Followers behavior suggestion
issueid=2127 04-23-2013 09:57 AM
Junior Member
Number of reported issues by vancheng: 1
Followers behavior suggestion
pointing on some awkward followers behavior and suggesting some stuff about followers, and about undead minions particularly

Currently if PC turns the corner and losts the sight of his follower, the last one can easily path another direction instead of following the PC's path.

Sometimes it results in awkward situations of loosing your follower in one of Terrinyo houses, for an instance. This forces player to return back in order to find his follower, spending time, wich may be critical in dungeons with high monster generation ratio.

On other side in order to avoid this, player with high movement speed have to frequently pause his movement (5), that feels very boring .

Even more, while using "w" command player can easily loose his companions sight, and again will be forced to come back in order to find him. This makes "w" command very uncomfortable for PC with followers.
It doesnt break game by any means, but anyway, all this stuff seem redundant, awkward and sometimes frustrating.

Suggestion: i see few ways of working this out (one of theese, or all of them)
1) enchance followers movement speed to match that's of player.
PC may be toggled to reduce his/her movement speed to match a target or default slowest companion's movement speed (by Stingray1)
2) make followers intellegent enough to follow PC even without seeing him, instead of random roaming.
3) make special command to call follower from afar. The follower will then path right to PC instead of making weird lapses in the empty room.

Implementing all 3 changes will make followers more appeal to play with (bards and necromancers rejoice!)

Talking about companions AI, i also want to mention some illogical behavior in concern of attaking PC foes. Sometimes followers just stand idle for a long period (2-5 turns) while you are fighting. I dont know if this is a bug. But, while it is 'ok' for some random companions of PC who doesn specialize in followers, this is such a fail for bards and etc (please put it into discussion if you dislike it too).
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______

As additional feature, I want to discuss special necromant puppets suggestion:

Unlike other followers, risen dead are fully controlled by their master. They are constantly somehow connected with him. So, this make no sence that necromancer cannot assign orders to his servants, which he cant see at the moment. Yes, he is out of sight. But they still connected! Is this really necessary for necromancer to speak or gesture orders to his servants? I think it all should happen mentally.

Suggestion:
1) make undead followers to share vision with necromancer while on the same level (perhaps the follower shouldnt be too far from his master, more than 5 or 6 sqares and he will loose share vision)
2) Also I think undead minions cant just loose their master. They feel him. So they will always follow him if other wasn't ordered.
3) Unlike other followers (dogs wolfs etc.) which like to roam around PC (while PC is holding position for example), undead servants have no interest in surroundings and thus dont have to move if they stand near their master. Currently they behaive much like alive followers with their own will and hobbies =)

Hope you will like this! Sorry for my bad english, Cheers!
Issue Details
Issue Number 2127
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Suggested
Priority 5 - Medium
Suggested Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 13
Implemented Version (none)
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 1
Votes against this feature 0
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




04-23-2013 10:29 AM
Joe Joe is offline
Senior Member
I like the UD slave suggestions very much!

04-23-2013 10:35 AM
Ancient Member
I don't think it's a good idea to make followers match PC's speed. For once you can have very powerful followers, like greater molochs, which by definition trade their speed for might. Making them go as fast as PC would be OP I think.
Secondly, you can speed up followers with potions of quickling blood permanently. Of course, those potions are probably the rarest of all in the game, granted I often complete 5 games and not find a single one.
Still, 10 of those would be enough to speed up any follower to such extent that they will catch up with an average PC.
Any PC that is faster than that pays for the advantage of speed by not having followers, or making/obtaining ones that are as fast or faster than the PC -> Necro, Bard. The price is high but the payoff is also high.
Neither Necro nor Bard risk having their followers turn against them due to rare occurrence of "you feel a sudden change of mind in a being close to you", which happens to me pretty much every time I use SoFS pet.
Hence, I'm against the first idea.

The suggestion about Necro controlling his slaves is good though, I agree with you.

04-23-2013 10:44 AM
Junior Member
Thank you, Joe! I really worried about problems I described in first part. Am I alone who troubled with followers being dumb a little?)
And UD changes will add nice touch to the game atmosphere.

04-23-2013 10:48 AM
Junior Member
Blasphemous, you opened my eyes on it, I agree that it can be imbalanced at some point (maybe i should remove it), but what about other points, are they valid in your opinion?

2) make followers intellegent enough to follow PC even without seeing him, instead of random roaming.
3) make special command to call follower from afar. The follower will then path right to PC instead of making weird lapses in the empty room.

