Grineer-Suggestions For New Units, Squad Combos, Better Ai, Tweak Old Units

[Second_Measure]

@Second_Measure

That would be fun, but at the same time make me seriously dislike whatever enemy tosses them out.  Blinding effects can be used to great effects in games, and as long as they prevent the enemies from spamming it it wouldn't be too frustrating.  It would add a target that requires prioritization though.

 

The guys usually don't throw grenades much, only if they want to flush you out behind cover. And that's where they should be used.

Of course they also can be used to slow down someone that wants to rush past all the guys, as something punishing. After all, no one is happy when they all run past you without getting attention. :o

[Madotsuki]

The guys usually don't throw grenades much, only if they want to flush you out behind cover. And that's where they should be used.

Of course they also can be used to slow down someone that wants to rush past all the guys, as something punishing. After all, no one is happy when they all run past you without getting attention. :o

I actually want Nef Anyo's uncloaking to create the flashbang blind effect if players look at him while uncloaking. Normal goons though? As long as said goon is an uncommon unit (like Shield Lancers or something), that shouldn't be a problem, otherwise all that screen blurring is going to get old fast.

 

@Tsukinoki

I have a few ideas for what elements can do.

Fire: Sets enemies on fire if their shields are down, doing DoT and having a chance to cause organics to panic, as well as do bonus damage to flesh (infested).

Shock: Deals DoT to shields only and not health, though it still does bonus blunt damage to health. Stuns and deals bonus damage to robotics (corpus).

Frost: Bonus blunt damage to shields and slow enemies.

Poison: Ignores shields and deal direct damage to health, but no DoT past the initial blunt damage (they already currently do pathetic DoT).

Acid: Heavily reduces armor (permanent on mobs, temporary on bosses and players) and deal DoT. Can DoT both shields and health (if shields are down).

I can probably think up more in the future.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Madotsuki

[Tsukinoki]

@Madotsuki
That sounds like great effects to add to the elements in the game.  And it is kinda silly that they can be on fire and flailing around without suffering any extra damage.  And as they add effects like this it would allow them to create more unit types that use the new mechanics or are weaker to some than others, such as a super heavy armored grineer that is immune to the fire DOT but is super affected by the acid DOT.

[Pi_Masta]

A vast majority of the OP's original ideas are great and terrific. However I've seen several topics on 'fixing/tweaking' the AI and people seem to think its a really easy solution. I haven't successfully made any kind of AI for a game, its a daunting task and I probably should read up more on it. Complex behavior is not something that can be whipped up overnight or even in a week. The more complicated you make the AI programming the heavier the CPU load (per enemy) and the greater the chance for odd behavior if/when they get stuck in the wrong AI states (standing their ground when they should flee, choosing a poor position for cover, etc.).

 

BETTER AI

 

Squad mechanics

The Grineer, despite being a military organization, is one of the most random and un-organized armies I’ve ever seen. They have barely any teamwork and just randomly send whatever they have on board at you. The only flanking I’ve ever seen them do is spawn a wave behind you in the room you just cleared 5 seconds ago. What they need are Squad Formations.

 

Essentially, aside from the constant stream of fodder, have them also spawn in certain groups of formations. For example, having two Shield Lancers guard a Seeker while he deploys Latchers at players in relative safety; having two Heavy Napalms cover the area behind players with fire as a wave of light units zerg rush from the front; having a Commander switch teleport you into a ring of Powerfists; the possibilities are endless! Squad Formations can spawn more often as enemy level goes up, as well as increasing their complexity. That is a much better way to increase difficulty instead of just making enemies more bullet spongy.

 

^^YES^^ This should not be too difficult to implement as it is now and would make the Grineer more difficult/challenging, though maybe scale this down or turned off in lower level (less than level 10) missions for new players. Though possibly the reason they just use fodder tactics is that they are just clones if I recall correctly, so they can always just make new ones...

 

AI Fixes

• Grenade throwing. ...considering grenades can arc, this is pretty stupid, as they simply fail at throwing them over cover ... by having the AI take the environment into account (cover etc.) and calculate a trajectory to land the nade as close to the player as possible by controlling throw strength, angle of projection etc.,
  
  While this sounds easy said out loud, from a programming standpoint its a nightmare. The geometry of levels are complex and unless they want to add additional data to simplify this grenade throwing mechanic the computational costs of figuring out how to make a grenade travel in an arc to reach a desired destination especially taking into consideration bouncing mechanics will not only often have multiple solutions (different throw strength, elevation angle and angle towards target, thats 3 variables to be solved) but each potential solution would need to check how it would bounce, and if hitting multiple walls this really gets complicated. In fact the problem of determining what object  intersects a straight line ray from point to an angle is somewhat expensive, now imagine if it wasn't a straight line but an arc...
   
• Light units are idiots. So many times I’ve had sawmen and powerfists attempt Leeroy Jenkinses on me from across the room while I casually line up a headshot for them. Flameblades fare a little better due to teleportation, but they can’t all have teleports can they? Sawmen and Powerfists really need better pathing so that they can try to attack from the side or back of the player. Whether this new pathing triggers over the straight-ahead pathing can be based on distance and enemy level.
  
