Abyssea Monster Ability Logic Topic

[N3ckB3ard]

Hello LSB team,

I have spent some time gathering mob logic from Abyssea and would like to continue my capture project of the areas. Something that I have found across the web and in my own captures is the repeatable mobskills used by most NM's within Abyssea areas. This type of logic to me is probably best handled through a listener or a mixin for Abyssea. I want to help with the project to get these mobs as close to retail as possible for other servers to begin minor testing of Abyssea for battle related content. I will give two examples of one area I have found and what I came to a idea about but I am fully willing to adopt more logical ideas from the team.

Abyssea - La Theine

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Megantereon Logic:

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This mob will use the ability "Roar" multiple times in concession until "Disorienting Waul" is used. This type of action has went for up to 5 consecutive triggers before Waul is used. I decided to use a TP return rather than calling mob:useMobAbility(270) since this will begin to fire off endlessly, but this type of structure would introduce more magic numbers over all Abyssea type mobskills and logic. This leads me to think repeatable logic should be handled as either a mixin or a global for a input of the ID we are preforming repeatable logic on. Here is a video reference of the ability being triggered twice before "Disorienting Waul"
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10_IfbahIfn_Nyl2wfa12v03RHOWUIXoy/view?usp=sharing

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Trudging Thomas Logic:

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This mob when under the effect of "Rage" will trigger multiple "Ram Charges" until the effect of "Rage" has expired or is dispelled from the mob. I did not create a logical example of this ability repeating as I wanted to host a discussion to see what ideas can be considered for these mobs. I would assume this is a check for a status effect and then a return of the mob ability or calling a TP feed. I did capture using "Dispel" to remove the "Berserk" effect and the chain abilities stopped without a final mobskill and this would prevent using a TP feeding logic structure (would have fired off again if the TP was being set to 3000) You can find it in the video reference here
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sfJjmTXUjlIiUG8Mos4pbo7p-JX5F0zR/view?usp=sharing

Please let me know what your thoughts are on this and possibly the best method moving forward for monster implementation.

[TeoTwawki]

up to 5

so its not always 5 then but the chances of it picking the other ability are low, or what?

See the exact way its choosing which ability to use and what the exact conditions are will factor heavily into how we handle it. If its not perfectly predictable we can't code a static behavior, and weighting which skill to use is a feature we do need for many mobs but we do not yet have. Some forks of LSB have made their own ways to alter the skill selection process mobs use but here in upstream we don't have anything yet. There is an open issue for it I think (might be in the list of battle mechanics).

until the effect of "Rage" has expired or is dispelled

That sounds like we can listener for being dispelled, set var in a mixin on trigger

[N3ckB3ard]

I can not say for sure on the predictability of the skills. If I was to try and capture this on retail what do you think the best method of a capture collection would be? I am fine with spending the time to thoroughly gather this type of data and touch on any conditions you think of so we can assure the information going in is ideal. From my testing, it seems almost RNG based.

I am curious what you would deem acceptable for captures for this type of mechanic also. I assume 5 samples of one mob would be enough evidence to support the implementation? What would you like to see from captures related for these mobs?

I am willing to put the time in for the information and have sufficient evidence but I am curious what you would want for these areas

[TeoTwawki]

if it seems RNG, it probably is. we only need 1 recording of it not happening the same way to know statically coding a number of uses is the wrong direction. If its RNG with a tendency to be less frequent that is exactly why we need weighting to our skill selections.

[gweivyth]

There isn't a "great" way in the base to weight TP moves based on external factors.

When I was working on some random Abyssea stuff last year, I was handling adding weight to TP moves by running a listener for criteria, and then having the mob change behavior by having it run its TP move checks thru the lua and weighing them by percentage in an if/else tree. Basically something like

function onlisteneractivate local rand = math.random () if rand < whatever% then return skillid elseif rand < different% return differentskillid end

It's dirty and probably inefficient but I didn't want to spend hours building out a core way of handling this behavior since it is sort of niche. Good luck buddy, Abyssea is a whole bag of marbles!