Excalibur Umbra AI

[Goelandz]

Introduction

Excalibur Umbra is a unique frame that make you able to play in conjunction with your operator. The concept is great, the idea is fine. But could use a little bit of tunning. We could use a complex system with ton of new thing to make him work... But lets be honest Warframe is already highly complicated and doesn't need further complexity for modding and sub-menu.

Actual Issue

As any NPC he do as he wish. When he should attack he cast a random ability, when he should CC he simply run around, or look at the beautiful wall. Is it impossible to have a efficient control on him.

Proposition

First of all adding a new option under Excalibur umbra.

Intelligence is a placeholder name, the option could also be under Exalted Umbra Blade.

When choosen it give you access to a new "Upgrade" section.

That section "Intelligence" would have access to a amount of mod. They would be like the current system for Pet, the priority from the top left to the top right, then from the bottom left to the bottom right. Those mod would have 0 level and couldn't be upgraded, traded or removed.

Such mod could include.

Weapon oriented Mod

• Main Weapon : Excalibur Umbra would prioritize using his Primary Weapon.
• Secondary Weapon : Excalibur Umbra would prioritize using his Secondary Weapon.
• Melee Weapon : Excalibur Umbra would prioritize using his Melee Weapon.
• Exalted Weapon : Excalibur Umbra would prioritize using his Exalted Weapon.

Ability oriented Mod

• Dash : Excalibur Umbra would use Slash Dash between location. (With internal cooldown)
• Dash & Slash : Excalibur Umbra would initiate fight with "Slash Dash" followed by Melee Attack.
• Howl of Protection : Excalibur Umbra would use Howl of Protection if the operator is surrounded by at least 5 enemies.
• Howl of Defense : Excalibur Umbra would use Howl of Protection if surrounded by at least 5 enemies.

A.I. oriented Mod

• Defender : Priorize defending the lowest hitpoint teamate in a range of 15 Meter.
• Ability Bane : Priorize "Aura" enemie in a range of 15 around the operator.. (Example, infected healer, Nullifier etc...)
• Heavy : Priorize enemie with high armor in a range of 15 around the operator.
• Rescue : If a player is lower then 50% hit point, rush toward him to help him.

Etc...Etc..Etc.. THat some basic idea, pretty sure people could get better idea.

Second, it would be great if the Waypoint system could be upgraded with Excalibur Umbra.

As example, If the waypoint target...

• A teamate, he will prioritize helping that person or objective.
• A location, he will rush toward location then proceed to protect that location until operator leave the range of X.

[Inquizitor]

Umbra shares same AI as specters does. Iirc devs planned to rework them...somehow, who knows, we might get even better AI and all...

I like your idea, but its nearly the same how we wanted to be able to give specific commands to sentinels & companions, and yet, we just wait...

At the rate DE adds new features to the game...expect this maybe in a couple more years ^^

 

[Birdframe_Prime]

There are two kinds of AI in Warframe, the basic AI used by the enemy and Warframe Spectre AI, which is where you generate a Spectre and it will take on the aspects of a Warframe, and is an upgraded version of the AI that is capable of using Abilities actively.

To create a better AI for Excal Umbra, they would genuinely have to create an entirely new AI function for their game that doesn't function on anything else they have currently.

The reason that Umbra doesn't, for example, use Exalted Blade is because of the preservation of function rule; the ability drains energy and interrupts energy regen and so is a detriment to the frame, so the AI doesn't use it. Likewise, all frames have a preference for which abilities they use based on the situation, this can lead to some abilities being completely unused because the situation to use them never came up.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

How about something much simpler?

have Excal Umbra preferentially wield whichever weapon I last had out -primary,pistol,melee. and whichever Ability I last used.

 

[000l000]

Il y a 17 heures, Birdframe_Prime a dit :

The reason that Umbra doesn't, for example, use Exalted Blade is because of the preservation of function rule; the ability drains energy and interrupts energy regen and so is a detriment to the frame, so the AI doesn't use it.

That's what Hildryn does though, if you're switching to your operator while channeling her 3rd and 4th she's still using them all way long.

