NPC maintenance

Game Talk The Bunker
1

So I’ve been playing Cataclysm since Whales was in charge and therefore I’ve avoided NPCs from the start and have never had an NPC accomplice. Now I’ve finally gotten one as I’ve started playing with them again and don’t know as to how far I have to go to maintaining them.

Do I have to make sure they have food traded for? And do I have to upkeep their armour and weapons?

Is there anything else about them that would make managing them easier if known?

Edit: Oh, I should probably mention that I play on the most recent experimental up to a week out of date ish

2

I’ve only messed with them a little bit, but you do have to kind of baby the ones actively following you. It’s kind of annoying and I wish I could designate areas as “Take food and drink from this area and stop bugging me about it”.

Ones that are set on guard duty suddenly stop needing to eat, drink, or sleep. Unless that’s changed in experimentals within the past couple of weeks.

3

Assuming recent experimentals:

You can strip 'em through examination menu (or just walking into them) to layer, fix, or replace their gear (or to just strip them and take away all the junk they’ve been accumulating and give back the rest).

You can deny certain squares as No Pickup Zones and give them free reign otherwise.

You can chat to them to "g"ive them stuff, they’ll take liquids but leave the bottle (unless it’s better than their current weapon, at which point they’ll steal the whole bottle from you once they’re not thirsty anymore), and semi-intelligently decide on whether a weapon or clothing item you’re handing them is better than what they have currently.

You can tell them to sleep whenever they like, but they turn narcoleptic and disappear mid-combat to go nap in nearby cars.

You can tell them to shut up about their needs - just remember to feed them periodically.

You don’t, as far as I can tell, need to boil their water - non-boiled water might rarely make them throw up, but they don’t get nauseous or parasites that I can see.

They’re similarly perfectly happy to eat raw meat, junk food, or anything else, since vitamins don’t matter to them.

You don’t need to worry about them dying of exposure. Even your nudist backup singers will be perfectly fine throughout the coldest lab.

You don’t need to worry about their morale, they’ll still help you batch craft regardless.

You can trade gear back and forth with them with no restrictions.

They can train you in their skills if they’re better’n yours. Currently this breaks their current quest if you ask them to train you while it’s ongoing, but otherwise it’s give or take once a day.

When doing missions, refuse a reward and ask they accompany you after. Partymates don’t charge for training and trade stuff for free.

They can increase their skills by either doing stuff, or watching you use your crafting skills. Generally if you have them use a different weapon than you, they can then train you in that weapon type later, so try that in preference to your entire NPC squad using sporks.

They will go out of their way to pulp any non-acid zombie for you, unless you tell them not to, and you can ask them to close doors behind them if you’d like.

Set their engagement rules to something about “close up, weak enemies” rather than “madly suicidal”, and for the love of the Buddha confiscate their explosives and any ammo for their guns.

Do not expect them to help you fight if you’re in a car, they’ll probably be too busy sitting politely in the passenger seat in case you want to drive off.

If they’ve lost their limbs, they will equip any splints you give them intelligently, and take them off when they’re done. You can also push them into a trolley wish "S"witch places, and then drag them around after you, and they’ll happily sit on board so as not to hold you up. They will not, however, return the favour and push you around when spitters melt you up to the groin. Jerks.

4

Biggest problem is having to manually give them food & drink.

Should all be automatically handled by AI code long ago imo.

5

[quote=“X-PLODE, post:4, topic:12347”]Biggest problem is having to manually give them food & drink.

Should all be automatically handled by AI code long ago imo.[/quote]

If I just let them scan food every turn they’re hungry, there would be serious slowdowns noticeable every time NPCs search for food.

6

NPCs can and will engage enemies if they’re set to do so. I’ve seen them started moving from their seat while driving, and immediately told them to stop engaging enemies (set to “only if your life depends on it”). But, I do have to admit, I haven’t seen it through whether or not they’ll actually jump out of a moving car to fight a monster that I might drive too close to.

