Borg bugs and feature requests

[agoodman]

An awake monster whose level is less than the player's level - 35 will always try to flee (and a fraction of the monsters whose levels are less than the player's level - 28 also flee). There's a more involved calculation, taking into account the player's and monster's hitpoints, that can cause a monster whose level is less than the player's level - 20 to flee. In all those cases, the monster does not necessarily have the afraid timed effect.

That may explain the behavior of the wild cat (level 2) and crow (also level 2) facing a level 50 rogue.

from what I can tell in the code such monsters aren't marked as "afraid" so they won't trigger that check but if I make sure the borg doesn't do it twice in a row he will, hopefully, wait once then approach. If the monster steps away we may see a stutter-y approach until the monster is pinned down. I could add a check for mon level + 25 vs plevel. Not sure it is worth it. Chances of this being a problem is pretty low. I am even having trouble duplicating it using this "attack" at all.

added https://github.com/angband/angband/pull/6516 which should help.

[backwardsEric]

An awake monster whose level is less than the player's level - 35 will always try to flee (and a fraction of the monsters whose levels are less than the player's level - 28 also flee). There's a more involved calculation, taking into account the player's and monster's hitpoints, that can cause a monster whose level is less than the player's level - 20 to flee. In all those cases, the monster does not necessarily have the afraid timed effect.

That may explain the behavior of the wild cat (level 2) and crow (also level 2) facing a level 50 rogue.

[eschiss1]

it was either asleep, or in a holding pattern with its holding pattern, or... hrm. Good point. It's happened once (with wildcats) since but I'll see if I can find out next time...

[agoodman]

Re #131, 134. Uploading a truncated log file that shows some of what happened, where the dungeon map probably contains the most information- will see if I can capture this at a point that shows what's happening more informatively rather than when the "infinite loop" is already well underway at 5 a.m. Not sure if I remember anything flowing towards me, but I may be misremembering.

He is waiting for the "B" (crow) to approach. So, why isn't it approaching? I wonder if it is afraid or something. I can check for status afraid or stunned or confused. It is only supposed to do this when the monster is within a step so I will also add a "don't do this twice in a row" check. I am also going to change the message to
"waiting for monster {name} to approach"
just so we can be sure we know what we are waiting for and we already know what square we are on so that seemed like useless information.

[eschiss1]

Re #131, 134. Uploading a truncated log file that shows some of what happened, where the dungeon map probably contains the most information- will see if I can capture this at a point that shows what's happening more informatively rather than when the "infinite loop" is already well underway at 5 a.m. Not sure if I remember anything flowing towards me, but I may be misremembering.

[eschiss1]

If you want to take the next step and adjust how the borg thinks, go into borg.txt (in the user directory) and change
borg_uses_dynamic_calcs = FALSE
to
borg_uses_dynamic_calcs = TRUE
then go and make adjustments in between
[BEGIN FORMULA SECTION]
and
[END FORMULA SECTION]
If you want to go this path, I can try to explain any formula that isn't obvious and show you ways to get the values that are being plugged in. Note that running with dynamic formulas is slower.

I'm going to have to have a look at that and ask about that soon , I think. (Well, ok, borg's strength going down to 10... a pox on time hounds (no doubt HG Wells' fault).. explained what I was noticing this afternoon - but - hrm.

[agoodman]

For fun and to test some other things for the heck of it, I started up a new borg in cheat mode, a human rogue, who reached level 50 very quickly- but several days later seems to stop and smell the cats weirdly often ("# Resting on grid (20,56), waiting for monster to approach" , almost always wild cats. (Got up just now to see that it was in a loop with a half-dozen cats looking at it.) Who don't, afaik, pose a threat to a 1011 hp, 50th level, character who, nonetheless, has taken to hanging mostly around the very earliest levels now. Sigh. Has killed most of the uniques (well, sure, cheat borg...) but scared of wild cats...)
Miaou? What could be causing that?

