Panama Jack wrote:
We have alot of plans for roaming NPC ships. The code is there for them but it is highly suspect. We haven't modified the code, except to remove things that locked up the server, since we forked from NGS back in february. So I have no idea how well it works.
We plan on completely rewriting that code but it hasn't been that big of a priority as we have been focusing on game play balancing aspects and getting backend coding established for future changes.
I'll chime in. It's horrid code. The ONLY things I've done to it were similar to what PJ did, and to clean things up to match our other coding standards (and didnt even do that completely).
While they "work", they are hardly NPC's in the traditional sense. They also have several security issues.
It's bad code. Amongst the worst in the game. Even when they work, they stay "locked" at a certain level.. ie, if you make a 'level 21 kabal', they are level 21 across the board, and when they die, they come back that way.
They provide cannon fodder, and not much more.
The eventual goal for NGS:TKI is to replace them with actual AI. Several people have fixed numerous bugs in the BNT kabal code, and its a start towards real code, but it does nothing to change the nature of the players it creates.
