ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So the tactical AI is slowly improving, and I would like some community feedback on the above question. The specific situation I have in mind is when the player controls an NPC (alchemist his golem, summoner his creatures, yeek anyone) and then gets incredibly frustrated as their "@" character does stupid stuff.

What can we currently do about it?

• Set a maximum wander distance. If whomever you are controlling goes beyond that distance the @ will try to move closer to you no matter what.
• Follow party leader. If the @ did nothing that turn (attack, etc) then it will move towards you. There is some poor synergy between this and the leash option above, where the @ effectively follows you after you turn this option off but the leash is activated. This could use some rethinking.
• Set behavior. This changes the type of tactical AI used, for example melee for an emphasis to attacking and closing in or ranged for an emphasis on keeping a safe distance (but maintaining LOS on your target). Standby currently does nothing.
• Starting in beta21 you can set talent weights, so you can tell your @'s AI to never use talent X but use talent Y as often as possible.

My question to you is, what else is needed?

I haven't played either in forever, but here are some ideas:

Scaredy cat: Always attempt to get behind the golem/summon/whatever, if possible, putting the thing you're controlling between the monster and the @

Healbot: Are there heals? Don't remember. If so, then an option to do nothing but stay away from enemies and cast buffs/heals as needed.

Ranged only, flee from melee: Nuff said. Preferably flee behind you as in Scaredy Cat

If I think of any more I'll put em up.

Having played a Warlock on WoW for many years I found you could actually do a lot with the simple AI commands and AI states. Note that switching these states took no time (no energy cost basically) allowing you to quickly plant your pet someplace, tell it to attack a target then putting it on passive to lead the target back to the spot all the while you do other stuff. Anyway, I was surprised by the number of tactical choices something simple like this offered.

States

Aggressive - Attacks anything in LOS if the master has no target or the masters target otherwise.

Defensive - Attacks anything that attacks the master or the pet.

Passive - Does nothing.

Commands

Follow - Follows the master closely, over ridden by the states above to a degree (will run off to attack targets if set to aggressive or to attack targets that attack it or the master if on defensive.)
Stay - Stays on the spot, again over ridden by Aggressive and Defensive options. A pet on stay will run up to attack a target you tell it too then move back to the stay spot.

If i am using summon control, odds are pretty big I want my summoner to stay away.

I tend to use summon control mainly when exploring something, if I use it to do something else, usually I want my summoner to do nothing, or at least be defensive (keep distance, heal when needed).
Last time I used summon control, my summoner ran into the battle or did something stupid like call a warp stalker that used a shadow prison that lasts for 20 turns.

If you can make him stay back and heal / shield when needed
that would be nice.

Two things that annoyed me when playing a summoner (on top of hydra breathing stuff on me, but that's already fixed), is that there isn't any way to tell ranged summons to target specific enemies without summoning them next to the targets. Melee summons don't have that issue since they will target whoever you targeted with the summon talent, and appears next to them (which is not a good thing for ranged summons). The second is when summons keep blasting a time-prisoned foe. Both situations could be fixed by allowing the player to set the target of his summons, at least individually.

For alchemists, you should reset the golem target whenever it is recreated, as it gets annoying to recreate it (at 10% health), and see it go back to where it previously died.

Thanks for the input everyone. It sounds like two additional things are necessary: be able to set what is followed (and allow that to be a tile, therefore doubling as a stay command) and be able to set the attack target. I'll talk to DG about how to handle this...

I have something in place that appears to work... anyone want to test it?

As a minimum, there should be a way to stop the summoner from charging into the front lines to face tank, blocking the controlled summon from being able to fight. Here's what I'm seeing (@ = summoner, S = summon, M = monster, # = wall):

#########
....@SM....
#########

I use Summon Control on S, and then immediately the situation changes to:

#########
....S@M....
#########

At this point, controlling S, it seems that I'm unable to switch positions with @, but it may be that the switch does occur, and @ just immediately switches back. In any case, this is the worst possible behavior @ could do, and it happens regardless of how I try to configure my summoner's behavior. Setting behavior to standby, and even disabling all talents including Attack, does not stop the summoner from doing this.

Ideally, I would like an option that tells the summoner to hang back a few spaces and only use summoning abilities if monsters are actively approaching. So, for example if the situation looked like this:

M............M
..S.........S..
................
................
.......@.......

then the summoner would not move or use any summoning abilities. If one of the summons were to die, then the summoner would replace it with a new summon based on talent priorities. And, if the situation looked like this:

@SM

then the summoner would back off 2-3 spaces, provided that doing so didn't reveal new terrain (as that could bring additional monsters into the fight).

My 2nd choice would be an "immobile" option that would allow the summoner to use talents, but would not move under any circumstances.