Lethal Company should have AI Bot players in the future

[Green Biker Dude]

I know this game is still in an early access phase but maybe down the line, there should be an option to add bot players that can help you if you ever want to play Solo Offline or if you are lacking players in online mode.

I imagine the bots can be your assistant or act as a look out. You can ask a bot to follow you or stay put. You can pass the items to the bot and have them carry it back to the ship.

If you die, you can immediately take control as one of the bots. Maybe program the bots in a way that they do not blindly follow the human player to their deaths.

Give the Bots a basic ability to recognize danger and flee from monsters if the human players dies in front of them.

Adding Bots could future proof this game from becoming unplayable should one day the online multiplayer dies out or become inaccessible.

[Sasha Mason]

I feel like this would be very difficult for a game like that without them just dying to monsters. Would be fun though, but even other coop heavy games I've played don't do that.

Deep Rock Galactic for example, if you play solo, you get a lil flying drone that can fight a lil, help you light things up, help you carry heavy items, and never gets targeted by enemies. It's a small aid, but no full on replacement for an actual player.

[Amaru]

It could be something similar to Bosco from DRG

[katersaid11]

Originally posted by Sasha Mason:

I feel like this would be very difficult for a game like that without them just dying to monsters. Would be fun though, but even other coop heavy games I've played don't do that.

Deep Rock Galactic for example, if you play solo, you get a lil flying drone that can fight a lil, help you light things up, help you carry heavy items, and never gets targeted by enemies. It's a small aid, but no full on replacement for an actual player.

I think it's actually hard to make them good and not perfect.

[Sasha Mason]

Originally posted by katersaid11:

I think it's actually hard to make them good and not perfect.

No, it's actually hard to make them good at all. I swear there's been so many games where you get some AI companion only for said AI companion to do something stupid and get stuck or end up not really helping.

DRG solved that problem by making sure that the lil flying drone you get can, quite literally, phase through the terrain. It also cannot be attacked by enemies, as such you cannot miserably lose it to because it was being stupid like you can in some other games. But to balance it out, the actual damage it does to enemies in combat isn't all that great and much worse than what a player can do.

If the game had attempted to have actual "player AI", it might've not really worked out too well.

[Derpykat5]

The AI required to make a computer-controlled player competent and controllable without being too good at the game would be mind-boggling, not to mention it would never hold up to the procedural generation.

A better solution would be an NPC companion that can pull some weight without following the same rules as an employee would. Something that can carry items for you or remote-activate terminal commands. Even then it would be hard to get right.

[The Fountaineer 🖋]

Have you seen the enemy AI already in game? We still have a long way to go before even Mask people control competently.

[CuriuM]

Originally posted by Green Biker Dude:

I know this game is still in an early access phase but maybe down the line, there should be an option to add bot players that can help you if you ever want to play Solo Offline or if you are lacking players in online mode.

I imagine the bots can be your assistant or act as a look out. You can ask a bot to follow you or stay put. You can pass the items to the bot and have them carry it back to the ship.

If you die, you can immediately take control as one of the bots. Maybe program the bots in a way that they do not blindly follow the human player to their deaths.

Give the Bots a basic ability to recognize danger and flee from monsters if the human players dies in front of them.

Adding Bots could future proof this game from becoming unplayable should one day the online multiplayer dies out or become inaccessible.

Why ??? AI have no strategy like humans, and it's better to play with your friends

[katersaid11]

Originally posted by CuriuM:

Originally posted by Green Biker Dude:

I know this game is still in an early access phase but maybe down the line, there should be an option to add bot players that can help you if you ever want to play Solo Offline or if you are lacking players in online mode.

I imagine the bots can be your assistant or act as a look out. You can ask a bot to follow you or stay put. You can pass the items to the bot and have them carry it back to the ship.

If you die, you can immediately take control as one of the bots. Maybe program the bots in a way that they do not blindly follow the human player to their deaths.

Give the Bots a basic ability to recognize danger and flee from monsters if the human players dies in front of them.

Adding Bots could future proof this game from becoming unplayable should one day the online multiplayer dies out or become inaccessible.

Why ??? AI have no strategy like humans, and it's better to play with your friends

Not everyone wants to play with other people.
I think the option to use bots would be nice. Also, if you can command the bots like in ready or not, then you can definitely do a lot.
Just having the option of having a bot deactivate the turrets and open doors for you would be good.

[Epik99]

Add friendly lootbugs who can enter/leave the facility, and nest in the ship. Monsters attack them like they would a player.
If you die and a lootbug is still alive, they animorph into an employee who you take control of.

[The Fountaineer 🖋]

Originally posted by katersaid11:

Originally posted by CuriuM:

Why ??? AI have no strategy like humans, and it's better to play with your friends

Not everyone wants to play with other people.
I think the option to use bots would be nice. Also, if you can command the bots like in ready or not, then you can definitely do a lot.
Just having the option of having a bot deactivate the turrets and open doors for you would be good.

There is way too much balancing and code that would have to go into that. Plus the game is literally designed to be more of a fleshed out experience with human players. Its one thing to have accessibility options and QoL, its another to ask the game to have unneeded developments added for a marginal playerbase that doesn’t like the core features presented.

If anything, a better option would be a simple robot like the one from Deep Rock Galactic. Nothing game breaking or complex, just a simple autonomous tool.

[That One Person]

Originally posted by Epik99:

Add friendly lootbugs who can enter/leave the facility, and nest in the ship. Monsters attack them like they would a player.
If you die and a lootbug is still alive, they animorph into an employee who you take control of.

This sounds really interesting minus the morphing into a player part!

[niralamart000]

sadly a long time ago both the community and devs decided that bots don't belong in multiplayer games anymore despite having stuff like squad. it's the only reason why i only watch videos of this game instead of buying it outright

[AWE_sum5067]

maybe someone should make this a mod.