I don't think they thought it that way, or thought it at all. 😂

Edited March 31, 2019 by 000l000

[Birdframe_Prime]

5 hours ago, 000l000 said:

That's what Hildryn does though, if you're switching to your operator while channeling her 3rd and 4th she's still using them all way long.

Hildryn is the genuine exception to this rule because her shields are counted as her energy pool, and the Spectre AI does allow for Shields to be depleted while taking actions. I don't think that, if it was draining an actual Energy pool, it would continue going.

[000l000]

Il y a 12 heures, Birdframe_Prime a dit :

Hildryn is the genuine exception to this rule because her shields are counted as her energy pool, and the Spectre AI does allow for Shields to be depleted while taking actions. I don't think that, if it was draining an actual Energy pool, it would continue going.

She's not, all channeled abilities in the whole game keep draining your energy/shield pool when you're switching to your operator. Excalibur Umbra is no exception then.

[Benour]

Umbra is cheezy enough as it is.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, 000l000 said:

She's not, all channeled abilities in the whole game keep draining your energy/shield pool when you're switching to your operator.

But, and here is the genuine point; none of your Warframes can run around and target the enemy while they're doing it.

[000l000]

il y a 38 minutes, Birdframe_Prime a dit :

But, and here is the genuine point; none of your Warframes can run around and target the enemy while they're doing it.

Well once you've cast World on fire or whatever ability that can destroy everything around, you don't care much about your frame being able to run around or not. They're still killing stuff the same way Excalibur would do.

The self preservation rule doesn't apply much to Excalibur Umbra AI anyway cause using powers doesn't use energy. For instance he's already using the first three powers at no cost on a regular basis. Perhaps they only have implemented a cooldown to prevent him from spamming powers. The only thing they could add is to make Excalibur keep his exalted weapon while switching to operator so we'd have the choice between him using his exalted blade or any other weapon.

Atm when you switch to operator the AI turns off automatically his 4th. Perhaps it'd make him way too strong especially at no cost, devs usually design things on purpose. 🙄

Edited April 1, 2019 by 000l000

[Birdframe_Prime]

3 hours ago, 000l000 said:

Well once you've cast World on fire or whatever ability that can destroy everything around, you don't care much about your frame being able to run around or not. They're still killing stuff the same way Excalibur would do.

Nope. You're attempting to equate two different things here.

First, static Warframes do use Energy for the abilities you leave them running, so do Spectres. Second, Umbra is not a static Warframe when you leave him.

Flat nope on that first. Leave Ember on World On Fire, you run out of energy and it stops. Energy use does apply to frames when you transfer out or when you summon a Spectre, they don't keep going indefinitely, for spectres the AI just has a high energy regen to allow them to keep going despite the builds players may put on them, meaning that they can sustain repeated casts of single-cost abilities, but if you use a Drain you lose that. And the same with Statics, when you jump out they don't just pause, Duration abilities end, Drain abilities use up your energy and end. Leave Excal Umbra on Exalted blade and he, too, wouldn't be able to keep it up, because it interrupts the energy gain that keeps AI going.

And still you're deliberately trying to muddy the waters here. We're not talking about a static Warframe that you're jumping out of and leaving there, we're talking about jumping out and changing it to an AI unit.

Spectre AI doesn't do Drain. If you leave your own personal Warframe, yes the abilities you set going do keep going. But Umbra isn't that Warframe anymore, it's a separate unit with AI rules.

And my previous statement, that the Drain functions are considered detrimental to the frame because they block energy regen, does apply there.

[000l000]

Il y a 15 heures, Birdframe_Prime a dit :

Nope. You're attempting to equate two different things here.

First, static Warframes do use Energy for the abilities you leave them running, so do Spectres. Second, Umbra is not a static Warframe when you leave him.

Flat nope on that first. Leave Ember on World On Fire, you run out of energy and it stops. Energy use does apply to frames when you transfer out or when you summon a Spectre, they don't keep going indefinitely, for spectres the AI just has a high energy regen to allow them to keep going despite the builds players may put on them, meaning that they can sustain repeated casts of single-cost abilities, but if you use a Drain you lose that. And the same with Statics, when you jump out they don't just pause, Duration abilities end, Drain abilities use up your energy and end. Leave Excal Umbra on Exalted blade and he, too, wouldn't be able to keep it up, because it interrupts the energy gain that keeps AI going.

