69 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

This said, the AI issue is far from unsolvable. In fact I think some of the issues rest in a very limited decision making tree in sandbox environments. If these maps were hand made then scripted points could be used to direct them. In fact I think that's what happened when the two got caught on the same path node and began copying each other. If the decision tree were expanded upon, basically anyone with the time and knowhow could easily make these mechs quite a bit more...capable. The issue I see is that PGI isn't big enough to put that kind of work into it. They have more art teams and the like and most of their programming budget likely went into the procedural generation.

Which I must say I am impressed with it. The only complaints I have is that water is just a texture and nothing more (seriously water doesn't exist beyond a texture) and I once saw boulders shift into a strikingly different arrangement when I got closer.

Anyway, overall one way to cheat is to have a command AI direct them like an RTS. Each AI actor in the field (mech, vehicle, etc) is much like HBS Battletech's AI, each one is only thinking of itself and what's best for it. Even then, perhaps they're not really thinking of what's best for itself or they're artificially limited as they seem to cycle between opportune hitboxes and play by certain rules to keep them from being too deadly in large numbers. The point is they do not seem to recognize each other as anything more than obstacles to avoid (and friendly AI doesn't even do that as evidenced by Centurions sharing the path node while trying to drive into each other and copy each other). Ultimately though they don't have to, as a command AI would be able to orchestrate their coordination while the individual AIs balance that with their own desires.

As an example of their own desires, I had a situation where I was standing inside of a building that was destroyed (the smaller kind you can walk through). In a certain spot the single enemy in front of me suddenly lost interest in me and started to leave. I shot him which caused him to react, turn toward the shot...and immediately lose interest the instant he faced me. Repeated this a few times. Left my spot and instantly I became interesting enough to start lobbing LRMs and AC fire my way.

What I think was happening is when the AI lost me as a target, he defaulted to his next desire which is to engage the objective (base defense mission). But by this point, I had lured him over a thousand meters away so the AI just appeared to not want to play with me anymore. So on a priority list for this specific actor (Unreal Engine calls anything that can move and react an actor), the player came before the objective. In others, the objective comes first until aggressed upon by the player or player's AI companion.

Edited by Koniving, 27 November 2019 - 05:49 PM.

[Dee Eight]

Koniving, on 27 November 2019 - 12:51 PM, said:

Mine was 48.6 gigabytes.

Also, considering it's 2 weeks before the main game and the features were locked 3 months ago...
even as a dumbed down version, the full base game, mech classes and AI script is already here...

Its a 20.2 gb download but the files unpack to the larger size during the installation.

[LordNothing]

graphics - yay
gameplay - yay
ai - meh
controls - fix the damn joysticks, no head tracking
music - yay
sound - yay
physics - yay
maps - yay (port them to mwo)

of course its hard to say nice things when your joystick doesnt work and you cant even play the game after spending an hour making a joystick profile.

Edited by LordNothing, 27 November 2019 - 10:06 PM.

[FRAGTAST1C]

LordNothing, on 27 November 2019 - 10:03 PM, said:

of course its hard to say nice things when your joystick doesnt work and you cant even play the game after spending an hour making a joystick profile.

Just use the mouse+keyboard combo like normal human beings

Anyway, I thought you found a work-around to your problem. Did it not fix it properly? I have an urge to buy a nice HOTAS system for this game and for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw soon.

[General Solo]

So I guess your first battletech video game experience wasn't in one of these



Played dem at Intensity Parramatta NSW Australia
Didn't even have a computa then.
(Pics are of Battlemech pods but not from Intensity)

Your radar and weapons had their own monitors



These didn't come with mouse and keyboard, pff
Only sweet HOTA$$.

Edited by OZHomerOZ, 27 November 2019 - 10:30 PM.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Nope, my first joystick experience (cue rude joke) was with Jane's Combat Simulations : USAF and then with Starlancer. There was an arcade near my place that had a nice simulator but the game was bad and I've completely forgotten about it.

Edit: I must also mention that I've played Heavy Gear games, especially Heavy Gear 2 back in the day, purely with a joystick.

Edited by FRAGTAST1C, 27 November 2019 - 10:42 PM.

[RickySpanish]

OZHomerOZ, on 27 November 2019 - 10:27 PM, said:

So I guess your first battletech video game experience wasn't in one of these



Played dem at Intensity Parramatta NSW Australia
Didn't even have a computa then.
(Pics are of Battlemech pods but not from Intensity)

Your radar and weapons had their own monitors



These didn't come with mouse and keyboard, pff
Only sweet HOTA$$.

Looks like the pilot in the left hand pod didn't make it.

[LordNothing]

FRAGTAST1C, on 27 November 2019 - 10:16 PM, said:

Just use the mouse+keyboard combo like normal human beings

Anyway, I thought you found a work-around to your problem. Did it not fix it properly? I have an urge to buy a nice HOTAS system for this game and for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw soon.

thats console peasant thinking. only console peasants get forced into standard controls. pc master race doesn't, at least until they start using mouse and keyboard for everything and denouncing joysticks at every juncture. or greedy software companies decide they want to make hardware and then write bad software to force you to buy their hardware.

my fix does work, its a pain in the *** to setup and you have to run the wrapper every time you play the game. then you have 2 sets of mappings to worry about. but it does work.

Edited by LordNothing, 27 November 2019 - 11:44 PM.

[FRAGTAST1C]

LordNothing, on 27 November 2019 - 11:42 PM, said:

my fix does work, its a pain in the *** to setup and you have to run the wrapper every time you play the game. then you have 2 sets of mappings to worry about. but it does work.

Sounds like DSFix for Dark Souls. I might pick up a HOTAS system later then.

[Vellron2005]

Finally a comprehensive review of the beta.

