[3.83] Runaway Slave Start - Njerpez Infighting

[kirfkin]

Starting as a Runaway Slave, a bizarre situation can take place.

Ocassionally, a Njerpez will hit another one with an arrow (I think it's only an arrow that starts this, but it may be others). Soon after, it seems they view one of the two as an enemy and start fighting, and then as a result of attacking that one, they all view eachother as an enemy. They stop trying to attack me, and instead end up fighting amongs eachother.

This particular instance has been one of the most extreme results -- 9 warriors are dead; that's all of them that were in the camp. The center most body has 5 stacked on top of it.

From them, I have gotten almost 150 pounds of equipment.

While it makes my life significantly easier, particularly escaping, it feels pretty bizarre and likely unintended.

While I do think there's room to make the escape part of the start more interesting (it feels silly to try to escape in broad daylight when you're surrounded by many of them, and you don't know anything about the encampment), a self-instigated massacre is not the best.

Things I was able to get by the first night:

3 Maces, 4 knives, 3 spears, 2 njerpez scimitar, 2 hunting knives, a shortbow, 12 broadheads, 13 arrows, 1 broad knife, 1 hunting bow, 1 scimitar, 1 kaumolais knife, 1 crossbow,1 splitting axe.
 
I won't go over the clothes and armor because there's simply too many.  A rough count is ~55 clothing items, plus an additional mug, skin, torch, fishook.

[Erkka]

I think this has already been fixed in version 3.72, see this piece of dev.news

The archery checks are based on risk assessment. In certain conditions, or if the archer feels confident, they can fire and arrow despite there being friends in the potential line of fire. Or, they can consider it safe to fire, but just miss so terribly that the arrow hits a friend. And such an accident will turn to infighting.

So, I'd say this is more a feature, not a bug.

[kirfkin]

I think this has already been fixed in version 3.72, see this piece of dev.news

The archery checks are based on risk assessment. In certain conditions, or if the archer feels confident, they can fire and arrow despite there being friends in the potential line of fire. Or, they can consider it safe to fire, but just miss so terribly that the arrow hits a friend. And such an accident will turn to infighting.

So, I'd say this is more a feature, not a bug.

I think it's a bit extreme if they all decide to kill eachother (quite literally) instead of chasing after their initial target, due to incidental friendly fire. It seems like they all turn hostile to everyone else in their party. I have my doubts that in a friendly fire incident soldiers just immediately start killing all of their comrades around them.

Regardless, it regularly seems to happen to some degree on the Runaway slave start, if they have enough melee oriented warriors and at least one archer.

I have two archived saves, one with the aftermath, and one in the midst of it happening, if it's relevant.

[Erkka]

There are two factors here;

1. friendly fire immediately leading to fierce infighting : yes, I agree with that, in some future version the logic could be improved somehow. Maybe the easiest would be that the first friendly hit is forgiven, but if it starts to accumulate the others would feel that this is not a chain of accidents but intentional behavior which needs to be punished.

2. should friendly fire happen in the first place : I think yes. But how often, that is a good question without absolute answer. So, when you say " it regularly seems to happen to some degree" I'd like to hear a bit more about that. What is "regularly to some degree", like out of 10 starts 2 of them lead to infighting? Or out of 20 starts one turns to infighting?

[kirfkin]

There are two factors here;

1. friendly fire immediately leading to fierce infighting : yes, I agree with that, in some future version the logic could be improved somehow. Maybe the easiest would be that the first friendly hit is forgiven, but if it starts to accumulate the others would feel that this is not a chain of accidents but intentional behavior which needs to be punished.

I  tend to agree. The scale of the conflict is what feels bad -- I mostly don't think that they should all kill eachother even if they're skeptical of one (or more) of them. I haven't paid close enough attention to see if it happens after only one shot. I do know that it quickly devolves into a grand melee.

2. should friendly fire happen in the first place : I think yes. But how often, that is a good question without absolute answer.

Definitely. Friendly fire happens in actuality; and even in melee combat it can happen if things are hectic enough (which it often is). I can't comment on the frequency, but I do believe I've read historic references to it (not that I can point at the material). EDIT: I'm talking about it happening in the real world. I don't think I've seen accidental melee friendly fire in game. Just intentional, when they decide to kill eachother.

So, when you say " it regularly seems to happen to some degree" I'd like to hear a bit more about that. What is "regularly to some degree", like out of 10 starts 2 of them lead to infighting? Or out of 20 starts one turns to infighting?

This is a hard question to answer.

Some starts, there will be 0 or 1 archer, who may be far enough away that they never actually shoot at you. If there's only melee combatants engaging you, it won't happen. It's not uncommon to have a start where you don't encounter (even if they're there) a njerpezit bowman while trying to escape.

I now I had it happen either 3 or 4 times today, and I've had 14 deaths, my current game, plus an additional game I archived and moved out of the folder in case I wish to revisit that start (but currently feel it's too strong). Out of the 16 games, it happened 3-4 times. I distinctly remember 3 (including 2 of which I archived) and I think I had a 4th. So around 20%-25% of the starts I've had today.

I'll try to pay more attention to how often it happens, and how much the composition of the njerpez (with a best estimate -- I can't always see all of them). I expect it will be most common in cases where 1+ archer is engaged with you, and 2+ melee troops are chasing after you. When I see the melee, there is almost always 4+ involved, and that goes back days. Again, not with much proof past that being the body count/involved numbers with the two saves I've archived where the worse one has 9 dead and the other has 3-4 dead and more still fighting.


It's kind of funny, honestly... but it happens often enough that I feel like I'd have to hold myself back from making the challenge start (I really like the escaped slave start overall) easier by just waiting for them to kill eachother and taking their valuable equipment. Hunting bows, lamellar (sometimes), spears, scimitars, and bastard swords...

I like the idea of an active escape, but maybe starting near a known camp, on a zoomed map with 3 or so Njerpez chasing you might be neat. It's cool when I'm injured. Sometimes it means I get extra arrows...

[Ezhe]

I also encountered this bug, while raiding a Njerpez camp. I even recorded it, because it's so uncommon.

A Njerpez archer shot a Njerpez warrior by accident, then a scuffle started. The "Njerpez warrior attacks the Njerpez warrior" message was spamming the log zone all the time. I really didn't know which one refered to which. But it seems that they're somehow divided to two sides. After all warriors of one of the sides killed, the rest turned to attack me.

It was quite interesting though. Maybe the Njerpez warriors didn't get along with each other. One of them wanted to take the opportunity in scuffle to murder the one he hated, but just lighted the powder keg once for all and everyone went mad. Eventually it led to the infight.

I know this explanation seems unreal. But isn't having your own story to what happens in your game also a style to play the game?

[PALU]

For context, it can be mentioned that the same phenomenon used to be a major issues with parties of recruited hirelings: They constantly shot each other and the PC in the back while trying to hit the enemy on the other side of the victim. When your character accidentally hits one of them they frequently attack the PC.

Note that is is from before companions (and enemies) were changed to take the risk of friendly fire into consideration. Ironically, my recollection from attempt at runaway slave starts is that they frequently hit each other, but I don't remember them getting into a fight over it (that was well before the friendly fire check was introduced).