I enjoy running the daily Prestige missions Scared to Death and White Collar Captives, along with a few similar Rank missions, because it's fun to have a handful of NPCs running around with you whacking enemies. But with the way they are now, I think dragging a rock around is almost more useful, because the poor things do absolutely ZERO damage worth speaking of. I've seen a recording floating around where someone showed two Knights who had an almost-dead Fiend cornered, and it took them probably a solid five minutes to eke out that last little pixel of its health bar. (At least they're good cannon fodder, I guess.) I'm not asking for them to be turned into uber-soldiers, but come on, these are members of the Spiral Order: shouldn't they at least be on the same tier as, say, a Mecha Knight kit? It doesn't seem like it'd be too egregious to give them attack power in line with the lower-starred Calibur for each tier (Proto Sword, Calibur, and Ascended Calibur respectively). At least then they could manage to do something other than attract Fiends out of your way.
Make NPC Knights at least barely-competent
Yay for NPCs!
I think the Knights should be more like those we find at the beginning of the game. The ones who carry specialized weapons, shield bash, use shields it general, dash around, and deal useful amounts of damage. The Recon Rangers have proven somewhat useful, but they still aren't quite up to power due to their 2* weaponry.
So yes, NPCs should become a bit more handy.
+1, only problem here is making the levels too easy because of the Ai assistance but that can be solved by fiddling with numbers.
I agree, I've been killed by a trojan far too many times because an NPC has decided to draw it's attention my way.
I'd also like to note the danger of making them TOO powerful. After all, It's an AI not unlike the zombie AI.
The AI Knights really need to be stronger. They are currently useful only for drawing aggro while a shield recharges or a weapon charges. What I suggest is to make them deal more damage, but also make them mortal, or at least lengthen the time they stay down after taking too much damage.
I mean, they're allready re-textured Mecha Knights. Anyone else notice that whenever they're hit the make the metallic THUMP! sound? I'd rather have a bunch of shock inflicting robots then those guys.