Mercenaries

[trevius]

Originally Posted by Secrets

Committing what I did tonight though

Did this commit go in? The last rev I see is 2255 from Nov 11th.

The sooner we can get this on the Trunk, the better, I think. I know Akka has a big change ready to go that might be a bit of a pain to get merged into the branch.

Inheriting mercs from NPCs will likely require quite a bit of work and testing to get the kinks all knocked out. It does make sense since technically mercs are NPCs. It would probably require a lot more duplicated code leaving mercs as their own class under mob. I kinda liked the idea of mercs being directly under mob, but hopefully having them under NPCs can be worked out before too long if we stick with using that route. I think having them as their own class directly under mob would probably allow for a cleaner and more flexible solution (even with duplicated code).

[bad_captain]

That why I created them under mob, but with stats being handled more like NPCs, I can see why it might work.

I have been working on getting stats in the database. I'm looking through my logs while writing a script to generate the stats and insert statements. I'm getting close to having something usable that can be tweaked, but I have little data for mercs > level 65, besides just DPS numbers ( no max hits, etc). If anyone has any readily available, I'd appreciate it.

[Secrets]

Been terribly busy, sorry am fixing up my local source, then I'll commit it tonight.

edit: just committed it.

[Secrets]

Just an inquiry, can we use the scalerate field in NPC_types and keep them in their own range?

That seems like it would make the most sense, people are more than capable of doing an update query by ID, and we can keep templates somewhat modular that way.

Thoughts?

[bad_captain]

I'm not sure what you mean 'in their own range'? I think it's been agreed that keeping mercs in a separate table from npc_types makes the most sense, if that's what you mean. KLS commented on that earlier.

Keep in mind, we need to include spell damage modifiers (per spell type, as I believe HoT spells aren't affected), as well as melee skills or discs, which don't conform to the npc_types table.

I agree some kind of scaling feature would be nice, but I also think allowing for complete customization has its benefits as well. I may have come over to Trevius' thinking in that respect. I'm not sure some aspects match a specific scaling rate, as looking at maxhit from lvl 1-60 does not seem to follow any particular equation, or any set of equations. I'm sure the same can be said of spell damage modifiers, etc. This also allows customization shown in live pets, where one particular pet focused with a particular focus has extreme regen - a bug I'm sure, but created some differentiation. SOmething similar could be done with something like the mercenary contracts, where obtaining a contract and hiring your mercenary that way results in a superior merc than what is available from the merchant, at the same proficiency and tier.

What I had planned to do was basically split the npc_types table in two and pull out any unneeded fields, and end up with a stats table (hp, mana, str, sta, resists, regen, etc for each level of a particular proficiency and tier), a texture table (to store visible textures and tints- weapons seem to change every 5 levels, and armor maybe every 20 or so?) - no need to duplicate the textures for every level. Then, one more table for the spell & skill mods (instant heal mods, nuke mods, buff duration mods if any, etc.).

[trevius]

I think the npc_types_tint table could be re-used for mercs as well. We would just need to add texture/model fields for each slot. It would be good to have that option for NPCs as well anyway, so you could have different textures for each slot if you wanted (plate chest, chain legs, etc). Then you would just assign a tint set ID to the merc and it would give the appropriate look.

I haven't tried the RoF beta yet (and don't plan to), but I hear that mercs may now have a new UI window that lets you at least view the equipment they are using. I don't have much detail on the subject, but if this is true, it would confirm that mercs do in fact equip gear. If no one can confirm now, we may have to wait until it goes live to be sure. Mercs equiping items could be something new to Live (assuming the info is true), or they may have done it all along.

Either way, even if it is true that Mercs can use gear, that is something that could always be added in later. Just like NPCs can use gear or not. It can factor into their combat, but not on the same scale as it does for player characters.

It is very possible that the casting bonuses and such come directly from focus effects on worn items. Though, it would be nice to have the option to change those values directly via a table like bad_captain mentioned.

As mentioned, a scaling option would be good if it could be worked out properly, but I think it would be pretty hard to really properly scale more than a few levels at a time. There may still be a good way to consolidate the large number of DB updates that would be required otherwise, though. We may be able to split stats out into a couple more tables and assign IDs from those stat tables to individual merc templates. There are probably different stats that overlap between different merc types. Maybe all tiers use the same STR/STA/INT/WIS/AGI/DEX/CHA and Resist values for each respective level of the merc, but they use different min/max and hp/mana/AC values. We could have one table that deals with stats and resists, then another that deals with min/max damage and hp/mana/AC, or whatever. It may take some analysis and thought to see if this approach would be worth-while, but if it can consolidate the amount of entries considerably, it could be worth it. Just kinda thinking out loud here, heh.

