Machine AI (post december '20 update)

To your accord, to be directed into environmental damage dealer and after blowing up, crediting the player for the kill.

Why do they need direction for that?

So that they can walk into it? :thinking:

But since they do that on their own…?

And when they are doing that on their own, player hasn’t contributed to the killing of a machine and thus, should not be credited for a machine kill. E.g when machine walks into water. Or when ticks run in the AoE area of tank’s rockets.

Well “should not be” might actually be “are”, unless you have some actual proof?

I wasn’t the one who asked to get credited for the machine kills if machine dies on it’s own.

As far as proof goes, well:

Whomever is claiming something to be true, ("I got credit ") would also need to provide proof. :thinking:

You had no problem with that before, why bring it up now? I guess because you are talking about how the game “should” be, and I’m trying to figure out how the game “actually” is.

Nice deflect. Failed though.

It still isn’t a problem for me. However, i wasn’t the one who asked for an “actual proof”. :roll_eyes:

It seems you got it vice-versa. I was talking how the game currently is, while you asked for a change in game, what it should be. E.g get credit for kills when you’ve damaged the machine, but not killing it. Instead, when damaged machine dies on it’s own, you still get credit for it’s destruction. ← This isn’t part of the game.

No I didn’t. Remember this conversation started from the ballistics discussion where people have impossible ranges on their kill shot, and one of the theories I proposed could be that machines injured by a player vent and got killed by the environment and thus crediting the player the kill while the player was very far away.

Its not implausible that the current game actually IS (wrongly) crediting players for kills they should not have. Hence if you want to go against that, you actually have to provide some proof.

Remember, to actually shoot a theory down you need proof.

I remember that.

Though, for theory to be credible, it would also require supporting evidence. Without evidence to support it or deny it, it just remains as a simple thought.

Latter i’m fine with since players can do little, if any, to get supporting or denying evidence for it. Only devs, having access to in-game telemetry, can tell if it’s true or not.

The base evidence for this proposed theory is the recorded lengths of the killshots, which are there, which we have seen.

Hence, not saying that this is necessarily the explanation for them.

Maybe you need to think more about what you are actually arguing about in the future.

This is a good collection thread I think. I will write down my thoughts below and then raise it to the Devs directly. If you have any separate threads about this, please link to them in this thread.

We all know that April update last year made machines extremely deadly with more aggression, better aim and shorter cooldowns. After a couple of months, devs changed that back a LOT and now, to many players, it feels like it’s too easy.
“Adventure” difficulty is fine. It’s supposed to be easy and I personally am very content with its difficulty. But I think the higher difficulties, especially Guerrilla should not only make machines bullet-spongier, but also make them more intelligent. shorten the time they need to take aim. make them attack simultaneously instead of taking turns like they currently do. make rockets fly faster (here, I’m mainly talking about Rocket Runner’s rockets. they are super easy to dodge, which is fine on Adventure, but not adequate on Guerrilla).
There is also an issue with Tanks only firing 2 rockets instead of the barrages they used to do, but I think that is more of a bug than a balance issue.
The main problem I think people have with that is that there’s a LOT of unused potential concerning the “learning curve” in combat. By making machines simply tankier, you make combat success reliant on the weapons used and the knowledge of which components to hit.
I would like that learning curve to also affect how you behave in combat, depending on how many machines there are, which types, and which class. Making you think differently in every situation.
And also making you sweat a bit more if you’re a hardcore player who is playing on Guerrilla.

Yea I have noticed this to man and I mentioned a bit in my rival ai update idea

If April’20 would come - I’ll vote for all it’s worth and my body ready.
Shooting 2 rockets is certainly bug, since timing correlates with certain routines that check awareness and “behaviour playlist”. Under certain circumstances, you can make tank to shoot two bullets from MG (i’s hard to reproduce, but I had few cases).

Here are few:

  1. PLEASE add April 2020 Difficulty as an option in the future
  2. Are TANKS to easy?

And:

And:

My mockery of Tank’s AI.
2x FNIX Tanks:

Reaper, same trick:

I also add on that smoke in combat works on tanks just fine, somewhat affect harvesters too, but it’s less practical since hunters and hounds are ignore smoke cloud and target player equally with or without it.

In stealth mode (in most cases even in “searching” state) it helps to move around most machines. Can’t say for sure about static Ticks and Seekers, since deploying smoke in these cases I deem impractical.

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The aggro of larger (tank & harvester) and smaller machines (runner & hunter) is not consistent. While the smaller machines usually hunt you till the end of the map, tanks and harvesters need to be aggroed all the time. If you wait for more then 3-4 seconds, tanks and harvester usually loose aggro on you (when there is no seeker nearby holding the aggro).

In addition I had a tank once who lost all aggro although I was shooting him constantly. He just wandered around and swallowed the bullets.

My suggestion is to have the aggro of runners and hunters applied to tanks and harvesters making them more persistent in fighting the puny human.

I’ve noticed the same thing and it started with the Resistance update. :face_with_monocle: Even on Guerilla, tanks doesn’t seem to be interested in me more than 5 seconds before wandering off. And to keep tank interested, i have to keep shooting at it.

Pre-Resistance update, it was very difficult to break combat with a tank and fastest way (other than killing it), was to outrun it. You could wait it out as well but it took a long time before tank lost interest in you (e.g when you were hiding somewhere).

Not the fastest, but safest way for me was and still is “smoke-and-mirrors” trick. I aggro tank on smoke cloud and sneaked away without getting into it’s sight. Worked reliably then and now.

Edit: next compilation contain old (Fall '20) footage, that still relevant (as in “I did similar stunts on latest patch”) -

  • hunters ignore smoke;
  • rapid-fire harvesters on fireworks;
  • breaking behaviour algorytm on hunters (visual), that shows on concussion rifle laser sigth still enabled when it’s not supposed to and incosistencies where laser pointed and where it is aiming in reality.

… also some fireworks and waltzing AI-breaking shenanigans.

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