And still you're deliberately trying to muddy the waters here. We're not talking about a static Warframe that you're jumping out of and leaving there, we're talking about jumping out and changing it to an AI unit.

Spectre AI doesn't do Drain. If you leave your own personal Warframe, yes the abilities you set going do keep going. But Umbra isn't that Warframe anymore, it's a separate unit with AI rules.

And my previous statement, that the Drain functions are considered detrimental to the frame because they block energy regen, does apply there.

Well that's pretty much what i said so we both agree except from spectre energy regen - I only did have my own experience on this one. Tbh its energy regen must be really high cause i've never seen a single loss in my energy pool no matters how long i was staying out of it.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, 000l000 said:

Tbh its energy regen must be really high cause i've never seen a single loss in my energy pool no matters how long i was staying out of it.

If you notice, when you jump back into a Warframe, unless you've been using a Drain ability, the energy resets to the place it was when you left it. This is balanced so that you can't exploit it for excess energy; Drains still drain, but Durations just end and don't cost any more. The exception is Umbra, who becomes a Spectre, and is technically a second model that gets loaded in, while the actual frame that you jumped out of gets placed out-of-map until you jump back in.

[KynaTiona]

On 2019-04-01 at 2:18 AM, Benour said:

Umbra is cheezy enough as it is.

Cheesy silly more so than cheesy exploit, though. I guess he might be effective in an open area or something, I dunno, but any kind of corner or cover and he mostly just stands around confused where the bad guys are. Plus he just doesn't understand his own weapon loadout, and is quite happy to switch to the weak weapons I was pocket ranking rather than sticking with the one good weapon I was already using. I'm honestly not convinced he could even use his Exalted effectively if he had it.

You'd be hard pressed to make player operator + AI Umbra more effective than just having a player Umbra, so I'm not totally sure where the exploit would be. Oberon (or any frame in a party with Oberon) is better for operator cheese, honestly, since the player can hide mostly invulnerable in operator mode while the frame self-heals in just a few seconds. Bonus points if you're using Unairu's Void Shadow to avoid what little damage gets past that 90% DR.

 

On 2019-04-01 at 6:36 AM, Birdframe_Prime said:

[...] Duration abilities end, Drain abilities use up your energy and end. Leave Excal Umbra on Exalted blade and he, too, wouldn't be able to keep it up, because it interrupts the energy gain that keeps AI going.

Conditionally. I immediately kitted my Umbra out with an efficiency build that reduces Exalted Blade's drain down to like, 0.63/s. In most cases, unless I was at almost zero energy or there's a Parasitic Eximus around, he's going to have minutes of Exalted Blade before he would run out. Even if I weren't running this build, I'm frequently only in operator mode for at most 10 seconds at a time, meaning Umbra would only need about 30 energy to continue using the blade for the entire time I'm away.

 

On 2019-04-01 at 6:36 AM, Birdframe_Prime said:

Spectre AI doesn't do Drain. If you leave your own personal Warframe, yes the abilities you set going do keep going. But Umbra isn't that Warframe anymore, it's a separate unit with AI rules.

Were this truly the case, then spectre Umbra's decision to dispel his Exalted shouldn't affect my Umbra when I jump back into it. It does, meaning that the player is not intended to think of Umbra's sentience as having their frame magically replaced with a spectre. I for one would be 100% okay with spectre Umbra continuing to make terrible decisions, so long as it didn't repeatedly cost me 6 energy, an extra second of vulnerability, and a wealth of tactics that work perfectly fine with any other frame in the game.

 

On 2019-04-02 at 1:18 AM, Birdframe_Prime said:

If you notice, when you jump back into a Warframe, unless you've been using a Drain ability, the energy resets to the place it was when you left it. This is balanced so that you can't exploit it for excess energy; Drains still drain, but Durations just end and don't cost any more. The exception is Umbra, who becomes a Spectre, and is technically a second model that gets loaded in, while the actual frame that you jumped out of gets placed out-of-map until you jump back in.

