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Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 5:07 pm
by Cataclysm of Iron
Playing a druid, I'm finding that semifrequently (and randomly) that companion/summoned creatures/empathied creatures will stand there and do squat while nasty things kill me - irrespective of whether I am 'controlling' them with PT1 or not, or what PT commands or radial commands I use.

Am I doing something wrong?

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 5:14 pm
by cptcuddlepants
The same happens to me every now and then. At that point I usually have to micromanage them with the player tool, or just dismiss it and summon a new thing and hope it doesn't happen again.

No idea what causes it, unfortunately >.<

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 5:16 pm
by BrutalForce48
Make sure that as you're using the player 1 tool you're not clicking the summon as it makes them stop and do nothing until you then either tell it to attack via player 1 tool or via radial.

Also note that the player 1 tool will only control 1 so if you tel them to stay put for example via radial menu, but select the controlled summon to attack the others will literally just sit there while only the NE up u told to attack will.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 6:43 pm
by RedGiant
I rarely, if ever, use P1 Tool and mine does the same thing. I'm idly curious, what is your companion? Mine is a bear, which shouldn't matter, but seemingly does in the case of murder kittens - i.e. panthers

But, I swear mine was working better a few months back...

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 6:48 pm
by Cataclysm of Iron
I don't think it matters because it affects all of my retinue intermittently, not just the companion - but fwiw it's a badger.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 6:51 pm
by One Two Three Five
Yeah, I've had the ol 'summon is suddenly a pacifist' thing happen on familiars, companions, any summon from 1-9, the shadow conjuration summons.. It's probably some kind of AI thing?

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 8:56 pm
by Tryn Dralar
From my experience, what kind of anaimal and whether you are using the player tool or not, the animals will at some point start standing around doing nothing. If I haven't used the player tool at all on them, and they start standing around, what I used to do was stick to the radial menu by clicking for them to follow me and dash off so they start moving, and then from the radial menu select them to attack nearest and more times than not this helped out.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 11:46 pm
by Sab1
I assumed it was lag, but I have often watched my summons do nothing as other peoples summons kill things. Or elemental swarm where two attack and two do nothing. Nothing like summoning an EDK to save you only to watch it just stand there and do nothing as you run about trying not to die.

I never user the tool since I always forget how to use it. :D

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 2:32 am
by RedGiant
This has to be a recent thing. For a long time my summons, and particularly my animal companion, were swift and lethal...almost hilariously so.

Was there any AI changes that would have affected it? Didn't Mith tweak the code for luring awhile back?

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 2:39 pm
by Miaou
I believe the op is talking about an actual long standing issue with summon AI. I have noticed since I started playing that they can get stuck in certain commands the AI tells them to do.

Let us disregard Player Tool 1 for a moment. When walking a dungeon, summons will race off ahead if they spot an NPC that is hostile. They will do their fighting and return. But I have noticed that things get funky when distance is added in. Say you summon went hostile and started to run off some distance. You walk around to follow it, but the route takes you slightly further away. Occasionally this causes the summon AI to choose to return to the PC instead of continuing to fight. At this point is when the script messes up. Your Summon AI has choose to return and follow you instead of fighting, and can get locked into this.

Luckily, this has a simple solution. Right click the summon, tell it to attack nearest. Giving a summon a command resets the AI and it can normally right itself. PT1 can be used the same way, as others pointed out.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 4:52 am
by RedGiant
But also to the original OP, the commands don't seem to readily fix it. I can testify to this as a veteran Arelith conjurer. The recent dynamic is:

I'm getting chopped in half. I command my companion to vigorously attack the Malarite/Harpy/whatever. The Malarite/Harpy/whatever is literally bumping into my animal companion while its sawing me in half. My animal companion stares in the opposite direction.

I think this is what needs splaining, because this wasn't always so, not even in the fairly recent past.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:50 pm
by Sockss
Empathied creatures are very odd. The vast majority of the time they will not attack the faction you've empathied them from, even using pt1, and will instead idle while getting bashed by their former allies.

Totem summons (if you have one) are very wonky in terms of visual size and their actual size. Provided that the summon is in combat (which you can see from it's animation/party UI), it'll be related to it's positioning against its current target. You could be blocking it, another creature, a placeable.

Voice commands don't always cause the creature to attack what is closest to you either, it may be trying to attack something it's blocked from reaching while staring into an opponent.

I've never encountered idling summons, outside of empathied ones, when using pt1 or voice commands.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:17 am
by RedGiant
I'm going to say, I think this goes further than animal companions.

I hadn't done a ton of adventuring lately, that is until recently, and I'm finding even enemies just suddenly gone stupid. I won several boss fights in the last couple days by them going catatonic in the middle of combat.

Are we sure there isn't some general AI things gone wrong here? I would suspect the large AI change we had just a few months back.

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=25&start=200

Any chance this is the culprit? Can't tell without looking under the hood, but seems a likely candidate.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 8:13 pm
by Blood on my Lips
I've been having issues with controlling a water elemental (Summon Creature IX) for well over a week now. It doesn't matter if I'm using the Player Tool or letting it wander randomly. I've tried both.

The elemental will stand next to hostile creatures and do nothing even when I've used the Player Tool to tell it to attack something.

When not using the tool the elemental will go after a hostile creature and then suddenly decide to stop fighting wander back to me luring the creature to me.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 8:30 pm
by BegoneThoth
Seen both recently its very annoying.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:14 am
by Woper_The_Black
Yep, I've noticed this too and fairly recently at that....last few weeks maybe. Where it used to seem like a glitch every now and again it's pretty constant now.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 6:46 am
by miesny_jez
Can You start reporting this in the Bug Forum please and make a list of which summons/bosses You seen this behavior?

Best to provide details such as:
Summon/Boss:
Where:
When:
Using PlayerTool1?:
Behavior reproduced:
If reproduced, what steps:
Happened in combat/out of?:
Noticed since:
Things Your character did when the issue occured:

I won't lie to You Issues like this are usually a complete pain in the **** to find out and debug but if You will start reporting this in a systematic approach we can easier find a pattern in it and debug it.

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:27 am
by Revelations
Never had any of these problems personally.

If summons don't reespond in any way, I just toggle off controlling that summon via player tool 1, click "follow" on the radial menu (or VEE) while it's not controlled. It normally still doesn't do anything then, but afterwards it's "active" again, meaning I can toggle player tool 1 back on and send it somewhere, toggle it off and use the normal commands.

Either this helps, or I've just been lucky that my summons never bug out!

Re: Summons etc. Doing Nothing

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:20 pm
by Hammerwell
Revelations wrote:If summons don't reespond in any way, I just toggle off controlling that summon via player tool 1, click "follow" on the radial menu (or VEE) while it's not controlled.
The voice commands help a lot. I try to tone down on them when in a party, but when I'm alone and need my summons to react quickly to a big bruiser running my way, or to my summon running off to aggro while I'm just standing there picking flowers, I'm all like, "VEE, VWE, VWF, VWX!!!!" etc.