How to keep trigger happy NPCs alive?

I have a question if there are ways to avoid the following scenario I encountered:

I was doing this story arc with a friend where you need to free some hostages, who will then start to help you fight the rest of the mobs and the end boss in the instance.

The problem that we had is that these hostages were rather trigger happy, but also relatively weak. This meant that even if I tried to tank a pull, they would usually get some hits and barely survive, also because we were fighting mobs that did a lot of AoE damage.

We first did my friend's version of the mission, and failed the mission soon after we freed the first hostage, as we weren't paying close attention to its health bar, until it died.

Fortunately we could then still do my version of the mission and try again.

Now we made sure that after each pull, the hostage(s) had a full health bar before we did the next pull. This ended up as a very painful and slow process, doing one pull, waiting a few minutes, doing another pull, waiting again, etc. Neither of us was a healer.

We tried walking back to the entrance, but the hostage(s) just kept following us around.

Is there a way to keep these kinds of NPCs out of harms way? Even with our careful and slow approach, they would often end up nearly dead.

Is sitting around waiting for a health bar creep back up the supposed challenge for this or is it just poor mission design?

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More seriously but less successfully, I assume you're talking about General Aarons from Serpent Drummer's arc? The only way is either to have someone baby-sit him while the rest of the team heads off or bring some FF users and buff him up. He really loves to charge Fake Nems and War Hulks with his revolver.

Your description of the mission was par for the course. I don't know of anyone who has not encountered that problem. Even a dedicated Emp is not going to keep him alive for long. So take heart! It's terrible mission design, not you or your teammate.

Sometimes you can ditch the hostage--easy to do if you have stealth, but running away works too, especially if you can break line of sight quickly. Once they lose sight of you, hostages should stay put until you come back, giving you time to clear the map.

Of course, if there's a patrol, or an ambush that happens to come past the hostage, then it may not work out so well.

FF = force fields

Combat allies are the reason I try to fit in Aid Other in my builds. But do like RedRacoon suggested: lead them back to a safe, out of the part of the map, then run away quickly.


Edit:
Well then the other thing you can try is to: don't rescue the hostage. Sneak past the guards and proceed to complete the rest of the mission first. Free the hostage after the map has been cleared.

Gen. Aarons inexplicably likes to close to melee even though he has a gun. Exploding Warhulks then kill him.

If you have any knockback powers, keep pushing the Warhulks away.

Or, as suggested above, run away and lose him clearing the map until you get to the Elite Boss at the end. Then go back and get Aarons to help you.


Wait 'til you get to Lt. Dietrich who likes to run several spawns ahead so she can shoot at a distance.... just like Fusionette.

Then there's Faultline who goes into granite form and then can't jump simple obstacles to follow you.

The Ballista Longbow is the only worthwhile NPC companion in the RWZ arcs.

Another thing to consider is that npc's generally have better perception than pc's. Hence the reason Lady Jane runs all over the map in Montague's arc: she's chasing the invisible ghosts you didn't kill.

Another strategy not yet mentioned in this thread (EDIT; I need to read better, SerialBeggar mentioned it) it to just simply not rescue them. A little counter-intuitive, I know, but you just run past the hostage situation and come back once all the other objectives have been fulfilled. They'll still be there ready to be rescued, and you don't have to baby-sit their stupid ***** for nearly as long.

That said, I really wish you could hand these allied combat NPCs inspirations. If they're low on health and you don't have any healing abilities, they're screwed. Or give them Rest and only allow the AI to use it when the player they're following uses it. Sometimes going solo I need to rest up a bit, but the ally following me just stands there and watches. This would be the perfect opportunity for some accelerated health regen on NPCs.

In some cases, such as Lady Jane, just don't kill the Mobs guarding the hostage.

Instead, clear the rest of the map, or most of it at least, and then go back and rescue the hostage.

The OP seems reasonably well answered, so I decided to address bad NPC ally behavior more generally.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starflier Another thing to consider is that npc's generally have better perception than pc's. Hence the reason Lady Jane runs all over the map in Montague's arc: she's chasing the invisible ghosts you didn't kill.

