Fix NPCs to be functional again

Definitely agree on this!

MMorekdfgkldhl

Sorry, support site is broken. II can't see what I'm typing. :(

I am glad you finally created this support post. Was about time. I like to see what the modding community can do too.

Back when i got this game (in mid 2017) i visited the alien planet in hopes there were aliens, there were. When i saw them i was mortally horrified by the sheer look of them and what they did to me and the easy start base. I was so scared of them i never wanted to see them again, until i started getting bored with being alone in space in early 2018. And to my surprise they were digging in and out of the ground constantly, i came up to them to end up getting shot into the air with one on my face, and finally landing on the ground dying upon impact with more spiders killing each other all around me. The wolf's are broke too, but they are another story.

100% agree on this SE needs better AI for NPC's to access for both Ships and the Wolfs and spiders.

keen will probably never read this : (

The possibilities would be endless with AI engineers...

Oh I should of added this in the main post. Here a video of a modder that actually made HOSTILE ENGINEER NPCS that can SHOOT. I think its amazing how far he got it to work even with Keens strict npc hardcode. If NPCs were less hard coded I would of love to see how this would improved and released. Sadly I heard he shelved this mod due to complications. I would love to experience PVE in SE that modders could enhance like crazy if they could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkOxn97MEO4

Keen's work on NPCs thus far has been at best lack luster. (Admittedly though they worked well at first.) If they have no intention on revamping NPCs and keeping them "experimental" then they really should take the time to pull NPC coding out of hardcoding so that modders can work their magic. By doing this it increases the playability of SE without Keen having to dive down the rabbit hole of NPC reworking if they choose not to. The small workload of tossing data in to XMLs and placing reference and pointers to that data will be greatly offset by the depth it adds to the game. Modders will likely flood the workshop with new NPC mods within days and help revitalize the game for those of us that are quite bored with every single world being utterly devoid of NPCs. I love SE but its often a toss up to go with many similar games simply due to other games having NPC interaction.

I really hope with all the DLC funding they been getting they will actually show something new and game changing. I tried the economy update and so far these stations are empty and lifeless and nothing new other than Fallout 76 levels of npc interaction that we seen modders made for years like EEM. Although I like the idea of contracts/missions but it seems Planet ones are very passive while space get the fun ones why not both? I think a neat idea for a bounty would be hunting down a npc bot in a base or ship that has guards. I just hope this economy will be improved and hopefully over time it will have more actual npc interaction than "imagination" and computers. Its a nice start though I just hope it won't be added and forgotten like the temperature mechanic thats pretty much just has the same effect as having no oxygen. Though none of those compared how actual npcs been broken for years and never improved once.

I just would like to see the DLC funding actually being used to add something totally new that modders didn't make years ago.

https://blog.marekrosa.org/2019/04/space-engineers-customizable-lcd.html

Wow...someone has footage when npcs use to able to Pathfind!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xEBBoVGLCo

All they're doing with the money they make is sticking it into their pockets and living large. If it requires a lot of time and effort anymore it just doesn't happen. This game used to be really good and it looked like it was going places but then it hit a brick wall and crashed and burned.

Just adding my voice to this. It feels like there's a whole layer to the game just looking weak. (I started playign with a couple of friends and because it was early days, MES encounters weren't attacking us yet, they thought the only threat in the game was these feeble badly scripted wolves, and almost quit. )

I'm fairly new to to game and started looking at modding, and I've run into brick walls where NPC behaviour is concerned. If NPC/character/bots were a fully rounded system I know I and others would be creating interesting mod content right now. With the Economy and Mission coming in there's tons of potential.

Keen pls, what's the point of economy if it's just you in an empty world full of metal blocks?

If money is the issue make it another DLC feature. Game seriously needs some AI better than even ME has.

To be honest, the Economy Update seems like a prerequisite for this. They did the easy part first (stations + contracts), along with some cool blocks, and now they can do NPCs without the community worrying about when the next update will be.

Also, good NPCs will be difficult to code and almost certainly hard on the CPU. Anything they do also has to work on lower-end systems without imploding.

Lol Marek talked about how much GoodAI progressed in the last stream. He suggested that maybe it could work with SE broken npcs in 2020...

Hopefully something will be done with npcs this year. With all that DLC funding and upcoming x box release (lol) and how their other game Medieval Engineers have decent npcs.

I still don't get why they never sorted out the NPC's before full release considering the sister company of keen is GoodAI

https://youtu.be/RIMoIPKuAx4?t=462

[Quote=Marek]Spiders and wolves don't do it for me and should not be in the game[/Quote]

So they just broke them so we can't use them.

so why not roll back the AI for spiders and wolves to where they were in a usable state and posed a threat and release the restrictions on the code for the modders to extend the functionality of the NPC's both drone and character AI.

and leave it as an experimental function for those of us wanting to use the functionality.

