Do you guys think having NPC is a good idea in this game? Another type of game play where the players are given an amount of time to build a fort and defend themselves against computer generated waves of npcs? There will be multiple type of npcs, they will roam both air and land, and players will have to work hard to defend themselves against these creatures. This will also bring some nice element into the game, so we won't have to be fighting each other all the time. Atm im also thinking of NPC(aka bots) faction, where they will be fighting against the player faction. As for the reason "why these came to be", we could probably create some storyline about how these BE or NF battalion are stranded in an unknown area and they have to fend for themselves until reinforcement come to rescue them or something like that. The whole thing seem hard to do though, so im not expecting them soon even if people like this idea and want to implement it. This was just a quick suggestion made by some very bored guy, and im pretty sure this has been brought up numerous times.
It just doesn't seem to fit Empires. I can see it being fun in some applications (Empires meets Iron Grip?), but basically you'd be playing a totally different game.
a bot team? That sucks. The waves of bots do sound fun though Going for a starship troopers feel where you hold out a against thousands.
While I'd love a Battlefield-like game involving NPCs in some manner, Empires is probably not going to be that game. 3 reasons why. 1. Lag. 2. Coding. 3. More lag. (Very diverse, no?)
You have to think about what you want when you suggest something like this. Considering Aircraft is going to take a while (that's even with a semi-working structure and some models), you gotta know that AI would take about 4x as long to implement. S'fine if you want it, but ya gotta think that it'd be 2 years 'til it gets to you.
How come HL2 Combine AI doesnt work what u would do is set it up so that NF/BE (whatever) as rebels or gorden and tell them to go here. Yes they would be as dumb as fuck but who cares. Good killing :D :p BUT being empires its not as simple as that . What in the code doesnt compute :p
NPC's require a large amount of code to ported from HL2, it has to be modified to even work in the first place, and then it will eat up bandwidth to the point of unplayable. Having to cache all the NPC's models, materials, sounds, etc will only slow down map loading as well. Also, i have suggested NPC's 2 years ago, and they were shot down.
It can be, especially if they have guidence from a 'comm.' I don't know if you've played Iron Grip, but it works pretty well there. It can also be fun to just jump in and play a co-op multiplayer FPS sometimes... which is basically what this would be. But, yeah, technically infeasable, and not very Empires-ish (which is a lesser concern -- I'm sure if it was easy to add we'd have it as an option already, Empires-ishness be damned, since it would be fun to have one or two servers devoted to this. But it very much isn't easy to add, and the devs are more focused on items more 'core' to Empires itself.)
I remember servers being absolutely crushed by Iron Grip. Admittedly, these were the good old days, when servers still ran Pentum 3s, DDR2 was expensive, and 32-player CS:S servers were XBOX HUEG.
There was a game that kinda reflect the starship trooper movie. You have a base and pretty much tons of ammunition, and what happen was a bunch of alien creatures just pretty much storm the base. And I watched that movie a long time ago too so I took my idea off of that kinda. But yea, if it's a no go, then it's fine. It's never bad to have an active imagination though.
I don't think that'll work to well with empires. The way I see the lvl ending most of the time would be with a huge lvl3 mg turret farm in front of the wall just mowing down the NPCs.
"...just mowing down the NPCs." ... till the NPCs come out in heavy tanks spewing HE at anything that moves with pinpoint accuracy. I doubt there would be much more code to make the AI use tank model instead of trooper model, Except how to aim. mmmm... NS stile troopers. Tell them to go to location and watch them rape other people while you tell your base bitch AI to build things.