My tips regarding NPC followers:

  • Give them a gallon jug of water. It’ll last a long time.
  • NPCs don’t seem to drink alcohol, or energy drinks. Some sodas are OK, I think, but water is the safest choice.
  • Feed them the junk food and other unhealthy food. Any food with low nutritional value, saving you from spamming the ‘Eat’ command on yourself.
  • Give them your extra painmeds. They’ll happily use them if in pain.
  • It seems their torso encumbrance limit is 30, after which they’ll remove something. And you don’t get to decide what it is.
  • Keeping the above in mind, choose their backpack carefully. Make sure it’s tough too. Leather backpack is great. Possibly some kevlar-reinforced ones might be great too. Normal cloth backpacks don’t last long in melee.
  • Make them wear a gas mask or a filter mask, so they can fight inside gas clouds too.
  • Rubber boots or turnout boots are recommended, so they can withstand acid puddles.
  • Fully reinforce and refit anything you want to give them. Replacing their gear later can be a pain.
  • They choose their weapons based on their skills, so check their skills before deciding a weapon. Choose wisely, because weapons cannot be removed from them, not easily. Decide as early as possible what you want them to use and specialize in, because after certain point (skill level) that worn down steel spear is considered better than a brand new fire axe.

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:5, topic:12347”][quote=“X-PLODE, post:4, topic:12347”]Biggest problem is having to manually give them food & drink.

Should all be automatically handled by AI code long ago imo.[/quote]

If I just let them scan food every turn they’re hungry, there would be serious slowdowns noticeable every time NPCs search for food.[/quote]
I would suggest any easier way of delivering the food, such as dropping food items directly at the feet of the NPC, and if they’re hungry, or if they have the inventory space, they should pick it up, and optionally eat it right away. The NPC menu is kind of a constant hassle, especially with the letters.

Edit:
And not to forget proper feedback if they don’t pick the food, such as
“Sorry, I’m full - my pockets AND my stomach.”
“Ugh. I’m not eating that.” (food item is thrown in random direction)
“How about YOU eat it. Hm?” (food item is moved at player’s feet)
“Take it or leave it? I’ll leave it.” (food item is left on the ground)

7

They can’t move from a moving vehicle onto a tile that isn’t a part of the same vehicle or isn’t mountable. It’s special cased.

Choose wisely, because weapons cannot be removed from them

They allow taking their weapons since they stopped caring about their debt.

8

They can’t move from a moving vehicle onto a tile that isn’t a part of the same vehicle or isn’t mountable. It’s special cased.

Choose wisely, because weapons cannot be removed from them

They allow taking their weapons since they stopped caring about their debt.[/quote]Is this particularly new? From what i’ve seen in the experimental I’m running, NPC’s weapons and clothes aren’t listed in their trade menu.

9

There’s got to be some sort of work around for this that saves performance while still adding some sanity to NPCs. At one point (older build) I couldn’t figure out how to trade food to my NPC ally and so they were literally sitting on a mountain of food and drink starving to death. Thankfully I figured out a work around, and it sounds like it’s been improved since.

NPCs periodically pick up items that they want until their inventories are full. Can we modify that code to give first priority to food and water? Right now npcs pick up really random stuff for now clear reason.

10

Just tell them to only pick up food and water.

11

Thanks you guys, this has all helped alot :slight_smile:

12

Calamaribro, i wasn’t suggesting NPC’s search for food & drink, i was thinking about making it easier for players to satiate them without going into the menu all the time.

Last time i had an NPC i gave it a large waterskin filled with water…and he put it on and took of his backpack and then died of sleep deprivation cos fuck that idiot.

What about a command that lets him manually “scan” for food & drink on tiles directly near him, that way i can just dump a bunch of stuff next or under him and he picks it all up and eats it?
I would also like the option to force him to sleep after pushing him to a bed/seat because sometimes i just want to leave him sleeping while i go adventure.

Another way would be to tie his hunger/thirst/sleep to your own and you basically eat/drink for both/all of you and sleeping by any one recuperates all of your party, albeit slight if only 1 sleeps for a party of 3.