If there was a variety of NPC's in space and on the different worlds another reason to explore or just stay safe on earth with the dumbed down wolves.

I totally agree with you Ryukki.

I'm okay with the occasional automated drone or even cargo ship passing by, but when every station and passing ship you encounter is barren and devoid of life, it feels unfinished/unpolished. I want a pirate ship to pass by and drop some NPC's off to jettison into my base and engage me, or manning stations in a pirate base and deploying to defend it. It doesn't have to be fancy AI but it would add that finishing touch that is so lacking right now.

If you guys don't mind using mods:https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1785389603 - They work in Space now too, as long as they are spawned from one of the Spawner Pads. They still work on Planets like they normally would, with or without the spawner.

+1 i agree this game needs more things like NPCs to make the game more interesting

UPVoted this post.

This game has such great potential, but somehow it feels like the developers don't want or (that would be weird) can't improve certain aspects of the game like AI.

I mean, yeah pathfinding can be expensive, but there are tricks to make it more efficient, also it's not needed for very long-range paths, not to mention, apparently, planets aren't procedurally generated, so there's an advantage here in terms of performance improvement.

About AI, most of the games use state machines, and afaik it's not an impossible feat to improve and fine-tune them.

Sometimes it feels like there's some unknown reason for Keen to not want to make the game "perfect".

This game, in it's current state is somewhat of a paradox. After 1500 hours in-game, all of them within the last 9 months, I fell I'm qualified to make a few constructive criticisms on general game play.

- For first-time players, the game starts out fun and exciting, this is in fact what got me hooked initially. The initial base building is slow but rewarding as you get your first equipment scaled up. Traction, however, is gained exponentially and you can quickly scaled to an "unlimited" supply of resources if not engaged by anyone. Mods with "threat score" are then required to allow for balancing, and we are suddenly getting out of core game play.

- Single player is fun, however quickly feels like a big automated universe taken over by machines. Engaging NPC's quickly loses it's thrill after fighting the repeated onslaught of automated turrets and grinding down ship remote controls. You'll quickly fell like you are fighting a big, empty universe devoid of any life. Perhaps this was Keen's goal to feel "isolated" but it loses fun quickly due to it's repeated elements.

- Multiplayer is fun as well, however suffers from some paradoxical elements:

- New players tend to begin with planet (labeled "easy") start, however planets are too small in scale and it's way too easy to find and pick on new players. Such game play dynamics drive the need for planets to be 5 or even 10 times the size they are now, however the game engine won't support this.

- The game is essentially devoid of any "life" however the "default" Keen servers only host 16 concurrent players in the game. This means that you'll either be subject to base rape early on (see previous point) or you'll do a "deep space" start and never see anyone. This game really needs to implement a scalable networking middleware such as SpatialOS or Scalify (or write your own?) to allow for a much larger concurrent play base. This would mitigate the issue of lack of interactible NPC's. Some private servers do scale up to 50 concurrent users, however this requires 3rd party tools to constantly disable or limit block types and run clean ups to keep the sim speed within remotely playable levels.

- Similarly to the previous point, there is limited concurrent player base however there is no AI to speak of to fill in the gaps of either lack of concurrent players in multiplayer, or to fill in the universe in single player. I personally would prefer a hybrid model with both NPC and Humans, and would enjoy a game play where it's difficult to initially discern between the two.

- 5 years development and only one face per model? C'mon guys, this is pure laziness and is unacceptable. Purchase a cheap face model plugin if you are too lazy to implement this yourself. I would prefer this "quality over quantity" type of update over the onslaught of silly DLC toilets and textures, which don't really expand game play. Unless keen is planning to implement "the runs challenge" in game, I won't waste my limited grid count on a space crapper.

I have been playing SE since 2013 hoping that some day we might get AI engineers and much better AI NPC in single player but i have lost hope a long time ago, single player mode is just pointless with a non existent enemy/challenge.

I recommended SE to a few friends of mine a few years ago hoping we could all play and between us all we would enjoy it but as soon as they knew the AI was scripted to go from point A to point B despawn and respawn somewhere else... repeat with no challenge from anything but terrible AI they quit and never returned to SE.

Single player AI/NPC is seriously broke and its a shame because i love playing SE but once i have all the resources to build what i need and built them then that is where the game ends for me.

I know nothing about game coding and what is possible or not and maybe the SE game engine can not produce the above

but i can only dream of chasing AI space engineers around bases/ships.

I have not played SE since DEC 2019 and currently have 822 hours in game, i would love to make that 10,000 :)

KEEN please amaze us and bring us a better AI !!