04-23-2013 10:50 AM
Ancient Member
As I've stated in the older RFE ( http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=1617) with some similar suggestions, at most the PC may be toggled to reduce his/her movement speed to match a target or default slowest companion's movement speed.

04-23-2013 11:07 AM
Junior Member
Stingray1, while this is a good suggestion (thank you btw =] ), followers still can be quite annoying when turning corners out of their line of sight. Center point of my thread is not about adjasting speed, but about tunning AI up a little or doing smthing, to make pets more newbie friendly. Matching speed was just one of other suggestions (I think I will remove this point eventually)

What do u think about other points?

04-23-2013 11:19 AM
Ancient Member
I understand exactly what you are referring to and I agree it is annoying. I agree that the companion should have some intellect regarding that its master just went around the corner.

I would hate however for companions to track to a PC that is many rooms distant, hence my suggestion of rather reducing the PC's speed will reduce problems wrt slower companions.

How many slaves can a PC have in p13, with a recent bard it seemed I wasn't able to have more than 2.

My appologies, I am on my BB, but will add some when at home.

04-23-2013 11:27 AM
Junior Member
I would hate however for companions to track to a PC that is many rooms distant, hence my suggestion of rather reducing the PC's speed will reduce problems wrt slower companions.
Tottally agreed, we dont need pets to behave like they are the prophets. As with my undead sugestion, 5 or 6 sqares of 'anchorish' unmistakable following should be enough. Farther then this, pet still can be lost, this is fair enough.

Would you mind if I add your suggestion instead of my 1) point, cause I really fell it is more suitable and balance-saving change?

Also maybe I should point at head post that followers sometimes doesn't automatically attack enemy who attacked you. This is kinda sick when your faithfull dog wathing your fighting without taking action or panicing (this is happening to me pretty often).

04-23-2013 01:39 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by vancheng
Would you mind if I add your suggestion instead of my 1) point, cause I really fell it is more suitable and balance-saving change?

Also maybe I should point at head post that followers sometimes doesn't automatically attack enemy who attacked you. This is kinda sick when your faithfull dog wathing your fighting without taking action or panicing (this is happening to me pretty often).
Be my guest. Maybe its best if you [/Strike] yours and add mine.

I think what might be happening is your pet is trying to get to the first monster that attacked you, but it has since swapped out with another monster. With the result that it seems to just stand there watching you fight. Ordering it usually fixes this temporarily.

The puppy has a way of following the PC properly, maybe some of its following characteristics can be added to other companions.

04-23-2013 05:11 PM
Junior Member
I think what might be happening is your pet is trying to get to the first monster that attacked you, but it has since swapped out with another monster
Nothing special preceded this behavior. Maybe I should report it as a bug at some point.

Added discussion result to the thread post. Hopefully this thread will be reviewed by someone from stuff members. Companions AI seems pretty lackluster atm.

04-24-2013 09:56 AM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Blasphemous
Any PC that is faster than that pays for the advantage of speed by not having followers, or making/obtaining ones that are as fast or faster than the PC -> Necro, Bard. The price is high but the payoff is also high.
Choices and tradeoffs in games are great, but UI limitations shouldn't be part of those tradeoffs.

If I leave my greater read wyrm ally behind, it's likely not because I don't want to pay the price of having the PC move a bit slower. It's almost always because I don't want to pay the price of having me, the player, not being able to use the handy w+<direction>, having to press 5 to wait often, checking that the ally is following me after going round a corner, etc. In summary, the main deterrent to using pets is real world time, not game world time, and that's what's not right.

I agree having the speed of allies match the player's speed would be unbalanced, but I think Stingray1's solution of letting the PC optionally slow himself to the movement speed of his allies makes sense.

04-24-2013 01:25 PM
Ancient Member
Having the PC slow himself to the speed of his allies is kind of crazy and I don't know why anyone would use it. A much better solution would be to automatically have the ally's speed/energy cost for movement match the player's when they are specifically instructed to follow him if it's less than the player's (and until they digress to another command on purpose/of their own free will, like attacking something).

04-25-2013 09:48 AM
Junior Member
Having the PC slow himself to the speed of his allies is kind of crazy and I don't know why anyone would use it. A much better solution would be to automatically have the ally's speed/energy cost for movement match the player's when they are specifically instructed to follow him if it's less than the player's (and until they digress to another command on purpose/of their own free will, like attacking something).
This is pretty nice desicion to give companion bonus speed while not in battle. But as far as I know there is no check in adom like 'is this creature in battle?'. Maybe it is worth to add some class bonuses for necro and bards, so their companion would be faster? (thought I dont like this idea by myself, just shared)

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