What's up with the goons?

grunth13

In today's dpq, the first wave goons are storing up all the ap so that it can be used against me in the second wave...which remarkably all three use green and torch uses black...that's crazy.

Unknown

Goons follow some additional rules in what abilities they can use on top of any AP limitations.

First, no goon can use more than one ability per turn. This includes any duplicates. So if you fight 3 Muscles, despite generating a ludricious amount of AP, they can only use either one Threaten or one Tommy Gun per turn, which is why you're likely to see them sitting on 30 blue AP after a while (Threaten is greatly preferred over Tommy Gun).

Second, no goon will use an ability in a color that's already used. So if you have Muscle + Hitman and they have 30 yellow, they'd put down one Covering Fire and nothing else on yellow, despite having more than enough to do it.

Further, these factors are sometimes combined in an order not obvious to the player. That is, if we have a Muscle + Hitmen scenario, the game can possibly process it like this:

Muscle decides to use Threaten.
Hitman decides to use Covering Fire.

Covering Fire has higher priority than Threaten (it costs more), so Covering Fire is used. The Hitman obviously cannot use Sniper Rifle at this point because he already picked his one ability per turn. However, since the Muscle already picked an ability too, he doesn't use Tommy Gun either despite having more than enough AP. It's hard to predict when such a scenario will happen but it can definitely happen.

The net result is that goons use a lot less abilities than their generated AP allows, which means they will almost certainly save a ton of it for whoever comes after them in a survival node.

DaveR4470

Ssshhhh.... do not anger Skynet! Skynet will wreak vengeance upon us all!!!!

(I sorta noticed that too, as I was getting whomped in wave 2. I retreated and reprioritized hammering away on purple for OBW in take 2, and everything worked much better.)

Wonko33

be happy that they don't use all the abilities they have AP for

Unknown

It's actually common for DDQ goons wave 1 to feed guys wave 2. The node is set up that way. If they weren't casting any CDs that is weird, but not unheard of. Who knows what the hell the AI is thinking sometimes. I've seen the enemy hold the AP to cast the winning power long enough to allow me to win, and I've seen the AI cast HT's green with 5 green before, so... yea he's not smart.

Unknown

I noticed that too: had to stun the brawler repeatedly to drain green then black. Still was accidentally hit by an inferno when a cascade ended wave 1. OBW wasn't a great help as I was Purple starved. Had already used CStorm's Lightning Storm twice by Wave 3, so it was tough trying to gain enough AP to finish off the 4th round without letting the AI take a turn. Unfortunately, I didn't look at the forums and it took more than a triple Windstorm to finish them off.

This was one of the harder DDQ's, maybe top 5 hardest.

grunth13

Wonko33 wrote:

be happy that they don't use all the abilities they have AP for

But they generate 12 ap per turn in the exact colors that they want in that first wave, while we generate ap in what's available on the board. I would much rather they play multiple abilities but can only generate a certain percentage of what colors are on the board. That would make it more fair in my opinion.

Unknown

There was a gauntlet node that I noticed with a mutant, a lieutenant, and a don that kept healing, and healing, and healing but never actually dropped a single offensive CD timer...was a bit surreal to collect ap all day then alpha strike them into dust.

orbitalint

Phan, are these weird set of rules why the Don is very inconsistent with dropping the black ability? So dropping blue or yellow was the decision each and every time I played against him? Whatever the last event was where he was prevalent, he had 30 black AP and simply never dropped his only damage ability. This happened regularly when I was facing him.

When he was with Punisher, it actually dropped more consistently. Other than that, he was always last one left with 30 black AP and never did anything with it.

Unknown

The Don is often paired with another yellow/blue generator. Let's say he has enough Yellow and Black. Yellow is at the top of the list, so he prefers to drop his yellow. However, another yellow generator probably has a more expensive power, so the Don chooses not to drop any tile at all, even though he has enough black. The only time he seems to drop his black for sure is if he doesn't have enough yellow nor blue, but has enough black AND it's the most expensive black power AND no other goon takes precedence for dropping a tile.

In most situations the goons are tied up dropping yellow first, then blue, and never get around to dropping Don's black because they're constantly dropping other countdowns.

If you leave the don for last, odds are you've still got a decent amount of yellow + blue stored up, so the Don prefers to exhaust those stockpiles first before using the black.

Unknown

orbitalint wrote:

Phan, are these weird set of rules why the Don is very inconsistent with dropping the black ability? So dropping blue or yellow was the decision each and every time I played against him? Whatever the last event was where he was prevalent, he had 30 black AP and simply never dropped his only damage ability. This happened regularly when I was facing him.

When he was with Punisher, it actually dropped more consistently. Other than that, he was always last one left with 30 black AP and never did anything with it.

Yes, that's why you rarely see Trap used by The Don because he almost always prefers to use his other two abilities, and even if he's later overruled (by another goon usually) that still counts as his one ability per turn, which is why you will often see The Don sitting with 30 black AP as the only black user and yet never dropping a Trap. From what I can tell, if the AI has enough AP to use all its abilities, it always greatly prefers them in a top down order (e.g. 3 Muscles and you almost always get Threaten over Tommy Gun), so Trap at the bottom has a very high chance of never being chosen.

One interesting way to see this in action is say you run Blade and drained all their yellow/blue AP but not black AP (because he had 30 of them and can't be all drained at once), you will see the Traps get dropped immediately, as now they no longer have enough yellow/blue so it is unambigious which ability The Don should use (black).

grunth13

On today's dpq I saw Tommy gun and trap on first node with covering fire.

emaker27

Just save your powers as much as possible during the 1st and 3rd waves. Use a power to finish of the last enemy so it's still your turn for the next wave. Then unleash your powers for waves 2 and 4 so the non-goon characters rarely have the chance to hit you or use their powers.

This may depend on who you have, but even most solid 2* rosters should be able to accomplish this.

Unknown

grunth13 wrote:

On today's dpq I saw Tommy gun and trap on first node with covering fire.

Yeah it still happens on the odd occasion, much like If you're running into XThor + Torch, if the AI has 8 red AP it might use fireball as opposed to saving for smite.

In that particular situation the AI would probably need to have either 4 or 5 yellow, no more no less.

Joey Jellico

Would be nice if they had some GIANT window pop up each turn and stay up for 3 seconds to show u what AP the goons r generating.

Unknown

The AI has a low, but not zero, chance of picking a power ordered on the bottom of their ability list assuming all are available. The easiest example would be 3 Muscles as you'd just see them spam Threaten all day, but once in a long while you will see a Tommy Gun.

cletus1985

Joey Jellico wrote:

Would be nice if they had some GIANT window pop up each turn and stay up for 3 seconds to show u what AP the goons r generating.

I hope this is sarcasm. If not, it's been done and should NEVER be done again.

evil panda

All's fair in MPQ and war. God knows that I save up all my AP in final DDQ survival nodes so that I can unleash holy tinykitty hell on waves 2 and 4, so if the other team does the same thing I won't complain...

Unknown

The AI many many times show a Friendly diplomatic status in order to try and get you to make friendship with them which would break your friendship with someone else. You donґt want to be declared friends of someone whoґs an enemy to another friend of yours, or the latter will likely turn on you. Thatґs probably what she was trying.