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Originally Posted by Criimson

I am not sure that this would be neccessary. I would need an example. With archetypes, bot roles, and class settings I think that the rest would be handled by AI thorugh the code. Reading too much from the DB, especially during large scale combat, seems like it would just slow the server down.

Criimson

Spell data is read only once. An example: I want Voice of Thule cast on my Main tank only. This could be put into code, but what if someone is using a custom spell file? Or Sedulous Subversion, necro mana transfer spell. I would think you would only want it cast on Cleric or maybe Enchanter. (main healer or crowd control) Also, I added in the percentage heals for Druids with my healing update a few months ago. As a backup healer, I would prefer that they stay away from them, since they take so long to cast, but if the Druid was the main healer, I would rather them use the percentage heal, since it's more efficient.

Originally Posted by Criimson

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My origianl plan was this:

Realistically, I could have percentages of AI already coded finished in a day. I just thought that there were only a few of us interested in bots to be honest and so wasnt a priority. If you'd like I can have some class settings done by tomorrow night.

While I appreciate the offer, I suggest running up through level 65, grouping with multiple classes to get a better feel for how the classes interact, and what spells are cast when. You mentioned being level 15. At that level ( and through the 50s probably) you will be OOM a lot, since you have little to no mana regen. For the past year, on and off, I have been going through all spells, trying to get bots to level 75+, as well as add in any spells that can be with the current code, or for ideas as to what can be added in the future. While I know much more about the spells than I did before, until I grouped certain classes together running through Vex Thal or PoFire, I didn't really see how to better manage my groups to be more efficient. I'm not sure a wholesale change of percentages would be best until decisions are made as to future changes, or at least a better understanding of higher level grouping / bot group raiding would be impacted. As I said before, limiting nuking by clerics or enchanters, or healing by hybrids may seem like a great idea, but when my main cleric has 9K mana, 100+ mana regen with spells while sitting, and a 10K HP tank, my cleric would be bored if it only had to cast a complete heal every 30 seconds. Also, as I stated, Paladin group healing is crippled by having the target be less that 20% to be healed. Having the paladin group heal running when being AE Dotted is a lifesaver. Of course, there will be other examples. I just wanted to point out that a good understanding of grouping / raiding is needed before making changes within the spell code. That's why I haven't made many more changes than I have.

Originally Posted by Criimson

What I'd like to see in this thread and discussed is what the players who use bots would like to see or think is coded wrong. I don't use every class in my group so some bots could be behaving really incorrectly and I'd never know.

This is what I'm looking for. While I use all classes in different ways, other people have different play styles that I would like to learn about. That would definitely help direct how some of these things are coded.

Originally Posted by Criimson

I had actually started planning for this. I was trying to get code in that showed itself working before I started doing changes to the DB structure. I think I mentioned it in one of my posts.
What I envisioned was a set of helps for each bot class that would list commands that relate to that class. Such as percentages and roles.

I missed one option I had thought about, which was allowing players to specify the exact mana percentage that a cleric would stop nuking, or a ranger would stop healing, etc. After thinking more on it, I think I like the idea of presets that a player can select from, which would have a certain percentage already attached to it. Not as granular in control over the bot AI, but it would give a good start into the concept of mercs, who use a similar system. This is what I wanted feedback on, as to what other bot owners would prefer.

Originally Posted by Criimson

I would like to see healing priority worked on, but I never played a healer so was putting it off. I don't even know if a druid heals better than a shaman.
I have decided to work on adding percentage code in next. Allowing players to choose at what percentage to heal, for instance. It will be on a per bot basis (adding a healing percentage column to bots) and then gauge server load during combats. I'd assume there is a way to read that data and keep it in memory but again I am not sure if that would cause more load than just reading it each time, especially since some servers use bots and have large player populations. Although, I have tinkered a bit player side with Angelox's DB and he has some good code. (Like I'd love to know how he has his bots stand in a spaced way behind the player using his #bot move command)

See my above comments on percentages. If the data is saved within a bot in the database, and loaded when the bot is spawned, it wouldn't have to continuously be loaded from the database.

Originally Posted by Criimson

I think that if we get a few coders to work on bots then we can break tasks up. I would love to see raid working for bots before I get to that point I am not keen on the idea of just having a bunch of bot groups when it doesn't seem that hard to be able to raidinvite the bot group leader. Havent looked at the code for this though.

A decision was made to remove bot raids since some people didn't think a player should be able to run around with 71 bots and run a full raid force at raid targets. If bots were added back into raids, a lot of code would need to be rewritten to take raids into account. Not that it wouldn't be worth it, but it would be a decent effort to do.

I do not want to disuade you from working on any one area and certainly appreciate your enthusiasm for bots, but I would suggest doing some more work such as the armor tinting (great job BTW), etc. until you get a better understanding of the spell code, before making such large changes on something that is so integral into bots and their worth to users. I am not saying I can do this better or anything, or anyone else, but I would ask that we get feedback from other bot users on what they would like to see before a lot of work is put into these kinds of significant changes.