Very Anxious Skaarj Snipers

[Chrysaor]

So, I have a MH map with a ledge full of Skaarj Snipers. They have a great perch, but I'm having trouble teaching them to just stand and shoot, y'know... like a sniper.

I have a distance view trigger setup to cue them to where I'm standing in the pic. I have some ICH to prevent them from jumping down, but they just hop around like a children's soccer team and rarely shoot me.

I also tried using ambush points. That didn't change their behavior.

I also tried to tell them more concretely when they should pay attention. I used blockpaths and triggered hate to spark their interest, and it sorta works, but they won't shoot me.

Oh, and also played around with the distance the sniper rifle shoots. I did this two ways and neither worked. If I change their sight radius they don't honor the new figure and ignore me up until I'm 4096 uu away. I also had them spawn midair and fall onto a sniper rifle with a 20,000 uu max range, but they weren't willing to shoot, and I'm not sure I could shoot 20,000 uu when I had it myself.

Thoughts? I've played plenty of MH maps where they just stand there and shoot at you, but for whatever reason, maybe the height or the distance, these guys are just antsy and ineffective.

[sektor2111]

If you know how to use AlarmPoints you might earn different results, either way you can forget long distances for A.I. sniping.
The other basic war strategy is not to just stay in spot and shoot - you are being targeted easily, it is why A.I. was not exactly instructed to do that in front of enemy. In a real war, this is how you die. When it comes to gaming, at least you can instruct Monster to do only a few moves in spot and shooting, or you can use some geometry design detracting them from leaving their place.

[Buggie]

Pawn sight limited in engine. So they simple not see you. This can be solved only by some hacks. Like external mutator which turn monster to you and fire from weapon. Normally they will not notice you.

[EvilGrins]

Pawn sight limited in engine.

This can be adjusted there.

[Buggie]

This not helps. Limits hardcoded in engine.

[EvilGrins]

This not helps. Limits hardcoded in engine.

It can't change them overall, no. Their defaults remain hardcoded in the system, but you can make alterations to whatever you place on a specific map.

Whether by editing properties of whatever Snipers you have walking around on a map or by generating a new class of Snipers for your map, to spawn out of creature factories.

[Buggie]

No. You can't out beyond engine limits. You can tune if it less from it, but not able increase it.

[mister_prophet]

You will not be able to resolve the view distance, as others have said. That will always be the primary problem since players will always be able to potshot the pawns before they will "wake up." If you are willing to close the distance by reapproaching the level design (as in designing the room they combat players in to accommodate their view limits) there are still ways to improve the pawn actions. You want them basically to shoot, so you can manipulate pawn properties a bit to keep them stationary and not do the whole Skaarj Shuffle. Combat Style, Ground Speed, Jump Z, Skill, bLeadTarget, and Orders is what might help.

Combat Style regulates the pawn melee/projectile attack mix, and Skaarj tend to be set average with these since they do both very well. For an immobile Sniper, consider scaling this to the far opposite variable to what a melee focused pawn would typically be set.

GroundSpeed and Jump Z will basically be reduced to zero so they won't try to actually move (Skaarj set to high spots have a tendency to try to jump down to players in my experience. This should keep them in place so they focus more on actually trying to attack. There may be other variables to look at if they try to dodge still.

Skill. I don't know how MH handles this, but a default of 3 is the highest difficulty in Unreal. Pawns tend to make fewer mistakes and be at their peak danger, but this might not be something the gametype will allow you to fix.

bLeadTarget make sure it's true, should be anyway.

In Orders set the pawn to Ambush. Even with no set ambush points to correspond with, pawns tend to be extra aware with this on in Unreal levels.

Please Note that all of this assumes that MH settings and other server side adjustments won't overwrite pawn settings. You can always make a subclass that has all of these attributes set. But again, none of this means anything if the room is too big.

[Buggie]

Well, you can overwrite monsters code, and implement own system of aim and sight things. Which can take in account any radius. It be hard, slow and possible buggy, but possible in general.

[Chrysaor]

You will not be able to resolve the view distance, as others have said. That will always be the primary problem since players will always be able to potshot the pawns before they will "wake up." If you are willing to close the distance by reapproaching the level design (as in designing the room they combat players in to accommodate their view limits) there are still ways to improve the pawn actions. You want them basically to shoot, so you can manipulate pawn properties a bit to keep them stationary and not do the whole Skaarj Shuffle. Combat Style, Ground Speed, Jump Z, Skill, bLeadTarget, and Orders is what might help.

Combat Style regulates the pawn melee/projectile attack mix, and Skaarj tend to be set average with these since they do both very well. For an immobile Sniper, consider scaling this to the far opposite variable to what a melee focused pawn would typically be set.

GroundSpeed and Jump Z will basically be reduced to zero so they won't try to actually move (Skaarj set to high spots have a tendency to try to jump down to players in my experience. This should keep them in place so they focus more on actually trying to attack. There may be other variables to look at if they try to dodge still.

Skill. I don't know how MH handles this, but a default of 3 is the highest difficulty in Unreal. Pawns tend to make fewer mistakes and be at their peak danger, but this might not be something the gametype will allow you to fix.

bLeadTarget make sure it's true, should be anyway.

In Orders set the pawn to Ambush. Even with no set ambush points to correspond with, pawns tend to be extra aware with this on in Unreal levels.

Please Note that all of this assumes that MH settings and other server side adjustments won't overwrite pawn settings. You can always make a subclass that has all of these attributes set. But again, none of this means anything if the room is too big.

This is gold. Thank you. Not willing to compromise the design, but with these tools, I think I can finagle something similar to what I was after.

Also, good to see you. Glad you're still active.

[Red_Fist]

Try block players I think it's block monster, can't remember, instead of collision hull, or block them, , they can be blocked but still shoot. I don't know, see what happens.

[mister_prophet]

This is gold. Thank you. Not willing to compromise the design, but with these tools, I think I can finagle something similar to what I was after.

Also, good to see you. Glad you're still active.

Happy to see you too Chysaor.

I respect that you do not wish to alter the design too much. I do still think my suggestions may fail you because of the distance, but this is something you can solve perhaps by "adding" to the level rather than removing. If distance is a recurring issue with these pawns then there may be ways to bring the player closer to them. In the good old days of UT it was acceptable to load one's map with random piles of crates, which depending on the parameters of the room may work for you (or something similar). Ideally, you either want players and the snipers to have have line of sight with each other at the same time OR you want the snipers to see the player first. You could even have the sniper window revealed via event trigger (a moving wall?) so that they will see the player when they are supposed to.

I'm sure you'll get it where you want it.

[sektor2111]

Please Note that all of this assumes that MH settings and other server side adjustments won't overwrite pawn settings.

Here is the hot point. Because some of those "mappers" in the past were not really knew what were doing, in big parts monster is reverted to default properties in newer MH controllers. If Room is too big, this is useless - UE1 was not designed for "Fortnite" stages. If Monster uses AlarmPoints well configured it won't leave the spot. I will nominate as a proof a Skaarj from a map which I did and which I called "Captain Bombadir" in MH-SK_Godz which is firing a cannon with rocks at Players and crawling only in its spot, firing, retreating, firing again and it only loops like this - it was planned this way. I have to admit that some packages which I trusted and used for map were not the best, it can be issues for certain players concerning rendering chapter - anybody willing to edit something or to change things feel free to do it...

[mister_prophet]

Yep, that's what I figured would be the case. His snipers will probably need custom classes to rule out any problems (or at least just do what he wants them to do).