Hound Behavior

[Zero]

I just got a helm of telepathy and noticed something strange. Why is it that hounds (Z) avoid the player?

[Nick]

I just got a helm of telepathy and noticed something strange. Why is it that hounds (Z) avoid the player?

That would be pack behaviour. They will hang back until they can have a chance at surrounding you or breathing on you from a distance.

[Djabanete]

Why is it that hounds (Z) avoid the player?

It's actually just to annoy you.

[Patashu]

I just got a helm of telepathy and noticed something strange. Why is it that hounds (Z) avoid the player?

In general they'll run away from you if you're in a corridor and swarm you if you're in a room. The idea is to deny you as much cover as possible.
As another poster said, it is quite annoying.

[brabson]

The behavior is annoying. But it does make it rather easy to kill the hounds as they almost always give you space to rest and recover from any attacks.

[aeneas]

The behavior is annoying. But it does make it rather easy to kill the hounds as they almost always give you space to rest and recover from any attacks.

Yep- the pack AI isn't necessarily harder to deal with- just different. Also, pack monsters without breath are basically sitting ducks (should probably be removed from them). You can bounce in and out of a doorway and pepper them with missiles without any risk. You just want to keep your hp high enough that they don't go all "bloodlust" on you. As far as I am concerned that's a waste of time, for the most part, but if you really have to get by them...

[z118]

I play Angband every winter, and I didn't notice this behavior until this year. Must be part of the latest version? I thought is was a pretty cool upgrade. I makes the hounds harder to deal with in some ways; before you could just get them to come around a corner one at a time, now they seems to shy away and avoid this.

[zaimoni]

Pack AI has been around for a while. I was using it back at least as far as V2.9.3.

What's different, is that it defaults to on as part of the option cleanup for V3.0.7 and later.

[z118]

Pack AI has been around for a while. I was using it back at least as far as V2.9.3.

What's different, is that it defaults to on as part of the option cleanup for V3.0.7 and later.

Ahhh... that would make sense, as I typically have never really tinkered with any of the options.

This year is the first time I have gotten around to sort of figuring out the whole squelching thing. I guess I should spend more time looking into all those options!

[zaimoni]

Well...as long as we're looking at that, I'd like a second opinion as to whether the net effect of "AI cheats" is to make V easier. (Of course, self-healers become harder to kill...but that's expected, even if it's a balance problem.) It certainly has some counterintuitive effects:
* Fear resistance can be a minor disadvantage, as the alternatives to the "cause fear" spell are generally a lot worse in the mid-game. (Would you rather be afraid, or take a nether bolt? Especially if you normally fire crossbows in melee anyway?)
* As the breath weapon pruner doesn't take into account damage or ability to close in/melee:
** monster may pass up chances to breathe for instant kill (maybe not a bug, but it annoys me.)
** theoretically, disenchant resistance keeps intelligent disenchantment breathers from breathing. This doesn't really make sense in "can't close or melee", as no other resisted breath weapons get this treatment.
** Your inventory is generally much safer, both because inventory damage is related to damage taken and being resistant to breath-base (fire, cold, elec, acid) means that you aren't getting as many breaths. So that Staff of Power lasts longer.

[AceRimmer]

Personally, I hate hounds... and not just because I recently had a 28th level priest scorched by gravity hounds (over 200 hp in one round). The reason I hate them *is* the pack behavior... they trickle in one at a time, breathe from offscreen, and are hard to hit with my Orbs of D. Hounds are a royal pain if one doesn't have telepathy.

But when my last character finally got telepathy, killing hounds suddenly became a pleasure -- I swear I actually sang while I slaughtered them. Once I got telepathy, I could simply stand outside the room and lob Orbs o' D around the corner untouched.

Telepathy is extremely valuable. I think it ought to be extremely hard to acquire.

Also, some brilliant programmer out there should experiment with pack behavior. At the very least, the hounds should stand farther back from the doorway. [Note: this quirk is not unique to packs... I killed Ar-Pharazon the same way... he just stood still while I peppered him with OoDs... I felt wimpy, but that didn't stop me).

[Orillian]

Pack behavior in Angband is VERY basic and rudimentary. But it gives a framework for more exciting creature AI. Pack creatures should only follow pack AI up to the point were they take damage, since pack creatures only abide by pack behaviors up to the point of injury then it becomes every man.....beast for themselves.

Taking damage for a powerful creature even if it does not know were it's from should enrage it, it should rush the attacker if known or retreat to collect information about the attacker to allow it to attempt to gain an advantage. It should use defensive measures if available to it to attempt to nullify the attackers current form of attack.

I personally dislike the current pack behavior, but I like the fact that it opens the door for more advanced AI. Now if only someone would spend the time to advance the overall AI in the game. I'm guessing this would add a lot of extra flags for the creatures and such, BUT that being said I'm guessing VERY few of us are still playing on 486's.

O.

[zaimoni]

Actually, quite a bit can be done to improve the V AI without new flags. The problem is that aside from pathfinding and some passwall/killwall/cover awareness, just about everything you'd want to do to the AI immediately is cheating because the corresponding information isn't exposed to the player.

Also, the AI does need to be stupid enough that the game can be beaten. (Triple-move G (e.g., Ghosts) with passwall awareness and fear of instant death are unfun at DL 20.)

[Pete Mack]

Personally, I hate hounds... and not just because I recently had a 28th level priest scorched by gravity hounds (over 200 hp in one round). The reason I hate them *is* the pack behavior... they trickle in one at a time, breathe from offscreen, and are hard to hit with my Orbs of D. Hounds are a royal pain if one doesn't have telepathy.

But when my last character finally got telepathy, killing hounds suddenly became a pleasure -- I swear I actually sang while I slaughtered them. Once I got telepathy, I could simply stand outside the room and lob Orbs o' D around the corner untouched.

Telepathy is extremely valuable. I think it ought to be extremely hard to acquire.

Also, some brilliant programmer out there should experiment with pack behavior. At the very least, the hounds should stand farther back from the doorway. [Note: this quirk is not unique to packs... I killed Ar-Pharazon the same way... he just stood still while I peppered him with OoDs... I felt wimpy, but that didn't stop me).

If the behavior is happening with Ar-Pharazon, you probably have a bad version of Angband 3.0.8 or 3.0.9. There is a big mistake in a .h file, where monster path-finding is reduced from a distance of 30 squares to 3.

Basically, if the monster is between 4 and squares away, and is not moving towards you, there is a very bad bug. I don't know if it affects the current V precompiled download or not.