I guess we basically have to purchase a second account to check out if our archers work or not, lol.
Hallelujah !!! they’re shooting !
So, it is still a bit glitchy and they need some time to draw their bows, but they are now doing their job.
The range and the hight might play a role in that matter.
Maybe the faction has an impact on the “glitchyness” as well but i doubt it.
These archers are from the volcano for the most part, and a few from the forgotten tribe which is our neighbour as you can notice…
One last thing these archers only have bows and arrows in their inventory, so no melee weapon at all.
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This is indeed a bug…a complex one…but is a bug.
I was banging my head on the desk trying to do different things to get my thralls to behave consistently. Here is what I found…almost the same as what you found. This is A LOT of trial and experimentation. Firstly…let’s discuss what is happening ‘Under the Hood’.
Technically (I am a systems engineer and AI programmer) it looks like it has to do with pathfinding but then the coding ‘under the hood’ that checks the pathfinding then chooses which weapon to use or even do combat…is terribly bad. Likely the code is based upon decisions in 1 frame of logic and ANY kind of game lag botches the execution of the code. Or…simply lazy AI programming. End Rant. =)
**The pathfinding was better before…but there were A LOT of floating NPC…less now…the programmers changed something.
Let’s not throw the AI programmers completely under the bus. UE4 out of the box handles pathfinding rather well, however, add Dynamic Building as we have in CE (ARK too) that having even a SMALL gap under a foundation will likely cause calculation issues because the Collider (Hit Box) is only partially touching the Ground…which means the entire section/piece may not be calculated. So it is really important to make certain that ALL under gaps of foundations and stairs ‘Go Through’ the ground or at least cleanly level.
Framing Code…60 Frames Per Second is 16.7ms for Each Frame to execute. Meaning that if you are running at 30 Frames Per Second everything is executing at 33.4ms. To counter this in Real Programming you have to Hold Off execution of very important code events to 50ms heartbeats. This makes AI even in the worst of conditions. If frames are dropping below 30 it means a terrible optimized design (possible) or the computer trying to run the game is struggling to keep up (usually). Servers could be of ‘Lesser Quality’ for handling these AI operations. CE has bad pathfinding but it is better than what it was before…but perhaps the Servers are not handling the math and Framing well enough.
Of note: Melee and Ranged need to have two completely separate AI routines. Melee is the easier of the two. Here is Exactly the order the code must be done in…1 ‘Thought’ each code frame…NOT all in one frame.
50ms - Get Nearest Valid Enemy within Perception Range (not Aggro Range)
50ms - Can I reach the Location of Target from My Location (Pathfinding AI)
50ms - True :: Location Possible
50ms - Can I ‘See’ the Enemy (Line of Sight)
50ms - True :: Choose Weapon and Prepare
50ms - False :: Hold Position and Wait
50ms - Is Distance Less than Defined Range
50ms - True :: Use Chosen Weapon and Enter Combat
This above example…which is actually fairly accurate…so 400ms (less than half a second) it would take the AI to go through the entire chain…let us make this 1000ms to allow for lots of other cool things/options to happen. 1 second is nothing in AI to choose…and 50ms events will not break AI chains…ever.
Follow Mode:
- Thralls in Follow Mode will only attack once the player gets hit. They will turn to face whatever ‘Threat’ they are suspecting as they follow. Switching this mode On/Off while adventuring can ‘Lock’ the Thrall/Follower in this mode.
- Places that very much cause locking issues is when you try to stop them too close to camps. The game made it so you cannot ‘Place’ the thrall in this location…which ‘usually’ keeps them in follow mode…but sometimes it puts them into Defend Mode in regards to placement but they are still in Follow Mode as to movement. When Combat happens the code is making the check for ‘Is Thrall Following’ True…No Attack until Player is Hit.
- Then the opposite happens…which is the major bug…the thrall ‘Thinks it is in Follow Mode’ but has been placed to defend that area. They will not attack until the player takes damage…AND ONLY IF…the pathfinding gives the Ok to attack. The pathfinding of ALL NPCs in this game is horrible…repeat…insanely terrible.
Melee:
- Give them only melee weapons and only 1. Also give them plenty of ground access…meaning double wide stairs. Once I started using double wide they have less issues moving and defending.
Archer:
- Give them a bow with your choice of arrow plugged into the bow. No melee. They ‘begin’ to have issues when they are more than 1 unit high above a good ground access point.
- Example…foundation is raised above grass (typical)…so call this 0.5 Units. Then add a Foundation or Wall on top…this is 1.5 Units. Make a double wide stair somewhat close to where they are…and they are usually fine shooting. The pic above shows a really good example of having easy access to the ground and only 1.1 Units above the ground. The pathfinding code can solve this and the Archers function.
