Will Fighter Crew competence ever be restored?

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
CMDR Daiyus said:
I did think about role playing that a ship with multi-crew seats required that amount of crew members to operate, and then employing three pilots to assign them to the seats every time. Sure, a credit drain, but that's the cost of operating a fleet of larger ships. Turns out you can't assign a crew member unless a SLF bay is fitted. Madness!

Beyond restoring their effectiveness when actually flying the SLF, they really should be overhauled to bring them into the game to earn their money. If it were up to me, I'd make them mandatory for multi-seat ships, with player multi-crew taking over when invited. I'd adjust how they're paid, so they have a flat retainer, and then a cut when active onboard the ship. They'd also have to be rendered in the seats with cockpit based banter, as well as their typical combat lines. The cherry on top would be fully utilising the SLF bays to launch both with NPCs.
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I would love it if i could fill my spare seats with NPCs, and damn the cost.

Back to the topic though, Had a bizarre one when i put them in the Javelin (i think it is... the Guardian one that shoots those plasma balls), and watching it, they were amazingly on target most of the time. Compared with their accuracy with hitscan weapons like the beam or pluse, or near hitscan like the multicannon, the fact they were hitting with the plasma balls was quite surprising.

Put them back in the other SLF, the fixed beam laser imperial SLF, and they were back to being a gimp.

A while ago i tried putting them in gimballed SLFs, and they weren't particularly better in those either.
 

Hugh Jardon

H
Scoob said:
Friend sacked their Crew member last night, after they were being useless. Replaced with a Harmless Crew member who was immediately far better. I've not tested mine again recently, to see if her sudden return to form was a fluke or not.

One of the things that definitely changed with my current Elite Crew member is how she worked when not micro-managed. I really could just leave her to do her own thing. Now, she's certainly more effective when micro-managed, which is generally what I do. I might send her to distract - perhaps even destroy - one ship, while I target another. I might have her combine fire with me etc. She does indeed work less well when given full autonomy than she used to.

However, none of this takes away from the fact that, last time I used her, she was GOOD again. This was against multiple foes. I did the "carry cargo, cause Pirates to spawn" thing, so I was fighting up to ten ships at once at times. Quite fun.

I still say Crew should NOT get a cut if they're not on active duty. Period. That's a silly design choice. Some sort of weekly retainer, sure, but earning billions while sat at the bar. No. That's ridiculous. Likely will never change though. Hmm, tempted to sack her for that reason alone... greedy so and so.
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After extensive testing, I'm pretty sure that carrying cargo doesn't cause more pirates to spawn. Instead it makes them shoot you after they scan you. In a busy instance, you can get that all at once to get a lot of ships shooting you together, which can test a Corvette unless you have SCBs. It does stop the ships that scanned you from flying away, though. I find it safer and more predictable not to have cargo. If you log until you get a good spawn, you're never short of targets, anyway.
 

Hugh Jardon

H
Agony_Aunt said:
A while ago i tried putting them in gimballed SLFs, and they weren't particularly better in those either.
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It's best not to use an SLF with gimballed weapons for the NPC if you have gimballed weapons in your main ship. When the SLF has fixed weapons, the enemy won't use chaff when chasing it down, which is a massive advantage for you in the main ship.
 

Tifu

Tifu
Agony_Aunt said:
Put them back in the other SLF, the fixed beam laser imperial SLF, and they were back to being a gimp.

A while ago i tried putting them in gimballed SLFs, and they weren't particularly better in those either.
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This is so weird. My two SLF pilots who were on ice for several years while I was away from ED reached Master & Expert respectively recently. Both are driving a gimballed beam Taipan and are markedly better than before.

Hugh Jardon said:
It's best not to use an SLF with gimballed weapons for the NPC if you have gimballed weapons in your main ship. When the SLF has fixed weapons, the enemy won't use chaff when chasing it down, which is a massive advantage for you in the main ship.
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I did not know this - very useful tip! Unfortunately, both my SLF pilots suck at fixed weapons so I'm forced to give them gimballed.
 

