Question on Guards

[jillmatik]

I've seen lots of threads about making guards attack mobs using faction modifications and such, but they don't relate to my problem.

If I run an orc to a guard in Greater Faydark, the guard will definitely chase the mob but I never see combat animation and the guard never does damage to the mob. If I attack the guard, the guard does do damage as set in the mindmg maxdmg fields. They just aren't doing damage when they are aggro'd from a mob nearby.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Thx,
J

[jillmatik]

No clues on this?

[Dr Zauis]

I first tried to change the race. No go! Then I changed a guard to same faction as Lashun Novashine. He attacked and killed Fippy but would not attack other mobs. Then I noticed that if a guard was trying to attack a mob
in the area that my Lashun faction guard was then he would assist the attacking guard. So its not right but with a little experimentation its possible to fake it. After a while I had modified and "normal" guards set up at the gates that would kill any mob around.
So if I maybe make new faction entries for guards I might have something.
But remember this would all be "fake". Its supposed to work as is.

[jillmatik]

I would think factions would be ok, since the guards are actually chasing the mobs.. they're just not doing any damage.

[Dr Zauis]

I would think factions would be ok, since the guards are actually chasing the mobs.. they're just not doing any damage.

Me too! Thats why I tried to change the race first. But didnt help. So I changed faction and by golly they worked! Man I hope I can get my server to work public..I can set this up and you can log in and see!

[vRandom]

Factions might be the problem, i killed a orc in greater faydark and i took a faction hit to them alien looking dudes on the moon, haven't had a chance to look in to it though...

My guards just follow things around.... maybe they are trying to intimidate the mobs to death.

vRandom

[killhand]

Hello, i cant test this in 6.2 because i dont have inet at home and couldn

[jillmatik]

maybe they are trying to intimidate the mobs to death.
vRandom

LMAO... glad my monk isn't the only one....

I will tinker around with the factions then. I appreciate all the feedback. I didn't realize guards would chase something, without the intention of causing damage.

[jillmatik]

Ok so I was messing around with the two guards at the West Freeport Gates.

I noticed that they too were just chasing mobs around, not doing any damage. So I ran this bat into town and started this huge guard train behind me and the bat... when all of a sudden, bat dead. Who killed him? Brother Jentry.

So I used the Jentry as a point of comparison and the only difference I could find really was that Jentry had an NPC_Faction_id of 1403 while the guards had 18884. So I changed the two front guards to npc_faction_id of 1403 and drug a bat in.. nothin.

Turns out that now they only attack a mob if another guard of npc_faction_id of 18884 is also chasing the mob. But these guys on 1403 actually damage the mob and kill it where the others don't.

I don't really know how all the tables link together npc_types npc_faction and npc_faction_entries to make this happen. But maybe someone with a little more understanding on these tables can take my observations and make some sense out of it. I do know that npc_faction_id of 1403 will attack and kill a mob if one of his buddies is also pissed at this mob.

[Carnage_ou812]

Wouldn't a blanket way to fake it be to add a new player faction and then have the guards assist the player faction like the other NPCs do the guards?

I realize that race would never be an issue then and that DE guards would help even halflings. Not perfect but possible?

[cavedude]

The problem is with npc_aggro. If it is set to 1, the mob will aggro but won't do any damage. If it is 0, the mob will assist only but deal damage when it does. The solution I came up was to set all guards to npc_aggro 0. Then, duplicate every guard with an invisible un-named mob on the same faction and npc_aggro set to 1. That way, the invis mob will attack the mob and deal no damage. Then, the guard will assist and kill the mob. Since the dup is invis and unnamed, the player doesn't even know it is there. It also does slow the server down a bit.

[jillmatik]

Alright thanks again for the suggestions. Sounds like this is what Killhand was talking about before. I'll throw up some invis mobs near the guard locations and see what happens.

Thanks
J

[cavedude]

Well the real trick is npc_aggro. Having the invis mob is just so it looks nice in-game.