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Artificer posted:
Not at this point in the lore no, the Manei Domini don't come along till the 3060's.
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Jan 16, 2019 20:51
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Artificer posted:Was the discovery of Comstar being utter shits with Holy Shroud and such a HOLY poo poo moment for the houses or a I loving KNEW IT moment? But prior to that they had given up the veneer of neutrality to stop Hanse Davion from ruining their plans, starting with interdicting the Suns under blatantly false pretenses at the end of the Fourth War (to little effect, as expected of Stackpole antagonists), the NAIS false flag attack (the Death Commandos were all massed in a counterattack on Kathil, of course both attacks had little effect), and then furnishing the Draconis Combine with regiments of stripped down mechs from their Star League caches to even the odds against the FedCom juggernaut.
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Jan 16, 2019 21:31
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I started a new career mode game the other day to see how it felt with fairly vanilla settings (nevermind that I just got wiped out in Iron Man mode on that defense mission with all the APCs that can somehow reach the base one turn after appearing and before I could get within range on my previous turn) from a point perspective. I immediately did basic mech reconfigurations, moving ammo into legs and bumping up cockpit and other armor where appropriate, and sacrificed 6 days letting those changes sit before taking on a mission. I chose a 1.5 skull destroy base mission. On my very first turn, I triggered reinforcements before either the base or garrison lance was in visual range. On the second turn, my commando was stripped of both arms by AC2 sniper turrets and a panther PPC blast. He died the next turn. I then proceeded to get limbs stripped off of one mech in a turn, followed by that mech getting cored the subsequent turn until Darius called me a dumbass. My efforts to draw aggro with my beefier mechs failed and the aggressive jenner + panther + LL commando in each of the two lances tore me apart as my fledgling mercs missed shot after shot. Moral of the story: don't get cocky with mech loadouts when your pilots can't hit an overheating Atlas in IR vision mode in a polar region. rocketrobot fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Jan 16, 2019 |
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Jan 16, 2019 21:34
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Since this has become the general BattleTech thread at this point: BT is turning 35 years old this year!  Here's what they're offering, starting next Wednesday:
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Jan 16, 2019 22:49
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For those of you Battletech-y and goonish enough to wear your fandom, they're offering 35th anniversary Battletech hoodies and shirts along with a bunch of new shadowrun and battletech pen and paper books and sets: https://www.catalystgamelabs.com/2019/01/16/preview-celebrate-milestone-anniversaries-for-battletech-and-shadowrun/ edit: gently caress, Beaten.
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Jan 17, 2019 02:21
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catalyst will always be to me the company that stiffed freelancers while the owner embezzled everything that wasn't nailed down
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Jan 17, 2019 02:36
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Cease to Hope posted:catalyst will always be to me the company that stiffed freelancers while the owner embezzled everything that wasn't nailed down Wait what?
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Jan 17, 2019 07:59
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yeah there was a thing a few years back where a bunch of freelancers didn't get paid because one of the higher ups (I think it was Pardoe?) raided the company bank account to build a deck extension for his house or something like that.
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Jan 17, 2019 08:02
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Pardoe is a slavery apologist so i believe it.
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Jan 17, 2019 08:03
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Der Waffle Mous posted:yeah there was a thing a few years back where a bunch of freelancers didn't get paid because one of the higher ups (I think it was Pardoe?) raided the company bank account to build a deck extension for his house or something like that. it was loren coleman
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Jan 17, 2019 11:35
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Cease to Hope posted:it was loren coleman Yep, Sarna has some details but the whole affair was pretty vague. The sympathetic reading is that Coleman made management mistakes which lead to a mingling of his personal finances with those of the company. The unsympathetic reading is that he pillaged operating capital to fund personal projects.
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Jan 17, 2019 11:55
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Having played some more, I think evasion is what breaks the ai. When you have a bunch of lights and mediums jumping around and all having 4-6 evasion, the ai just braces up. When you leave one of them with only 2 evasion, enemies out of range keep just bracing, but ones that are close enough start shooting at your less-evasive mech. I guess their hit chance is just so low that they think it's not worth taking a shot? The problem is you just do that every turn and also get to shoot, so they just act like fish in a barrel. Maybe this is less of a problem once you get to the heavy and assault mech phase of the game.
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Jan 17, 2019 20:15
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Jabor posted:Having played some more, I think evasion is what breaks the ai. This could very well be the root of my problem. I had all lights and mediums and have been putting lots of points in Piloting.