- In the original posting you can see that the pathfinding will have all sorts of trouble…there is water (bad trouble) and an overhang/deck on pillars on ceilings over water…no surprise they have trouble working if at all. Not really your fault since nobody is really telling us the Right and Wrong methods to place thralls.
Sorry for the long winded-ness of this post…hopefully Funcom will take a good hard look at setting up their events properly and get the ordering resolved.
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Ok, so first you don’t have to be sorry for bringing that much umput and that much to the table, therefore i say thanks and hope to see more of your sharing.
Secondly, i admit i didn’t understand everything since english is not my mother tongue. But i think there are some things i did understand:
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The more stuff you build under your archers position the more trouble they will have.
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Often times the AI coding chain (list of actions to be taken in consideration depending on the context) can be broken and thus make the thralls not react. A bad framrate could lead into that.
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Giving them the minimal number of weapons would help them to choose and thus act quicker or simply even act as they should
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The more easy surface to maneuver they have the more effective they will be
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Their pathfinding is horrible
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Switching between “follow” and “stop follow” could mess the state of the AI
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the higher archers are placed the more likely they 'll be bugged and not react at all
Can you confirm that i did understand these points correctly please?
Again, thanks for your sharing 
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This shot was taken at the begining of last winter.
these are the old good times of having killing machines as thralls :D. Purge was not here though but the AI was working correctly.
All of this mess began with the new inventory system, i remember it very well.
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@roro4066 You understood well.
The only thing maybe confusing is…not so much ‘The More Stuff Built Under Archers’ but it is Where the archers are ‘Over’ and ‘Any Gaps Under’. Things like water really affect the AI…watch the enemies while in or near water and you will quickly see the issues they have.
Switching between Follow and Stop Follow bugs them out more often near camps or places we are not allowed to place/build things. I only had 1 bug out during normal switching out hunting and backpacking for iron ore. Had to kill that one and Admin Spawn another. =(
I agree…the old AI was much better at defending. To have Player Parties they all had to be put away though. =)
Super nice tower! Love it.
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ok i will try to pay more attention to water then when the opportunity comes.
Thanks this tower and evrything around it was designed to be a little killing machine outpost for farming thralls near new asagarth (and i tried to make it look ok so i’m glad you think it’s nice).
i’m currently populating my " ultimate anti frozen purge" base up in the north, so more testing and more screenshots will obviously coming out of that but i fear the thing will become a real mess when the purge happens ( so many poor AI working at the same time… )
What about you? do you have screenshots about AI and defense to post as well?
Cheers and have fun mate !
Sure. I will post a couple pics. So far I have had no bugging out for the defense thralls. Also good news is I went 2 high on these as well…not an issue with Archers or Melee with pathfinding. I also made a ‘T’ shape out of this with the center 2 high and the outer wings 1 high…also working.
You have to have archers near the front fence and melee in the back near the stairs. The animals also have no problem with pathfinding up the stairs so the melee intercept prior to them getting there. The archers pepper away while the melee are tanking and do damage.
The archers sometimes will not equip their bows for quite awhile…which means they are out there with the melee using their fists. =) palms head =)
- So these defensive outposts are 3 wide x 2 deep foundations with 7 fences and 3 stairs.
- Sandstone and Brick seem to be the best foundations. The fences don’t seem to matter…which they should not.
- These are easy to create out in the wild because they are small…6 Foundations, 3 Stairs, 7 fences.
- Carry 2 Archer and 2 Melee to set up a quick outpost.
- For flanking you can build two and put melee on one and archers on the other. Or mix it up.
Here are a few pics as examples…and my favorite house. =)
All 4 on 1. I use a thrall placement distance modifier. You can see here the carnage of 5 large shalebacks…two were reddish backs as well.
The twin
The twin defending against salamanders. 3 spawned in and attacked…only 1 shown here. A couple more in the distance.
Ohhhh…forgot to show something about pathfinding!
So I went and found a Shaleback King and decided to get him to do a screen shot for me. =)
What is happening here is that low stone in front is basically locking it down. It is trying to slam and jump (not in pic) but it just cannot figure out how to go around it and get at me. I went through 50 iron arrows (about 10% health =O ) then had to get into melee mode. =)
So basically while we are in melee it is doing lots of damage (I am a light skirmisher in medium armor here) but I just get behind the stone and drink an aloe potion (used 4 in this fight). Easy fight. Far too many examples of this in game…animals…human…all.
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Thanks for sharing.
Btw, is that white dye that you used on your thralls armor?
