Enemy variety would be nice

[Lord Baron Von Vaderham]

A recent experience went something like this...

1) Stack 13 delivery missions.
2) 5 send enemies after me the moment I leave the station
3) Spend the next 2-3 hours blowing up 14 engineered anacondas and a pair of Federal Assaultships.
4) Mop up the deliveries in a single run with a Type-9

I get that Threat 8 is supposed to be a challenge, but can I please fight something other than the same ship over and over again?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Having some of the Threat 8 encounters be smaller ships, but you fight all four of them at once, would be an interesting way to mix things up a bit.
(More so than "this one is a Corvette instead", anyway)

 

[Rubbernuke]

Reverting back to wing sizes >4 and having more RNG loadouts / ships would be excellent.

Even small ships with engineering would be fun- four G3 Sidewinders would be nasty and much more fun than the pirate Corvette.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

The game definitely needs more railwinders and it'd certainly add some spice if 2-3 enemy groups dropped in at the same time if you mission stacked. I don't think it would hurt the game at all to have moments where you need to make a tactical retreat.

 

[Lord Baron Von Vaderham]

The game definitely needs more railwinders and it'd certainly add some spice if 2-3 enemy groups dropped in at the same time if you mission stacked. I don't think it would hurt the game at all to have moments where you need to make a tactical retreat.

As long as a retreat is possible. It's rather annoying when you get interdicted four times by the same guy in the last 24Mm on your way into a station because the NPCs don't play by the same rules.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

As long as a retreat is possible. It's rather annoying when you get interdicted four times by the same guy in the last 24Mm on your way into a station because the NPCs don't play by the same rules.

Maybe if you could at least see an element of progression. A problem we have is that if you or the NPC jump out, the encounter gets reset as if it never happened.

However, if it was possible to have incoming enemies listed as a group in the message you get warning you about them and you blow some of those up, they don't come back so you're at least whittling down the group as you go- so if you did need to retreat, there's the potential you could sort out your ship and next time there's less to deal with. Most importantly it wouldn't feel like you were just repeating the exact same treadmill.

 

[aRJay]

As long as a retreat is possible. It's rather annoying when you get interdicted four times by the same guy in the last 24Mm on your way into a station because the NPCs don't play by the same rules.

The solutions to repeat interdictions by the same NPC are well known though not always achievable, either

1. Win the interdiction mini game
2. Destroy the NPC if you don’t do 1.

But more variety in the ships would be nice.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

As long as a retreat is possible. It's rather annoying when you get interdicted four times by the same guy in the last 24Mm on your way into a station because the NPCs don't play by the same rules.

If you're low-waking out of the fight and leaving them alive, chain-interdicting is exactly what a player could do in that situation too.

Probably more effectively, too - the NPC seems to generally reappear some distance out in that scenario, and in a random direction, so has to waste time getting into position again, whereas a player would be coming from the same place you were facing the exact same direction.

Allowing low-wakes and beating interdictions as a really easy way of skipping a fight is probably the underlying problem, though: if mission enemies are optional in the first place then it doesn't really matter what they are. May as well leave the combat in the dedicated combat missions / POIs and let haulers have their uninterrupted supercruise at this point.

 

[Lord Baron Von Vaderham]

Allowing low-wakes and beating interdictions as a really easy way of skipping a fight is probably the underlying problem, though: if mission enemies are optional in the first place then it doesn't really matter what they are. May as well leave the combat in the dedicated combat missions / POIs and let haulers have their uninterrupted supercruise at this point.

I would add to this the distribution of threat levels I've seen. When there are 18 source and return missions but 14 of them are high threat and high risk it doesn't exactly leave the player many options. I'm not sure how the missions are spun, but this is frequently the case for me.

Transport missions effectively come with a combat tax. If you want to get some use out of that Type-9 then either stop taking missions or be ready to switch out ships and take part in an entirely different part of the game.

As someone who has been a space trucker since day one, I spent the first few months not even looking at the mission board because of this. The risks should always be there but some of us neither like nor are good at combat. It should not be a gate to doing our thing.

 

[SlickPBW]

You can also break chain interdictions by intentionally overshooting the destination and doing a “loop of shame”. This causes the NPC interdictiors to constantly try to get behind you in SC. Because you are constantly turning toward the destination, this becomes almost impossible for their subhuman piloting skills, and you can usually land without being interrupted.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I would add to this the distribution of threat levels I've seen. When there are 18 source and return missions but 14 of them are high threat and high risk it doesn't exactly leave the player many options. I'm not sure how the missions are spun, but this is frequently the case for me.

Definitely agreed there. It gets me on the other side - my multirole ship has a 96t cargo hold, which is too small to do just about any cargo delivery mission in a single trip (source and returns, sure, but even then it gets tricky). And I'm sure this has got worse over the last few years, too.

Having a greater mix of mission tonnages and threat levels would be a lot more interesting.