Enemies that should not try to melee

[xnd]

The mancers love to run right up to me to get slaughtered. shouldnt they try to stay away and cast from a distance?
of course that makes them far more dangerous but it just makes sense? what wizard ina robe and staff runs up to someone in full battle armor and a greatsword and tries to melee them?

[HousePet]

Could be that they have the dumb ai script set?
Or it could be the ai is silly.

[xnd]

i found them hidden in angolwen npcs lua; it has
ai = "dumb_talented_simple", ai_state = { ai_move="move_complex", talent_in=3, },

i'd assume it stays that when they go in ID?

or if the issue is caused upon clones made from my chronoxorn mod, the ai lines in the talent that doubles the enemies are
ai_target = {actor=nil},
ai = "summoned", ai_real = "tactical",
ai_tactic = resolvers.tactic("ranged"), ai_state = { talent_in=1, ally_compassion=10},
desc = [[The real one... or so it believes.]]

[StarKeep]

Its worth noting that if they got proper ai, the fact that they can spawn on level 1 of the ID would have to be fixed, because they would be the absolute nightmare of melee characters, and at that point in the game, its in a way that the player can't actually play around, as they have basically no tools available.

[xnd]

i almost always die on 1st lev of ID thanks to lev 30s in a vault or Shas or whatever shows up even if a pack of mages doesnt get me.

but yeah, i think the ai should be fixed to make sense and maybe set ID so that certain enemies and vaults and all spawn at lev x+.

yeah it seems to me that some kind of ranged attack is important for melee types to have or else you get owned.

[xnd]

Summoners.

instead of retreating and summoning they charge in to get killed. this is not what a summoner does anymore than the mages or archers that charges in to get killed. yeah archers do it also.

there could be an ai version for ranged enemies that would solve this so they play their classes properly.

[Nagyhal]

xnd, there is supposed to be a very harsh divide between enemies that make do with this most basic of AIs and enemies that use the more complicated AIs. This is done to be as sparing as possible with computing time, as well as to provide significant challenge where it's needed and (as per StarKeep) to spare players where it isn't.

Now, that's easy for me to understand since I'm a developer and I've pored over the code for hours, but for most players I can imagine there's a failure to communicate that in the game and so AI behaviour can seem "bad" or even "bugged" without this knowledge!

For me, there's a gameplay (rather than a realism-based) reason to improve things: Vanilla enemies in ToME tend toward uninteresting speed-bumps. If we don't want to make the majority of enemies significantly more challenging (and there are good arguments against that, such as making the overall experience too stressful for players) then we can at least make them more interesting and fun with alterations to their behaviour. Snakes are a good example of a weaker attempt at this.

Challenge-wise, early-level melee fighters could do the corner-abusing trick which will get ranged mobs to come and peek out. However I think the basic ranged AI is a bit too relentless about running away and that would get annoying (c.f. those bloody Brecklorn). A ranged AI which switches between "fleeing" and "overconfidently closing in" modes might be better.

[xnd]

well i sure would like to see some fix that makes them not seem like insane bots but actually play as makes some sense. otherwise it really looks like there are just bots on the screen doing dumb things way out of character.

[posetcay]

The game is already unfair to melees, if every enemy kited properly like Skeleton Master Archer the pain would be too much to bear