Enemy Action Sets

[DerVVulfman]

BUMP

To version 1.2

DISCUSSION TIME!!!!

Alas, Melana found a bug indeed.  The system that acquires the target by Status Effects recognized three specific scopes:  One Enemy, One Ally and One Ally (0HP).  It did not account for any others. So when the scope of a skill was set to the User/Caster, it drew no target which caused the issue in question. 

This has been fixed, now adding a feature to retrieve the user itself as a target if so defined.  But I went further and made the routine exit if the invalid scopes for All Allies and All Enemies were set.  The system that acquires the actual target is meant to return merely one and not a variety... thus said scopes would be invalid.  It is a preventative measure.

Now, as to the selection of an action...

Actions are selected based upon the 'Rating' of the action, and optionally given a boost by its 'Priority' if the action is based on the target's HP score.  If a spell is meant to poison the caster's enemies, the spell is cast as often as the rating dictates.  And if the spell is set by this system to target those that have not yet been poisoned, it will exclude those targets when it attempts to perform the skill.

However, the actions are 'nudged' towards the desired goal.  Rather than preventing other from being performed, actions that have a higher priority merely have a greater chance of being executed.  And while an action may with to target specific individuals based on their hit point or status effect state, the action has already been chosen prior towards the target-selection upgrade.

Before the system performs this 'nudge', the action is already chosen, it is defined and default targets are set.  This is to allow enemies not covered by the system to be able to perform.  So an action for an enemy like a Poisonous Snake to bite and transmit 'Venom' to a target will already be set before the system takes hold.

If the system nudges the snake to bite targets that have not been poisoned, the snake will go after any other target.  But one way or another, it is performing this Venomous Bite as often as its Rating so dictates.   And if it has already bitten everyone, it falls back upon the default target it selected prior.

The only thing I can think of doing is to upgrade the Priorities option which currently covers:
    0 = No Priorities
    1 = Party Crisis
    2 = Troop Crisis

Perhaps setting a '3' and '4' priority (Party/Troop State Crisis) could come into play.  Very annoying a feature to be sure ... from a coder's point of view.  Just as it reads each attack pattern line and checks if an actor/enemy has low HP, it would have to run a separate check to see if an actor/enemy is subject to a change in state.  And if said target was subject, then its rating would be increased as it would be for the other priority ratings.

This would not eliminate the Snake from biting a target already poisoned, but it would allow better control.

But this is a theoretical idea right now.



ow you should have absolutely no problem with this.  The incidents were in two methods related to targeting and crisis HP systems.