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Question - MQ2Nav, hostile zone navigation (1 Viewer)

Joined
Jun 7, 2020
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Hey guys,

Before I start, I'd just like to mention I've watched the five YouTube videos. Educational, informative and entertaining. (Especially - MQ2EQBC: Control Your EverQuest Multibox Group). Applause to the effort in making those videos, convey information, keeping them on point and straight forward to digest.

The navigate video showed usage of MQ2Nav solo and with a group, selecting a target destination and travel to it, and also having your abandoned group navigate to you. Great features, and especial reference to navigation around a number of obstacles. They come to mind as having tried to guide characters on "/follow" is painful.

I understand the concept of the mesh, to take the topography of the zone and present it in a away for the MQ2Nav to make decisions and character movements to progress from A to B.




Whilst the video presented the friendly environment of PoK, I'm wondering how things work in hostile zones, those areas were mobs want to kill you if you get into their aggro radius.

To set the scene for this, I'm going to consider a zone like Lesser Faydark (LFay). You're level 20-21, and you are going to battle in Mistmoor. Perhaps you're coming from Greater Faydark having levelled there or arrived via other transport means. Equally, it could be from Steamfont Mountains. In broad strokes, both are coming from the north easterly area of the LFay zone, to get to the zone line in the south west.

As a player traditional attempts to be safe is travel a zone by hugging wall of the zone. In this case, run along the northern wall towards the west. Then down the western wall, south, finally a short burst east to make it to the zone line. Travelling diagonal, 'as the bird fly' is the quickest route and not much terrain to hinder either. But there are roaming mobs, like Brownie Scouts (high 30s), that would like to make it hurt.

Would it be right in guessing, MQ2Nav will calculate and cut across the zone using the shortest route, regardless of aggro hot spots?

Next tricky element that comes to mind. If it were trying to navigate the walls as described above. There is the Brownie camp in the north western area, which tend to not like anyone other than druids in wolf form. If try the southern route instead, there is a camp of dark elves. Not so bad if you're a follower of Innoruuk but painful to others.

If I embellish the scenario a bit more. Lets say perhaps, an Iksar Necromancer. The druid ring in Steamfont is the local vendoring depot and thus you bind in that area. Lets say you've been causing pain in Mistmoor and it's time to empty those bags. A running sequence; gate, go to vendor, sell, go to Lfay zone line, go to Mistmoor line, go to group. Drawing a rough line between the two zone lines, would intersect with some areas populated orc and another with wood elves.




Whats the RedGuides community understanding of MQ2Nav in this regard? I don't mean literally running around LFay, but the sort of pains in crossing a hostile zone trying to make it in one piece. I just used LFay as an old content example that many long time players will be familiar with.


Thanking in advance for taking time to read these words, and appreciate your patience with noobie questions looking to understand.

Regards.
 
you can define "weights" in your navigation mesh if you wanted to make it hug walls or avoid certain areas - but it doesn't do any avoiding of mobs - it just navigates the map. many folks would just invis up.

you can and will 100% nav into mobs if you're in an aggro zone, and not invis and just nav across
 
Thanks for that Sic.

It may work for some classes in some scenarios, but not for all. Coming to mind are content with either the living or undead. Not forgetting those who can just see through invisible, period. But your point is well made. Thanks.

This leads to the next question.

What happens if a solo character, or multiple characters are navigating a zone, and there is an aggro encounter?

In some cases, you don't care - they are grey cons, or you're moving with SoW, Bard speeds or AA enhanced speed they can't keep pace and may drop aggro.
But there are those cases in which they will be on your heels and hitting.

As a manual player, you'd make a call to keep running or turn to fight. Even if just to root / snare, and then try and get some distance.

Does MQ2Nav keep on going, or is it suspended, and some combat code engage?
If the latter, and the solo or group survive, does it recover and resume the original course to the navigation destination?
Also to that, if it's a group, would they all stop and get involved then resume?
 
Thanks for that Sic.

It may work for some classes in some scenarios, but not for all. Coming to mind are content with either the living or undead. Not forgetting those who can just see through invisible, period. But your point is well made. Thanks.

This leads to the next question.

What happens if a solo character, or multiple characters are navigating a zone, and there is an aggro encounter?

In some cases, you don't care - they are grey cons, or you're moving with SoW, Bard speeds or AA enhanced speed they can't keep pace and may drop aggro.
But there are those cases in which they will be on your heels and hitting.

As a manual player, you'd make a call to keep running or turn to fight. Even if just to root / snare, and then try and get some distance.

Does MQ2Nav keep on going, or is it suspended, and some combat code engage?
If the latter, and the solo or group survive, does it recover and resume the original course to the navigation destination?
Also to that, if it's a group, would they all stop and get involved then resume?
mq2nav is basically an auto gps - it doesn't care if you're fighting, or hungry, or your shoes fell off - it is just trying to get you from where you started to where you told it to go

in the /nav ui tools window you can go to settings and select a break behavior if you move your dude manually - like hitting WASD - i use Stop Navication, but there is also "pause navivation" which would allow you to go again after you did what you broke to take care of

1591734583527.png


Many macros that do auto running across places may have some detection that would stop your navigation, then fight, then start navigating again - but this is up to your macro - mq2nav is just the "call the travel coach to get us to point B"
 
You could set up waypoints, to try direct the character along safer routes/areas. You can use the nav ui to click/run them, you just can't use the find window to zone connection or easyfind across several zones
 
Thanks for your feedback as well Rooster.

It actually gives me another question.

Away from the games, and thinking more computers in general - there is a world where things are done as a GUI and mouse clicks, and also lots that can be achieved by command line.
The navigation demonstrations in the videos, showed using the gui.
is it possible to give navigation commands to move to certain loc position, or a zone line, as a 'chat box' command or social hotkey?
 
Mq2nav has a bunch of commands, but the trouble with using command line nav stuff for anything that isn't a spawn/waypoint you need to know the location
/nav help in game for a list

Command line is especially useful for macro writing, and as well as you mention social hot keys when mixed with DanNet or EQBC and broadcasting the /nav id ${Me.ID}

You can make use of easyfind command line which utilitises mq2nav, you can /travelto "zone name" and it'll take you from zone a to z assuming all zones meshes and valid connections/zone points for all the zones. some door clicks/landing pad style zones require additional ini modification
 
Away from the games, and thinking more computers in general - there is a world where things are done as a GUI and mouse clicks, and also lots that can be achieved by command line.

If you click on the "Plugins" section, each plugin has an introduction and a command reference that normally tell you how to use them a) on the command line and b) in your macros. Quality of the instructions vary wildly, but you can normally find what you want there.

 
Thank you Vsab.

I see on the MQ2Nav plugin page, lower down there is a series of "/" commands.
Which was then followed by this: "Include MQ2Nav in your macros with brainiac's guide. "

The brainiac guide link goes to the github and that was interesting.
- It has detail of command reference.
- The macro data reference looks like a variant on scripting.
- Whereas the exported functions looks like a code api.
 
Question - MQ2Nav, hostile zone navigation

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