PANPC 2.0.2 Released!

As I mentioned in my previous preview post, I've been working on missiles this week. We also have a bunch of new optimizations (including a completely refactored main combat target scanner), some fixes for sleeping NPCs and BOS, and some changes to how PANPC suppression works. So let's get into it.

As usual, you can get 2.02 on the GreslinGames Discord, in the PANPC #releases-latest channel. You will need the Citizen role to access it, so jump in #role-requests and ask for it.

The full PANPC Changelog can be found here.

Missiles and Fat Men

Missile tactics are more challenging to get right than you might think. Rocketeers are slow to maneuver, have long reload times, and generally only get off a few shots before they revert to a secondary weapon. Their attacks have to count, and in the meantime, they're sitting ducks for flanking assaults.

Up until now, missile and Fat Man launchers in PANPC were considered generic "heavy" weapons, midfield suppressors on par with miniguns and Gatling lasers. Tactically, that's flatly ridiculous, but it was the best I had at the time. There were no specialized tactics for explosive launchers (now a new PANPC class, Heavy AOE).

Now there are. Heavy AOE users will generally set up towards the rear of the engagement, or at least in heavy ranged cover, and look for where a rocket would do the most damage.  

Unlike almost every other tactic set that prioritizes the closest or weakest enemy, Heavy AOEs will seek out the enemy with the current highest HP level. These enemies will often likewise be in the back of their own side's engagement area, acting as an attraction point for weaker allies. This means that if you have Heavy AOE launchers on both sides, they'll tend to attack from either end of the field, with full on chaos in between.

Heavy AOEs now have double the range on their combat scanners, in order to pick targets at farther distances. To compensate for this, Heavy AOEs cannot ambush, and have severely restricted pre-combat patrol activities. Other NPCs who can ambush, however, can summon the Heavy AOEs into the field once the ambush itself begins.

Suppression

Suppression tactics are situations where the NPC knows that they have considerable firepower to work with, and so they aren't afraid to move into the open midfield to draw fire and start blasting. The general idea is to give ranged allies (snipers, Heavy AOE) a chance to set up positions, while close range assaults (shotguns, rifles) push into the battle.

Up until now, suppression tactics were limited to Heavy weapons: miniguns, Gatling lasers, rocket launchers, and the like. Rocket and Fat Man launchers are now Heavy AOE class (see above) and no longer suppress. Flamers, including weapons with flamer attachments, are now considered suppression weapons.

New to 2.0.2, rifles and assault rifles can now, in a pinch, fill in suppression roles. The rule is this: if an NPC rifleman detects that fewer than 25% of their current team is acting in a suppression capacity, they may now opt to suppress. Otherwise, they will remain using standard rifle tactics (ranged maneuver, mostly).

Sleep, Brotherhood of Steel

It was brought to my attention this week that it is rare to find sleeping PANPC enemies. Upon reviewing the code, I realized that sleep state was not being checked as a "pacified" condition, along with consciousness, captivity and the like. This sort of cuts into your ability to sneak around in the dead of night and take out sleeping Raiders.

That's now fixed: if an enemy is anything other than fully awake, the AI script will go dormant until that changes. While the NPC is asleep, they are driven almost entirely by the vanilla system and they will not be using PANPC scanners at all.

In a somewhat related issue, there are vanilla quest situations where a fully aware PANPC-powered Brotherhood of Steel member can ruin your day. One example of this is in the Airship Down quest, which involves the need to infiltrate a BoS base. Some of the PANPC noncombat patrol behaviors - ambushing, random attraction, etc. - can virtually guarantee that someone is going to notice you and give you away.

To deal with this, several of these behaviors in BoS are now locked behind their first combat engagement. As long as the shooting hasn't started, BoS will not AutoAlert, or ambush, or do any of these other proactive engagement behaviors - instead, they will show some military discipline, stick to their posts and not concern themselves until either combat begins or something obviously suspicious gets their attention.

Optimizations and Bug Fixes

I continue to refactor and optimize PANPC. The main combat targeting scanners have been cleaned up, and I've done some significant work on the main AI decision bus and most of the event handlers. Optimization efforts aren't done quite yet (probably never will be), but again we're considerable better than we were even in 2.0.1.

One side effect of refactoring code is that you quickly start seeing where the logic doesn't work, and where bugs have been hiding. It is a little like pulling the refrigerator from the wall and watching the wildlife scurry out of the shadows.

This version includes a number of small bug fixes, including a few in the feral ghoul AI and another that could give NPCs too many molotovs on death. Activation for the new Enclave and Random Civilian profiles was broken, and so I fixed that.

Finally, after some testing I concluded that the Weapon Attack Rate actor value doesn't do anything in FO4, or if does, it has so little significance that it doesn't matter. So the attack rate modifier has been removed from MCM and from PANPC.

Next Steps

I've done a lot of work with the PANPC code base in the last couple of weeks, some very necessary housecleaning and upgrading that I had wanted to get into 2.0 but didn't have time for. Barring inspiration or disaster, v2.0.3 may be a few weeks out, and will probably be another optimization and bug fix release, without too many new features.

I now plan to get back into PACE. Two new feature sets are on the top of my PACE ambition list right now: rank assignment of companions (the ability to designate one companion as your lieutenant, allowing them to order other companions in a multi-comp scenario), and the start of a faction-based disguise/camo system that would allow the player and companions to "blend" into enemy camps using faction armor.

And, like I keep promising, I want to get some melee upgrades in, as well as another round of fine tuning for Dogmeat. That will probably take priority over the ooh-ahh fancy experimental features.

If you want to watch my progress, I'm starting to record PANPC/PACE war game test sessions. You can watch those videos on the GreslinGames YouTube channel, with discussion and critique happening on the #pack-attack channel of the GreslinGames Discord.

I think that's it for now. Have fun, visit GG, and stay safe out in the Wasteland!

My best,

- G.