March Change - Ships of the Damned

[RenWmn 30]

On our server we have a lot of solo players and small companies and I've been doing things to try to accommodate them. We are mostly a PVE community but we run PVP events.  We average about 9 islands per map square on our existing map.  With the climate templates Ships of the Damned (SoTD) spawn frequency is set about about .75.    Some of our players really have difficulty with the existing Brig ships of the damned.  Part of what makes it really difficult is how they seem to spawn in groups NOW.  Even with the reduced spawn sailing can seem more like a slalom course then it is normal sailing with the occasional hazardous ships.  (I've tried to fix out issue by modifying rates in the .json but for whatever reason it isn't taking for us.  Some people have also mentioned this issue and only a server wipe seems to fix.) 

I'm just really curious what other server owners settings are and how their players react to SoTD. How do you think the SoTD squad changes will effect your server/players?

I love the fact that there is going to be varying difficulties of SoTD. . But the fact that they will spawn in squads just adds a difficulty that small population, smaller tribe servers probably can't handle. Ideally I would love to be able to limit the squad size of SoTD.  Plus being able to cap the amount of Galleon, Brig, and Schooner per map grid based on our player base of a given server. 

Right now since the code for the .json isn't working in one square with more new players I've had to outright block the spawn of SoTDs.  Has anyone gotten the dinospawnweightmultiplier code to work for SoTD?

[Estharos 10]

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I'm just really curious what other server owners settings are and how their players react to SoTD. How do you think the SoTD squad changes will effect your server/players?

Well it's a matter of setting. When I first test the ship of the damn spawn rate, I notice that the default spawn rate was very high. A setting of 1.0 was spawning a barrage of SotD around the islands, spreading toward the high sea. To be confortable on our server I had to set the setting accordingly to the number of players playing on  the server. So I have to reduce the setting a lot to get the right settings. 

The reason for the high spawn rate for the SotD is because of the Official server, if you ask my opinion. Keep in mind that the official server as an objective to have 40,000 players on there server. If you do the math 40,000 players in 255 grids is about 175 players on each grid. I know there's barely few hundreds of player playing on the Official Servers, not 40,000 but GrapeShot as to make sure that there's enough SotD spawn to accommodate the players. They adjust the spawn rate the way they see fit then set it as default settings. Why a default settings, that's because of us. They knew that people will start there own server and will need a setting to start with, so we can adjust it the way we wanted to.

We played for a week with the 1.0 setting but at that time people were still experiencing the game, took a few days before someone decide to go at sea. Then it's where it all started, when they go at sea they were so much SotD that you could walk from one Island to another without getting your feet wet. Took me a few days with a lot of digging to found the argument in the .json file to reduce there spawn rate. So I begin testing, I set it up to 0.9 then gradually lower it down. The spawn rate is so high that I didn't notice any change until I reach 0.6. Then set it up for 0.5 for testing. Did a dino wipe then at first it look ok, people were able to travel more freely, even if they have to do long detour just to avoid them.

After a couple of hours we notice that the SotD started to be all over again, raising up there barrage again around Islands, took a while to figure out why. Longer the server was running, more and more they were spawning. People were still not ready to fight them, they just started leaving Islands so the can gather the proper resources to make combat ships, so no population control, even then, couple of hours to be overwhelm, clearly the setting was still to high. Now it's set up at 0.2 for the freeport grid and 0.3 for the other grids.

Our server is private and player population ain't really high, so I had to set the setting accordingly with the population involve and what they do. Right now they are more explorers then hunters so having to many SotD was out of the question.

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(I've tried to fix out issue by modifying rates in the .json but for whatever reason it isn't taking for us.  Some people have also mentioned this issue and only a server wipe seems to fix.)

Yea for some server owner they have to do a complete wipe on the server for the setting to take effect and some like me only require a creature wipe to see the effect to be change. When I change the settings, I do a dino wipe, well I set up the .ini file to do one at start up. So every time it start it kills all creatures including SotD. I don't need a server wipe for the settings to take effect. Keep in mind that at a setting of 0.75 it will take a few minutes for the grid to be overwhelm again. Specially if you got no one hunting them, they will keep on spawning and spawning until they reach the max on the grid. It seems that the creatures and SotD don't despawn after a while they just stay. Did you try a lower setting like 0.2 and see what happen with a dino wipe?

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Has anyone gotten the dinospawnweightmultiplier code to work for SoTD?

Even with the Devkit out atm, the info about settings is very limited. People don't say much about it.

- Maybe because the Dev kit require 180gig and 200gig of free space to work with, so not everyone can handle it. 

- Maybe people are making mods that will make changes on those aspect and don't want to say anything because they are to afraid that people won't use there work.

- Maybe server owner keep they work secret to avoid loosing player on there server

But just to say that info about it is not licking very fast. It will take time. Also not all argument are enable either. For instance the cuddle interval just got enable a few patch ago, so there a lot of settings that are disable, we will need to wait for the Dev to unlock them. 

