Improve Medbot AI/Prioritization

[Surrealistik]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):

Per Subject.


Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):

Allows Medbots to heal Marines more efficiently, prevents accidental overdoses and prevents them from wandering off indefinitely.


Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):

Medbots will only try to pursue and heal a marine that isn't already being targeted and tended to by another Medbot. This prevents accidental overdoses of Tricordazine (3x simultaneous 15U injections, thereby circumventing the usual Medbot safeties against it), while making general Medbot treatment more efficient.


Medbots gain a 'return to position' setting. While active, the Medbot will set an 'anchor' location if it does not have one already when it detects and attempts to treat a patient. After the Medbot finishes treating its patient (or it cannot otherwise treat its patient; it's either dead, or it's moved beyond its treatment range as below, etc), it will attempt to return to the anchor location, and it will report if it cannot return back to that anchor location, as well as its current position (coordinates + the name of the area) over the MedSci frequency, then delete the existing anchor location. Note that while in the process of returning to the anchor location, the Medbot will continue to detect and treat patients (it will not however set a new anchor location until the old one is deleted). Once the Medbot has returned to its anchor location (or it has determined it cannot return to its anchor location), that location will be deleted. This prevents Medbots from trekking off into the wilderness after a Marine, never to be seen again.

A permanent anchor point (until reset via the Medbot controls) can be designated at the Medbot's current position, otherwise it is dynamic, and the Medbot will self-designate its anchor point as above.


Medbots gain a treatment range setting. While active and defined, the Medbot will not detect, move beyond, or attempt to treat patients beyond that range in tiles (relative to its starting position when it initially detects someone, or, if defined as above, its anchor location). If the patient it is attempting to treat moves beyond this treatment range, it will reset its patient queue, and attempt to move back to its anchor location (as stated above) if defined. While a Medbot's speaker is active, if a patient has moved beyond its treatment range, it will attempt to tell that patient this and to come closer for treatment.


Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):

Coding changes.

[Sad_Corn]

I think they already improved the medibot AI to don't OD marines. But i liked the anchor thing, i mean, sometimes when xenos are atacking, the medibot keeps slowly going to the xeno side and just explode after some time, slashed by a swarm of aliens.
+1

[Surrealistik]

I think they already improved the medibot AI to don't OD marines. But i liked the anchor thing, i mean, sometimes when xenos are atacking, the medibot keeps slowly going to the xeno side and just explode after some time, slashed by a swarm of aliens.
+1

Did you see that screenshot? That's 3x 15U simultaneous injections, which means 15U of Overdose beyond the 30U limit. Medbot safety AI seems to preclude them from trying to inject someone injured who already has Tricord in their system, but that's of no help at all if you have simultaneous injections.

[Heckenshutze]

I've been healed by medbots three times ever in my CM experience.

The three times i got OD'ed. so +1

[Sad_Corn]

Did you see that screenshot? That's 3x 15U simultaneous injections, which means 15U of Overdose beyond the 30U limit. Medbot safety AI seems to preclude them from trying to inject someone injured who already has Tricord in their system, but that's of no help at all if you have simultaneous injections.

They never OD me. That's why i love medibots

[Surrealistik]

They never OD me. That's why i love medibots

The anti-OD safeties are normally effective. However, when you have multiple Medbots that target the same patient, you can get into problems as seen in that screenshot.

[Aracino]

Pretty sure you can set how much they put into people and if they are stationary(?)

[Surrealistik]

Pretty sure you can set how much they put into people and if they are stationary(?)

You can't do the latter except for turning them off, and the former doesn't really address the problems this suggestion does.

[Surrealistik]

Bump because not implemented and Medbots are still overdosing people.

[Surrealistik]

Since I understand Apop doesn't want to add a variable to humans or create a patient array, just giving the Medbots a stationary mode so they don't follow marines to the point of creating a critical mass of 3+, and to prevent said critical mass from becoming an actual problem would work too.

Further, adding a safety check such that a Medbot stops attempting to treat a patient if it detects another Medbot already adjacent to its patient.

[InterroLouis]

I saw a CMO in the hangar once, who had a tiny cut. It was like Dawn of the Dead. 4 medibots converged on them and injected them at once with double the OD limit of tricord.