I have never seen this behavior. The code in question is commented as
"
Attempt to rest on the grid to allow the monster to approach me.
Make sure the monster does not have a ranged attack and that I am
inclined to attack him.
"
It is looking for a monster that is flowing toward you (not "can't move" or asleep or the like) and isn't that dangerous and doesn't have a ranged attack. This code should be optimized because it is doing a "am I in danger just sitting here" with each monster instead of doing it once at the start and kicking out but it certainly isn't looking for cats, other than they don't have ranged attacks and aren't too dangerous. What the code wants to do is "if I step toward this guy, he gets an extra blow on me but if I wait for him here it is safer"

[agoodman]

Another question- is there an inscription one can place that encourages the borg -not- to drop an item it would usually drop (like a rod of probing?)

no but that isn't a bad idea. I wonder if I could generalize it... inscriptions to modify behavior... hmmmm!

[eschiss1]

Another question- is there an inscription one can place that encourages the borg -not- to drop an item it would usually drop (like a rod of probing?)

[eschiss1]

For fun and to test some other things for the heck of it, I started up a new borg in cheat mode, a human rogue, who reached level 50 very quickly- but several days later seems to stop and smell the cats weirdly often ("# Resting on grid (20,56), waiting for monster to approach" , almost always wild cats. (Got up just now to see that it was in a loop with a half-dozen cats looking at it.) Who don't, afaik, pose a threat to a 1011 hp, 50th level, character who, nonetheless, has taken to hanging mostly around the very earliest levels now. Sigh. Has killed most of the uniques (well, sure, cheat borg...) but scared of wild cats...)
Miaou? What could be causing that?

[eschiss1]

That sounds very interesting and I'll have to take you up on that sometime soon. (Have been following the progress meanwhile of my death-cheating borg, running on 4.2.5-525 now, who last night finally killed Sauron while I was sleeping, which I admit took long enough... )

[agoodman]

Ok, the borg does think it has noticeably more power with a mace of extra attacks and an amulet of trickery than an apparently-to-me much more useful artifact ball and chain and artifact amulet, just at the moment (it changes its mind according to other circumstances, which is also interesting. Anyhow, thumbs-up!

If you want to take the next step and adjust how the borg thinks, go into borg.txt (in the user directory) and change
borg_uses_dynamic_calcs = FALSE
to
borg_uses_dynamic_calcs = TRUE
then go and make adjustments in between
[BEGIN FORMULA SECTION]
and
[END FORMULA SECTION]
If you want to go this path, I can try to explain any formula that isn't obvious and show you ways to get the values that are being plugged in. Note that running with dynamic formulas is slower.

[eschiss1]

Ok, the borg does think it has noticeably more power with a mace of extra attacks and an amulet of trickery than an apparently-to-me much more useful artifact ball and chain and artifact amulet, just at the moment (it changes its mind according to other circumstances, which is also interesting. Anyhow, thumbs-up!

[agoodman]

another thing is... the borg isn't as good with random artifacts as with the standard set. It can deal with them but it sometimes makes bad choices. Some of the formulas are set up around the "this activation means this artifact means give it a little boost because we know it works well with this other set of artifacts". I have tried to keep the power settings more generic so random artifacts work well but sometimes there are old changes that aren't pure. You can even see this in advice I gave someone earlier on how to make it so the borg never dropped Ringil.

[eschiss1]

Good points. Fortunately he isn't getting rid of the amulet, but was still carrying it as an alternate to his nothing-at-all (actually, he's gone back to wearing it, and his really good morningstar with extra immunities instead of relatively mundane weapons of extra attacks, but I will definitely try the power level comparisons and other suggestions when/if this happens again. (He hasn't been killing many uniques lately and there -are- 15 to go, though some are just versions of Sauron and one, Father Christmas, probably doesn't count... I mean, yes, on the one hand, he has the advantage that he's respawning/cheating/an experiment, but except for the Tarrasque and a few others who he may never figure out, he's still doing fairly well at reducing Sauron's summoning advantage... )
Thanks!