I hope you will not encouter any issue with “disappearing stuff” when you’ll be upgrading your foundations into t2…
Personnally i am always building into the final tier i wish in order to prevent this VERY BAD issue from happening now.
cheers
If they built on a private server they can just remove everything from the containers on the floor they are upgrading, pick move all thralls somewhere they are not upgrading and then upgrade the floors before a server restart. The vanishing objects happens right after the server restarts, so from my experience, this is the best way to prevent losing more than the container object.
Yes that is white or light ash for the light coloring. Sometimes white is too bright.
Sometimes I use Stonebrick as it does look better and stronger but usually just use Sandstone (looks fine too). I am PvE only now on single player…having fun. I miss the old roleplay server (heavy RP) but has not come back for awhile. 
Would not change building style on a PvE server either. It is defended but if it comes down…I rebuild it.
In any case I tend to take out all the walls on the foundations and destroy the old ones before building new. Learned the hard way in ARK awhile back. LOL. Never really tried to squeeze in pieces.
In the north I do actually use Stonebrick since it matches the environment better than the Insulated does. Then use Stonebrick and Insulated above ground to get the look and feel.
Thanks for sharing as well. 
Cheers/À votre santé
The problem with non-attacking thralls is due to the time-limited raid timer. Whenever it is on the thralls are useless, since they are switched passive in the mode. We have run on the server, the offline protection mod and the raid timer is out of our thralls are quite normal.
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Try not to use the Follow. The game has a bug when it does not turn off. And while the status is On, the thralls combat AI does not work.
Small update on this. It appears this should be a simple fix on the dev’s part. Mostly thrall combat is working but the AI is just not ‘intelligent’ enough to make the proper analysis.
- I think it is now verifiable that setting a ‘companion’ follower is fine as long as they are not set to Not Follow too close to enemy/world Non-Placeable areas. I have had no goofed up AI modes. Also to note I simply have to take the first hit every time and the thrall gets into combat every time.This goes for both Melee and Archer Thralls.
2A) Defensive platforms. Melee has no trouble going down 3 or 4 stairs as long as they are double wide and even or through the ground. (as mentioned above)
2B) Since replacing all my defensive platforms with 1 or 2 Unit high foundations with double wide (or more) Archer Thralls also do not have an issue entering combat. Archers do indeed begin to get goofy at 3 Units or Higher…meaning they will use the stairs to get a better angle on their enemy. When I remove the stairs and leave the archers there…3 high they usually just will not shoot. 1 or 2 high and they have no trouble getting into combat.
Anyhow…lots of testing here in different environments and terrains.
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thanks for the info my archer thralls are stand 3 blocks high and just stand and watch only shooting on rare occasions
This is correct, if placed too high, archers will only enter the combat if they have access to stairs in order to close distance with ennemies (which is dumb, since they should be able too shoot from a 3 walls high spot or even higher as they were exactly doing BEFORE)
if they don’t have a way to close distance (like stairs or ramps) they will stand still 99% of the time. BUt, in some rare cases, don’t ask me why, you might be able too see 1 or even 2 arrows shot from the third floor (3 walls high).
So, HEIGHT is the biggest trouble maker about wether or not archers will engage the ennemies…
Personnally, all my archers are plcaced 1 wall high from now on and sometimes even on simple ground which they seem to like the most although I don’t.
will post severals screenshots about it certainly tomorrow.
but there is still an other factor causing problems in their behaviour:
During a fight, you will often times see your thralls (both archers and fighters) switching from their main weapon to fist fighting and even sometimes standing still following their ennemy, like if they were just thinking "dammit can’t remember which weapon to use in this situation ??? ".
So i’m no expert by any means, but i would maybe say “coding?”
…sorry, we can’t do anything about that, there is just no “workaround” for such things so please funcom or whatever compagny which is responsible for the AI, FIX iT SOON AND MAKE IT WORK FOR GOOD
if i remember coorrectly joel said several months ago that the purge would only be added if the state of the AI could allow it to happen, right? So my question is to funcom, “does the current state of the AI allow the purge to work now?”
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place them on the ground or on 1 foundation high spot and they will shoot, still not perfectly though but you’ll definitely see a lot more going on.
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I put my first named thrall on the height of two blocks and guess what? He drove me an arrow in the err… in the “lower back” during the first battle. 
Is the consensus then, with all the threads on this now, that as long as we do 1 of 2 things, or both, we should be fine?
a) Make sure each piece of structure is fully contacting the ground - no gaps between bottom piece and ground.
b) Have thralls no more than 1 foundation higher than target (may be improved with a above.)
Thanks!