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Jan 17, 2019 20:38
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Jabor posted:Maybe this is less of a problem once you get to the heavy and assault mech phase of the game. Lance of mediums did that to my lance of 3 heavies and an assault. Only the grasshopper was jumping around, everyone else just hung out. It was an escort mission so I figured they were going after the APCs despite getting shot the gently caress up, but, nope, even seemed to ignore them and just shuffle forward getting blasted apart. Fine by me it was a good time. Those hatchetmen pop real good WHOOP WHOOP
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Jan 17, 2019 21:14
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Hmm, so it's not just evasion. Maybe old-Bulwark was actually covering up the ai deficiencies because it would make them stand still and shoot even if they thought it wasn't really worthwhile.
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Jan 17, 2019 21:17
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The AI was actually really bad at using old Bulwark. They'd often move when they'd have been better standing still.
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Jan 17, 2019 21:51
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It is only the first time I've really noticed them doing that, however. The only other behavior I'll see than the expected maneuvering and shooting / punching is running away if I've roasted enough of their weapon systems or applied enough damage.
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Jan 17, 2019 21:55
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Jabor posted:Having played some more, I think evasion is what breaks the ai. There's a certain threshold for what the AI considers a good shot, and if none are available, it'll either brace or plink with a single weapon (usually a medium laser). It's easiest to achieve this on lights due to their inherent +3 Hit Defense, but heavier mechs can too with the proper combination of skills/mobility/defense gyros. It makes *some* sense to behave like this, but the reason it's abusable is mostly because the AI isn't smart enough to factor other things, like the player's overall lance composition or when they can afford to eat the heat of an alpha. Personally, I've used it to prevent HBK-4Gs from firing during the light mechs phase of career mode - 4 turns on the field and it never got an AC20 shot off.
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Jan 17, 2019 23:34
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Q_res posted:The AI was actually really bad at using old Bulwark. They'd often move when they'd have been better standing still. Regardless, the AI hasn't changed but the players have. Most people abused old bulwark and were sitting still a lot. When players don't move it's easier for the AI to avoid brain-dead mistakes. Now there's no advantage to it so you might as well move all the time. As I've posted about before, I've always done more with maneuver & evasion than bulwark. I don't feel like the AI got stupider in 1.3. "Enemy mech chooses to shoot one large laser at my 5-pip mech rather than roll the dice on 50/50 shots" is not new behavior to me. Frequently it's a dumb move, like when the unit that did it is being focused down by my whole team and isn't gonna get another turn... But it does work to strip evasion which is what gets me if I haven't managed how exposed to return fire my guys are.
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Jan 18, 2019 03:30
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Klyith posted:IIRC the defender class AI would move into cover even when that was a strict downgrade in defense, so I don't know if they even took old bulwark into account with their decisions. The AI could, but was set so low it would ignore it for moving in to melee range and shooting at whatever shot it last, which led it to getting caught out in the open with no hope of survival. There is still the "Float_BulwarkThresholdPercentage" in the code. Before, if you set it to about 80 the AI would use Bulwark alright without staying still too much, but the old default was like 40. The old Bulwark being stationary is also still active in the code and is currently preventing the AI from maximizing the new defensive options. It's also very important to consider that HBS has intentionally heavily shackled the base AI to not own newbs out the gate. But, each new version is improving on the dumbest parts of the AI slowly. They don't sprint in to combat like in beta 1, don't lose focus so easily like beta 2, know to move an unsteady unit first unlike 1.0 and so on. Improvement is slow, but they are also not aiming for optimal AI. I am, and that's what modding is for. To do the things too niche and costly to justify dedicating employees to. I did just push out a new version of my Better AI mod if anyone hasn't seen me spam up this thread with mod news enough as it is. If anyone has any questions about what the AI can and can't do, ask away. Overall, the ability revision plays better to the AI's tendencies without any extra adjustments. Sure, the value for liking trees/cover could be bumped, but that could be said for basically any value in their files.
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Jan 18, 2019 04:28
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So these Gyros that provide "+X Hit Defense," do they improve defense vs all hits or just melee hits? Since I can't target myself, I have no way of knowing.