I made an account here just to upvote this, I don't have medieval engineers so I had no idea there was such a difference in the AI. SE feels so empty without mods, even the economy stations. I would love to see any or all of Ryukki's feedback implemented!

Here are the results of a poll run on Reddit of how the community would like Keen to improve the current Character NPC's as you can see most players would like the modding community to have access to the NPC code to further develop the Character NPC's and add some life to Space Engineers.

I believe that if Keen added access to NPC code to be run in experimental mode this would be beneficial to both your company and the community as you have seen over the last year there are great mods being written by the community for the community as this is a core component of the game which has been left in a poor state for so very long

considering Keen had working NPC's in Medieval Engineers that were a challenge to players.

Could you please give a response to this post on your plans for updating Character NPC's.

• 4.1% Restore NPC's to 1.184.
• 14.5% Use Medieval Engineers NPC code.
• 71.4% Build a NPC framework and allow the modders access to develop further.

Good new everyone! They did updated npcs and pathfinding on grids is back with the Sparks of the Future update. I was really happy to have spiders chase me through the parking lot I made ages ago. Wolves never really had decent pathfinding but least spiders are working again. Although them attacking a smallgrid your hiding in isn't back sadly. Hopefully they'll keep working on npcs and loosening restrictions on them for modders to tinker with.

Good Job Keen, please keep up the good work on npcs.

Interestingly enough, all it seems to be is a few modifications of the AIBehavior.sbc file.

As a heads up, the recent update with the block collisions did jank up the spiders but they know this so hopefully by next update they'll be working again.

Yes the NPC animals feels like something butin alfa build in the late 90s. It is a black spot on the game.

Love to have some real animal and monster on the planets but also pirates and armed security forces onboard ships.

New update "Wasteland" is released with new work done on wolves and spiders and its kinda mixed. Thought I update everyone with what I found on day one of this update. I'm glad they didn't abandon npcs and hope they keep working on them with hot fixes or more updates. Wolves really benefited from this update though.

Spiders which use to be really good at hunting players deep underground or in high towers. Now hunts players but looses track of the them once their in a grid. I seen spiders chase me through a building some keep chasing and others shuffle around then collide into the others blocking the rest. While a number of them stay outside and keep digging into the ground in a loop. Its a really odd behavior compared to the old AI, hope they keep working on them.

Wolves FINALLY have path finding after 5 years of never having any. I think they pretty much benefit the most out of this update. Although both them and spiders have some trouble moving around corners. It was pretty interesting having wolves chasing me through a grid for the first time ever. Although they kinda suffer from the same issue with spiders if your inside a building they kinda shuffle a bit.

Not 100% sure if anything been done for NPCs mod.api, Just hope their keeping modders in mind when they makes custom npcs. Also Keen can you please re-enable the spiders damaging grids code for modders to use. There been a legit massive spider mod released and I would love to see it be able to tear up buildings and ships and rovers.

Keen, to be fair, has made some progress on their AI this update, which is unusual to say the least. One thing I would like, as I am sure many others would like, is the NPCs to be able to damage blocks/grids/whatever you want to call them.

Found out a older branch of SE had working spiders when they were at their best in 2017. Made a video comparing how much more interesting and engaging the old spiders are compared to the current ones. It would be nice to see this again in SE but more polished of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NecC0D_rhw

@Nebo Yea, I got SE when it first released in 2013, came back to it when it had planets in 2015. At that time spiders had "okay" AI which was fun to play with because they could path find and hunt you down even break grids to reach you or force you out of hiding. Then 2018 happen and npcs been pretty subpar ever since.

Now speaking about crew/humanoid AI. Someone been working on a mod that adds that and more. It's not out but the possibilities is amazing. You mix this mod with the Modular encounters mod and you can have populated npc ships/stations. These droids could be task with guarding a grid or following you or even repairing. The insane part is you can have a 100 active npcs in a area and the game will still be stable. I'm currently looking forward to this mod than any recent update.

Just a shame keen thinks decent npcs is impossible when they did it years ago and a modder is making insanely amazing npcs. While They also continue chugging out DLC each update.

So Ai Enabled mod came out a few weeks ago. Its insane how amazing it is and the sort of black magic commit for it to exist lol. With Ai Enabled the npcs are optimized so you can have 100 active npcs in a area if you spam them and still have decent game performance. Meanwhile Keens DLC up the wazoo npcs only are locked at 30 and the game performance is horrendous! All because they can't navigate at all and end up cluttering into a wall tanking game performance. Even Medieval Engineers npcs is better optimized with there npc limit at 40.

