Require permission to teleport player (Summon Control)

[Silvermoon]

My summoner just lost a life (her last) to a catastrophically stupid decision to teleport away from a single foe with less than 10% life while I was controlling a summon -- landing in a group of orc casters that nearly insta-vaporized her.

I appreciate that the AI is proactive about keeping the character alive when ambushed while summon controlling -- especially when I'm poking around in a vault with a summon to check it's contents -- however, the player should still be in control of his or her self when using summon control. Give a prompt of yes/no when the player wants to teleport, and preferrably show us the player's view as well.

[bricks]

Intuitively, it seems that the Summoner should just "go limp" when controlling a summon directly; i.e., not take any actions. Any reason why this shouldn't be the case?

[Silvermoon]

In hindsight, I could have set Teleport priority to 0, preventing it from being used -- however the teleport also saved my character's life multiple times when clearing vaults that have summoners. That also brings up the obnoxiousness of (as far as I can tell) not being able to set the player's AI priorities without a mouse.

[Aquillion]

Honestly, while I have no idea if it would be feasible or not, you know what would be really useful?

A set of icons, on your party screen, showing what every member of your party is planning to do on their next turn (talent icons, plus directional icons if they're planning on moving, a Z if they plan to wait, etc.) This could be done by eg. having the AI calculate what it would do if nothing changed except cooldowns, durations, and resource-recovery, and produce an icon for it -- obviously, it might do something different if the situation changes, but it would be a very good guideline for players most of the time.

Then, for directly-controllable allies, give the player a set of commands that lets them override that when they want to without wasting a turn -- either ordering a teammate to take a specific action, or ordering them to not use what they were planning to use. Maybe even a simple 'right-click on planned action icon to cycle it for something else' -- their next-best choice or whatever.

This would allow fine-grained control with relatively little annoyance, while letting you leave them on autopilot most of the time. It might be a bitch to implement, but I think it would be worth it, and would make summoners and alchemists much, much more fun to play.

[Silvermoon]

The problem with that approach is that not everything is taking it's turn at the same time, so the AI's prediction on YOUR turn might be HEAVILY altered by the time you have a chance to influence it.

In cases where the player actually has not just the ABILITY to control an ally, but a solid reason to HAVE direct control over an ally -- Summoners' summons and alchemist golems -- I've always wanted a mode I could toggle wherein I control every action that any entity I control can take. Yes, it would drag the game to a crawl, but there are times where it would be extremely welcomed. This would also solve the problem of it costing a portion (or complete) turn in order to switch control.

[lukep]

It is (sort of) possible to control your summons like that. In critical situations, I have adjusted my summons' tactical AI between every turn while switching their targets manually. It is very slow (5 minutes/turn) but usually works as expected. A UI more suited to this would help immensely, something along the lines of "set next action" that lets you choose a talent and a target that it will do next chance it gets (even if the reasons change, that's your fault). I would prefer this to a "limited omniscience" ability, whee you automatically switch control to whoever's turn it is, although that could work as well.

[Aquillion]

The problem with that approach is that not everything is taking it's turn at the same time, so the AI's prediction on YOUR turn might be HEAVILY altered by the time you have a chance to influence it.

True, but it'd be better than nothing.

In cases where the player actually has not just the ABILITY to control an ally, but a solid reason to HAVE direct control over an ally -- Summoners' summons and alchemist golems -- I've always wanted a mode I could toggle wherein I control every action that any entity I control can take. Yes, it would drag the game to a crawl, but there are times where it would be extremely welcomed. This would also solve the problem of it costing a portion (or complete) turn in order to switch control.

A combination of these two that might slow things down a bit less: Display an 'action bar' of all the upcoming friendly and enemy actions, according to time -- squares for when each one will act, with the icon of that being. Friendlies could have their currently-predicted action; there could be a checkbox or a button players could use to set it to 'confirm mode' where they hit space to confirm each action for a friendly controllable creature -- or, of course, they can take direct control and manage it. There could also be a button they could push to skip straight to their next turn.

This would serve several purposes: It would make ToME's turn system easier to understand when using speed-changing talents. And it would let a summoner control all their summons without slowing the game to a crawl -- they could rapidly tap through uninteresting / unimportant actions, letting the AI handle them, and only step in during significant ones.

Perhaps have an options so it only goes into 'confirm mode' when a controllable ally sees an enemy.

[marvalis]

I would personally like it if the 'default' action of the summoner would be to stay in place and not use any talents. This could then be altered in the tactical AI menu.

[Aquillion]

Well, I'd want them to, at the very least:

* Keep summoning (that has very little risk; most summons are cheap.)

* Heal themselves as necessary, activate shield runes when in danger, etc.

* If they can't do anything else, attack adjacent monsters (or at range if they have shoot and a ranged weapon.)

Having to go through the tactical menu just to enable those things seems silly, and I would be extremely annoyed if my summoner died because their default setup didn't have them heal themselves while I was in another body.

[Silvermoon]

Honestly, the basic suggestion was given because I don't really feel the current AI needs altered -- it's remarkably adept at staying alive the majority of the time. I just want to have to CONFIRM that, yes, I do want to use a teleport.

[Aquillion]

It'd be nice to generalize the solution a bit, though. Maybe have an option in the AI tactical talent priority menu to tag a talent as 'confirm before using' or somesuch, with teleportation defaulting to 'yes'.

[Silvermoon]

Being able to flag skills as such would actually have other applicable uses elsewhere, yeah. And possibly further down the line.