[Trackye]

Trev these were found on a Merc FAQ I was looking at

Q: Can I give my mercenary weapons and armor similar to a pet?

A: No. your mercenary comes equipped with the armor and weapons he needs. Also his armor and weapons will get better as he levels up.

source http://almarsguides.com/eq/general/mercenaries.cfm


Can I give the mercenary gear?
No, you cannot gear the mercenaries or hand them any thing at all.

Source : http://www.necrotalk.com/showthread.php?t=9993

So it may be that in ROF giving them equipment is new..But looks like atm you cannot and their gear scales accordingly with preset sets of Gear based on level.

[trevius]

Ya, but the information may not be accurate in those FAQs. They say that mercs come with their own gear, but they don't know for sure if that means they actually have a full set of equiped items (inventory) or if they are just simulating a set of gear by sending texture and wearchange packets and adjusting NPC stats accordingly to scale. Considering that all of the mercs I have seen in the past only wore armor with no tint, that makes me lean toward them just sending a texture change. If they were using actual gear, why not use existing gear sets made for players (which would have a tint applied)? Of course, they could also send a tint to simulate that as well, which we already have an option for in the emu.

[Noport]

[sorvani]

I have not looked into the MQ2 source for their spawn searches but found this over on their forums

You're right, anything doing a spawnsearch using "pc" will not return a merc- there is "mercenary" for that (I use Autobot and had to heavily modify it to allow a tank merc as MT).

[bad_captain]

I'm tempted to just go ahead and add in equipment, as it won't be that much work (minus weapons), and it will affect the stats used as base stats (what I'm working on now & they would need to be significantly adjusted later if equipment we added). Not only that, but secondary stats such as spellshield, healing amount, etc would need to be addressed. Equipment allows mercs to have those stats without having to give them the stats initially. Plus, it allows for a lot of possible customization.

I would be curious to see just what equipment they do use on live, if any. I know it was odd to see my tank merc alternate between weapon types, using 1hs, 1hp, and hand-to-hand weapons at lower levels.

Also, not sure about this, but just because a merc is 'wearing' a piece of equipment doesn't necessarily mean it has to use that texture, right? They could use the equipment for stats, but display what we specify, correct?

[trevius]

Originally Posted by trevius

I haven't tried the RoF beta yet (and don't plan to), but I hear that mercs may now have a new UI window that lets you at least view the equipment they are using. I don't have much detail on the subject, but if this is true, it would confirm that mercs do in fact equip gear. If no one can confirm now, we may have to wait until it goes live to be sure. Mercs equiping items could be something new to Live (assuming the info is true), or they may have done it all along.

FYI, the info quoted above is false.

And, Noport, mercs have always displayed weapons and armor like you show in that pic. That is nothing new. It doesn't mean that they actually equip any of the items they are displaying, it could just be (and most likely is) for display only.

Originally Posted by bad_captain

Also, not sure about this, but just because a merc is 'wearing' a piece of equipment doesn't necessarily mean it has to use that texture, right? They could use the equipment for stats, but display what we specify, correct?

That is correct. We can send texture changes, or wearchanges to make any NPC appear to wear/wield whatever we want, no matter what their inventory actually is (or isn't). Keep in mind that there is 1 extra step that has to be taken to make different weapon type changes work as needed; we have to also change the attack message to match the weapon model (slashes, crushes, etc). NPCs already support this type of change in fields of the npc_types table.

[Noport]

i'll say this Trevius is correct there is nothing new. my mercenary hits for 2k a swing not counting crits. this is what you get when you receive your mercenary this is a tier V mercenary. the mercemary ui looks just like what Secrets posted (just for display only).

[Caryatis]

I think its fairly obvious that mercenaries wear opcodes.

[bad_captain]

Originally Posted by trevius

The sooner we can get this on the Trunk, the better, I think. I know Akka has a big change ready to go that might be a bit of a pain to get merged into the branch.

I think if we make sure all servers can continue to run without mercs after getting latest, it should be able to be merged now. And for that to happen, we just need a simple script to change the 9 mercenary liaisons (class_id 71) to guards or whatever, then we should be good to go. (I have 9, stock peq may have fewer- I can't remember if I've added any mercenary liaisons)

We still need the scripts to change all of the current PoK guards into mercenary liaisons, but that shouldn't be too much work. I have a bunch of collects, so I think I'd just need to create the scripts and test it all out. This would then be added to the current mercs.sql to fully enable mercs on servers who want them.