These npcs are also entertaining and really spices up SE gameplay and give planets or space station a lively feeling. Its as if npcs in a game helps make the game fun. I had a blast running test with these npcs seeing what they can do. They'll target enemy grids,they'll jump in your ship and be your crew, and you can fight and defend your base or invade a enemy ship and take out its crew. While also having giving them commands and watching repair bot go around and fix your base.

With all this DLC money and having a combat update with NOTHING to fight at all and npcs went from okay to even worse and still are is just inexcusable. SE claims its a survival a game but there is nothing to survive against other than the repetitive and tedious grind with nothing else to do with no actual threats "A survival against boredom". Keen a dev team with DLC every update and the best they can in 6 years is wolves and giant space spiders and both don't even work at all. While 2 modders did more with AI than keen did in years and loads of DLC backing keen up. The current state of npcs is inexcusable with the lack luster updates that were mere recycled blocks and more DLC.

AI Enabled: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2596208372

Keen dev enjoying AI Enabled: https://youtu.be/tey4VTUpfyw?t=5041

When Keen AI use to be decent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NecC0D_rhw

what years of DLC brings you... : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBsPAXxCwiY

I did a insanely fun idea for a test recently with Ai enabled. Having 100 npcs with guns duke it out on a asteroid station platform. I recorded 2 sessions and learned that they can fly with jetpacks somewhat in space. I love these battles!

-Eat your heart out Warfare 1 trailer, this is real combat in SE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6iSOzOapiQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJTpZd2j64

The main take away here is that Keen doesn't take your feedback seriously or they are simply too small to go beyond the scope of bug fixing. Either way it's become clear that they are leaving the modding community to deal with this, which is why I've moved on. Keen has become the couch potato of dev teams and are just riding on DLC welfare to survive. I say good luck I'll spend my time elsewhere. I had fun while it lasted.

AI enabled got updated with a fun feature that makes so you can make custom npcs with the Ai enabled framework mainly using existing suit mods from workshop. Its amazing not only am I able to fight Engineers but I can fight armored juggernaut like engineers with way more HP. Someone if they wanted could pretty much mod alien npcs to populate their alien ships now. Meanwhile SE vanilla npcs are still killing performance and getting stuck in walls.

I think playing Survival with your friends cooperatively in a PVE environment is essential for this game to really shine. We have these large planets with largely nothing to do on them except mine and crash vehicles… build structures etc.

I think there is a significant portion of the community that would love to see a good variety of creatures on some of these worlds and even in space. How about some space-based lifeforms to deal with as well?

Anyway… I’m going to vote for this and I’m definitely going to check out the mod AI enabled.

For how many years of development there were many problems. Some kin have been fixed. A lot has been done. But really ... for how many years it was possible to add realistic NCPs. For all the years you buy 2 new types of paint and a new skin for the sake of supporting the developers. Give them aspirations. And they shove paid skins ... Nonsense ... Yes, I will not argue there are useful points. By adding new ncp, the variability of the game will increase a hundredfold. And players after 2 hours of company will not be so bored. Please draw your own conclusions. This is the most relevant topic for many players.

yeah i agree and the Aienabled mod is great i hope this means Keen will fix and add more npcs the game that aren't garbage.

I've made similar post around the same time as original post (link here https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/character-npcs )

I enjoyed playing SE at the start because it was neat to see what you could build....but it is missing the other half of the game, something to do with your creations. This could be surviving a planet's elements, (good) NPC combat, surviving as long as you can with limited resources, a story mode type thing, etc etc. If SE ever became a game with stuff to do instead of a neat thing to mess around with for a bit I would certainly play it.

Currently for me you start a game and depending on where you start this is what you need to survive:

Earth like: open your helmet

Mars: Build a solar panel, a cockpit, and an o2 generator. Mine a little ice which is easy to find and you're good for ages

Space: Mine a little ice and maybe build a solar panel and you're good.

There is nothing to see and no reason to go anywhere, nothing to threaten you, nothing to challenge you. I have no reason to play.

I agree that the game devs should focus on more PVE content instead of adding new blocks. The game performance, creative content and graphics is already beyond decent, while NPCs have been left behind for years. I don't really enjoy fighting against players on PVP servers and would love to focus on PVE mostly.

Even the wolves are bugged and a relatively easy threat that doesn't scale at all with your expanding bases. Since there is no food mechanics and the weather is hardly doing anything to harm you, there is still nothing left to pose any survival threat, nor is there hardly any reason to explore further beyond Earth / Moon (without modding resource generation), but that's for another topic.

Status → Under Consideration

Will miracles never cease.

I totally agree, having some nice AI life in the game would get me playing again immediately! Building weird contraptions is fun, but it would be so much nicer if you are under attack by alien factions or if you want to raid an alien base. How about building funny traps to capture some AI enemies? The game indeed needs more life! Giving the PvE players something to fight against.