Tifu

Tifu
Koma Pahu said:
They do suck until they get more skilled. I don’t remember when my (now forcibly retired) pilot suddenly learned to shoot but it does come.
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That's very good news! I was very fond of the Taipan SLF with dual fixed plasma repeaters but had to give up on it. Now I can look forward to it being in use again 👍
 

Scoob

Scoob
Hugh Jardon said:
After extensive testing, I'm pretty sure that carrying cargo doesn't cause more pirates to spawn. Instead it makes them shoot you after they scan you. In a busy instance, you can get that all at once to get a lot of ships shooting you together, which can test a Corvette unless you have SCBs. It does stop the ships that scanned you from flying away, though. I find it safer and more predictable not to have cargo. If you log until you get a good spawn, you're never short of targets, anyway.
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Hmm, the results of my own testing differ to yours. I'd show up in an instance and very few Pirates would appear. I'm looking around with long-range sensors and very few show up. I then managed to kill one of the few Wanted ships that do spawn in, gaining an Occupied Escape Pod. Soon after that happens, I start seeing LOTS of Pirates spawning in. They then make a bee-line for me, scan and, ultimately, start shooting.

At one point, I got so swamped with Pirates that they managed to rob me of any Escape Pods I'd collected. As a test, after dealing with these Pirates, I did not deploy my limpets again, so collected no more Escape Pods. Pirate activity quickly died down, with NONE spawning for several minutes, then the odd one or two again.

In a well-engineered ship, it's pretty easy to quickly wipe out any attackers. However, I tend to go for a shield tank Anaconda, with lots of collectors - I'm there gathering basic Manufactured Materials - armed with mostly Turrets. Add the SLF to the Mix and, now that she's behaving again, we still make quite short work of Pirates. Add to that, my Wing Mate being along for the ride and the number of Pirate spawns are perfect for the rate at which we can kill them. Great fun.

I've seen this pattern many times at this point, and it's proven to be a reliable method of getting ships to fight. Either I'll bring a unit of cargo myself to kick things off quickly, or just wait until I obtain an Escape Pod.

Something changed some time back, in that in LHS 317 where I do most Pirate Hunting stuff, even HazRes sites because heavily "Policed" by Federal Agent ships. There would be very few actual wanted ships vs. how things were before. It got boring. Bring / collect some cargo though and the balance changes totally, the Federal Agent ships largely vanish, replaced by lots of Pirates. Fun.

This has been my go-to "quick session" activity for ages now.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Tifu said:
This is so weird. My two SLF pilots who were on ice for several years while I was away from ED reached Master & Expert respectively recently. Both are driving a gimballed beam Taipan and are markedly better than before.
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Something might be wonky with the ranks then i suppose. Someone messed up a variable for Elite ranked pilots.

However, Master/Expert is where (at least originally) they teneded to cap out at being good with gimballed and you wanted to switch them to using fixed after.
 

Hugh Jardon

H
Scoob said:
Hmm, the results of my own testing differ to yours. I'd show up in an instance and very few Pirates would appear. I'm looking around with long-range sensors and very few show up. I then managed to kill one of the few Wanted ships that do spawn in, gaining an Occupied Escape Pod. Soon after that happens, I start seeing LOTS of Pirates spawning in. They then make a bee-line for me, scan and, ultimately, start shooting.

At one point, I got so swamped with Pirates that they managed to rob me of any Escape Pods I'd collected. As a test, after dealing with these Pirates, I did not deploy my limpets again, so collected no more Escape Pods. Pirate activity quickly died down, with NONE spawning for several minutes, then the odd one or two again.

In a well-engineered ship, it's pretty easy to quickly wipe out any attackers. However, I tend to go for a shield tank Anaconda, with lots of collectors - I'm there gathering basic Manufactured Materials - armed with mostly Turrets. Add the SLF to the Mix and, now that she's behaving again, we still make quite short work of Pirates. Add to that, my Wing Mate being along for the ride and the number of Pirate spawns are perfect for the rate at which we can kill them. Great fun.

I've seen this pattern many times at this point, and it's proven to be a reliable method of getting ships to fight. Either I'll bring a unit of cargo myself to kick things off quickly, or just wait until I obtain an Escape Pod.