 

Cheers,

 

 

[Estharos 10]

P.S: v16 was suppose to be out late February and now we are almost at the end of this month and are at v19.62. It won't impress me if v20 come out in the next few days then v21 will follow shortly after. So people won't be rdy for it. It will just slam us in the face in no time.

 

Cheers,

 

 

[RenWmn 30]

2 hours ago, Estharos said:

Yea for some server owner they have to do a complete wipe on the server for the setting to take effect and some like me only require a creature wipe to see the effect to be change. When I change the settings, I do a dino wipe, well I set up the .ini file to do one at start up. So every time it start it kills all creatures including SotD. I don't need a server wipe for the settings to take effect. Keep in mind that at a setting of 0.75 it will take a few minutes for the grid to be overwhelm again. Specially if you got no one hunting them, they will keep on spawning and spawning until they reach the max on the grid. It seems that the creatures and SotD don't despawn after a while they just stay. Did you try a lower setting like 0.2 and see what happen with a dino wipe?

 

 

I put the settings to .3 in the json and saw no marked difference between .75.  I definitely did a wild creature wipe after. To be honest it wouldn't hurt me to try even lower than you suggested like .1 just to remove any shred of doubt it wasn't working.  I'm really glad it is working for some people!  

[Andargor 30]

FWIW I'm currently testing the following in Game.ini only, no JSON changes in the grid and no wipe:

[/Script/ShooterGame.ShooterGameMode]
DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers=(DinoNameTag=ShipNPC_Brig,SpawnWeightMultiplier=0.1)

After server restart and destroywilddinos in all grids and another restart, so far so good. We had swarms before, and now we get 1 or 2 in open sea, or 5-6 near PVE islands. I chose 0.1 so that I could actually see the change, if any. However, they do seem to accumulate over time, so I will only be sure this worked after a few days.

 

 

Edited March 2, 2019 by Andargor

[HelixU4 21]

Using the 

DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers

Will make the PowerStone Island bosses not spawn correctly.

We have successfully reduced and controlling th sotd spawn rate with NPCShipNumMult in custom datas

[krazmuze 120]

try something like this in your json (use the map editor if you prefer) as grid properties for the desired servers.

DifficultyMult does the obvious it makes even yellows rare, Num reduces the pack size, while DifficultyLerp higher decreases the aggro.  These particular numbers are half inversed from official powerstone modifications to increased damned.    Reducing Floatsam with less damned is of course optional.

      "ServerCustomDatas1": "NPCShipDifficultyMult,NPCShipDifficultyLerp,NPCShipNumMult,FloatsamQualityMultiplier",
      "ServerCustomDatas2": "0.25,4.0,0.3,0.35",

I have no idea if this will still work with the March update to damned.  But since it is obvious in hindsight that the recent AI behaviors of them spawning in packs was part of that change - this did help.   You still have the problem they will build to the max 40 per grid if nobody is killing them, but I do not know how to change that.

We did this after a redis wipe.....

 

Edited March 2, 2019 by krazmuze

[Andargor 30]

1 hour ago, HelixU4 said:

Using the 

DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers

Will make the PowerStone Island bosses not spawn correctly.

We have successfully reduced and controlling th sotd spawn rate with NPCShipNumMult in custom datas

Interesting that it would affect those bosses, even though I use a specific DinoNameTag.

 

1 hour ago, krazmuze said:

try something like this in your json (use the map editor if you prefer) as grid properties for the desired servers.

DifficultyMult does the obvious it makes even yellows rare, Num reduces the pack size, while DifficultyLerp higher decreases the aggro.  These particular numbers are half inversed from official powerstone modifications to increased damned.    Reducing Floatsam with less damned is of course optional.

      "ServerCustomDatas1": "NPCShipDifficultyMult,NPCShipDifficultyLerp,NPCShipNumMult,FloatsamQualityMultiplier",
      "ServerCustomDatas2": "0.25,4.0,0.3,0.35",

I have no idea if this will still work with the March update to damned.  But since it is obvious in hindsight that the recent AI behaviors of them spawning in packs was part of that change - this did help.   You still have the problem they will build to the max 40 per grid if nobody is killing them, but I do not know how to change that.

We did this after a redis wipe.....

 

Yeah, I read all those posts about this method, and what stopped us was the requirement for a wipe.

 

EDIT: And although my method seems to slow down how fast they spawn, they still seem to accumulate as you say.

 

Edited March 2, 2019 by Andargor

[RenWmn 30]

3 hours ago, HelixU4 said:

Using the 

DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers

Will make the PowerStone Island bosses not spawn correctly.

We have successfully reduced and controlling th sotd spawn rate with NPCShipNumMult in custom datas

Good point!  We tried the same thing too as an alternative and noticed the bosses disappear as a result.

