Thralls behaving right?

Conan Exiles General Discussion
1

Just put Gary Trooper in to semi retirement. T3 Zingar{y}an bearer that managed to get through some real :poop: and earned the name.

He started out with a surprisingly high agility so I built him to it; weapons and armor. No matter what I did he still “hit like a popcorn fart”. But he used his weapons well. Yes weapons.

Was already about over loaded when we killed that reptile best world boss; 2 for challenge. Opened the chest and got a legendary lance. Had to swap stuff around by weight so I wasn’t over weight walking; borrowed his pack so I could carry more. And he ended up with the lance.

So after that he started fighting like he knew how. Start with the lance, get a reach attack or two close the distance drawing his short sword and shield. If he got knocked back, jump up, lance, reach attack, close distance changing weapons. I was so amazed I stood there and watched him fight a gorilla.

Now just why does it seem some times thralls fight like they know how and others they act brain dead or just clueless how to use a weapon? I know part of it is the servers, but could part of it be the weapon? I know thralls seem to use some weapons better then others. And it seems stats are more about damage then ability to use a weapon well. Also seems thralls use newer weapons better then older weapons. Could part of the issue be old weapons/attack animations just aren’t playing well with some update to the engine? Could redoing the old animations help?

Just things I was pondering while watching Gary do in gorillas with well coordinated attacks. Why can’t all thralls fight like their A had more I?

2 Likes
2

Its both. Some weapons do not have dedicated combo tables and use other weapons instead to fill in the gaps.

I’ll explain this is the best way I can (I’ve looked at this stuff in the devkit, but never really interacted with in a modding sense). But how it works is every thrall has a set of combos they can do with weapons. There’s a basic table and an advanced (might be called elite, don’t exactly remember).

In the basic table its basically looks like this:

Light
Heavy
Light Light
Heavy Heavy
Light Heavy
Heavy Light
Special

Where as the advanced table has the same attacks plus variations of 3 and 4 attacks.

So when you see thralls fighting effectively, its because they are on the elite table and using full combos. But they don’t always use full combos. Sometimes they use 1 or 2 hits only. Sometimes they do full combos back to back, sometimes they do only the shortened ones, and sometimes something in between.

Its all RNG.

Now
 when using non-standard weapons
 it gets bad. Weapons like Katanas, Claws, Javelins, Shields, Throwing Axes, Short Swords, and Two-Handed Axes (I think). Either don’t have their own combos, or don’t function well.

For example if you give a thrall a short sword, they will use the regular one handed sword combo list. Which means it will look like this:

Light
Heavy
Light Light
Heavy Heavy
Light Heavy
Heavy Light
Light Light Light
Heavy Heavy Heavy




Special

And it just picks one at random.

Now so far you might have noticed that in these tables there is a Special listing. This is the Block/Kick/Special button. If you have a shield, you use this to block. If you have a two handed sword, you use it for the vertical swing. If you have a throwing axe you throw it.

When a thrall picks special for its combo, it will block if it has a shield, throw if it has a throwing axe, vertical swing if it has a two handed sword, and backflip if using daggers. It picks special WITHOUT any regard to the situation. It is just randomly done for its attack. This is why thralls act weird with shields, they also lock into blocking I believe until they pick another combo. This is why when someone asks if their thrall should use a shield, most of us in the know tell them no. They won’t block when they need to, and it will make them do less damage over all, or sit and watch as you get your tail beat.

When using a Katana
 it will try to use the charge
 but there is no combo table like:

Hold-Special Light

That would cause it to use the special dash attack. It will do the charge for a second and then stop before picking another combo. If it picks special again, it does nothing until the next combo. If it picks special yet again
 well it looks like your thrall is doing nothing. If it had an actual two-handed sword, those specials would be high damage vertical strikes.

This has little to do with animations. The thrall combo tables are well out of date with the current game. This is actually a relatively easy fix, a modder could probably do it in an hour or so. But it is tedious. But understand that any changes made to this table will affect NPCs in the wild as well.

I wouldn’t mind it. It would be funny to see a player facing off against a named Aquilonian with a short sword that decided to do Heavy Light Light Light Light Light
 and see the tears as they get shanked to death.

Or a group of Yamatai with Katanas dashing around. I’ve actually seen a mod do this, and its about as frustrating as it sounds lol. It was the Elven Covenant faction in the Age of Calamitous mod. But I haven’t tinkered with that mod in about two years or so, so not sure if it still has that.

But yeah, the combo table for NPCs needs a look. And even then its not going to fix contextual issues such as blocking and throwing. Since it simply picks attacks from a list. AI doesn’t exactly exist in Conan Exiles. Its just a table with entries that are picked at random.

To my knowledge, non-human NPCs have similar but rules. Instead of doing combos, they pick a random ‘weapon’ to attack. For example the giant crocodile has a few attacks, each one is a weapon that it randomly selects to attack with. Same with dragons, demons, and other animals.

2 Likes
3

:grin:

Well that pretty well is AI in games. But it does sound like and update to the system would make for better thralls.

1 Like
4

Thralls shouldn’t use NPC move tables - they should use their own move set, fully customizable by player, in-game. But I guess we would have to wait for 4.0 to get that. And then wait for 5.0 for FUNCOM to add a preset saving, so players don’t have to customize every thrall manually.

5

That begs the question how many people use the present settings?

I set followers to guard me, or attack what i attack, and that is about the size of it. Base archers I will set to max agro distance. And I do love setting scenes so I have thralls standing around talking to each other; well grounds fighters. But I have honestly not delved that deep in to the thrall settings.

I’d love to set my bearers to guard, guard, heavy. So I’d set attack patterns if I could.

But, when my fighter with the heavy ax takes two, three hits, gets knocked down, then jumps up and does the stand block, while the beast attacks me, I realize the I is RNG.

Or better yet, when they decide they want to box with a world boss and not draw a weapon. Oh the language I use and the volume I use it at :flushed:

1 Like
6

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.