[ Faction ] Aggro or not aggro?

[Eudes]

Hi DOL,

I have two NPC, both are in the same faction and the faction is aggressive to the players.

One of the NPC is a hand to hand fighter, the second one is an archer.

Both have the same configuration excepted the Equiptemplate beacause of the blade or the bow.

My question is to know if I have to define the AGGRO level for those NPC or not. Because of their faction, they are looking aggressive to the players, even with /mob aggro 0.

I think that setting up the /mob aggro to 100 could be a conflict with the relationship system of the faction. A NPC with an AGGRO to 100 will stay aggressive even if its faction becomes friendly to the player. is not it?

But... if the fighter works fine, even with an AGGRO to 0 (he attacks the player correctly because of his faction statut) the archer does not. With the AGGRO to 100, the archer attacks from distance the player, but with the AGGRO to 0 he does not, even with his aggressive statut inherit from his faction.

Both NPC are equal, the only difference is the weapon. And one more time, the archer is ok when its AGGRO level is 100.

Any idea is welcome

Thanks, have a nice day.

[Leodagan]

Faction are badly implemented

Aggro Level is also Badly implemented between Mob Table and NPC Template Table...

And above this I have no Idea if Faction are taking priority on these Aggro Checks (they should most of the time, but it's badly implemented !)

At last... I'm pretty sure the display message for mob aggressiveness is wrong

[Eudes]

Lol

You killed me!

Bad news Leo, bad news

It's too bad that such a nice feature is not well implemented, factions are quite nice to give a server some good PvE activites. But I guess PvE has never been the main goal of most of the DOL shards.

Bad news Leo! ^^

[Eudes]

I'm still playing with factions and AGGRO.

- A mob with aggro 100 and a friendly relationship from its faction attacks the player.
- A mob with aggro 0 and an aggressive relationship from its faction does not attack the player.

- Mobs from realm 1/2/3, with AGGRO 100 do not attack each other. No matter what the faction relationship is.
- Mob from REALM 0 does not attack others realms even with aggro 100 excepted if from an ennemy faction.
- Mob from REALM 1/2/3 attacks mobs from REALM 0
- Mob from REALM 0 does attack others mobs from REALM 0 only if from ennemy faction.
- Mob from REALM 0 does not attack other REALM 0 even from ennemy faction if AGGRO 0.

I guess I forgot some possibilities but it is already looking a little complicated

Above all, it looks like no matter the relation with the faction is, it is the aggro level which is the key.

[Leodagan]

Yes there are too much area where aggro is checked...

I looked some more, and most of time Mob aggro is set to Faction "BaseAggro" if there is any, then on some checks it would try to get aggro from faction (especially when displaying aggro message to player, which should be correct by the way) but on other check it will just use Mob Aggro even if it's set to Faction BaseAggro...

Using NPCTemplate Aggro could overwrite Faction Aggro in some cases...

Faction Friend/Enemies, Realm Friends/Enemies are rules checked in "GameServerRules" I think, it's no surprise that NPC aggressiveness between Factions/Realm is pretty much broken

[Eudes]

I am using aggro with NPCT, I will give it a try without any aggro information there. Thanks for the direction.

[Leodagan]

The key to not have NPCT aggro changing Mob Aggro is to not use the flag "ReplaceMobValues".

But anyway there is so much area of code that won't rely on "CalculateAggroToTarget()" method which is the only way to get the proper Aggro Amount between Factions for a given Combative Mob...

This method is only called 3 times in the whole project, when it should be used everywhere

And Direct Access to AggressiveBrain "AggroLevel" property has 40 occurrences when it shouldn't be relevent for any rules because Aggro is mostly dependent on target ! (CalculateAggroToTarget() is overridden in most brains to enforce server rules...)

This needs updates badly

[Eudes]

Well... does it mean no ones use the faction system? Because if it does not work properly in 100% of case, it it not possible to use it, does it?

If all the mobs created from the same NPCT are in the same faction, I think that could be enough to define AGGRO to 0, no? Because the ReplaceMobValues is something useful as well.

[Eudes]

Having Faction and Realm as Npctemplate Table fields could be useful!

And maybe part of the key for Aggro conflict between Mob and Npctemplate tables, no?

