Carrier attack pet logic fix

[Archived Post]

Greetings all,

I've checked in a fix for carrier attack pets that does the following:


If the attack pet's primary target cloaks (and the pet is outside of its detection range) it will now attack another enemy target until its primary target comes back out of cloak.
If the attack pet's primary target dies, they should no longer fly toward the respawn location of that target.
Scramble Sensors now affects attack pets.



This fix should arrive on Tribble at the end of next week.

-snix

[Archived Post]

Barring actual buttons and controls to control the targets of the pets, that is an improvement. (Though why do they return to the original target and not just set for the currently target selected by the Cruiser?)

Except maybe the Scramble Sensors thing - you should seriously consider taking back one/some of the Carrier "nerfs" back. The Scramble thing might considerably weaken his offensive abiltities - and possibly his defense, if the pets target the Carrier itself... Hmm.

[Archived Post]

Barring actual buttons and controls to control the targets of the pets, that is an improvement. (Though why do they return to the original target and not just set for the currently target selected by the Cruiser?)

Except maybe the Scramble Sensors thing - you should seriously consider taking back one/some of the Carrier "nerfs" back. The Scramble thing might considerably weaken his offensive abiltities - and possibly his defense, if the pets target the Carrier itself... Hmm.

True

I hope that if the Carrier uses science team on one of its BOP or Duj Fighters that it will remove scramble sensors on all of the BOP and Duj at are deployed at the tiem :)

[Archived Post]

Scramble Sensors now affects attack pets

Great! now fix the issue where you can't clear scramble with sci-team, and add a scramble resistance! :)

[Archived Post]

Greetings all,

I've checked in a fix for carrier attack pets that does the following:


If the attack pet's primary target cloaks (and the pet is outside of its detection range) it will now attack another enemy target until its primary target comes back out of cloak.
If the attack pet's primary target dies, they should no longer fly toward the respawn location of that target.
Scramble Sensors now affects attack pets.



This fix should arrive on Tribble at the end of next week.

-snix

This is helpful, and I appreciate the effort... but, could I also ask for three other things, because Carrier Pets right now are dumber than posts; and while this change will help; it's still going to leave the little guys pretty uhm... less-than-brilliant on most occasions.


1) We really just need some basic button-based controls. Please, please think about adding them, it's the single most irritating part of playing a carrier at present, and it's not even something that can be excused by realism (even in a Star Trek sense.) My preference would be for a space equivalent to the Bridge Officer controls, enabling you to control all flights at once, or each flight individually.

2) Could you get the fighters to smarten up about Warp Core Breaches? Right now they just hang around a defeated enemy unless *immediately* reassigned, Since there's no pet control buttons, if there's not an enemy in visual distance, they'll just explode by standing around the warp core when it goes off. It also just plain looks stupid. (Or at least, makes the pilots look like idiots.)

3) When an enemy target turns Friendly; like during the various Transport Raids done by Gozer, the pets keep attacking the now-friendly ship, and will not change target until it's dead. This isn't as big an issue on some other maps where disabling a ship and then boarding it is part of the mission (though it is annoying if you disable it earlier in the mission and have more fighting to do)... but on the transport raids it makes doing the various bonuses in a carrier near impossible.

Really button based controls would fix the other two as well.

[Archived Post]

This is helpful, and I appreciate the effort... but, could I also ask for three other things, because Carrier Pets right now are dumber than posts; and while this change will help; it's still going to leave the little guys pretty uhm... less-than-brilliant on most occasions.


1) We really just need some basic button-based controls. Please, please think about adding them, it's the single most irritating part of playing a carrier at present, and it's not even something that can be excused by realism (even in a Star Trek sense.) My preference would be for a space equivalent to the Bridge Officer controls, enabling you to control all flights at once, or each flight individually.

Agree. Pets you don't have direct control over, are pretty annoying, frustrating and in my opinion somhow contradictory to a 'pet class'

2) Could you get the fighters to smarten up about Warp Core Breaches? Right now they just hang around a defeated enemy unless *immediately* reassigned, Since there's no pet control buttons, if there's not an enemy in visual distance, they'll just explode by standing around the warp core when it goes off. It also just plain looks stupid. (Or at least, makes the pilots look like idiots.)

This is especially annoying when using energy siphon pods, since they orbit the target at such a close distance that all of them will be destroyed by the targets explosion for sure.
Thus you can absolutly forget about building up stack of them and this is also the reason why they are very rarly beeing used. Besides me trying to find some use for them, I can only remember one encounter where some other guy was using them.

[Archived Post]

I agree that fighters should have controls, I believe that there are discussions with the MVAM problems with the same issue as #2, hopefullly a fix will work for both sides on this.

