Alpha 8 - AI: Patrol Vessels and Drones

No Drone attack waves. Was getting attack waves prior to Hotfixes.

SP-Survival Game started in A800 B1708. Had attacks prior to Hotfixes B1712 & B1713. Cleared Cache. Now running B1718.

Just stayed at base for more than 3 in-game days, no warnings or attacks.

This is all on starter planet. Haven't gone into orbit yet. Will be heading into orbit shortly.

 

We were having drone waves earlier but they seem to have stopped. This is a MP server so not sure if it used up all the drones, if they stopped because the drone base was destroyed or what happened. The drone base nearest me had regenerated but there were still no waves.

We need to have drones much more constant and never run out especially for MP servers.
Drones currently done come together, sure they come in waves but due to launch time they end up coming at the base 1 at a time instead of 3 or 5 or 10 at a time. I would like to see them group up before moving out, and each in game day or two up the number of drones in a way up to a max of 10 with a mix and match of bombers and anti personal Gatling or anti ship plasma or cannon.

PV needs to respawn if destroyed or cored or even just weapons taken out both in space and on planet, as well as space drones that may spawn from a space based drone ship. On a MP server finding space drones is not easy .

Also allow drones to maneuver some and dodge or tilt up and down, they so easy to kill its funny you just fly above them and aim down a bit, the drones cant tilt so they slowly raise up as you shoot at them without really firing back, they don't dodge at all, nothing like fighting another sv.

 

8.2, SP
Noticed while exploring a planet in an SV, after I had disabled the enemy drone base.
Random PoI Drones (ie: the ones hovering near resources and other structures) keep re-spawning after destroyed, if I leave the area, then return immediately. I am making an assumption that due to the new DSL system, when I fly out of that 12k distance, then come back, they are immediately respawning as if I had not killed them. All of the times I noticed this was while backtracking across a recently (as in a few minutes ago, not hours or days) explored area, and seeing them in the same spot. Also noticed the same when I exited to main menu, and immediately returned to the same game, the drones I had just dispatched were sitting there waiting for me.
DSL = ZombieDrones?


Other note: Apparently Drones are much simpler to handle now. First, they seem to lose all aggressive behavior once you have destroyed the DroneBase. This I can understand, as though CnC has been lost and they are now in default self-defense mode or something.
However, you only need to land one hit on them, which forces them to spin wildly (and ignoring normal physics) out of control for quite a while. Too easy to pick them off in this state, they never get a shot off.

 

I'd like to note a couple of things before getting into my feedback:

1) level progression is way too fast.
- it is too easy to get to level cap, and have all the endgame items. It leaves nothing to do, and after that happens boredome with the game sets in.

2) loot is not varied enough.
- there is no incentive to raid npc bases once you are at endgame. There is no unique items that NPCs drop vs player made items.

3) every player can make everything at level cap. There should be risk/reward consiquences to your choices in the tech tree. A least for multiplayer. Single player, I can understand being able to unlock everything. But multiplayer, I shouldn't be able to unlock everything if I chose to go heavy in the CV tree.

Now with that said:

I'd like to see a way to add NPC events.
That for example: a user could create an NPC event in creative mode, and add it to their workshop. Ie: zirax patrol vessel enters planet atmosphere, and at random follows a straightline path strafing any bases alond a x kilometer distance. Where x is selectable.

Or:

Create an event where an alien troop transport offloads a combination of hover vessels, and troops and beelines for a random player base found on the surface.

Couple this with a unique only NPC item/loot pool, that players can only get from raiding and killing npc's and we have and endgame loop that adds longevity.

What about adding a Diabloeque loot table? That was only dropped from NPCs and NPC bosses. Where the lesser common NPC dropped average, and unique rarity loot (logically random). Ie: a spider should not drop a laser rifle. But the NPC bosses dropped legendary, with random set item loot?

Imagine a player armor dropped. With diabloesque loot it could be something like this.

Resistive commando armor of the pantheon (making stuff up here)

That is more laser resistive than normal, but projectile neutral, commando being heavy armor, and pantheon added health. +1 mod could denote and extra above normal open mod slot for air, jetpack, multiboost etc.

Boss Ai could drop legendary amd set item loot. Each poi depending on it's complexity should have a boss NPC. Smaller POI's can have run of the mill low level npc's, then (using a in diabloesque terms) a blue boss who drops more rare items. Larger POI's have those super unique glowy bosses that drop purple and yellow legendary and set items.

This would go a long way to adding replayability, and longevity keeping people playing over and over.

Additional items can be unique blocks that are resistive to different damage types or add more armor. But in small quantities. So a player can tailor the situation.

