My only protest to that is it seems like a shame not to include iconic units like guardians and gretchin at launch. This seems like a good way to give them some exposure. And it couldn't hurt to nip ghostcapping in the bud with garrisons. As a battlefield tactical tool, sure, that could wait for a post launch release. But base garrisons would be a good way to test their effectiveness for future uses.
NPC ghostcapping protection squads should be feasible IMO it be fun for all involved instead of just waiting on the point with nothing to do, and as more players show up, less NPCs respawn from a "Garrison" until eventually none spawn and it is a big PVP battle.
I wouldn't mind seeing some NPCs to slow down attacks on rear facilities. As long as we don't have Level ??? elites that kill you in two hits protecting spawn areas.
Imagine this: Defensive option - What about the high level commander (option only for the leaders of the armies), he watches one of his goal with a few soldiers and suffering an disproportionate enemy attack (less than 25% of defense). No squad available in time to support. They call the transport vehicle to deploy 1 small squad of npc's (IG, Cultis armed Goblins and the equivalent for the Eldar .... resistant ones and unique caracters - bringing more immersion into battle [ They can put in the store to sell for those veteran players more resists units as OGRES (IG) etc...]). This will cost a lot requisition points and would not be allowed to call another for a long time, like hours. I do not think NPCs will defeat the attackers, They will give some work to the opponents. The npc's help the few soldiers in combat, they will probably die because the move foward and has initiative in combat .... if not they should stay in place standing guard until they were killed by players. It's an epic option in combat and just imagine that happening!
Right. NPCs would be the large scale equivalent of a sentry turret. It isn't an offensive option, and good players won't have a problem dealing with it, but it does serve to slow things down and allow for more defensive flexibility.
I think the only way you could use ai is to take the place of players thay leave...there empty corpse becomes ai untill the unit dies. Thay way a squad dosent just become instantly useless.
I think staffing garrisons with NPCs would make the most sense, and it might even be an upgradeable option. If we get fighting NPCs in secured objectives and Garrisons then we might even have support NPCs, helping with supplies for example.
So from a purely 'fun' mode - saying nothing about performance for a moment - I am actually in favor of NPCs both as defensive and offensive units. Defensive as has been described above, where players could buy a 'logistics' or something skill which gives them a certain number of defensive units they can assign. They don't have to be 'lesser' units (no need for extra work there), just the base version of what the players start as - and are assumed to grow out of within a month or two. They wouldn't hold up well to any major rush but would prevent a single player from taking over a city just because the other players were busy elsewhere, and would slow things down enough that a skilled strike-team could respond - and make the battle more fun than playing hopscotch. At the end of the day 'fun' is what it is all about. Offensively I could see a similar skill unlock for very high level players focused on command skills - unleashing a squad or two as a 'deep strike' or teleport or summon or what have you, with a singular objective - 'defend the deployment point for X-minutes then return to your duties' or 'take that building and hold it for X minutes'. Again, stock units (maybe weakened a little bit so they are fun not overpowering). The experience would stay around the players if you just limit how often you can summon these squads (like DoW does - you have to get a certain buildup of kills or objectives to unleash these in a burst). What I think it would add is a feeling of large-scale war (seeing an actual orc mob charging at you like the siren's going off in Left for Dead and you're covered in sirloin) instead of just another Unreal / Global Agenda game. Just think it would create the right 'mood' for the slaughtering going on everywhere. So I was ignoring performance for a few reasons. Firstly, because massive battles have been done in Warhammer Online and Planetside 1 and 2. The bots being AI makes a slight difference, but not if they are not terribly intelligent and you have some beefy modern computers on the server side handling the calculations. You could also limit the ability to deploy these in high-population areas if it is causing problems - 'there is too much interference!' or 'all of our squads are tied up fighting a wave of tyranids, you are on your own!' or 'sorry, you've got enough players there mate, deal with it'. And lastly because programmers and engineers are very interesting creatures - their job and passion is solving tough problems. The easy ones are just what they do to pass the time and earn the paycheck, the tough problems are the exciting bits, and they are like demi-gods at what they can accomplish. So it is just easier to focus on 'would this be fun and cool for the game', and if so hand the performance issue to them and let them figure out if it is possible or not. And if not, well, don't implement it.
sadly even WoW had to cut down Alterac Valley because the NPCs were just causing too much input lag and clutter and that was in a scripted battleground, not an open world scenario. Definitely love the idea of fighting next to a Marshal of our crusade or another well-known space marine though, however unlikely.
Hmm.. WoW is effectively an older engine that keeps getting tuned up (it has been around for oh.. over ten years now?), though it does have Blizzard behind it - and no offense to any other developers out there, but Blizzard is just.. well, I mean its Blizzard. Still, I've always been curious about compression on NPCs - there has to be ways to transmit position info in a faster way. Perhaps letting the computers handle the final calculations and having the servers just pushing out more minimal updates to just keep the computers on track. (If it is a bandwidth issue). Unreal does a nifty thing where you can have 'smart AI' (stand alone bots) or mob AI (a stream of bots that are a lot more like particle-effects in how they are treated). The later might not add as much to lag if they were treated properly. Or the whole thing could be throttled as I'd mentioned - determine safe player levels for a zone vs max player levels. If it passed over safe and before max just don't allow any summoned troops, and if it is under that (whatever that number is) then allow them - to avoid situations like Alterac Valley, while still dynamically allowing larger battles in areas off the beaten path. Eh, again, don't know since I'm not coding on this myself and I haven't coded in the latest version of the Unity engine - but it may be worth a brief exploration to see if it is feasible. If it is, rocking, if it isn't, scrap it.
