Ooof, i can imagine that. I've seen examples before in ED where the displayed value didn't match the real value, like they were storing two different values for the same thing.
My Elite SLF Pilot Seems To Have Lost Her Mojo
- Thread starter Lyla
- Start date
Ooof, i can imagine that. I've seen examples before in ED where the displayed value didn't match the real value, like they were storing two different values for the same thing.
I've recruited a new pilot to test it out. I realize honestly that with incomes atm I can afford to have multiple, so I may as well. I'll try to fight a bunch of goids and report if the behavior improves.
I don't know how true this is but I already have 3 Elite NPCs. It's bad enough they take 30% of my income (especially on combat CGs) but if they're not even putting in the effort then this is just hilariously bad. I honestly don't know how Frontier's coding standards work to bring about some of these bugs. 
I guess all we can do, is to vote it up on the tracker:
issues.frontierstore.net
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Needs a bump again, it seems?
No mention in 18.04 patch notes
No mention in 18.04 patch notes
Really? Sigh.
I think this problem might be much worse than it at first appears. I've trained a new NPC, and the higher her rank, the less effective she becomes.
But worse, I've noticed that it's not just NPCs; thargoids, too, have lost their mojo. Multiple people on AXI have reported that interceptors refuse to fire when players are moving over a certain speed. Just now, I sat in my Taipan and rotated around a cloud of 12 scouts at moderate speed; before, they would have shredded me in seconds, but today, they just sat there, staring at me. If I stopped, they would shoot, but as soon as I started to move, they'd get completely confused and refuse to fire.
I think there might be some sort of general bug with NPC aiming. Based on what we've seen with our own NPCs, I suspect it's something like they aren't aiming where they know they should. High-rank NPCs are programmed to only fire when they're on target, but once you start moving, they're NEVER on target, and as such, they always think they're missing(unless the target happens to stop moving), and therefore, they just never, ever fire.
This is quite possibly also why the turreted AX missiles miss all the time. They're not aiming in the right place.
I really hope I'm wrong, but I'm seriously suspecting that something is very broken in there.
But worse, I've noticed that it's not just NPCs; thargoids, too, have lost their mojo. Multiple people on AXI have reported that interceptors refuse to fire when players are moving over a certain speed. Just now, I sat in my Taipan and rotated around a cloud of 12 scouts at moderate speed; before, they would have shredded me in seconds, but today, they just sat there, staring at me. If I stopped, they would shoot, but as soon as I started to move, they'd get completely confused and refuse to fire.
I think there might be some sort of general bug with NPC aiming. Based on what we've seen with our own NPCs, I suspect it's something like they aren't aiming where they know they should. High-rank NPCs are programmed to only fire when they're on target, but once you start moving, they're NEVER on target, and as such, they always think they're missing(unless the target happens to stop moving), and therefore, they just never, ever fire.
This is quite possibly also why the turreted AX missiles miss all the time. They're not aiming in the right place.
I really hope I'm wrong, but I'm seriously suspecting that something is very broken in there.
So then what is suggested? I heard somewhere that switching to a gimballed SLF variant helps.
In my Anaconda and Corvette I carry a fixed and a gimballed ship around. My Elite crew member uses fixed against big targets, otherwise gimballed. I don't think either has chaff so they sometimes get blown up quickly - sometimes they can fight with an NPC with decent survivability. Hit or miss, they do fire though. I think my experience sounds pretty close to intended behaviour, but they do seem somewhat overly poor at using fixed weapons - particularly as they are Elite (though they go from Harmless to Elite really quickly).
If you watch an elite slf pilot using fixed beams, you can clearly see that they’re very consistently off by the same amount each shot. On larger targets this becomes a near-100% hit rate, as before, because the target is big enough to accommodate the offset.
Definitely something has messed up recently in the aiming AI, also affecting thargoids. It feels like Elite bots (e.g. assassination missions) are also a little off their game versus small ships at the moment.
Gimballed SLFs seem to mitigate this a bit, for AI crew, at the cost of DPS, obviously.
All this being said, elite slf pilots are still surviving waaaay longer than lesser crew, so their evasive flying is still on point.
Definitely something has messed up recently in the aiming AI, also affecting thargoids. It feels like Elite bots (e.g. assassination missions) are also a little off their game versus small ships at the moment.
Gimballed SLFs seem to mitigate this a bit, for AI crew, at the cost of DPS, obviously.
All this being said, elite slf pilots are still surviving waaaay longer than lesser crew, so their evasive flying is still on point.
What I have noticed with the one I am levelling up, only Dangerous so far, is that in a Haz RES they will hit the rocks quite a lot but I have never been in a position to know whether that was a missed shot at the target or bang on target but they had ignored the rock.
Gu-97 with fixed beams.
Gu-97 with fixed beams.
Yeah, I noticed this too.
Mine seem to have the same hit % agains large ships as they used to have against small.
But this isn't entierly new. There's been something off with the slf pilots since odyssey was released.
Mine seem to have the same hit % agains large ships as they used to have against small.
But this isn't entierly new. There's been something off with the slf pilots since odyssey was released.
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Maybe they want to get off the ship too....
Unfortunately I had to switch my fighters to gimballed and my elite crew member still misses a lot. It’s inane that much lower ranked NPC targets seem to have better aim. It’s like the crew scripts were custom edited, for what reason, I don’t know, to introduce a seemingly fixed targeting offset.
Balance issues not withstanding, it would be nice if I could take her with me. At least it she could shoot on foot the way she used to shoot in an slf.Maybe they want to get off the ship too....
I have a theory. We know that they had to completely rebuild the ship system in order to add new ships this year. What if there is a specific point the NPCs are coded to Target, but they forgot to set that in the center of the ship, so it's defaulted to the 0,0,0 point?
Anything is possible. I can't count the number of times that an update has broken things seemingly not affected by the update. It should have been a copy/paste for existing ships, but I don't know what it takes to add another ship, or if that's even related to the issue.
Did you happen to try with any guardian ships since the Tuesday patch? Just curious.....
Fixed issues with Guardian Fighters hit check not behaving correctly.