I thought about tying weight/volume of NPC’s to your own and sharing access to your inventory with him and allowing him certain options like eat food or drink and take drugs intelligently.

If managing your partymembers was easy then the next thing to fix is the loop>suicide thing, instead of exploding heads just make the NPC reset all processes and if that doesn’t fix it make it drop all items/clothes/weapon and stand guard automatically.
After that the player can carefully assess what went wrong and re-equip him and make him follow again.

In the future when NPC’s are stable you can add a construction/crafting queue that you can order your NPC’s to do, that way you can do something else like build a vehicle while your allies build a spiked pit moat or a wooden fence as you had planned/queued.
Using the queue menu would create jobs for NPC’s to complete and examining a constructing/crafting NPC would give you the option of helping them.
Tedious work like disassembling rags or tilling holes to farm could be done by an NPC while you read, etc.

Different stats/skills/needs on NPC’s would influence which kind of personality profile it has and what kind of autotasks it could do on its own around the base like board/reinforce windows or repair/dismantle a vehicle.

Investing into an NPC right now is not worth it, you can feed and clothe them and then they suddenly selfdestruct because their programming hit an error and it doesn’t have a robust error handling mechanism.

13

They allow taking their weapons since they stopped caring about their debt.[/quote]Is this particularly new? From what i’ve seen in the experimental I’m running, NPC’s weapons and clothes aren’t listed in their trade menu.[/quote]

I tend to update experimental about once a day to every few days. As of at least a couple of days ago NPC equipped weapon is listed in the trade interface (ie you can take it from them). You still need to (r)earrange armor (via (e)xamining them, not via conversation) and (u)nequip items you want to take off of them. Be sure to then trade to take the item from them, assuming they had the storage volume.

As for those mentioning taking ammo and such from NPCs… I don’t bother. I just set their combat commands to either ‘Don’t use guns anymore’ or ‘Use only silent weapons’ as well as ‘Don’t use grenades anymore.’ This way if they do have a firearm and something nasty pops up unexpectedly I can tell them to use their guns (in my NPCs case, a shotgun). Saved my but a couple of times while I was still VERY new to the game and a Mi-Go came wandering around from the other side of an RV II was siphoning from, for one example.

It seems like NPCs do care about nutrition, as in how filling something is, so finding something with a long shelf life and high nutrition (ie some type of oatmeal) is great for about a week or more. I mention this as when giving them a bunch of junk and low nutrition food I saw them eating something pretty frequently while something like cooked buckwheat I notice it FAR less. I go ahead and give them clean water (gallon jug/3l bottle) just in case I goof up and need something to drink. I’ve mostly left them to not auto pickup since they try to rummage through my shopping cart (and last I tried to set their pickup rules it didn’t keep between sessions which I gather is being looked at).

I haven’t messed with engagement rules a whole lot as I’ve mostly used ‘Attack enemies that get too close’ and ‘Attack only enemies that I attack first.’ The former has a range of about 5 tiles from the player or them, and they will abandon moving to fight an enemy if you get too far away. The later is nice for slightly riskier situations or firearms (assuming they are allowed to shoot). I’ve been pretty satisfied with those behaviors so far.

I’ve observed that if you are a lot faster than they are (when my character had roller blades on) that if you stand on stairs they will get one tile away from you, good for going down into the unknown assuming there is room for them to come down the turn after you go down. Annoyingly they do have a tendency to wander right into the line of fire (I re-broke my NPCs leg with an arrow once). It’s usually not too bad though as stepping one tile to restore clear line of fire usually works, the zombies will have tended to re-target for the NPC instead of me by then.

Oh and it seems like talking is noise enough to attract zombies. ie talking to an NPC or the NPC complaining about something like being tired, hungry, etc. I’m not certain on this.

As for telling an NPC to guard a location, that seems to throw out all settings, while they are guarding anyway. Things go back to settings when they are following you. ie if they are told to stay quiet but they have a gun and told to guard a location, they will use that gun. This was rather unexpected to me but makes some sense in hindsight. Also probably so they don’t starve or something if you leave them alone for a few weeks.

