ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

While I love my little(big?) golem, there are several problems that I feel need to be adressed.

1) Pound is a liability. During the same playthrough, I made the mistake of picking pound as a talent. The golem is seriously lacking in intelligence, and is apparently using it willy-nilly on cooldown. This means that he will use it when you're right behind him, smashing your face in the process. Which is especially bad if you also picked Gem Golem and changed his damage type. He will rip you without a second though.

Not only that, but he actually charged Subject Z and started pounding, making the yeek aggro him, and then proceeded to crush its skull in, making me miss the unlock. I have no doubt that, had I not cleared the thieves den earlier, and saved the merchant, he would have killed him with AoE pounding also.

2) Any AoE runes you might put on him are also a liability. He will also use them on CD, with no regard to your safety.

3) On the contrary, it seems that he rarely, if ever, uses Taunt.

4) Teleporation/Phase Door runes are also a liability. He will spam them on cooldown, and would someone make the mistake of using one on it, you'd end up with a very funny teleporting chunk of rock.

5) Not sure if this is intended, but It seems that you can control him yourself to learn Shoot and the Armor category in Last Hope. Which is especially funny, seeing as how I trained him pretty late, and saw that he had 6/5 Heavy Armor and 6/5 Massive Armor. Odd.

6)If the player dies, the control is automatically switched to the golem. While interesting, it's not exactly right, since one can kill the TOME process and then reload the game at the start of the dungeon. On any other character death, the game is saved after the main character dies, but with alchemist the game is saved only after both the golem and the alchemist itself die.

7) The golem seems to have a very large light area (infravision maybe?) that only shows when it's direct controlled. Is that intended? If so, could it be so he gives off a faint amount of light even when not direct controlled? Radius 1, just so we know where the hell it's going whan chasing stuff in the darkness.

Apart from these problems, I have a few pleas, if possible.

*) Some kind of direct order bar, with orders like 'Hold Position', 'Passive/Agressive/Devensive', 'Target X', 'Heel'(Different from the talent, golem would just drop what he was doing/chasing and make its way to the owner.), 'Go to'.

*)A way to prioritize spells/skills/talents/runes, if multiple are off CD at once.

*)A way to completely disable unwanted/unneeded/dangerous runes/talents.

*)A way to order the Golem to use a skill/spell/rune on demand, without switching to direct control. (Perhaps by allowing the owner to bind the golem's skills to their on bindings).

So far, I absolutely love the Golem, but Pound really left me with a bitter taste since it basically ruined that character for me. I just know that he'll pound me once when there archers around wich hill give me holes by the time I'm out of daze.

I'll lead with a plug for this thread: http://forums.te4.org//viewtopic.php?f=36&t=24683

Kats wrote: 1) Pound is a liability. During the same playthrough, I made the mistake of picking pound as a talent. The golem is seriously lacking in intelligence, and is apparently using it willy-nilly on cooldown. This means that he will use it when you're right behind him, smashing your face in the process. Which is especially bad if you also picked Gem Golem and changed his damage type. He will rip you without a second though.

Others can correct me if I am wrong since I am feeling a bit lazy, but I think Pound is actually buggy in beta20. The daze effect is only supposed to be used AFTER an initial rush to the target, and the rush bit was broken.

Not only that, but he actually charged Subject Z and started pounding, making the yeek aggro him, and then proceeded to crush its skull in, making me miss the unlock. I have no doubt that, had I not cleared the thieves den earlier, and saved the merchant, he would have killed him with AoE pounding also.

This hopefully will be avoided with the tactical AI changes as well, since the golem will count the neutral yeek as an ally.

2) Any AoE runes you might put on him are also a liability. He will also use them on CD, with no regard to your safety.

Ditto.

3) On the contrary, it seems that he rarely, if ever, uses Taunt.

Taunt was and is buggy. It uses the "PROTECT" tactical flag which currently is not used in the tactical AI. I am not sure how DG plans to implement it, but I will talk to him about it.

4) Teleporation/Phase Door runes are also a liability. He will spam them on cooldown, and would someone make the mistake of using one on it, you'd end up with a very funny teleporting chunk of rock.

Someone mentioned this on IRC. Is it that the golem is trying to use them even when the runes are on cooldown? Or that the golem uses them in a stupid manner?

5) Not sure if this is intended, but It seems that you can control him yourself to learn Shoot and the Armor category in Last Hope. Which is especially funny, seeing as how I trained him pretty late, and saw that he had 6/5 Heavy Armor and 6/5 Massive Armor. Odd.

Huh, neat!

6)If the player dies, the control is automatically switched to the golem. While interesting, it's not exactly right, since one can kill the TOME process and then reload the game at the start of the dungeon. On any other character death, the game is saved after the main character dies, but with alchemist the game is saved only after both the golem and the alchemist itself die.

Good point. A player only truly dies when everyone in the party dies. I don't know if this should be considered a bug since killing the TOME process is in itself a cheat, and if people want to do it well then they can do it.

7) The golem seems to have a very large light area (infravision maybe?) that only shows when it's direct controlled. Is that intended? If so, could it be so he gives off a faint amount of light even when not direct controlled? Radius 1, just so we know where the hell it's going whan chasing stuff in the darkness.

I've noticed this too, actually with the Yeek's racial power.

*) Some kind of direct order bar, with orders like 'Hold Position', 'Passive/Agressive/Devensive', 'Target X', 'Heel'(Different from the talent, golem would just drop what he was doing/chasing and make its way to the owner.), 'Go to'.

*)A way to prioritize spells/skills/talents/runes, if multiple are off CD at once.

*)A way to completely disable unwanted/unneeded/dangerous runes/talents.

