing about being added to coxg.  When I heard the titles of various things added, I thought:  "Oh geez!  I want that, but I don't want to have to play on a server without GMs."   And then I read that post linked to by Bossk, and I realized:  "WHOA!  That's . . . okay, it has some nice ideas, but . . . that number of simultaneous changes . . . geez.  Mercs could definitely use a little love, but that was a bit overkill."

[Sovera]

All those changes for mercs, like, wow, I'd play one.

 

One of you MM afictionados should go to the COHX test server and report on the changes. Especially removal of brawl.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 9/30/2019 at 2:02 PM, MetaVileTerror said:

Also . . . I was starting to get anxious about all the stuff I've been hearing about being added to coxg.  When I heard the titles of various things added, I thought:  "Oh geez!  I want that, but I don't want to have to play on a server without GMs."   And then I read that post linked to by Bossk, and I realized:  "WHOA!  That's . . . okay, it has some nice ideas, but . . . that number of simultaneous changes . . . geez.  Mercs could definitely use a little love, but that was a bit overkill."

Yeah, I kind of feel they're charging ahead willy-nilly without maybe thinking things through too well.  Guess we'll see!

[Katharos]

Honestly, I think even die-hard merc people would be okay with a complete merc revamp to turn them into melee-only pets. I'm adding my +1 for the desire of fixing the running into melee pet issue, but if that's not possible (or is too much work) mercs are just so weak they should be straight up buffed. Of course, assuming that's any easier than modifying their behaviour. 

[Shazbotacus]

A buff should happen regardless, of course, but you’ll hear no objection from me if the buff includes bayonets.

[DR_Mechano]

Sorry to resurrect and old topic but did we hear anything more from this and our dear William Valence?

[Derek Icelord]

<PA system voice> Paging @William Valence, white courtesy phone. William Valence please pick up the white courtesy phone.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Derek Icelord

[VileTerror]

The last post from William was October 11th.  The last activity documented from William was October 28th.

Send out the search parties!  We must find William!

[FDR's Think Tank]

If you aren't calling your henchmen all Nincompoops, you aren't a real Mastermind. If you want to do something right, you gotta do it yourself.

[plainguy]

Just giving my support to this

 

[Lost Ninja]

I have no idea if this is at all relevant, but when I was playing my Grav/Rad (Controllers) team the other day I was having the precise opposite issues with my pets. The Singularities would stay at range as soon as they "see" an enemy even when they'd be far more use in "melee", as I understand it they only have the two ST attacks (hold/immob). Would looking at how they function in combat be helpful in working out a way to prevent MM pets going into melee?

[EmmySky]

2 minutes ago, Lost Ninja said:

I have no idea if this is at all relevant, but when I was playing my Grav/Rad (Controllers) team the other day I was having the precise opposite issues with my pets. The Singularities would stay at range as soon as they "see" an enemy even when they'd be far more use in "melee", as I understand it they only have the two ST attacks (hold/immob). Would looking at how they function in combat be helpful in working out a way to prevent MM pets going into melee?

Reverse engineering, I like it.  The only difference that may be coded differently or cause issues is the commandability of MM pets vs the non-commandability of troller pets.