Sliding NPC/AI difficulty based on player profile

Development directions, tasks, and features being actively implemented or pursued by the development team.
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greenfreedom10
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Sliding NPC/AI difficulty based on player profile

Post by greenfreedom10 »

Starting at this post:
greenfreedom10 wrote:I don't care for the idea of adjusting AI equipment/abilities based on player profile, if that is still true in VegaStrike.
(More specifically, based on total credits earned in the campaign.)
travists wrote:YES!! Start the player in a safer place, but do NOT have a sliding NPC difficulty! That's a big plus to realism too. It's a rough galaxy out there, if you overreach you die.
Deus Siddis wrote:I'd recommend starting a new topic on the subject, focused on finding out if this feature is still active, and if so, putting forward that it needs to be removed. Such is (or was) a very contrived and actually imbalancing game mechanic.
So here is the new thread. Comments about removing sliding NPC difficulty and actual game code are welcome.
Deus Siddis
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Re: Sliding NPC/AI difficulty based on player profile

Post by Deus Siddis »

So does anyone know if the game throws tougher enemies or missions at players with more credits or any other in game criteria (besides player-faction relations)?

Or is this kind of thing only influenced by the difficulty preset in the offline VS setup program?
klauss
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Re: Sliding NPC/AI difficulty based on player profile

Post by klauss »

As you earn credits, the game spawns tougher units - at least from the code I skimmed over in random_encounters.py
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Deus Siddis
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Re: Sliding NPC/AI difficulty based on player profile

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote:As you earn credits, the game spawns tougher units - at least from the code I skimmed over in random_encounters.py
Are you sure random_encounters.py handles any player credits code? I had skimmed through it myself but didn't notice anything credits related.

The other question is if random_encounters.py is mostly or entirely unused by modern VS. It might be the code that, back in the 0.4.3 days, would randomly and suddenly spawn a clydesdale a few hundred meters in front of you as you approached a jump point. I thought that code was deactivated when 0.5.0 added greater natural traffic to systems (instead of trying to artificially make them look filled out with proximity-triggered "random encounter" spawns).

If that is the case, then only mission-triggered encounters are still used by the game; random_encounters.py is a deprecated module.
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Re: Sliding NPC/AI difficulty based on player profile

Post by klauss »

Ya, I meant I started from random_encounters, following the links ;)

I think the links took me through fg_util, faction_ships, dynamic_universe and whatnot.
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Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
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