I like how detailed the OP did.. he made some good points.

I have not tried the beta myself yet, but am looking forward to it.

[Odanan]

CFC Conky, on 27 November 2019 - 11:53 AM, said:

Ummmm, cuz it’s a beta?

I hope it's an old build, because they can't do much in 2 weeks...

[LowSubmarino]

I was kinda shocked when I saw the initial gameplay trailers. Visuals did look good but the ai was abysmal. Ai never seems to focus fire and tumbles about aimlessly.

If the ai is below a certain leven it completly kills a single player game ss suspension of disbelief is impossible even for brief moments. It kills immersion if the ai is completly dumb. Couldnt care less whether its a steam or epic release. Not one secondbdidnI ever waste on such thoughts. What I immediately worried about was:

The ai looks like trash.

I mean...even if you got human players but the skill difference is too vast, then itll kill most of the fun even if you play with human players. Even the most inexperienced mwo newbies that **** down every second alpha looked vastly more competent than the mw5 alpha. They should have prioritized that. What thread starter said was exactly what I immediately thought just by watching the gameplay trailers.

Ai pilots pilot these überexpensive warmachines but run around aimlessly. Not surprised players can dominate missions with just one light mech. The ai is braindead.

[Sol Lunari]

As a long time player of Mechwarrior Online, I've found the lack of ready pips on the reticle for weapon groups to be almost infuriating. Pretty terrible design choice, if those are not to be in the full release.

[Jyi]

Koniving, on 27 November 2019 - 05:30 PM, said:

They are also seemingly very UNaware of each other. With a team of two Centurions armed with different weapon variants, they got into a situation where the damaged one appeared to be using the healthier one as a shield. I was actually pretty impressed at first. Then I realize what's going on is both of them are trying to follow a similar if not identical path node around some complex geometry, and since both of them are trying to use it and shoot the same enemy, they formed a double rail in which the rear weaker Centurion could shoot the arm gun around the other one... but while that looked awesome and intended, it'd also use the lasers and SRMs into the other's back...killing it after the third time where I get some comment about taking too much damage and ejecting. Ultimately the two Centurions were basically copying each other right down to the order of their fire.

This is my experience too. I did the assassination mission solo in a Jenner (not stock, but almost) and the first target just died when I was evading behind a rock. I wondered if I had somehow triggered an ammo explosion, but how could have I when I hadn't even gotten through the armor yet. Then I saw a tank with 4 AC5's curve around the corner and figured it had shot the assassination target in the back.

The AI is literally so dumb it tries to abort itself.

edit: Did the assassination mission again just to test it. I took a KGC with dualgauss and ppc and sat back on top of the hill. The AI just funneled towards me one or two tanks at a time, while the Thunderbolt stayed back. I made sure to not shoot at the Locust even once. It took me about 20 seconds to kill the Thunderbolt by coring it, and I could've probably headshotted it from up the hill if I had made an effort.

Once I had finished off any straggling tanks nibbling at my knees, I took a look at the Locust. It was cored yellow from behind and orange from the front. I didn't finish it off, and when I moved on, the Locust didn't even bother following me. I guess it decided to stay and forever guard the corpse of the friend it had so miserably failed to protect.

The second Locust you encounter in the mission ran into a building and got slowed down, so I doublegaussed it in the face. R.I.P.

The third mech I encountered was the Shadow Hawk. I shot at it a couple times. Then it ran into a building, and died without me even shooting at it. Once again. I'm not sure what happened.

The Awesome has such a huge head that I just headshotted it (took me a couple tries from up the hill, though). Even with the PPC's constant disruption effect, there doesn't seem to be any kind of effect on accuracy, so as long as you line your weapons between PPC hits, they don't seem to matter. The disruption effect looks cool, but doesn't seem to serve any kind of real purpose.

The last mech in the map, the Archer, is also quite easy to headshot.

Edited by Jyi, 28 November 2019 - 12:03 PM.

[Koniving]

So first and foremost, the most important thing that someone needs to mod...
is AI awareness of each other.
Even Unreal 2k4's bots were at least aware of each other's existence when it came to firing at enemies in the presence of friendlies. It's a simple "do not fire" rule when a friend is in the way.

The game has it (to deliberately limited capacity) when a building is in the way. So it isn't difficult to do.

Awareness of each other in a simple "if friendly is in the way do not fire" or make it interesting. If attacked by friendly, engage (good AI clause to have around pirates, the Turok games 1 and 2 on the N64 had that clause where if they were attacked by friendly fire of another enemy type [human and raptor, alien and ancient, etc.] they would engage each other).

[Jyi]

Sol Lunari, on 28 November 2019 - 05:58 AM, said:

As a long time player of Mechwarrior Online, I've found the lack of ready pips on the reticle for weapon groups to be almost infuriating. Pretty terrible design choice, if those are not to be in the full release.

There are no kind of reticle ready pips in MW5. Absolutely none.

[Stone Wall]

It's almost like a slap in the face for so many people to call it a Beta within 2 weeks of releasing.

[Ilfi]

Stone Wall, on 28 November 2019 - 03:30 PM, said:

It's almost like a slap in the face for so many people to call it a Beta within 2 weeks of releasing.

It's not even an online product, so it's not like we can pretend it's an open beta stress test. It's a demo, and a rather disappointing one at that. Core functionality is missing.

Honestly, I've had the biggest itch to just get MechWarrior 4 and MechWarrior 3 working again on my Windows 10 desktop rig; only reason I haven't given it a shot is because I know the multiplayer is going to be a ghost land in both of them. Ah well.

[thievingmagpi]

minimum viable product

[Mystere]

FRAGTAST1C, on 27 November 2019 - 10:16 PM, said:

Just use the mouse+keyboard combo like normal human beings

Some people are not "just normal".