*)A way to order the Golem to use a skill/spell/rune on demand, without switching to direct control. (Perhaps by allowing the owner to bind the golem's skills to their on bindings).

So more fine-tuned control of the golem's tactical AI, ok. I don't know if they will go in, but I have an idea of how to do it.

yufra wrote:

4) Teleporation/Phase Door runes are also a liability. He will spam them on cooldown, and would someone make the mistake of using one on it, you'd end up with a very funny teleporting chunk of rock.

Someone mentioned this on IRC. Is it that the golem is trying to use them even when the runes are on cooldown? Or that the golem uses them in a stupid manner?

He uses them in a stupid manner. Once the CD is over, he will use it as soon as he can, teleporting away from wherever. Note: I tried it only with Phase Door, thus that character was ruined. (Well, ok, I could go scum l1 Rhaloren camp for Iron Weapons, extract gems and replace the rune, but you get my point.)

6)If the player dies, the control is automatically switched to the golem. While interesting, it's not exactly right, since one can kill the TOME process and then reload the game at the start of the dungeon. On any other character death, the game is saved after the main character dies, but with alchemist the game is saved only after both the golem and the alchemist itself die.

Good point. A player only truly dies when everyone in the party dies. I don't know if this should be considered a bug since killing the TOME process is in itself a cheat, and if people want to do it well then they can do it.

It's not the point that I can kill the process. The point is that the game is de facto over once your Alchemist dies. The Golem can't leave dungeons and go to world map, so not ending the game right then is an odd design choice. I Recognize this may be in place for Adventure/Discovery difficulty though. Maybe end the game if the Alchemist dies and has no extra lives, and keep the current functionality otherwise?

Maybe the golem should be able to leave the dungeon and venture around on the world map without an alchemist.

Maybe a simpler solution is for the golem to go inert X turns after his alchemist dies and end the game more gracefully. Though seeing how far you could get with just the golem might be fun.

Kats wrote: He uses them in a stupid manner. Once the CD is over, he will use it as soon as he can, teleporting away from wherever. Note: I tried it only with Phase Door, thus that character was ruined. (Well, ok, I could go scum l1 Rhaloren camp for Iron Weapons, extract gems and replace the rune, but you get my point.)

Thanks for the clarification. I believe I see the problem now and will talk to DG about it. Basically there is no mechanism right now to prefer a normal attack or movement if the NPC is lower than 80% life (when the need_heal variable in the tactical AI becomes non-zero).

Has this been fixed in b21?

Most of these woes have.

The golem is still dark and half of the time I have no clue what he's doing in the darkness.

However, he uses pound responsably, he uses taunt, the priority system seems to be working like a charm, and you can disable his unwanted skills.

Still no 'heel' 'wait' 'go to' commands, but that we'll have to make do with adjusting the leash distance if we want him to heel.

You can still train him in Last Hope, and he still gets 6/5 Heavy Armor. Gemming him grabs your whole stack of gems.

Also, the damage he does seems to be randomly attributed? I know that yellow gems will cause light damage. And reds will do fire damage. And greens nature. Everything else seems rather arbitrary set. White does frost, I don't know what violet does, black seems to do frost too instead of the supposed darkness.

Also, I would like if the damage he does would be split 33%+33%+34% between gem 1, gem 2 and physical. Doesn't seem like much sense that when a hulking rock gemmed with red gems puches your face in, you should just laugh it off if you're dressed in an asbestos suit. But well, that's just a random thing.

I'll go back to playing it now. Whoever wrote the tactical AI code, THANK YOU!

Kats wrote: I'll go back to playing it now. Whoever wrote the tactical AI code, THANK YOU!

DG laid the ground work, so most of the thanks has to go to him.

The golem is still dark and half of the time I have no clue what he's doing in the darkness.

That is an interesting point... maybe we should add a lite equipment slot to golems? That way you can still remove the light and give them an invisibility rune.

Still no 'heel' 'wait' 'go to' commands, but that we'll have to make do with adjusting the leash distance if we want him to heel.

You are right, we decided as a first pass to have heel be done with the leash distance. You can also change the leach anchoring point from you to a point on the ground to do the 'go to' command. If you have suggestions on how to make that clearer please let us know.

Your other points are still good, and should get addressed... when time allows it.

Where are things like the golem equipment slots found if I wanted to mod it? I have an idea about a new talent tree for alchemists that would allow the golem to resize belts and other equipment they cannot currently use, allow them to use tools perhaps grant them additional cats and or talent points.

The player of course has to spend points they could otherwise use for thier own character's build and no matter what the mid to late game will still make the golem look puny.

I am not a coder though in my high school days I had training and practice in older computer languages. that was some time ago. so no I am not a coder. but I can probably slog through it.

I need to know where the golem is defined. What file the template resides in. Where the player's golem is kept; including where the PC talent trees are. At first I will probably not be able to use proper hooks to role play the changes. That would come later.

So anyone who can tell me where the relevant files are would be appreciated.

stormbringer wrote:Where are things like the golem equipment slots found if I wanted to mod it? I have an idea about a new talent tree for alchemists that would allow the golem to resize belts and other equipment they cannot currently use, allow them to use tools perhaps grant them additional cats and or talent points.

The player of course has to spend points they could otherwise use for thier own character's build and no matter what the mid to late game will still make the golem look puny.

I am not a coder though in my high school days I had training and practice in older computer languages. that was some time ago. so no I am not a coder. but I can probably slog through it.

I need to know where the golem is defined. What file the template resides in. Where the player's golem is kept; including where the PC talent trees are. At first I will probably not be able to use proper hooks to role play the changes. That would come later.

So anyone who can tell me where the relevant files are would be appreciated.

data/talents/spells/golemancy.lua, I believe.
Also, nice necro!