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Jan 18, 2019 18:04
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rocketrobot posted:So these Gyros that provide "+X Hit Defense," do they improve defense vs all hits or just melee hits? Since I can't target myself, I have no way of knowing. All attacks, both ranged and melee. Amechwarrior posted:It's also very important to consider that HBS has intentionally heavily shackled the base AI to not own newbs out the gate. I'm a bit dubious about how much that was actually a consideration. Probably a few things in the personality files you're working with. Like, they could have make the AI more target fixated that it is now, which would have been owned newbs but also been an exploitable weakness by experienced players. But stuff like movement and positioning is not great (which I won't knock HBS too much because that's a very hard problem that few games do well, and is even harder with the realistic / natural maps). tl;dr of what could be a 3 page essay on AI: the thing that video game AI should aim for isn't beating the player or executing the most optimal play. It's to produce a combination of natural / expected behavior responding from player actions (putting my mechs in front of the building makes the AI accept my sacrifice and shoot me) and surprising behavior by sometimes doing very different things. But since you've been working with this stuff a lot I've got a question. Would it be possible to add new personality types to the AI? I see that there are a couple different "role" personalities, which have slightly different behavior. I've been thinking that some personalities that were more extreme could really add a lot, if there was a way to insure they'd only show up on a single AI unit.
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Jan 18, 2019 19:24
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Klyith posted:I'm a bit dubious about how much that was actually a consideration. Probably a few things in the personality files you're working with. Like, they could have make the AI more target fixated that it is now, which would have been owned newbs but also been an exploitable weakness by experienced players. But stuff like movement and positioning is not great (which I won't knock HBS too much because that's a very hard problem that few games do well, and is even harder with the realistic / natural maps). Much of it was. There was a beta patch preview that noted we should have gotten AI that would reserve, the code always worked since I started editing the AI in beta but they never gave us that. In beta, all you had to do was flip a single T/F variable and you were golden. The other values relating to reserve weights were close to good, but suddenly in 1.0 they zeroed all those weights in addition to not letting them reserve, so in that respect they actually went back and said "Naw, we are not going to let the AI reserve and let's null out those variables so they won't be considered at all." There are many layers of AI personality but only some of them are active. We got Global, Roles, Moods, Skill, Personality and Faction. So far, I know global and roles work and have two moods aggressive and defensive. There is also a Sensor Lock mood for pilots that can do it. I think the single "Ruthless" skill is active but is not used yet (added in 1.1?) and the Faction/Personality stuff I haven't touched. My impression with a lot of the unused stuff is that it wasn't worth the time/money/manpower to layer all these on top and then have most players never notice. 'Mech selection by faction would be a much greater impact over telling one faction to slightly prefer forests or melee over another and vise versa. The Roles are the bread and butter of making the AI pilot different units a certain way. We got Brawler, Scout, Sniper, MeleeOnly, LastManStanding, Vehicle, Turret and NonCombatant off the top of my head. These are chosen based on the tags in the 'Mech variant ("unit_role_sniper") and then dynamically balanced around the Lance each round unless they are vehicles or turrets that have fixed roles. In my mod, I've taken HBS's roles and amplified them to really bring out what makes them unique and hopefully live longer. JM6's on sniper duty will stay out of LoS but favor places with lines of fire to player units. The stock sniper role doesn't consider LoS to enemies any different than the global (brawler) and that's why in stock all of your fragile snipers are always in ML range for easy kills. Hell, the global (brawler) role doesn't even consider protecting their weak side from the player. Even changing that variable from 0.0 to 0.1 would make the AI act in a way the player would expect. "Float_PreferPresentingHigherArmorToHostileFactorWeight" which controls: "Influence Factor Weight to control the desire to defend my own weak armor." is in the unused.json pile with all the other good things that work and HBS turned off for the base AI. They made an AI that could be good, but chose to not use a lot of those variables. As for adding new roles, that's a bit harder but not impossible. CWolf's "Mission Control" mod is the first to add new code to the AI and I haven't had time to work with him on learning how to do that. Right now, he adds a "follow" routine to help the allied AI in SP missions where there is no instructions for them normally. There are also unused and disabled roles Flanker, Spotter and Suppression that might be enabled if someone took the time to code it all in. At this point we get to writing your own code and that's something I need to block off a lot of time to do right. If you want a look at all of the AI's possible variables and cross referenced to all of their moods I made a big spreadsheet that has sheets for both stock and my modded values. It also has all the HBS comments about the variables under each one. Most of the stock files are blank (greyed out) which means they just fall back on the global.json settings. The OP in my Better AI thread also goes in to more details about how the AI works and what we can mod with json edits. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q-Z0jSjb1rRd5-r0zYHwH_yES8cgVdmv-kE2WS_7lHE/ Amechwarrior fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Jan 18, 2019 |
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Jan 18, 2019 19:59
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Amechwarrior posted:There are many layers of AI personality but only some of them are active. Yeah, where I was thinking about adding roles would be some one-offs that were even more unique than the brawl/sniper/scout types. Some things you wouldn't want more than one unit on the AI team to do, because they're not optimal behavior but are a good monkey wrench to throw at the player. Obvious example would be the berserker charge type, but also a lone-wolf flanker (push the 'preferred distance from teammates' much higher and make them sprint more) or the always-alphastrike guy that gives no fucks about heat or hit chance. Amechwarrior posted:If you want a look at all of the AI's possible variables and cross referenced to all of their moods I made a big spreadsheet that has sheets for both stock and my modded values. It also has all the HBS comments about the variables under each one. Most of the stock files are blank (greyed out) which means they just fall back on the global.json settings. The OP in my Better AI thread also goes in to more details about how the AI works and what we can mod with json edits. The spreadsheet is dope! That was what made me starting using your mod. I've now been playing with it a bit, with some changes, and the spreadsheet was great for being able to scroll through and compare. When I was doing tweaks to combatconstants for the threads old evasive mod, I was trying to keep track just with command line diff. (Ex of my own config: I didn't like all enemies being able to reserve because it collapses the initiative play, but re-added it to scouts so they can be more independent. Also your AI resistance against distraction from priority targets is IMO too high, it makes the best response into a gimmick all glass cannon squad.)