Actually the original frame is still hanging around in the area, as evidenced by Unairu's Void Shadow making it visible. They would have had to go to extra effort to prevent the drain from Exalted Sword, parasitic eximus, etc. from taking effect while spectre Umbra is in play, making the spectre pretty irrelevant as far as the player's energy levels go. Even if they let the spectre use its Exalted, it would be pretty easy to just tie the spectre's Exalted state to the actual frame's Exalted state, achieving a much more fluid effect with little to no potential for energy-related exploits.

[Birdframe_Prime]

10 hours ago, CaraiseLink said:

Actually the original frame is still hanging around in the area

Tries to argue that the frame and the spectre aren’t separate in one paragraph, then points out the frame is a separate entity clearly present while the spectre is active...

Interesting as that contradiction is, the rest of your comment appears to be trying to argue that, just because you can mod the frame to have a low cost, it somehow negates the fact that getting the spectre, all the abilities that it can and does cast, all of the ammunition it shoots and so on... for free is basically just an exploit.

Doesn’t matter how efficient you make it, when you’re the one in control you pay the cost, when you jump out it costs nothing, not even the effort of pressing more buttons.

And that should not be a function the game encourages.

[KynaTiona]

10 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Doesn’t matter how efficient you make it, when you’re the one in control you pay the cost, when you jump out it costs nothing, not even the effort of pressing more buttons.

And that should not be a function the game encourages.

That response sounds less like you're trying to work out how to make the sentience mechanic work better and more like you're trying to shoot down anything related to a mechanic you consider fundamentally broken.

[Birdframe_Prime]

8 hours ago, CaraiseLink said:

That response sounds less like you're trying to work out how to make the sentience mechanic work better and more like you're trying to shoot down anything related to a mechanic you consider fundamentally broken.

Honestly, since this thread died two months ago, kind of yeah.

See, since this thread, there have been more, and there have been more people. And I've just kind of come to the conclusion that when it's a Passive, when it's got no cost, no drawbacks, and the amount of times people just abuse it as a function... I just don't think it should work at all.

Having dumb AI is fine when it's an ability, when you have to still play the game and that AI is nothing more than a distraction or extra source of damage, it's no different to bringing an actual Spectre, which is something that costs resources.

But the Sentience passive on Umbra? Is just ridiculous and after the people (no offense meant to you directly, you've been perfectly civil) that have made some of the most stupid and uninformed comments on the topic, and 'debates' I've tried to participate in, I just want it gone. I'd rather not have it than keep having these discussions about it.

[KynaTiona]

12 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Honestly, since this thread died two months ago, kind of yeah.

See, since this thread, there have been more, and there have been more people. And I've just kind of come to the conclusion that when it's a Passive, when it's got no cost, no drawbacks, and the amount of times people just abuse it as a function... I just don't think it should work at all.

Having dumb AI is fine when it's an ability, when you have to still play the game and that AI is nothing more than a distraction or extra source of damage, it's no different to bringing an actual Spectre, which is something that costs resources.

But the Sentience passive on Umbra? Is just ridiculous and after the people (no offense meant to you directly, you've been perfectly civil) that have made some of the most stupid and uninformed comments on the topic, and 'debates' I've tried to participate in, I just want it gone. I'd rather not have it than keep having these discussions about it.

That's pretty fair. I was away from the game for a while and just got introduced to Umbra a few days ago, so I haven't had time to get jaded with the entire affair. I only found a couple of threads on it through the search function, so I figured it was an underdiscussed topic. I hadn't considered the distinct possibility of there being several debates already that had already been deleted, locked, or otherwise dismissed due to being poorly handled.

I guess if the topic was already played out by the time I got here, I'll let this thread die again. It was nice talking to you, Birdframe Prime~

[Birdframe_Prime]

14 minutes ago, CaraiseLink said:

I guess if the topic was already played out by the time I got here, I'll let this thread die again. It was nice talking to you, Birdframe Prime~

Again, sorry for being an old, jaded player ^^