Assault robot bug

[Tex Connor]

When I add Flamethrower to my Assault Bot via "Equip Robot", it starts running into melee range to lay down fire patches.  I love the fire patch damage, but I hate how that almost always gets it killed, particularly in hover farms.

 

Is this "by design"?  If not, is it "on the list" for getting fixed?

 

Thanks!

[ScarySai]

Fire patches aren't from the flamethrower.

[Tex Connor]

Oh.  Well, I'd thought that that's "Equip Robot" was what gave the Assault Bot that ability.  Do you know where it does come from?  "base Assault Bot", "Equip Robot", or "Upgrade Robot"?

I just want my Assault Bot to stop running into melee range.

[TheZag]

After you upgrade your robots you can click the arrow on the right side of the pet window to show their buffs.  Right click their upgrade buffs to see the info and it says what abilities were granted by the upgrade.

 

If you want your pets to stay out of melee range you probably need to use go to or stay commands.  Im pretty sure their melee ability is part of the base model.

 

And i think the fire patches are left behind after the missile attack.  The flamethrower attack has less range so the assault bot moves closer to use it and then he says 'oh hey,  im pretty close.  Let me just go ahead and use this here melee attack'.  So its indirectly caused by the flamethrower.

 

[Tex Connor]

That's easy enough to test, just by changing the order of summons and buffs.

 

I'll let y'all know what happens.

[MistressOhm]

There's always that one bot that insists on melee'ing (and gets itself smashed to bits in the process).

 

Here's how I would approach the problem, IF the Bots set is supposed to fight from range and not melee:

 

1) Add a Mag-2 or Mag-3 Knockback to the Melee attack of the Assault bot.  Give the Protectors a short-range Force Push instead of a melee attack.  Take away the little guy's punch attacks and instead give them a high-mag Stun attack (tasers?).   The idea here is that IF something gets into melee range, it can get shut down and ejected back to 'ranged' before it does too much damage.  

 

2) Remove the "follow" behavior between bots and their aggro'd targets.  They just need to close to range, not stomp right up to them and pound.  That's for ninjas and zombies.  Bots should have better programming!

 

3) Allow the MM to switch modes on the Assault bot with a toggle - Mobile and Entrenched.

 

• Mobile = current behavior. All weaponry is close to mid range.
• Entrenched = Bot anchors itself to one spot, deploys a shield, and goes to long range AOE attacks only.  Protectors would prioritize a damaged Entrenched bot over the other pets wrt repair and shielding.
• Switching modes would take a few seconds of transition, long enough to keep a MM from toggling between the two all the time, but short enough not to lower overall DPS too drastically.  During the transition the bot would be defenseless.

 

The danger with the above, of course, is that a closely grouped spawn will get scattered by the bots.   There's also the assumption that Bots are only a Ranged set.  Personally I don't mind the melee parts of it, because I can run in and plant a Poison trap whilst the spawn is busy trying to turn the robots into component parts.  That usually shuts down incoming damage pretty quickly, as the spawn starts choking and puking.   Other secondaries might have better strategies, however.