I think NPC Allies ignore stealth on an engaged enemy in much the same way NPC enemies do. From my experience, once you've engaged an enemy, turning on Stealth/Invis doesn't make the enemy lose track of you, even if you are beyond the point they should be able to see you. It's part of the reason Placate and Stealth are two different effects.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zombie Man Wait 'til you get to Lt. Dietrich who likes to run several spawns ahead so she can shoot at a distance.... just like Fusionette.

Regarding Dietrich/Fusionette and racing forward - I wouldn't be surprised if they have the same power that Longbow Eagles do (Positioning?) that forces them to engage from range. (I also wouldn't be surprised if Dietrich was considered an Eagle herself, if an EB one, but that's another topic.)The AI has no sense of direction, only distance. This doesn't matter so much to Eagles, because if they are running away from you, the only other thing they'll run into are allied Longbow. For your NPC ally on the other hand, all they will run into are more enemies, or at best empty spaces. If you could keep the enemy between the ally and the next spawn, would that make the helper run backward to empty space, or would the ally charge past the enemy anyway?

Another problem I have encountered with NPC allies comes when I am running Tactics, due to the +Perception it grants. Suddenly my NPC ally can see further down that long hallway to the next enemy spawn. Since it has no sense of self-preservation, it runs to attack and leaves me behind. Turning off Tactics often alleviates the problem.

I will agree that NPC allies can often be more trouble than they are worth. However, if the AI for them was better, I'd expect the devs would use the same AI for enemies. I'll leave whether smarter enemies is a good thing for another thread.

1) Only specific NPC allies/hostages/escorts ignore stealth. Essentially, the ones that actually fight with you seem to be the only ones that ignore stealth, complete allies.
The ones who are your hostage will stop because they "lost you" if you use stealth.
Some ally escorts will still lose you, all too often.

2) Enemy AI is already better than ally AI.
Just watch an ambush chase you up stairs sometime and lament the fact that an allied NPC gets stuck while the enemies have almost no trouble with stairs over and over again.

I really wish they would figure out what makes enemy AI deal so well with stairs and apply it to allied NPCs so that they aren't so stupid.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this yet: Whoever has the hostage, go to the mission exit, while the other gets out of line of sight and far enough away to lose the escort, then Recall Friend your teammate away from the NPC. Alternately, Assemble the Team will work in some cases, but in others, it picks up the NPC too. I don't know how to tell which NPCs ATT picks up short of trial and error. That new destiny with the League Teleport might work too. Again, I don't know how it handles the NPCs.

Of course, if neither of you have a teleport power, none of the above will work.

Another option is to have one person lead him to a cleared part of the map that's away from the door and then log out. THIS WILL NOT WORK if you are solo; someone has to stay logged in, and on the mission map to make sure the server doesn't reset the instance. When you log back in, you can enter the mission and catch up to your friend.

A similar method that works both solo or teamed is to die (Self Destruction is perfect for this, if you have it). As above, do it in a clear area, away from the mission door. When you get back from the Hospital, he'll be "lost", unless you get close enough to pick him back up.

I find that the best solution (for the mission the OP was referring to) is to split up, have everyone do the mission solo and team up again afterwards. Aarons tendency to get himself mowed down by the alpha strike when he runs off to engage a group alone is mitigated by the small size of the groups, there are less bosses, less AoEs and once you have a couple of allies boosting your firepower you can roll through the mission.

In Paragon City since June 2005.

Thanks for all the good advice. My friend might actually have Tactics, which might have been contributing to the problem.

And I would in general like better AI both on enemies and allies.

The suggestion of them resting if you do is also a very good one.

We're newbies who have just reached level 40 with our first characters, so we don't have access to some of the tricks people mention.

Thanks for the advice.

Another thing that I don't think was mentioned was your mission settings. If you have bosses turned off, your allies may end up being Lts. This is usually hillariouslly fatal. (OK, maybe I shouldn't laugh as the allies get gunned down, but someone has to.)

Even if I'm running a squishy solo and have bosses off, if I find out I have a "hostage-with-a-death-wish" mission coming up, I turn the bosses on at least for that mission.

Otherwise, my ideas are all posted above: TP the person leading away from the hostage, kill all but one mob in the group holding the hostage, run from them like they have the plague...

Another possible tactic is to get into a fight that the hostage can't possibly lose (beating on a force field generator or mission objective) and ditch him like an ugly blind date at a sushi resturant.