Half Giant Soldiers: Are they necessary?

[Reiloth]

Piled around Allanak in clumps are death squads of 3-6 Half Giant Soldiers. I wonder, from a IC and OOC point of view, if this many half-giant soldiers are necessary. I think Templars have a script where they can summon half-giant soldiers as needed -- Shouldn't that be enough, if they are chasing a particularly nasty criminal?

ICly, it seems tilted very far towards half-giants in representation of NPCs in Tek's army. I imagine they make up 'some' of the %, but not over half or even more. It seems the only soldiers I see represented by NPCs are half-giants.

OOCly, I wonder why the crime code needs to be so deadly/effective. Human soldiers can be parried, defeated, killed even if need be, by skilled PCs. But half-giant death squads are pretty much a guaranteed death within seconds. Should the police force of Allanak be so deadly, so quickly?

Otherwise, I think soldiers should be exclusively human throughout Allanak. It just isn't feasible for the criminal element to fail a hide check and be instagibbed by half-giants. This is particularly true if you are fighting something at the time -- As you cannot be subdued while in combat, so no_save arrest is nullified.

[Jihelu]

I feel like the occasional half giant soldier, in places where templars are available and as their guards, would be better than say...half giants patrolling the streets alone.
Icly I feel like theres too much room for error in the half giants behavior for him to do something stupid. "Oh that elf is taking money from that man (Because they are doing a trade), I better smash!" would probably happen a bit more.

Or.
You could make it a bit even more dumb and have half giant soldiers ALWAYS with a human soldier to help guide him on.
Though the latter doesn't really remove half giants.

Half giant soldiers should be used more for "Lets attack this place" Than "Go sit in the street"

[nauta]

There used to be a side street in the Gemmed quarter that was just -packed- with them, and on those weird reboots where the NPCs doubled, it was double-packed with them.  Like nineteen or something.

[Lizzie]

I think the profound proliferation of HG soldiers dates back to when there were a bunch of crashes once upon a time, that created dupes in high numbers. I -think- it was back during the Gith/Borsail RPT. Someone on staff at the time posted (I think it was Vanth or Vendyra?) asking us to typo the dupes when we saw them.

I've been doing that, but the damned NPCs keep duplicating. It appears to be a coding issue. But no it was never intended, there didn't always used to be that many especially all ganged up together. There's sometimes over a dozen "slim elven woman" NPCs or something like that, and the guy who coughs all the time, and the NPC whose ldesc says it's walking around with a pile of hides - they duplicate often and they shouldn't.

[Dresan]

We've had this discussion before, a week after that discussion I saw about 10+ half-giant npc soldiers standing around in one section of the city.

I figure that was pretty much the staff answer at that point.   

[Reiloth]

Yeah, I don't think it was intentional. And while a couple dozen 'slim elven woman' NPCs isn't really a big deal, having criminal-code affecting agents like Half Giant soldiers arguably is. I think it has to do with the Brain script, where it keeps adding additional half-giants in to the system to circulate.

I'm wondering aloud if it's codedly intentional / desirable to have such lethal force liberally sprinkled throughout the city. It strangles crime, makes it very risky and sort of outside of your control.

For example, if you are mugging an NPC, attempting to knock them out, and you look both ways and see no soldiers at night -- If a half-giant death squad / even a single HG wanders by, it immediately enters the room, attempts to subdue you (but can't because you're already in combat) and then kills you pretty much instantly.

If we could move away from that sort of binary-ness by reducing the amount of half-giant soldiers...Well, it'd make me happy.

[Reiloth]

We've had this discussion before, a week after that discussion I saw about 10+ half-giant npc soldiers standing around in one section of the city.

I figure that was pretty much the staff answer at that point.   

Hidden look was discussed a million times before it was implemented. Is it not worth discussing just because it's been discussed?

[BadSkeelz]

Feck the Half-Giant Police

I had a thread about the Crim Code last year, and the prevalence of half giant gank squads a common complaint.

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49826.0.html

[seidhr]

There should be no rooms with multiple HG soldiers in Allanak unless it's like, at the gates of the city or a militia barracks or something.  If you find a room with more than a couple of them, feel free to 'bug' it.