For sleep issues… I tend to make a point of telling my NPC it’s ok to sleep when I’m going to sleep, otherwise if exploring I tell them to stay awake. If they complain I find my car (assuming it’s nearby) get in, wait for them to get into the passenger sleep, then say it’s ok to sleep. One turn later and they are having a nap.

As for NPC head explosions… I haven’t seen this yet (and the only game I’ve played this past month has been CDDA). I did see a huge performance hit when NPC inventory was full and they wanted to pick up stuff around my base (I have a lot of stuff) but zones (I didn’t know about them then) and telling them not to pick stuff up (and probably the pickup rules) would be a counter to that issue.

From reading the NPCs seem to have gotten a LOT of work and I’ve observed quite a bit more work on them just in the short time (about a month) I’ve been playing the game. IMO NPCs can be worth it depending on your character and play style. Having another person who can soak a few blows (and dish it out a bit too) is pretty nice (and literally has saved my character at least a dozen times that I can clearly recall). They do seem to knock a chunk of time off of construction/batch crafting too, which is nice. There are a few things I’d wish were tweaked on them… but then thanks (in part) to a certain vehicle toggle bug my dev environment can now handle C++ so I can git some code and step my way around some bugs maybe to offering up a side of code with my suggestions/complaints… :slight_smile:

14

NPC’s are honestly worth playing with now that Follower NPCs and Hostile NPCs don’t ignore each other any more. If some guy chases after me with a shotgun, my companions will actually try to defend me, rather than watching as my head gets blown off and (presumably) high-fiving the killer and proceeding to become best buddies forever. NPCs may still be incompetent(Instead of shooting at point blank, they spam bullets at long range where they can’t even hit worth a damn, NPCs don’t use Hit and Run attacks and would rather get infected bite wounds several times, etc), but they’re slowly getting better, and the fact that they’ll actually defend you against bandits makes up for it slightly.

15

You can tell friendly NPCs not to shoot without aiming

16

[quote=“Taberone, post:14, topic:12347”]NPC’s are honestly worth playing with now that Follower NPCs and Hostile NPCs don’t ignore each other any more. If some guy chases after me with a shotgun, my companions will actually try to defend me, rather than watching as my head gets blown off and (presumably) high-fiving the killer and proceeding to become best buddies forever. NPCs may still be incompetent(Instead of shooting at point blank, they spam bullets at long range where they can’t even hit worth a damn, NPCs don’t use Hit and Run attacks and would rather get infected bite wounds several times, etc), but they’re slowly getting better, and the fact that they’ll actually defend you against bandits makes up for it slightly.[/quote]There’s actually a combat command in there to ask NPCs to not bother shooting things if they can’t get a good shot.
I’ll have to screenshot it when I get a new one, though I’d imagine it’d help.

17

Now if only we could get them to defend our stuff from people who randomly walk into our base…

18

Now if only we could get them to defend our stuff from people who randomly walk into our base…[/quote]

That would be real nice. Like maybe some sort of zone, like instead of just a no pick-up zone, you can designate a zone where they’ll attack anyone that tries to pick up in said zone, with the exception of the player character obviously.

19

Zone stuff the game could use:

defend No-Pickup zones? Y/N?

Use items Zone: NPC’s will use any items in said zone as needed, including food, medicine, and exchanging more highly “valued” weapons with what they already have. They will dump any items they don’t want anymore in these zones as well, or alternatively more zone types could be created: Dump zone, maybe a tribute zone where NPC’s dump items they don’t need that might help “the community”

Also a Collect ___ type items option could be useful as well; sort of a "hey guys, we need (wood, plastics, weapons etc…) so you’re in charge of gathering “X”

Making it so that Vehicles, or individual tiles on a vehichle can be designated would be awesome too, it would allow you to use NPC’s to help loot places rather than just watching or stuffing their pockets and THEN just watching… like some kind of walking chest.

20

It would likely be much easier to designate an only-friendlies zone if you wanted NPCs to guard bases better.

Linking hostilities to no-pickup zones sounds a bit contrived.