[Leodagan]

Faction system is mostly used for "rules"

I know I've been using Faction to prevent Mob AE Spell from hitting their "Friends" because it was tearing aggro From player in fights and you just had to watch mob fight each other !!

If NPCTemplate "Aggro" is set to "Mob Faction" BaseAggro you'll have the same behavior with or without ReplaceMobValues

But then you have to keep your database up to date with some scripts... and it won't solve everything...

Mob and NPCTemplate shouldn't have colliding field, these two mechanisms have been built with separately when DOL needed more customization for NPC's and tried to prevent any "break" in Previous Mob Table handling, but today no one can predict what will happen between Mob and NPCT when changing any data

[Eudes]

I understand. But by the past the VisibleWeaponSlot was only in the mob table if I remember well, now it is in both mob and npctemplate tables which gives us more options to manage mobs. That could be tested for Faction also maybe?

Right now, the faction system does not look like working properly.

I have made new tests without NPCT, only regular mobs and a player without any admin/gm right, a brand new PC.

I created 3 mobs, 1 friendly, 1 hostile, 1 aggressive (because of their faction). When the player selects each mob, the message is correct about the relationship.

All mobs are defined as PEACE = false, look green to the player. I did try with both REALM 0 and REALM 4. No difference.

When NPC have an aggro 0, none attacks the PC. NONE !
When NPC have an aggro 100, the aggressive and the hostile attack, not the one from the friendly faction.

[Leodagan]

yeah so it's clearly lacking the use of "CalculateAggroToTarget()" for the purpose of what we call "Natural Aggro" (when combat is initiated by Mob Coming to Player on a Successful aggro check)

That explains a lot of broken shard with "Aggressive" Delving Mob but not attacking you at all (you may have the Faction aggressive, but mob BaseAggro is too low to initiate Natural Aggro)

[MrGz]

Hey guys,

Quick update on this subject... Is anybody working on Faction ?
Faction's aggro is the last (big) barrier to Pandemonia official start :$
(since it will be a RP server, our mapping is 75% based on faction).

[Marko]

I'd try to look at it, but not sure where to begin looking (I'm still pretty new to DOL, only delving in once-in-a-while). The base functionality doesn't seem to be implemented - for example the boogeys in Cornwall on Live attack the Cliff Spiders and the Giant Rooters, but in DOL they just ignore each other. Not sure where inter-faction aggression is implemented. Esp. since the rooters and boogeys belong to opposing factions ( 4 = boogey & 14 = cornwall farmers ) - Looking at tables: mob, faction, and linkedfaction. And playing around with the admin /faction command didn't provide any enlightenment. Doing a /faction list brought up nothing, even though the tables mentioned earlier are fully populated ???

Sounds like Aggro Calculation in the CS code needs to be overhauled, something I'm not comfortable with, being so new. Also, dragging mobs to guards sometimes works to get the guards to attack the mob, but in other areas it doesn't (some guards never attack mobs). I'm still trying to figure that out.

I was about to try spawning different mobs next to each other to see if I can't figure something out, but it seems like even that won't work if the Aggro Calculations aren't taking faction into account at all(?).

As a side note, why doesn't the admin command /mob info show the mob's faction info? That might help in fixing this issue (?)

[Marko]

I'm also curious how Eudes got your mobs from realm 0 to fight each other. I have opposing factions right next to each other and they refuse to fight each other(Granite Giants vs. Stonecrush Giants). However, you do gain faction with the stonecrush if you kill granites. Not sure what's going on. AggroLevel in the mob table for Granites is anywhere from 36 to 100, and for Stonecrush is much tighter between 45 and 56. I'm guessing I need to bump the Granites up to what? 60? 80? 90? 100?

When I look at the mobs 'in-game' with /mob info, the granites show aggrolevel 100, and the stonecrushers are 48 - so I'm assuming this is coming from the faction table's baseaggro value and not the mob table (?). Anyways, just trying to get some mobs to fight each other, and it would be nice to get guards & other realm defined NPCs consistently attacking mobs when they wander too close.

Side note, I'm using a PvE/co-op configured server, so that may be part of the issue?

I'm going to go play around with those aggro levels in the mob table and see if that makes any difference... (I'm back) And no, even setting the granites' aggrolevel up to 100 did not make them attack the stonecrush. SO.... I'm guessing I'm going to have to move over to the code side of the house since db value changes don't seem to be changing behaviour