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Jan 18, 2019 23:07
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Klyith posted:Yeah, where I was thinking about adding roles would be some one-offs that were even more unique than the brawl/sniper/scout types. Some things you wouldn't want more than one unit on the AI team to do, because they're not optimal behavior but are a good monkey wrench to throw at the player. What do you mean about the priority targeting being too high? Also for the reserve, would a slightly lower global default work to keep the init play across more phases? As for the one off, try messing with that Reckless mood/skill. That's basically what you are describing and there is a setting in global for the odds of a pilot using it. I know RT seems to use that so I assume it works.
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Jan 19, 2019 01:37
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Are the new events that can sometimes get you lostech, occasional availability of lostech in stores, and the alliance system part of story mode as well as career mode? I'm thinking of starting a new game, don't particularly care about career mode score, but don't want to block myself out of additional tech/mechanics if you can't get it in story mode.
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Jan 19, 2019 03:17
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Breetai posted:Are the new events that can sometimes get you lostech, occasional availability of lostech in stores, and the alliance system part of story mode as well as career mode? I'm thinking of starting a new game, don't particularly care about career mode score, but don't want to block myself out of additional tech/mechanics if you can't get it in story mode. the detailed answer to this is a large spoiler, but suffice it to say that story is better for your first playthrough.
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Jan 19, 2019 03:50
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Breetai posted:Are the new events that can sometimes get you lostech, occasional availability of lostech in stores, and the alliance system part of story mode as well as career mode? I'm thinking of starting a new game, don't particularly care about career mode score, but don't want to block myself out of additional tech/mechanics if you can't get it in story mode. Everything is available in both modes. Possibly you can't ally the taurians in story mode? edit: spoiler if you haven't played the campaign The spoilermech, and all the other SLDF mech variants that are in the game, are possible to acquire in Career mode from the big rewards. But you definitely won't get them as early as the story gifts them to you. Amechwarrior posted:What do you mean about the priority targeting being too high? Also for the reserve, would a slightly lower global default work to keep the init play across more phases? Priority targeting: specifically the "Int_RecentTargetThresholdPhases" you have set to 1, which from the description would indicate that they can only be distracted from the priority target if you hit them the same initiative phase. (The use of 11 at stock makes me think the 1 is their own activation since 10 would be two turns.) OTOH the stock setting of 11 is way too high. I think the 4-6 range is more appropriate. Probably 6 for the general audience of people who hate those mission. It's really a hard one to strike a good balance though -- what you really need is a damage threshold to determine how 'distracted' they are from an attack. That way an atlas doesn't get too concerned by a medium laser singing his paint job. Reserve: eh, don't take my feedback into account for this one. Basically on the turns I'm paying attention to initiative that means several extra minutes to think through my order of activation & stuff like ace pilot. If the AI can reserve that's wasted effort and I just stop bothering. I turned it back on for scouts because the scout mechs generally suck. I'll check the reckless mood, thanks.
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Jan 19, 2019 04:10
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What flashpoint do you do for the SLDF Highlander?
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Jan 19, 2019 05:50
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I dunno about flashpoints but it definitely shows up on the Black Market.
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Jan 19, 2019 06:04
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RBA Starblade posted:What flashpoint do you do for the SLDF Highlander? I got one piece as a reward during Braying of Hounds. I don't think any reward a complete mech; you just gotta find bits piecemeal in shops and flashpoints.