Something changed some time back, in that in LHS 317 where I do most Pirate Hunting stuff, even HazRes sites because heavily "Policed" by Federal Agent ships. There would be very few actual wanted ships vs. how things were before. It got boring. Bring / collect some cargo though and the balance changes totally, the Federal Agent ships largely vanish, replaced by lots of Pirates. Fun.

This has been my go-to "quick session" activity for ages now.
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For reference, I've done a lot of killing pirates - like around 7,500 hrs worth of it out of my approx 15,000hrs total game time. This is my experience:

Even in a weak spawn, the pirates come in waves, which seems to match what you're saying. I can judge a spawn within a few seconds of arriving, so if it's not the type I want, I relog until I get it. That's what I do to reach at least the top 10 commanders whenever I participate in the bounty farming CGs. It seems to beat all other methods.

I did a lot of tests on how to optimise AFK farming for pirates when it was a thing a few years ago. For that, cargo is essential. The trick for success is to get the right spawn too, but you need one not too busy and not too quiet. I'm pretty sure that having the cargo made no difference at all to the type of spawn, which is under the control of RNG.

One thing that does increase the number of pirates is having a partner. When my friend does it with me, there are always more pirates. I don't know whether that is only when you have missions, though I think not.

I've never noticed any difference in spawn rates at certain locations during the 10 years I've been playing, except maybe when there's been a change of state, power, allegiance or something like that. None of the places where I do it regularly seem to have changed.
 

CMDR X

CMDR X
Regarding the bad SLF Crew aiming. Has anyone tested this with all 3 types of SLF? Fixed lasers in Condor, Taipan and the Gu97. Is it a global issue? I always used the Gu97-Aegis F for the speed, so I don't have experience with the rest. Tried the beam version too and she can't even scratch the shields of a novice Viper it's so bad. Back when she worked she could solo medium deadlies with the fixed pulses. I don't have the time to experiment. Thx.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Hugh Jardon said:
For reference, I've done a lot of killing pirates - like around 7,500 hrs worth of it out of my approx 15,000hrs total game time. This is my experience:
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1) Your name :D

2) You've got so many hours but only joined the forums this (EDIT: last, damn new year) year!!!

3) 15k hours.... wow. I'm at around 3.5k and been playing since launch.
 

Semivivus

Semivivus
You´re simply not paying your pilots adequately.

12.jpeg
 

Shadowsnog

Shadowsnog
more importantly how much money did you spend on rerolls to get npcs that look like people. i know i parted ways with a few mil before i got a somewhat normal looking one.

i say that slf pilots got worse mainly because of one particular scenario.
you know those kill pirates missions where you drop on a signal and theres like 8 small/medium ships (mainly vulture, cobra, viper and chief, fdl and python). they all scan you on drop and if you dont have cargo they just fly around in a formation for a while.
i used to send my slf pilot after one of the smaller ships right at the drop and by the time i was done with my kills and all other ships jumped, the slf was done with its target. it worked almost like a clockwork.
nowadays regardless of time they are both at 100%.
 

Semivivus

Semivivus
CMDR X said:
Don't even ask how many rolls she took.
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One too many. Imagine finally rolling a good-looking fighter, grinding them up to Elite rank - only for FDev to drop an update that significantly changes or even completely resets most SLF NPC appearances, naturally turning your SLF fighter into something straight out of Mordor - but, of course, not your neighbour Bob´s.

I lost two female fighters this way, but I´m still keeping Jordon - he finally revealed his true nature, and you don´t play games with the Devil but obediently give tribute.

jordon2.jpg
 
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Neilski

Neilski
Agony_Aunt said:
3) 15k hours.... wow. I'm at around 3.5k and been playing since launch.
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Yup, that's... disturbingly high :)
Semivivus said:
You´re simply not paying your pilots adequately.
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Is that for real?? (And your sig says "trillionaire", which prompts the same question :ROFLMAO: - was it made via combat?)
Shadowsnog said:
nowadays regardless of time they are both at 100%.
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That sucks. I gave up on SLFs years ago and eventually got around to firing my pilot. Not in a big rush to retry and this thread makes me even less keen.
 
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