[Hauwke]

There is almost always some by the entrance to the Labyrinth. Usually about five or six of them inexplicably derping around there. I figure that may or may not be an intentional one though.

[seidhr]

Bug it from the room you see the problem in.

[Yam]

What uh... what do you plan to do with all the redundant half-giants?

Is there a farm?

[BadSkeelz]

They will be tied together to form a Super Giant Soldier and used to reclaim Red Storm East.

[Hauwke]

Dude, get it right man. We are going to tape them to a stick and hit the gates of Tuluk with it.

(Bonus points if you imagine a really thin stick with a zerg ball of halfgiants in chitin armour smacking a gate over and over)

[Lizzie]

Here's what happens:
A couple of those HGs are on a travel script. The rest are not.

Hypothetically (and using my pseudocode because I'm not a coder and only know C and VB6): there are 8 spawn points for HG soldiers in the elemental quarter, so theoretically, there should be 8 half-giants total there (not including the ones with NON-generic mdescs).

Everything's great for maybe an hour, til someone breaks a law (intentional or otherwise). The nearest soldier chases after the rat (it's usually a rat that fights back after it's fled and you catch it and try and kill it some more). It brings along whatever buddies it sees on its way. The rat continues running, the soldiers chase. Eventually they cut the rat down and then - they just stand there.

That'd be all well and good, however those spawn points now have no HG soldier in them to tell the codebase [room_mob > 0] and poof - at the next click, they generate another HG soldier.

So now we have a cluster of 4 HGs where the dead rat is, and they're just standing there. And there's another 4 wandering around from the first 8, that the rat didn't pass on its way to death. And - now there's a whole new section of 4 HG soldiers in the spawn rooms where the first 4 HGs were before they chased after the rat.

Repeat that a few times every week, and eventually you'll have some HGs clustered in all the 8 spawn points AND clusters of 3, 4, 5, even up to 8, scattered around the quarter.

What the code should check for (in my opinion, regardless of whether or not it can be done) - is to check the ZONE for HGs during the respawn process. If there are already 8 HGs in that zone, then there would be no respawn. You could subdivide the zone, even, to reduce but not eliminate the overpop issue. Make everything from the entry to the first major turn (not alleys) a subzone. From that turn to the next section, a second subzone.

And then the code can check to ensure that there is at least one HG soldier in each subzone. If there aren't, it'd respawn in the subzone missing its HG.

Pretty much like this:
create array Room_Segments
create Room_Segment 1 = rooms 257 to 272
create Room_Segment 2 = rooms 273 to 298
create Room_Segment 3 = rooms 299 to 327
(etc)
engage soldier_respawn
where
soldier_respawn = check Room_Segment 1 for soldier
if soldier = 0, respawn
else next Room_Segment
end soldier_respawn

That won't eliminate the overpop but it would certainly reduce it.

[Armaddict]

Feck the Half-Giant Police

I had a thread about the Crim Code last year, and the prevalence of half giant gank squads a common complaint.

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49826.0.html

I was pretty pleased with that thread coming up with other options than a massive crim code revamp/overhaul.  The prevalence of half-giants was definitely too large, and I'm kind of hoping their reduction leads back to the old days where people -would- fight soldiers in the streets, and PC soldiers -did- have a reason to patrol, if only to provide backup (i.e. Scan unnecessary and non-hiding criminals viable/incredibly valuable).

[seidhr]

So the giants that are clumping up on the Road of Slaves (and elsewhere) seem to be re-appearing even after we get rid of them and re-save and we haven't quite figured out why.  It doesn't appear to be a brain thing, just some bizarre behavior with the zone population routine.

I now know where the room in question is so there's no need to keep sending in bugs about it.  I agree with the sentiment that this shouldn't be happening and will be working at getting it sorted out.  I suspect it may require help from one of the coders to investigate.

[Reiloth]

So the giants that are clumping up on the Road of Slaves (and elsewhere) seem to be re-appearing even after we get rid of them and re-save and we haven't quite figured out why.  It doesn't appear to be a brain thing, just some bizarre behavior with the zone population routine.

I now know where the room in question is so there's no need to keep sending in bugs about it.  I agree with the sentiment that this shouldn't be happening and will be working at getting it sorted out.  I suspect it may require help from one of the coders to investigate.

Thanks Seidhr!!