If basic controls are added #3 should be fixed as well.

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Its a start SNix, but fine control of pets should be the ultimate goal.

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The Devs are never going to learn, people have been asking for pet controls since beta. You even have Federation players asking for Pet controls, that means you should now make that a priority.

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Well, this little tidbit of CaptainGeko has me more optimistic then Serpieri. But then, who isn't? :p

Source: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3415416&postcount=527


Great ideas about A.I. controls, or equipping your pets with item, but that is beyond the scope of this feature. The MVAM will not be getting these with its initial release. Better space pet controls - like BOff controls - is something we hope to get to space pets sometime in the future.



Of course "hope to get" is not "scheduled for season 4", but at least they have acknowledged the need and expressed the desire to do it. Can't come soon enough, right?

[Archived Post]

Of course "hope to get" is not "scheduled for season 4",

With a "hope to get" and "in the future" on that post, I'd translate it to:

"We may eventually get to do this, when the day comes that we can't think of anything else to do. Presuming the engine allows it and that we haven't forgotten it by that time. Do not hope for anything before season 10"

:D

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to me it seems more of..."I'm sorry we cant hear you over the sound of hoe awsome we are!" Season 4 with better pet controls would be amazing but im not going to hold my breath.

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I would be happy with somewhat simple commands for pets like;

Agressive , Passive, Defensive commands and the ability to allow me to set their targets as groups or individuals.

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all we can do at this point is hope and pray.

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.. and try the latest Tribble build. It is supposed to contain the changes snix mentions above.

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Woah hold your horses snix! We ask for better pet control & now you want to make them confusable by SS? Do you even listen? MORE control, not less.

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I'm happy that SS will confuse pets, my immediate concern is that this will make even MORE people run SS...

I'd be relived if ST would always clear SS from self.

I'd be happy if I also got a 30sec immunity after every time I was scrambled.

(And I feel I have more or less confirmed over the weekend that ST jumps away even when I'm only hit with SS1 or 2.)

[Archived Post]

I'm happy that SS will confuse pets, my immediate concern is that this will make even MORE people run SS...

I'd be relived if ST would always clear SS from self.

I'd be happy if I also got a 30sec immunity after every time I was scrambled.

(And I feel I have more or less confirmed over the weekend that ST jumps away even when I'm only hit with SS1 or 2.)

yes, i second that. If there is no SS cure for pets they should gain a ss immunity for a certain amount of time.

[Archived Post]

I would be happy with somewhat simple commands for pets like;

Agressive , Passive, Defensive commands and the ability to allow me to set their targets as groups or individuals.

That's your idea of simple pet commands?

Simple pet commands would be attack and disengage...

And these 2 are pretty much all we need.

[Archived Post]

I'm happy that SS will confuse pets, my immediate concern is that this will make even MORE people run SS...

I'd be relived if ST would always clear SS from self.

I'd be happy if I also got a 30sec immunity after every time I was scrambled.

(And I feel I have more or less confirmed over the weekend that ST jumps away even when I'm only hit with SS1 or 2.)

It's gonna be yet another one of those "must have" skills Cryptic is so fond of.

They claim they aren't, but come on, they wouldn't do things like that if not...

[Archived Post]

That's your idea of simple pet commands?

Simple pet commands would be attack and disengage...

And these 2 are pretty much all we need.

Pet Attack Target "x" - pet or pets run off and attack target "x"
Pet Passive Stance - pet or pets take a passive stance near player
Pet Defend Target "x"- pet or pets follow and defend target "x"

Yeah thats my idea for simple pet commands. Basically the carry over of the BOff ground commands used at this time.

[Archived Post]

Pet Attack Target "x" - pet or pets run off and attack target "x"
Pet Passive Stance - pet or pets take a passive stance near player
Pet Defend Target "x"- pet or pets follow and defend target "x"

Yeah thats my idea for simple pet commands. Basically the carry over of the BOff ground commands used at this time.

While I do agree with your idea for the sake of "logic-fix" (similar to the recent "pet logic-fix") i do not think that cryptic would want that. The Reason would be that this ability allows the carrier-captain to summon a full armada of pets before engagement. As the situation is right now, carriers (ironically) have to run away from their own pets, in order to keep them in play.

[Archived Post]

While I do agree with your idea for the sake of "logic-fix" (similar to the recent "pet logic-fix") i do not think that cryptic would want that. The Reason would be that this ability allows the carrier-captain to summon a full armada of pets before engagement. As the situation is right now, carriers (ironically) have to run away from their own pets, in order to keep them in play.

