Author Topic: Make AI stay at yellow alert level after player leaves combat with stealth  (Read 1587 times)

sull

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This change could make the stealth feel more challenging and less cheese-able without overcomplicating things or adding tedium. Perhaps it is too late in UnderRail's development to alter something like this, but I think it's at least a neat idea for Infusion.

If the player is in combat but then manages to hide, any enemy who had detected the player previously would rest at yellow alert level instead of regressing all the way down to green.

This would better give the impression that enemies have object permanence, while avoiding the pitfalls of having a randomly wandering "search phase" that the player would either wait out or abuse to isolate targets. It would also reward players for investing heavily into stealth, either to avoid detection to begin with or to be better able to hide from enemies who are already watching out for them.

The behavior could also be extended to enemies who take damage from a player's trap. But it should not be so easy to trigger that it would discourage the use of normal distractions (ie. using noise to lure enemies somewhere).
« Last Edit: March 03, 2021, 09:49:41 pm by sull »

Sykar

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Good idea imho.

cypherusuh

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It's bad because of the opposite reason you said. It makes 0 stealth character unviable for most stealth-only quests, like that JKK mail bomber ones, or gray army base. Both can be brute-forced, but still viable enough for 0 stealth characters with high tailoring.

Ofc it's all very few in number, but still kinda sucks. And due to how the game mechanic works, yellow or green eye only affects its "timer", doesn't affect their actual detection. Probably gives you 1-3 seconds delay at best.
Basically just adding more tedium in the game, unless Styg reworked the entire mechanic.

sull

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It's bad because of the opposite reason you said. It makes 0 stealth character unviable for most stealth-only quests, like that JKK mail bomber ones, or gray army base. Both can be brute-forced, but still viable enough for 0 stealth characters with high tailoring.

Ofc it's all very few in number, but still kinda sucks. And due to how the game mechanic works, yellow or green eye only affects its "timer", doesn't affect their actual detection. Probably gives you 1-3 seconds delay at best.
Basically just adding more tedium in the game, unless Styg reworked the entire mechanic.

My suggestion would change what happens after full red-eye detection. If you mean that a 0 stealth character can do these quests "stealth-only", then those characters won't trigger this behavior in the first place.

I think it would work fine with current game mechanics. Reducing the detection timer means less time spent waiting for it to go back down. It would also give less breathing room for sneaking near these "alerted" enemies without triggering the orange phase. Making stealth harder after doing cheesy things should deter trivializing encounters that way for characters that aren't normally built around stealth, trapping, etc.

Sykar

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It's bad because of the opposite reason you said. It makes 0 stealth character unviable for most stealth-only quests, like that JKK mail bomber ones, or gray army base. Both can be brute-forced, but still viable enough for 0 stealth characters with high tailoring.

Ofc it's all very few in number, but still kinda sucks. And due to how the game mechanic works, yellow or green eye only affects its "timer", doesn't affect their actual detection. Probably gives you 1-3 seconds delay at best.
Basically just adding more tedium in the game, unless Styg reworked the entire mechanic.

Wait, so you feel characters should not suffer some consequences for having no stealth when engaging in, potential, stealth quests?  ::)