What's your experience since the AI change in EXP Phase I? Let us know! ---------------------------------------------------------------- New Character Controller for AI: A new character controller (CC) has been implemented in the game as a first iteration to improve AI movement. The goal was primarily to avoid the huge zig-zags of AI when moving in certain circumstances. The new controller affects only AI with the newest behavior and only outside while the AIs are on the terrain (not inside POI). This new CC could be extended later to other ground AIs if there is a need. What is new with the new CC compared to the old CC: The new CC smooths the path generated by the path finder : The white boxes are generated directly by the path finder. The blue/black cube is the smoothed version of the original path. The AI will now strictly follow the smoothed path (see above) contrary to the old CC where the AI was following only very roughly the path defined by the path finder especially at high speed : With the old CC here, the AI can be far from the path from time to time while zig-zagging (yellow) around the path defined by the path finder (white boxes). The fact that the AI position and movement are precisely controlled now at any speed allows some new behaviors like for example a raming behavior. Important : the AIs can still get stuck. It seems that the path finder still has in some cases some flaws and inaccuracies that sometimes lead to bad paths. This is an old bug that will be addressed soon.
I've not yet has a lot of interaction with the AI, though I can say, from what I have seen so far, things like raptors do appear to move about in far less erratic manners. It's gotten a good bit more challenging to take down packs of 3,4 or 5 of these at a time with the survival tool, short of their getting stuck, though it does seem, at least at this point, to be a little easier to trigger this by tagging one with a jolt from the Survival tool and making very erratic movements when they engage. Still, seems to be a considerable improvement over the old method. This now really begs the question: Will or Can this be adapted to permit AI-operated HV's and SV's in planetary environments? And to go hand-in-hand with that, might we see in the nearer future, the presence of some animal-powered Talon "HV's"? A "Siege Engine", pulled by a 4-lizard mule team laden with Talon ballistae, for example, where the Lizard Mule team is a cleverly disguised hover pad, would actually be rather terrifying.
