Discovery Gaming Community

I've played on both vanilla and Discovery servers that generate loot when NPCs kill each other. That is a big help to new players and is something that could be combined with a couple new features which have recently been added to the 88 Flak mod.

NPCs now tractor loot in the 88 Flak mod, as shown in the screen shots in this thread in their forums: Custom AI Bots, as well as NPCs with Tractor AI. The other recently-added feature that those screen shots show is the ability for players to create NPC wingmen based on their characters or friends' characters. Perhaps that could even be combined with Korrd's Freelancer Account Manager to copy your characters from other accounts and use them as NPC wingmen. Obviously, creating an Outcast wingman for your Corsair character will result in you being attacked by your own wingman and/or you being sanctioned by Hoodlum!:crazy:

Imagine that you're the only player from your faction on the server, so you create a few NPC wingmen to defend your faction's system or go on a raid of an enemy system. If your wingmen get low on bots & bats, you can drop some from your own supply and your wingmen will divide them up. If you have a transport, you can supply your own escorts (unfortunately this will further reduce demand for players who are mercenaries). I don't know if this can be done on Disco, as I imagine that it will create lag. However, less popular Discovery servers could use these features without having serious lag problems.

Igiss: Can these features be added to Discovery 4.85? If so, can they be made optional, thereby allowing servers to use them if they can handle the lag?

EDIT: I fixed the name of the 88 Flak mod (which I had mentioned incorrectly as Flak 88). I wonder if anybody is going to give the Grammar Nazi any flak for those typos?:$

While tractoring loot I don't know about, I think buyable wingmen would be a lovely addition, but there would have to be some kind of limit on the wingmen-per-player ration. I imagine this has been discussed before, too...

This actually looks really promising! I think that if possible we should add these features in! I am quite impressed! Good find Juan.

Verg

As far as I remember, Flak only allowed one wingman per player. Perhaps we could make them cost about 2m a piece, I would love having that in the mod.

I think the NPCs dropping real loot when killed by other NPCs would be a great addition. It would make it much more realistic.

The wingmen thing troubles me. From what I could gather from their site so far, the wingmen are bots of other player-created characters. Traders using their merc characters for protection? Splendid. A Battleship with a second battleship wingman? Absolutely horrible. Unless there is some kind of restriction ability, I think the wingmen are too big of an abuse liability.

Perhaps creating an NPC that follows you around? And making them cost a hell of a lot?

' Wrote:This actually looks really promising! I think that if possible we should add these features in! I am quite impressed! Good find Juan.

Verg

Thank you.:D

As you may have noticed from a thread I created, the AI in Discovery 4.84 is too hard for my skills. As a result, I've been checking out other mods to find something I can play at least until the first 4.85 beta becomes available. I've narrowed down the list of temporary replacements for Discovery to four other mods, including 88 Flak. Ironically, 88 Flak is my least favorite of the four, as 88 Flak adds only one new ship, adds no systems and is primarily a PvP (not RP) mod. The only features that I like about 88 Flak are those I mentioned in my initial post. However, I have been thinking of playing 88 Flak if for no other reason to see what playing with NPC wingmen is like and to get an idea of how it might work in Discovery.

Edited to add:

' Wrote:As far as I remember, Flak only allowed one wingman per player. Perhaps we could make them cost about 2m a piece, I would love having that in the mod.

Maybe you played an earlier version of 88 Flak, as the current version allows up to four wingmen per player. I'm not sure about the cost, but I imagine that it varies based on the ship and equipment belonging to the wingman.

I found a few interesting links regarding the 88 Flak mod...

The news section on the ModDB page for 88 Flak mod shows details about the AI Companion Bot Generator (which allows players to make NPC copies of their characters for use as wingmen).

The download page for the 88 Flak mod lists the details of the changes in each RC (their term for version) of the mod. The most interesting part (from the bottom of the versions list):

Quote:Note near the bottom how the war zones have been removed from the Independant World systems - instead, I've now implanted a global "random spawn" system for factions (similar to how FL NPCs appear). Basically, there is a small chance of a huge Navy assault force marching to a pirate base and blowing the crap out of it. Likewise, you may see a huge pirate assault force marching off to eradicate some shipping station.

If Igiss implemented something similar, we could see the Liberty Navy/LPI attacking Buffalo Base or a Rogue/Outcast fleet attacking West Point.

The funniest thread I found was their thread entitled "What happens when the server is one RC and you are another." Here is a list of the weird NPC/ship combinations seen when players were using the wrong version of the 88 Flak mod: BHG/Legionnaire, BHG/Mule, Bowex/Bretonia Battleship, Bowex/Stilettos (2), Rogues/Titans (2), Order/Rhino, Kishiro/Stiletto, a Zoner in a Nomad ship, BHG/Kusari Battleship (2+), BHG/Valkyrie, Universal/Nomad Battleship, Universal/Hammerhead, Universal/Bloodhound, Zoner/Mule, Zoners/Bloodhounds (2), and Republican/Hammerhead. If Hoodlum saw this in-game, I think he would try sanctioning the NPCs, then go insane when he discovered that is impossible.:crazy:

Another thing that crossed my mid

If these can be any ship - meansthey can be a trader too. That means, that what? People will set up 5 freighters, make a convoy and trade 5 times more effectively? I'd love that - even if I'd have to log off and buy the goods for each "bot" myself, theprofit would more than compensate the time spent on the base, switching chars.

However - there is risk, that such a feature will unbalance trading a lot.

There are things there we can certainly use...though as this is an RP server we wouldn't be able to use the features to their full potential...

When starting the mod, or a server, does it give you options as to how many wingmen or ship restrictions? Something like that would be ideal for Discovery imo.

We wouldn't have to create copies of players so much, just if possible:

Have something that could go in your cargo hold
Costs a ****load of credits
Attacks non-dockable that is hostile to you
Forced it to follow you, like flying in formation or something
Is destroyed on death
Is unlootable

Is that too much?