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Jan 19, 2019 10:06
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Skippy McPants posted:I got one piece as a reward during Braying of Hounds. I don't think any reward a complete mech; you just gotta find bits piecemeal in shops and flashpoints. Oh, I haven't seen any at all, just King Crab and Black Knight parts (not complaining about that though!). Also some of these flashpoints are pretty great. I ignored a master thief so she switched coordinates on me and ditched her dropship, which would've screwed me but also gave me just enough rep for returning it to ally with the Suns.
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Jan 20, 2019 04:42
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Klyith posted:Everything is available in both modes. Possibly you can't ally the taurians in story mode? So some of the real mod wizards that can code and I are talking about a big collab project to redo the AI's routines. I have made a note about a threshold for damage to distract vs the current "I've been shot!" switch. I generally don't have an issue with Escort/Base Def. with it set to 1. Pinging them still shakes them off target, but I find leaving it to 1 lets the Lance "act as one" to focus a player unit to destruction if it doesn't get out or some other very threatening stuff takes point. The dmg. thresh. you suggested it a plain better way of going about it though and I'd love to work that one in with the other custom changes the modding group and I have tossed as "possible low hanging fruit" we could try and hit up first. However, all of us who want to do this are also elbows deep in other group and personal mod projects so who knows how long it will take us to actually get something done. One of those personal projects I'm done with though: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ive-made-a-custom-flashpoint-video-included.1145148/page-3#post-25082868 I've made a FP that plays all the music tracks in sequence for FP authors looking for reference. I got fed up blindly picking tracks and just hammered out a crazy deep conversation tree for it. I ran in to every bug ConverseTek has, but now CWolf fixed them and put out a FP compatible ConverseTek release if anyone wants to start modding their own. https://github.com/CWolfs/ConverseTek/releases
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Jan 20, 2019 06:25
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Saw my first King Crab and realized the main reason I miss the Clans in this game is aesthetics. I want my BirdMechs.
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Jan 20, 2019 06:32
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Cardiac posted:Saw my first King Crab and realized the main reason I miss the Clans in this game is aesthetics. As utterly useless as light mechs are I would just love to have a Piranha. 12 Machines guns to just rip apart anything without armor.
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Jan 20, 2019 09:09
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If you see an Obsidian Skull Atlas-II in Roguetech and you get the chance to salvage it, do so ASAP. you can fit an XL425(!) in it with a bunch of micro pulse lasers (which fire in the melee phase) and a clan Null Sig system makes it impossible to hit AND gives it Bulwark even on certain moves AND it does something like 200 melee damage unmodded. I named mine "Consequences" and it's a huge power boost even when you're already rolling with pure assaults.
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Jan 20, 2019 15:58
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Klyith posted:IIRC the defender class AI would move into cover even when that was a strict downgrade in defense, so I don't know if they even took old bulwark into account with their decisions. The AI has absolutely become stupider. The last six missions my Commander has gone on, every single enemy attack has been aimed at them regardless of other considerations until their mech is destroyed. I've seen enemies ignore primary targets in Defend Base missions, ignore my mechs in open ground with two pips to shoot my commander in cover with five pips - sometimes they'll even sprint to get my commander in range rather than shoot a mech that is within range - and run straight past my other mechs and leave themselves open to backshots. I've even seen mechs literally not act at all for six rounds while I blew up the rest of their lance, then activate and attack the instant my commander comes into their LOS.
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Jan 20, 2019 16:12
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The ai goes out of its way not to shoot me in the back to try and shoot my king crab in the head. Which usually works but the head is still intact, so you know e: What do the alliance FPs look like? Is there a list anywhere of what they are and what you get? e: I just loaded up a Black Knight with all my DHSs, a heat bank, and LL+++ and ML+++s and lmao this isn't fair, it one shots almost anything with a precision strike. Kind of fragile though. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jan 20, 2019 |
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Jan 20, 2019 16:19
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Had a random event give me 2 double heat sinks!  On the downside I only got 1 salvage from a Catapult K2 even though I took it down without coring it.  Battletech is a study in contrasts.
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Jan 20, 2019 21:54
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My final take on the bulwark change: they done hosed up. Bulwark is just as necessary than it was before if not moreso, because a standard brace is useless for damage mitigation outside of cover. Vigilance, which was always well behind called shot in effectiveness before, is now poo poo on pilots that don't also have bulwark. For a pilot without bulwark the only really viable way to reduce damage is to break range, which means they're pretty much lock in to sniper or at least mid-long type roles. Alternately, if stability / knockdown play was still threatening then the regular brace action might be worth something. But the addition of entrenched to piloting means half the units on the field are walking around with constant 50% stability resistance. Unless you go absolutely ham on LRMs it's easier to just kill something than it is to knock them down.
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Jan 20, 2019 22:29
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