marbleman on 5/8/2017 at 20:07
Now that my level has grown quite a bit, I'm really starting to notice that guards' patrols deactivate at certain range, but it seems to be even smaller than usual. I've never noticed it anywhere else, but in this mission, I can see them frozen at the end of certain sightlines (about 100 units long). So I was thinking about efficiency settings, but I have a few questions.
1) How exactly do they work? From what I've read, they are applied a bit counter-logically.
2) Is it possible to make all guards in the entire mission not "freeze"? Is it safe to correct efficiency settings on an entire archetype? And if so...
3) Should I mess with it? Won't it make Dromed angry and corrupt my mission, uninstall my OS, and make my PC jump out of the window?
GORT on 5/8/2017 at 20:37
There is a way to not have your AIs to freeze as you've described. Give them the meta-property "Never Efficient". I did this in TROTB 2 to all of my AIs because some of their patrols were being interrupted in a bad way. However, this might have some problems in its own. So far, it's seems fine for me.
LarryG on 5/8/2017 at 21:38
I believe the original LGS intent was to save compute power by having AIs which are not visible (because they are too far away to be so) not move. Now that we have longer sight lines this issue arises. But fortuitously, and at the same time, we have much more powerful machines and can tolerate AIs that move about out of sight much better than the old IBM PS2 machines originally thought of as state of the art.
marbleman on 5/8/2017 at 22:08
Yes, I've known about AIs freezing for a long time and always had the same idea that it was done to save on computing resources. Today, it should be obsolete, but I didn't know if the Dark itself can handle it because no matter how powerful the PC, the engine has its limits.
Anyway, seeing as GORT applied it in his what I believe to be huge campaign, I think I'm safe. And an easy solution too, just one metaprop over the entire creature archetype. Thanks, GORT! :)
john9818a on 6/8/2017 at 04:52
I always use the Never Efficient metaproperty and it doesn't really affect performance like it did on slower PCs. A problem with having Efficient AI is that they can possibly flee to a point that is too far and then never return. If they flee to an archer that is too far away they might not ever get there.
gamophyte on 7/8/2017 at 14:29
Sorry to bump, but I wanted to clarify; so then it's safe to put it as high as Physical --> Creature?
Do you have to hit hierarchy OP or is that just to push it to non concrete instances?
marbleman on 7/8/2017 at 15:37
I don't know if it's safe, but I'm not planning on using every single creature type either. I suppose it would be wise to only apply it to concrete archetypes such as Creature > Human > Swordsman, and I can do that later if necessary. So far, it works okay, and I do see the difference.
Yandros on 7/8/2017 at 16:58
It should be safe and functionally equivalent to just put it on Creature. The only risk you run is if a child archetype under it has the efficiency settings on it as a property, it will override the M-NeverEfficient on Creature, but that's probably a good thing. I don't know of any such cases in the default gamesys, though.
