DarkThief Darek on 5/12/2017 at 00:20
Shame I didn't notice this thread earlier.
I'm also one of those players that finds the blackjack way too OP (I know there are players that like this aspect and abuse the hell of it to cheese the game)
Since my years of using Dromed I always wanted a restricted Blackjack and tested around myself a bit. But sadly, we have limited options, if we want to change the original gameplay and original game design as little as possible.
Here are some snippets what I tried to work on:
* First, we have the
helmet guards:
As mentioned by trefoilknot we could give all AIs a helmet, but that would make the Blackjack useless, not less effective. It also limits the playstyle for that particular FM and I know that many players like to KO everyone, so I don't want to restrict that freedom completely.
* The
major alert sound on bjack_flesh is definitely a good solution to prevent something like the triple KO on the three-guard patrol in the "First City Bank and Trust". But as far as I know it sets the guards nearby to Alert 3 instead of Alert 2. I wish there was something like a middle ground that only alert guards to level 2. But in the end, I guess it's better than having no sound while blackjacking everyone nearby. Also, a bump on the head is a loud noise, so a major alert is somewhat justified.
* Next, I tried to play around with the
weak point. Robots in T2 have a weak point, where only water arrows in the boiler area count as damage. At first it was a great way to forbid the famous KO through closed doors, KOs while leaning forward or KOs on the arms or the butt. But this system is sadly way to inaccurate. If you select only a close area as a weak point on the back of the head you can miss that even if you try to hit him in that area (but missed) - also you need to adjust the area for smaller humans, larger humans etc. .... ugh.
* The last thing I tried I also published in my recent FM "Project Hammer - Secret Connections". So far, I guess no one noticed the changes or at least they weren't vocal about it.
Here I played around with
AI Core/Vision description. I will now go into greater detail of what I discovered with this and what I changed.
After looking closer to what actually triggered the KO on a guard I stumbled over this: Every AI that is naturally KO-able has the "
GetsKnockedOutEasily" metaproperty. It allows the AI to get the knockout stim if it collides with the Blackjack. Every servant for example have that, therefore they can be easily knocked out, regardless of the alert level.
The difference with the guards is, that they have an additional
Awareness Filter before the Knockout gets counted. If we look closer to its behavior it is set to "
Can't see culprit, Stunned". So, the awareness filter will let the guard get knocked out, if these conditions are true. Therefore, a Flashbomb will always set every guard affected by the stun be KO-able. So, remove "Stunned" for a nice quick fix if you wants to prevent this.
The other thing is "Can't see culprit".
The thing about the vision cones defined in AI Core/Vision description is, that if Garrett isn't in these vision cones, the guards can't see the culprit. And if we look closer, the vision cones of AIs in pitch black areas are the following (quick tutorial for those who don't know about vision cones - please notice I explain this all with the Thief Gold vision description, but I'm certain it's not different from Thief 2 one )
Quote:
Cone 1 and cone 2 are important here, because of their cone flags "Night vision". First cone is for alert level 2 and 3, because "No alert 0, No alert 1". The standard cone would affect all alert levels. Cone 2 is vice versa.
Cone Angle is the width of the cone
around the AI, cone Z angle is the height of the cone.
We can see that the cone in high alert (2 and 3) is 170 wide and 170 high. The one for low level alert is only 50 wide and 100 high.
So, the AI can see more on high alert, but the problem is, they can't see what's behind their backs. That's on the one hand a good thing, because with that you can knock out a guard in the first place, because they can't see the culprit if they are behind them.
If we look at Cone 5 which is only present on high alert with the additional flag 'Omni', so only in bright areas, the Angel is 320. This is the reason why no one can knock out a guard from behind if they are on high alert and in bright light
AND they will also see you if you attempt to do it.
The last thing is the Range, which should be self-explanatory. The vision cone will only go so far. So, in night vision mode the cone will only reach 5 DU in front of the guard. That's the reason why you can stand in front of a guard, lean forward and blackjack him, even if they are high alerted. You just need to be out of the 5 range cone, and that' possible with the wide swing and leaning forward.
So, what did I do? I changed the range to 7 to prevent the leaning forward and also add some width to the high alert vision cones (just enough so you can still knock out alerted guards if you sneak behind them) Then I rearranged the Cones and alert levels so that alert 0 guards are unaffected from this. (I guess that's the case why most players didn't notice anything. The guards behave exactly the same as in the original on alert 0) - but they are much more sensitive on alert 1 and 3 than before. Sadly, we have only 10 vison cones to play with. With an optimal setup I needed 11 cones, but that isn't allowed.
Here is the final result of my first three new cones - the original cone 3 is now cone 4, original cone 4 is cone 5 and so on:
--------------------------------------------------------
Cone 1: Flags - Active, No alert 0, No alert 1, No alert 2, Night vision
Cone 1: Angle - 260
Cone 1: Z angle - 170
Cone 1: Range - 7
Cone 1: Acuity - 1500
--------------------------------------------------------
Cone 2: Flags - Active, No alert 0, No alert 3, Night vision
Cone 2: Angle - 170
Cone 2: Z angle - 170
Cone 2: Range - 7
Cone 2: Acuity - 1500
--------------------------------------------------------
Cone 3: Flags - Active, No alert 1, No alert 2, No alert 3, Night vision
Cone 3: Angle - 50
Cone 3: Z angle - 100
Cone 3: Range - 5
Cone 3: Acuity - 1500
--------------------------------------------------------
I hope that helps someone or give some new ideas. :)
But in the end I wish Looking Glass had implemented an additional
"combat"-alert mode.
The AI can switch between alert combat and alert 3 when they chase Garrett or simply search for him. Then we could easily restrict knock outs in a fight and enable knockouts if you sneak behind an alerted guard that don't know you are there.