[RenWmn 30]

I think some people have seen the ServerCustomDatas take effect without a wipe, so they are worth a try!  In the map editor I've noticed a space for them in the settings for each square but I also noticed that there are defaults for those values in each climate template too.

I get the "NPCShipDifficultyMult,,NPCShipNumMult"

I'm wondering what "NPCShipDifficultyLerp" is.  

I simple definition of this might be escaping me.  

Oh, and what really sounds like it would be most helpful in all this is a setting for a cap of SoTD per square?  

The total amount will greatly effect game play especially when we don't have a hoard of players culling them all the time or super frequent creature wipes.

 

Edited March 2, 2019 by RenWmn

[krazmuze 120]

Lerp is aggro, the smaller it is the further they will aggro.   That is why if not enough people are killing them you want a high number, so at least they will leave players alone unless they are intentionally drawing aggro to fight them.

 

 

[Andargor 30]

Hmm. Then the DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers method might not be the way to go. I'm looking at the Dev Kit and in Ark you could override the spawn entry containers, has anyone tried something like this:

ConfigOverrideNPCSpawnEntriesContainer=(NPCSpawnEntriesContainerClassString="DinoSpawnEntries_NPCShips_C",NPCSpawnEntries=((AnEntryName="Ship of the Damned (2)",EntryWeight=1.000000,NPCsToSpawnStrings=("ShipNPC_Brig_C"),NPCsSpawnOffsets=((X=0.000000,Y=0.000000,Z=0.000000)),NPCsToSpawnPercentageChance=(0.100000),GroupSpawnOffset=(X=0.000000,Y=0.000000,Z=35.000000),ManualSpawnPointSpreadRadius=650.000000,WaterSpawnOnlyMinimumWaterHeight=140.000000)),NPCSpawnLimits=((NPCClassString="ShipNPC_Brig_C",MaxPercentageOfDesiredNumToAllow=0.1),MaxDesiredNumEnemiesMultiplier=0.1))

 

I see a lot of interesting variables, but unfortunately they don't seem to be exposed (either to the JSON processing or INI), such as this in the NPCShipZoneManager_Blueprint (which uses the DinoSpawnEntries_NPCShips container):

 

 

EDIT2: corrected container class name, tweaked

 

Edited March 3, 2019 by Andargor

[Estharos 10]

3 hours ago, RenWmn said:

I think some people have seen the ServerCustomDatas take effect without a wipe, so they are worth a try!  In the map editor I've noticed a space for them in the settings for each square but I also noticed that there are defaults for those values in each climate template too.

I get the "NPCShipDifficultyMult,,NPCShipNumMult"

I'm wondering what "NPCShipDifficultyLerp" is.  

I simple definition of this might be escaping me.  

Oh, and what really sounds like it would be most helpful in all this is a setting for a cap of SoTD per square?  

The total amount will greatly effect game play especially when we don't have a hoard of players culling them all the time or super frequent creature wipes.

 

NPCShipDifficultyMult = Multiplier for difficulty..

NPCShipDifficultyLerp = Speed at which there allowed to go & turn..

NPCShipNumMult = Amount of ships spawned at any given time.

 

Cheers,

 

 

[RenWmn 30]

Now we have two different explanations. 

Is NPCShipDifficultyLerp : 
Speed at which there allowed to go & turn

OR 
Aggro range?

[Estharos 10]

Go and Turn. Aggro is hard coded and work different for different ship. Bigger the ship you got longer aggro range, smaller ship you got smaller aggro range. Hence the reason that you got to knock on the bow of the ship on a Ramshack sloop to get aggro.

 

Cheers,

 

 

[krazmuze 120]

speed and aggro are really the same thing, if they cannot turn on you or catch up to you - they cannot aggro you.

 

[Andargor 30]

18 hours ago, Andargor said:

ConfigOverrideNPCSpawnEntriesContainer=(NPCSpawnEntriesContainerClassString="DinoSpawnEntries_NPCShips_C",NPCSpawnEntries=((AnEntryName="Ship of the Damned (2)",EntryWeight=1.000000,NPCsToSpawnStrings=("ShipNPC_Brig_C"),NPCsSpawnOffsets=((X=0.000000,Y=0.000000,Z=0.000000)),NPCsToSpawnPercentageChance=(0.100000),GroupSpawnOffset=(X=0.000000,Y=0.000000,Z=35.000000),ManualSpawnPointSpreadRadius=650.000000,WaterSpawnOnlyMinimumWaterHeight=140.000000)),NPCSpawnLimits=((NPCClassString="ShipNPC_Brig_C",MaxPercentageOfDesiredNumToAllow=0.1),MaxDesiredNumEnemiesMultiplier=0.1))

 

I am going to be cautiously optimistic, but I implemented this change last night and I haven't seen more than 1 SOTD in a pack since then. Time will tell if they will accumulate, but it is noticeable for us.

When you were saying that bosses were no longer appearing because of DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers, were you referring to Gorgons, Cyclopses, etc.?