  This is doable, but would take some time/tweaking. I would actually have them try to either sneak up behind you or stay behind cover and try to ambush you. Possibly removing or deafening the sawblade's sound as they are so squishy and you can hear them a mile away but they can't do anything at range

Tweaking existing enemies

• Seekers: First off, their Latchers really need a damage buff. For something that can be removed with a single roll, its damage is way too insignificant. ... Latchers on players should at least do 100 damage a pop, increasing with enemy level. Secondly, Seekers are way too brave. For a unit whose main job is deploying explosive marbles, I’ve seen him out in the open attempting to blast me with a Kraken too much. He should be hiding in cover mostly, forcing players to search for him or track the Latchers to him. Only when found should he resort to shooting while attempting to retreat.
  
  I agree, seekers should be more defensive / hiding. Their main power is in their latchers. A slight damage buff especially as level increases would make them more of a priority, even though it just takes a single roll to remove them all. They can get a bit dangerous when you get several of them attached to you and they explode at near the same time. The AI changes you mentioned shouldn't be nearly as difficult as they already have code for them to seek cover, just need to have him stay in it more and retreat when confronted
• 
  
• Ballistas: As snipers, they don’t stay at range enough. Ballistas should be given better pathing and mobility (speed, super jumps) to stay in medium-long range and utilize high ground and cover.
  
  Yeah Ballistas are a bit of joke right now, only thing is they sound exactly like heavy gunners and sometimes put me on edge but when I realize its a ballista I'm just like LOL easy 200+ affinity. More mobility and some AI for them to retreat when confronted up close would be nice. Also to me they don't seem to do that much damage, but maybe its because I'm running around too much and killing them too easily. Super jumps I'm iffy on, I don't know about having a basic unit having a warframe ability...

 

 

The problem with having really good adaptive AI in a game allowing for emergent enemy behavior is that it's really taxing, computationally.

Yep, dead on

 

I'm a little flabbergasted that they weren't using solid-state storage for the game servers to begin with!

 

SSD's aren't exactly cheap per GB. They needed a lot of data storage and they did not know if this game was going to be as big of a success as it is now. Using HDDs to get the capacity needed makes sense from an economical and financial risk point of view.

 

You are ABSOLUTELY spot-on with the AI fixes. Back in 1996, Id Software's Quake... that simplistic game, [the enemies] had insane accuracy with their grenades; they could arc them over walls, bounce them around corners... There's really no reason the enemies in this game are so brain-dead with their grenades

 

Keyword in your argument is simplistic game. Quake's level geometry was pretty simple, mostly flat 90 degree walls. Knowing this makes the math simpler for grenade throwing. Warframe has irregular surfaces, angled ramps/stairs and walls, fences with holes in them, a lot more factors involved in level geometry.

 

 

Overall, I have a feeling we won't see major changes in normal enemy AI until they get boss battles more in line with what they want (not just enormous bullet sponges)

[RealityMachina]

Concerning the grenade thing:

 

Honestly I would be ok if DE "cheated" like Bioware did and essentialy made it so while the animation of an arc thrown grenade will play every time an enemy throws a grenade and the game doesn't see any major obstruction in the path, the grenade...will always go towards the spot of where the player was holding up in cover. It's something that ME3 players will pretty much never realize isn't a "true" grenade throw and thus have immersion broken, barring doing a once in a million teleportation attack with the N7 Shadow after the grenade throw is trigger but before the location is set, resulting in the grenade doing a 180 degree turn and heading straight for where the player just ended up. (And even then this tends to be very hard to replicate beyond getting very lucky with the timing and some assisstance from lag AFAIK.)

[TennoSkoom]

granieer already have some squad mechanics- if you haven't seen shield lancers post up in a defensive stance in front of other granieer you haven't been paying attention. I do however agree that these squad mechanics should be improved upon especially at higher difficulty levels and most of the ideas presented by OP regarding this topic are indeed good, except for being teleported into a circle of rape for the sake of being stunlocked to death. No... stop that, that's bad. Challenge is good, taking control away from the player does not introduce challenge, just disorientation and frustration.

 

Rollers are fine the way they are now. (With the singular exception that they still cannot be shot while grinding down the core on granieer defense missions, but that's not the rollers fault, it's the fault of poor bounding boxes on the core in that particular static map) They've been tweaked considerably since U7. Sure I still hate them with a burning passion- but there's something to be said about having an enemy you love to hate, and I think that's a requirement of any good game or story for that matter.

 

I'd also like to express that overall most of the ideas presented by the OP are pretty good, but.. my (perhaps kneejerk) reaction to the idea of a pipe-bomb lobbing unit is... no.. hell no. And perhaps this is because of the TF2 image used- but... generally- no. Why? Because no. And also because this will invariably turn into players wanting a pipebomb launcher... which will turn into warframe is becomming tf2 threads appearing on the forums, which will turn into... well you get the point. Generally I'm opposed to this.

 

Finally... grenades... I've actually been hit by several while not paying attention. Their current mechanic is fine as players standing still or not moving a lot(how very unspaceninjalike of them!) are more prone to be hit by them than those wallrunning down corridors and chargeslicing the heads off of enemies and bouncing all over the place like rabbits on cocaine. Unlike the seeker bombs the grenades damage is okay... but perhaps a grenade should have knockdown or stagger in addition to the damage it currently deals, or a buff to the damage it deals to compensate for the lack of stagger/knockdown.

 

Seeker bombs do need a damage buff +1 to op for that alone.