Auto-switch to melee weapon when magical weapon/ammo runs out
ryuken87
Member Posts: 563
When you run out of a magical weapon (e.g. Melf's Minute Meteors) or your current stack of ammo the character always switches to their melee weapon and rushes into combat, even if there is another stack of ammo available, even if the weapon has magical ammo (e.g. Tansheron's) and even if that melee weapon is only their fist.
It's *really* annoying to watch Neera rush into melee all the time. I know you can set an auto pause for weapon unusable but I don't wanna do that.
It's *really* annoying to watch Neera rush into melee all the time. I know you can set an auto pause for weapon unusable but I don't wanna do that.
Post edited by Illydth on
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Say you had arrows +1 and arrows +2 Fire loaded in your ammo slot...and you were fighting an Effriti. If you ran out of +1 arrows you'd immediately start firing +2 Fire Arrows which the Efritti is immune to and wasting them.
By the current method of handling this weapon switching, you have to manually make the choice to switch to those arrows of fire, which i this situation is the right one.
If you want to "fix" this, you have two things you can do:
1) Pick a better AI Script for your NPCs. The default AI script is pretty useless in most cases unless you're playing a warrior...even then there are better. Take some time to go change your NPC's AI scripts to something that suits the way you want to use them in battle and you'll have a much better time with this.
2) Turn off Party AI (Lantern button in the lower right). This causes you to have to micromanage your party a little more, but the results are a bit better...
Either of these will save Neera from rushing into battle.
Auto-pause for weapon unusable is the third suggestion, but you've already identified that one.
Moving to Not an Issue.
The scripts are all terrible anyway, this has always been the case and I always keep them off. The AI is always off for me too.
But, even if I use AI and/or select the 'Ranged' script and I run out of one stack of ammo, and have a Quiver of Plenty next to it, the character will *still* charge into melee. The result is the same.
Your example doesn't really work, there are no +2 fire arrows in BG2 AFAIK and if you you were using some totally ineffective ammo, you would get the 'weapon ineffective' message.
Jumping from one type of ammunition to another type of ammunition causes a situation where the player may NOT want to be using that second type of ammo.
I ABSOLUTELY APPRECIATE your position on this, I will even go so far as to say I agree with the annoyance factor and would LOVE to see something done about it.
However, for every one of you who WANT automatic ammo switching to happen, there is someone else out there who will post complaining that the ammo swapped and killed his party because it swapped to arrows of detonation when he didn't want to use them. Someone else is going to complain that instead of swapping from arrows +1 it swapped to regular arrows instead of arrows +2 (Well, it should always use better arrows than I have right now!), and someone else is going to say, They're annoyed because the auto swap used up all their arrows +2 and it should have swapped to their quiver of plenty instead because those are unlimited!
This is a NO WIN discussion for the developers. Without putting hundreds of lines of code and intelligence options and configuration options and scripts around it, we're going to piss SOMEONE off when ammo swaps...just like we've pissed you (and MANY like you I will say) off by NOT ammo swapping.
Further, I am not sure I agree with your assessment that none of the options above work to alleviate the annoyance...with the party AI turned off, are you really suggesting that your ranged characters are deciding to draw swords and run into battles? I will admit not to have tested this very thoroughly but having played an archer through the entirety of BG1:EE twice now, I have to say I don't remember this happening. Are you further saying that auto-pause on weapon unusuable isn't pausing the game after a stack of arrows are fired to allow you to re-initiate ranged combat with the next stack of arrows? I appreciate that you believe none of these are the RIGHT solution (or even a GOOD solution), but I would have to disagree with your position that none of the above solves the issue of a ranged character running off into melee.
I understand and agree with your position that it is annoying when a ranged character hauls off, draws a sword and starts running for the enemy group. However, the design choice was made as the lesser of all evils.
When a ranged character draws a sword and goes running into combat, you can pause the game and correct that action. When a ranged character uses the wrong ammunition in a bow automatically the likelihood is you do NOT notice this and a significant amount of that ammo will be lost before you realize what's happened. In the case of a chaotic melee and arrows of detonation happening to come up, this is almost a guaranteed recipe for a reload. First time this happens on a "no reload" game we're going to hear about it.
You can raise a character that died through running into battle (albeit with a bunch of inconvenience), you cannot (except through the console) replace the lost ammunition.
Please do not let me shut down your discussion. Feel free to open a thread for discussion about this in the general area and drum up as much support as you'd like for a fix on this...the devs read those threads and have, more than once, reversed decisions and/or updated code based upon community feedback.
My job here is to make sure the BUG REPORT threads stay clean. An intended, designed decision is not a bug...as much as I do or do not agree with your assessment of how this should work and/or whether a fix needs to be applied or not...the current situation is not a bug...it's intended to work as it does, albeit poorly.
also my personal opinion is, if u don't want certain ammo to get used up, don't equip it (or pay attention).