Why can't you get close to NPCs?

[Mazryonh 0]

I don't know who decided to implement this into AMK, but for some reason human NPCs in this mod can't be approached closer than 3 feet away. While this may seem realistic if it was to demonstrate how the Marked One respects the space of others, it does cause several issues that should be addressed.

 

First, if a human NPC is too close to a doorway or somewhere near where the player needs to go, it is impossible to move past the NPC until either it decides to move, or you kill the human NPC, or you load up another savegame to reset their AI routines and get them to move away. Sometimes I've been trapped by several NPCs very close to one another, who have either decided to all stand in the middle of a doorway with their guns drawn or the like, or who have all sat close to a fire and block any way out short of loading another savegame and resetting their AI routine.

 

An example of human NPCs blocking the door way in my playthrough is how the NPCs at the Army Warehouses stalker camp walked out of the trailer after a blowout, saw something that spooked them, and crouched down while drawing their guns--completely blocking my way out of the trailer since I had taken shelter in it too. Another example of how NPCs around a campfire can block any way out is for me, often found near the campfire at the very southern end of one of the abandoned farms near the south of the Dark Valley, and at the campfire in the farmstead in the Army Warehouses level, where the Duty kill-squad has taken up residence. If you try to reach the box behind both of those campfires and there are NPCs gathering to sit around it, it may become impossible to get out thanks to the "radius of inaccessibility" around each human NPC, unless you load another savegame to reset their AI routine and cause them to sit somewhere else.

 

Another problem this "feature" causes is that since you can't get close enough to NPCs, it is impossible to use the knife on them unless they are wounded and bleeding to death. Before you say "JUST SHOOT THEM!", you should remember that AMK did make some improvements to the stealth system--not as good as the recently-released LURK mod, but still good enough that you can sneak behind an NPC heading somewhere and get close enough to shoot them from point-blank range. I would prefer to backstab them, but unfortunately given that you can't get any closer than 3 feet to a human NPC, it's too far to hit them with the knife.

 

One more problem that this "radius of inaccessibility" problem causes is how difficult it can be to finish off downed Zombified Stalkers with the knife. Yes, they count as human NPCs as well, and you can't get closer than 3 feet to them. When they're on the ground but not dead, I would like to have the ability to keep stabbing them with the knife until they're truly dead. Shooting at them from a distance can be difficult or impossible when they're writhing on the ground, since most of the time their feet are towards you, not their heads, and is likely to be a waste of ammunition because of how resistant they are to gunshot wounds. The most efficient method is to get close, crouch low, and use the stabbing attack with the knife on their heads. Even this is difficult given that even when a Zombified Stalker is downed, the "radius of inaccessibility" will only let you get just close enough to stab their heads.

 

To fix this, I suggest that the closest distance you can approach an active human NPC be changed to one foot, or perhaps even 6 inches of space. This will allow us to use the knife much more effectively, and reduce the chance that human NPCs will block a doorway or make it impossible to get around them. I do not believe this should be exceedingly difficult--this sounds like something that is controlled by single variable.

[Mazryonh 0]

Okay, now I've got a savegame that illustrates this problem well. Here's the link:

 

http://www.filefront.com/14774335/NPC-Move...blem-Saves.rar/

 

It's in the Bar, just behind the entrance to General Voronin's headquarters. Given how the Duty guards there stand around, it is next to impossible without jumping on the sandbag barriers to get past those guards, since two guards stand right between the sandbag barriers. If the guards had their AI routines changed to stand in different places or had their "personal space radius" lowered, it would be easier to get into General Voronin's headquarters without having to jump over the sandbags or kill the guards.