Planet items should be blocks, player weapons, HV and base weapons.

A space loot items could be unique SV/cvblocks and weapons

Example:. I kill and loot a space station. Along with more normal items. We find unique space vehicle weapons and blocks that are resistive to lasers. But small quantity so it keeps player wanting to kill more and more NPCs in space to try and outfit their ships.

A block could be:
Combat block of uv protection.. I know it is goofy but I am trying to make a point. So I could have one or two rows of blocks on my front slope for a CV that is resistive to lasers, where my player made blocks have nothing additive.

Well that is my suggestion on how to improve the Ai, and loot tables.

With workshop capability to script, create events. It would add a ton of replayability.

Adding a diabloesque loot table to NPCs would further add replayability. But this should not be workshop enabled.

Devs could even monetize DLC for more loot table items/types.

War and Peace,
UnknownSoldier

 

Drone waves need to escalate in number and firepower. Since I’ve been playing (alpha 4) one or two cannon turrets are enough to defend your base from the attacks. If the first wave does no damage, then more drones with additional firepower and weapons with longer range need to be sent.

Once you hit level 5 (or is it 7?) and can build cannon turrets, your base is basically impervious to drone attacks. At some point, the PV should be sent as well. That’ll get a player’s attention!

I miss the PVs in the intermediate starter planets. It forced me to build my first base underground in case it’s patrol path crossed my base. They could do some damage.

Also, when I set “overall drone presence” to high, I would expect to see drones on patrol, not just hovering around a few random POIs. It seems the planet drone limit needs to be addressed now that the planets have gotten larger.

Lastly, drones should be able to out- range player handheld weapons. Having to evade them in the early game is a much better survival mechanic than simply running underneath them and shooting them in the “eye” with the pistol a couple times to take them down.

As long as I’ve been playing drones add no challenge whatsoever. Hoping to see that addressed at some point.

 

Gonna agree with burnout here about drones/PV offering little to no challenge.

-Drones can be easily destroyed with handheld weapons. This is fine on starter planets but needs to change on higher difficulty areas.

-Drones are way too weak overall. This is especially a problem with base attack drones. Base turrets have incredible amounts of range and can wipe out drone waves before they even get to attack. Once you can build any kind of turret they are no longer a threat, even on high difficulty planets.

-Not enough patrol drones. You maybe see one or two around ore deposits or POIs but what about the rest of the map? This has always been a problem but even more so now that planets are much larger.

-Patrol vessel damage is too low. The weaker patrol vessels have all sentry turrets as weapons. What's the point? Those can't do anything to the player. By the time a player encounters a PV they will have their own vessel or base. For higher tier patrol vessels, this is mainly an issue with alien turrets being complete garbage. Low damage, low range, projectiles that travel at a snail's pace and can't hit anything.

 

Drones need to spawn randomly around planets. Drone assaults need to ramp up with player level / time. When I see "drone assult" I imagine 10+ drones, and a troop carrier or 3.

Patrol Vessels need to spawn more, and patrol more. I've seen one, once on the planet I'm on.

Drones need to be a scaling response, and Patrol Vessels should be able to be avoided / hunted, but they're basically invisible.

 

Echo all the above. Greatly disappointed that updates continue to address textures, colors, minor tweaks, etc., yet players have been saying for the last several versions that (1) drone attacks are broken/bugged, often stop after the first couple waves, (2) drones are way too easy, particularly after player gets to SV stage, and (3) the PV has moved from the roving machine of death it was on first intervention, to a weak joke that moves at a crawl and has a few sentry guns. Yet these basic gameplay bugs and weakness issues don't get addressed. Too bad - I've got lots of hours in this game (1156 as of now), and I think it peaked about version five or six. There I could start on the ice planet with minimal resources and a very scary PV that would kill me if it caught me out in the open, so I had to build my base underwater for protection. That was a challenge. Now the game has become boring - wide open spaces with no enemies in sight. Biggest challenge is don't freeze to death in the first couple days. Last game I started, built a base, had two waves of two drones each, and then they stopped coming. Again.... Yawn.... I quit before I even built a CV, no challenge.

And it's too bad. I really, really loved the old game several versions ago. BTW, is there any way to retro my game version - to go back to version six, for example? I currently don't know how, would love to know.

 

Right click the game on Steam > Properties > Betas > change to alpha 7 or 6.

My bandaid fix for at least the PV was modifying existing CV designs and putting alien turrets on them then editing the planet .yaml files to make them use those designs.

I buffed the stats of drones a lot too but you can't edit their speed which is unfortunate.