NPC speed bug, or...?

Game Talk The Garage
1

Version: 755178a (or listed elsewhere as 2092)
Tiles/SDL
Windows 7

This is the first time I’ve played with NPCs enabled, and I also have no experience using guns yet so I’m not positive this is a bug. It seems all really off though, so figure I should bring it up.

I meet an NPC who demands I drop my weapon and back away, so I comply and start bolting away immediately toward a house. After a few turns of me running away he opens fire anyway. Now I had both Fleet-Footed and Quick traits and no pain hindering speed so I had a very fast character and I was bolting almost directly away from him. So pissing him off was apparently unavoidable, there was no way to get away from him fast enough. That’s my first issue, I think NPCs should be way more tolerant of your presence or retreating speed before attacking.

The second issue is that when he opened fire he unloaded his USP .45 at me 11 times all at once in the same turn. Whoa. Is that normal? Does it only cost a few action points to fire a semi-automatic pistol? Did he have some kind of fully-automatic mod installed on it? Is this a bug with NPCs? Luckily this opening salvo missed me, though he did hit another nearby NPC. I only got another 2-3 tiles away before he finished reloading and unloaded at me again before I could break line of sight, doing 62 torso damage and leaving me with tons of pain and just a sliver of torso HP left. I’m right at a window sill at this point so I jump through, dodge a zombie, and dart through a few rooms closing the doors behind me as I go. I have no healing or pain relief items so I sit still behind the last door waiting out turns hoping that was enough to lose him while I wait. I hear him firing for quite some time, dealing with the other NPC and the zombie before it gets quiet for awhile and I think maybe I slipped his notice. Unfortunately the door suddenly swings open and I instantly take 4 more shots to the chest, like something out of The Matrix.

That’s my third issue, that NPCs can apparently move and attack (multiple times) all in the same turn. The fourth issue is that almost every shot either missed or hit the torso. In two encounters with this NPC I was hit a total of 9 times and 8 of them were all torso hits.

So after this I spawn another character on the same map to find I’ve spawned at the same shelter. I convince the nearby NPC with a gun to follow me and make my way back up to the town where the last character died and run into the NPC that killed me again. I hide a ways behind my friendly NPC and hope for the best, ending turns as the hostile NPC approaches. Unfortunately the hostile NPC again opens up with a 11 shot salvo all in one turn and kills both me and my friendly NPC instantly. As in the first encounter he again moves and fires both at the same turn, fires an incredible amount of bullets all at once, and almost all of them are chest shots.

So what gives, bug or no? Here’s screen caps of the encounters:

2

Think about it. Fire a pistol at a zombie and see how long it takes for the zombie to move a square while you pump bullets into it.

3

As I said, I haven’t gotten any experience with firearms in the game yet.

How many speed points does it take to fire off a pistol round?

4

There’s your problem. Git gud skrub Spawn one in.

5

Thank you, you have been incredibly helpful.

6

I’m not wrong, am I?

7

This made me curious, so I decided to try guns out for the first time. I spawned in a few LMOEs and helped myself to some of the weapon spawns to test.

I got the following speed point costs while at 0 hindrance:

Pistols:
Glock 19, 60
M1911, 60
SIG Sauer P230, 60
Taurus Raging Bull, 60
Walther PPK, 60

SMGs:
H&K MP5, 80
PPSh-41, 80

Rifles:
Mosin-Nagant, 150
Remington 700, 150

Pistols are pretty quick, but they do have a not-insignificant speed cost to firing them. So again I have to ask, how does an NPC move and fire 11 shots in one turn? For a player character that would take 760 speed points, but it only seems to take an NPC 100.

8

I have run into this sorta thing a lot with turrets as well, I think they are burst-firing so I don’t think it really takes that much of their turn. The problem is, they seem to hit the same body part pretty reliably with their bursts so if your out in the open you can not really escape alive unless: You are very well armored or you use a specific CBM to buy yourself a little time.

It does seem that some times they fire a ludicrous amount of times in a single turn, but I do not really know for sure that is working as intended since i do not know the burst size of their weapons. I certainly would not call it fair that opening the wrong door or rounding the wrong corner means death to moderately skilled survivor in “survivor” gear, which requires Kevlar to make but feels sorta like paper in actual combat. That being said, i don’t think “fair” is necessarily the goal of any rogue-like.

9

I remember somewhere that when NPCs fire they spawn a turret entity and the turret fires.

10

Uh, that seems backwards. Turrets and other gun-using hostiles spawn a pseudo-NPC to handle the firing. 's why the turret code in monattack needs ST/DX/PE and skilldefs: just how good is this shooter?

That said, I’ve had times when NPCs seem to fire a lot of rounds, too. A good solid round of tests on this one would not be amiss.