Fighting and safety rules

Friends are free to decide what to do, how and what to say. A few hard rules fence them, and the server enforces those itself: a friend’s own decision or an AI’s answer can never get round them.

Mobs

Friends defend themselves and their owner from hostile mobs. When they are badly outmatched they back off and warn you: “Too many of them! I’m backing off!” These reflexes never wait for an AI, so they work with no connection.

A fight with a mob pauses the job in hand. Work already done is kept and checked again before the job carries on.

Fighting players

A friend may fight a player, another player’s friend or pet, or a mount: on your order, or by its own judgement.

On your order:

/pyhf attack <friend> <player>

The friend answers “Pip will attack Alex. Say stop to call it off.” A friend never attacks its own owner on anyone’s order: “Pip won’t attack their own owner.”

By its own judgement, a friend may choose to fight a player, another player’s friend or pet, or even its owner.

Either way, every hit is checked as if the player whose rights the friend is using struck it: the player who gave the order, or the owner when it is the friend’s own idea. That player must be online and in the same dimension. A hit is refused when that player couldn’t make it:

Check	What the friend says
PvP is off on the server	“PvP is turned off on this server, so Pip won’t attack players.”
The land is protected from PvP by FTB Chunks	“Pip won’t fight there: that land is protected from PvP.”
A teammate, with friendly fire off	“Pip won’t hit a teammate while friendly fire is off.”
The target is in creative or spectator mode	“Pip won’t hit someone in creative or spectator mode.”
The player it fights for is away	“Pip stopped: whoever that fight is for has to be nearby.”
It can’t tell who owns the target	“Pip can’t tell whose that is, so won’t hit it.”

When a friend hits its own owner, the checks are server PvP, FTB Chunks PvP protection where the fight happens, and the owner not being in creative or spectator mode. Team friendly fire doesn’t apply.

There is no PvP switch in the friend’s settings. The server’s own rules decide.

Stopping a fight

Stop ends a fight at once. If someone attacks the friend after that, it may still defend itself. Untrusting the player a fight was for also ends it: “Pip stopped fighting for you: you can’t give them orders any more.”

The rules that always hold

• The server decides. Every action is a request the server checks first: who asked, their rights, reach and the world as it is. A friend saying it is done counts for nothing until the server has checked.
• Only what the player could do. A friend works within the rights of the player it works for: their game mode, spawn protection and land claims. See Servers.
• Items have one owner. A friend never gets free items, and death, restarts and interrupted jobs settle each item once rather than copying it.
• Stop always works, at once, with or without AI.
• Private stays private. See Privacy.
• No access to your computer. Friends can’t run programs, read files or use commands beyond their own checked actions.
• No paid fallback. If your connection fails, nothing switches to another service or a paid one by itself.

Within those lines a friend uses its own judgement. You steer it by talking to it, not by menus that restrict it. Tell it “leave the garden alone” or “don’t use my diamonds” and it remembers.