Pets would have to be limited to a certain number per pet type in play at any one time in order for fine control aspects to be brought into game.
Thus (like a MM from CoH) the Carrier could summon say for example 6 fighters and 3 BoPs before combat and only have to resummon them when they are dead as resummoning them recreates the whole wing of ships not just those that died.
From this point the Carrier could assign targets or give commands as they see fit.
No more waves of spam
Of course the pets would have to be more like BOffs in that they would need a buff to stats to make them more effective.

[Archived Post]

i do like this idea, however... can I trade 6 fighters for 2 bops? :D

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I would think that the pets would have to be designed in Wings, with "x" amount in each wing.
So one could still have an all fighter carrier, an all BoP carrier or a mixture of whatever.

[Archived Post]

Pet Attack Target "x" - pet or pets run off and attack target "x"
Pet Passive Stance - pet or pets take a passive stance near player
Pet Defend Target "x"- pet or pets follow and defend target "x"

Yeah thats my idea for simple pet commands. Basically the carry over of the BOff ground commands used at this time.

Well, a pet defend target command would defeat almost the entire system we have now with pets despawning when combat ends (not that i'd mind that as its a really really stupid solution to a nonexistent problem). I suppose they could return anyway but it seems like a pretty awkward way of doing it.

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Well, a pet defend target command would defeat almost the entire system we have now with pets despawning when combat ends (not that i'd mind that as its a really really stupid solution to a nonexistent problem). I suppose they could return anyway but it seems like a pretty awkward way of doing it.

i was assuming that we were talking about carrier,MVAM and Gal-R Pets, not photonic fleet or fleet support.

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i was assuming that we were talking about carrier,MVAM and Gal-R Pets, not photonic fleet or fleet support.

We are, carrier pets DO despawn when combat ends just like photonic fleet and fleet support..

Or well, not properly despawning, they return to the carrier and "dock" when combat ends and there's nothing you can do to prevent it other then keeping far enough away from them. Which means full impulse as they are faster then the carrier even with the "speed" setting.

So you can't have any pets other then the shield heal pets out permanently.

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So you can't have any pets other then the shield heal pets out permanently.
Why don't they despawn after combat? I guess that's a bug that Cryptic will Ninjafix err... bring to a new level of... err... sorry it's not a bug it's a feature!
Or in other words we could let every pet orbit your carrier but then the majority of thos cashcows err FEDs will QQ so we decided to disgrace you in letting the least useable pet orbit your ship while everything else just despawns.:p

[Archived Post]

They don't despawn because they are not combat pets. :)

Having them out permanently doesn't do a thing either way for the carrier.

[Archived Post]

I'm happy that SS will confuse pets, my immediate concern is that this will make even MORE people run SS...



Hahah no kiddin g. PvP will become "SS and B:FaW v P"

[Archived Post]

Greetings all,

I've checked in a fix for carrier attack pets that does the following:


If the attack pet's primary target cloaks (and the pet is outside of its detection range) it will now attack another enemy target until its primary target comes back out of cloak.
If the attack pet's primary target dies, they should no longer fly toward the respawn location of that target.
Scramble Sensors now affects attack pets.



This fix should arrive on Tribble at the end of next week.

-snix

I know this isnt Carrier Related, but Theoretically, couldnt Scramble Sensors also Affect the Attack Pets gained from MVAM on the Fed Escort?

[Archived Post]

Yes they do :)

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So am I to understand that Carrier pets only "dock" because Feds use Photonic fleet all the time and use way too many mines, so that the few fighters or BoP's a carrier drags along cause to much lag?:rolleyes:
Good that this was explained to me. :)

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So am I to understand that Carrier pets only "dock" because Feds use Photonic fleet all the time and use way too many mines, so that the few fighters or BoP's a carrier drags along cause to much lag?:rolleyes:
Good that this was explained to me. :)

Wait...now I am confused.....we are having our pets dock now when a fed uses photonic fleet? That's a bunch of crud...

[Archived Post]

So am I to understand that Carrier pets only "dock" because Feds use Photonic fleet all the time and use way too many mines, so that the few fighters or BoP's a carrier drags along cause to much lag?:rolleyes:
Good that this was explained to me. :)

Even playing solo pve with a carrier or using scorpion fighters, they will dock with your ship after combat unless you keep outrunning them. This has been a bad mechanic ever since it was implemented since you have no control over your fighters deciding to dock just before a new fight, and creates the silly system of having people constantly running away from their fighters.

The other problems right now are the fact that fighters will stupidly stay next to a warp core breach and that sci team doesn't get rid of SS.

All of these things need fixing to make playing with carriers or fighters fun.

I thought snix didn't work for Cryptic anymore, did he come back or did he never leave?

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Huh, was this thread somehow "necroed" by the forum merges?
I was surprised that not only was snix had a recent post in the Dev Tracker, that he was still checking stuff in, and that I already replied to it, all happening today!