So I was thinking the other day about the AI, and the spawning and monsters in genral. I figured to make the combat and the general game more player enriching certain things could be done to \"spice it up\". For certain \"intellegent\" NPC\'s there would be a chance for grouping to happen. So I will use Rogues as an example of potentially intellegent NPC characters. This is inspired by the idea of NPC bases and camps.
As some of the rogues cannot actually harm players, the rogues in the bases would have to be harder than the average rogue.
So I\'m thinking that you would either have to make some rogues that can hit hard and well, and alot of them if this base is to be feared and take a group to beat, otherwise your going to have one player marching around the land like a god with a broad sword hacking apart rogue base everytime they build a new one. This could also be applied multipul times for different places in the world, so there is not just one group of rogues and they all belong to the same thing.
So here is my idea which has probably been said before but here it is anyway. When they do eventually get the NPC\'s to spawn in random places, they should also have them roam across the land. With this comes my idea. I think that when an NPC comes across another of its own then they should join up together and continue. When a certain number is reached they start to settle down and can bring in more powerfull of their own. For example:
A rogue spawns on the odja road, he roams until he comes within a certain distance of another rogue, they change direction and continue together, they keep to this pattern until there are five of them. The five then set up a camp and start to spawn other tougher rogues every 15 minuets or so.
This is when a Rogue \"leader\" is elected (or in this case spawned). They group has gotten to 25 strong and they need someone to control them and keep them together. A leader steps up and takes control. He then has two choices. He can either roam with his band, killing all in his way and becoming a notauriouse force in the known lands. Or he can still camp and become a large growing camp, slowly becoming apparant to the player civilization.
The players can either decide to seek out this threat and destroy it (whichever random choice is taken by the computer) or they can leave it to grow, eventually after a certain amount of time, the band will be forced to move on and possibly assualt a city. This could happen when a certain number is reached, a maximum of 50?
This will inevitably be a rare occurance, as players will always be seeking out NPC\'s and probably killing them before they can camp or find a partner. This build up could also possibly be stopped by having NPC\'s attack other NPC\'s if they come across each other. Other than that, a group of randomly skilled NPC\'s marching around as one attacking en mass whoever they come across makes the world more life like and apparant.
This however could be far to complicated, difficult and sizeable toimplement into planeshift so its just an idea I was working on.
