thoughts about spawns

[Sheltem]

This was my main idea, formerly there was more to be read but I shortened it a bit ... have fun reading and commenting !

Spawning Enemys
This is a big and complex theme. First I want to mention, that spawns are a the best cos endless source of income. As most other items are limited ingame and therefore money by trading, people may feel forced to start farming the spawns. As you don't know if you can use some loot again later, you will save it instead of selling it. The player will often just sell what the spawns dropped as he knows he has endless supply of it.

I also was confused by the fact that they always directly find me in the middle of nowhere. By this means hostility is actually 'thrown' at you what I didn't find very logical. Your are not glowing in the dark much, or having an "attack me" printed on my hull, how can they actual directly head towards me ?

That's why I thought spawns out of the gate start going on patrol first. They randomly change direction searching through space for enemy sovereigns. As you are an enemy too, they would attack on sight (maybe one LRS lenght). This could be shown by an "Enemy sighted you" - in this case you could try to run or face the enemy.

As more spawns pop out of the gate, the map would get filled too much !
To solve this problem problem the spawns are made hostile to each other too ! So it will happen, that you see pirates, fighting some anarchists, sapiens, whatever. So you may find more floating wrecks around and try to loot them - so salvager nomads would actually have a good job to do.
We must "destroy" the loot to. This may be acomplished by sending the spawns and filled salvagers back through the gate, letting stuff vanish in the data void.
This would apply to pirates too then - as they search for loot, they would also dock on their victims and as their cargo is much smaller, they would disappear soon again.



As this was the second most esteemed idea, I really hope you don't get me wrong. As you may have noticed, I tend to be a person who likes the vanilla game to be changed, as I have a somewhat negative mindset towards mods. I hope this post will not just disappear unchecked accuratley

[Betelgeuse]

long post that doesn't say much

basically you want there to be no b-liners you want random spawn ships to patrol.

The other ideas can be added on after we see how the first idea works as they don't have any effect on the original idea. (like angering people is a separate issue)

A couple comments on the idea.

Ships should loot and gate out with stuff they loot. (so there is a race between you and them)
Max amount of patrolers with patrolers change out after a time. (that way you don't have all the patrolers to be a single sovereign after a point)

[BrolyLSSJ5]

Hmmmm... random patrols would be very interesting: infact if you try to go far away from the center star, they always find you! This not make sense...

But is it really possible?

[Bobby]

it seems possible(but kindof cpu intensive), put a recurring event on the stargate, if if finds an enemy ship attacking the player then order it to patroll a random planet at a random distance(perhaps choose an object near the player?).

also have a recurring event on the player that checkes for enemies patrolling a planet nearby and have them attack.(incoming stargate could start it)

put a timer on the patrolls that orders them to patroll another random planet after a certain amount of time, and if this is their 8th planet make them gate out.

[Periculi]

timers and more timers? Ouch! You know that the spawns come from the stations, and the stations have a few optional AI commands, other than 'attack' which is what causes the b-lining. Switching the 'attack' command to 'wander' or 'patrol' and suddenly: no more direct assaults.

Perhaps there are a few more AI commands to make use of, but if not, these might be nice additions: 'DefendArea' (perhaps with an optional filter for choosing what to target as a defending ship), 'FormUp' to join a group which could then go and patrol or wander or whatnot, 'Dock' to send it to the station first, and maybe others such as 'Salvage' (which I think works already...) and more refined commands such as 'PatrolGates' to send ships around to check the gate trade lanes or something like a longer more functional patrol route.

[digdug]

Simulating reinforcements: what about instead creating a timer on the station that will check if the player is close to the station itself ? if so, the station will stop the timer and start spawning ships directed to the player ?

Otherwise the station will just spawn system wanders and patrols. Also the station can also recall a wandering ship(s) when the playership start attaking the station.
More or less a minor version of the ferian swarm when you start shooting the station.

[Sheltem]

What else commands do we have instead of attack ?

@digdug, how a timer can be applied for distance ?_?

[Periculi]

I believe that the current set of AI spawn issued commands includes: Attack, Patrol, Wander, Guard, Escort (if in the <Escorts> tag), Mine, and Scavenge.

There is also combatStyle in a ship AI Settings tag that can change how a ship acts in combat, only a few choices such as 'standOff' for a missile ship.

Oh, and the timer is applied to periodically run a script to check the distance from the object, see the Planet mod by Apemant which employs a gate effect automatically when you get within a certain distance of the planet, taking you to a closer range planetary space screen or back out again.

[Sheltem]

thanks.

It was obvious to change "attack" in the <encounters ..> tag to something else, but as I didn't know "wander" I chose "patrol". The spawns where not b-lining then, they just flew around until they found a friendly station and circled it (I think it must be of same sov).
This was not the idea I want them to behave, but could solve the "no direct assaults problem" or making them a heavy-lag causing fortess due to their movement.

[digdug]

Planet mod by Apemant ? Where is it ? I missed it completely.

[Periculi]

F50 here

My problem with timers is that they seem cpu intensive and if every station, gate and planet in a system is running proximity checks and tons of ships are getting scripts fired to alter their behaviors it seems a little messy. What we really need are a few methods of adding to the actual AI system, so that the timer is unnecessary and the code that gets executed is much more condensed for it's purpose. Some AI scripting methods that could be built up into more complex ship-specific behaviors would be totally awesome!