Sarah "Cylon" Jane Avory.
All Hail Sarah Jane - Mistress of the Minions
- Thread starter shadragon
- Start date
My own experiences in 1 on 1
1) Elite Viper taking on my Clipper about 200LY from Sol. I was that far out looking for a pristine ring in an uninhabited system so I thought I'd be safe. Nope, first thing that happens, an Elite Viper shows up - says "I want it all" though the only thing I'm carrying are collection drones. Haven't even started mining yet. So while the circumstances were odd, I was all up for a fight.
She almost took down my shields all by herself. Not bad!
2) Low level Sidewinder - shieldless. Now this was a USS I dropped into. He welcomed me with "Glad you could drop by" or some such before the fight began. I was in an Asp this time. Sidewinder couldn't put a dent into me, but dang it was hard to hit! I used to really like the Asp for NPC combat, but this fight took too dang long because it nipped about. Of course, he couldn't hurt me and never even considered running away, so I question his intelligence.
3) Elite Viper - BUG! - This was an NPC enforcer from the Utopians that interdicted me en route to Gateway. The problem is it never fired once. Again I was in my Asp and it was shielded and nippy as heck, so the fight took FOREVER. Only dinged it once with my railguns, had to rely on fixed beam lasers to hit it. But the whole time it never fired (and it clearly wanted to. He wasn't there to hand out pamphlets)
I can only imagine how the fight would have gone if it had fired back.
1) Elite Viper taking on my Clipper about 200LY from Sol. I was that far out looking for a pristine ring in an uninhabited system so I thought I'd be safe. Nope, first thing that happens, an Elite Viper shows up - says "I want it all" though the only thing I'm carrying are collection drones. Haven't even started mining yet. So while the circumstances were odd, I was all up for a fight.
She almost took down my shields all by herself. Not bad!
2) Low level Sidewinder - shieldless. Now this was a USS I dropped into. He welcomed me with "Glad you could drop by" or some such before the fight began. I was in an Asp this time. Sidewinder couldn't put a dent into me, but dang it was hard to hit! I used to really like the Asp for NPC combat, but this fight took too dang long because it nipped about. Of course, he couldn't hurt me and never even considered running away, so I question his intelligence.
3) Elite Viper - BUG! - This was an NPC enforcer from the Utopians that interdicted me en route to Gateway. The problem is it never fired once. Again I was in my Asp and it was shielded and nippy as heck, so the fight took FOREVER. Only dinged it once with my railguns, had to rely on fixed beam lasers to hit it. But the whole time it never fired (and it clearly wanted to. He wasn't there to hand out pamphlets)
I can only imagine how the fight would have gone if it had fired back.
I expect that they already exist and we just have not encountered them yet....
"They're out there!"
They are probably called Thargoids. Seriously. No flight assist, EVER.
Personally I want to see baby Sidewinders scatter like cockroaches whenever I deploy hardpoints in my 800t Clipper frigate.
Maybe it should be Sarah "Sauron" Jane Avory..
And we adress you "Your Wickedness"
Cheers Cmdr's
I think Mistress Sarah works too.
"Please make the AI spank us harder, Mistress Sarah."
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What you need is an Arena mode, so we can go head-to-head with your creations and you get all the feedback/telemetry on how to improve the Borg.
It's all for development, so we wouldn't enjoy one minute of it. Not one.
Not completely. I've seen NPC's try to run when under 30% hull. Happened last night twice as a matter of fact.
Sarah Jane Avory
Retro Queen
I have found a couple of bugs. 1) It's possible for pips management to foul up for high rank ships, meaning their pips request for WEP is... zero! 2) On smoothing out the DC I accidentally compromised AI ships orientation in combat massively, so it's hard for them to align to target. I've tested the fixes and it makes them much deadlier. They won't be going in just yet. I need to re-balance the combat AI (especially low ranks) and upgrade it loads top end, adding such thing as ships breaking away to recharge shields, and possibly using SCBs better.
Well, if nothing else, your AI has shown me that the Asp is not the end-all jack-of-all-trades ship I had hoped for.
That's not a bad thing. In fact, given the number of times I've pancaked that into station walls (I had a bad habit of boosting to the docking port, and in any other ship if I knew I was going to miss I could steer away in time, but the Asp? Splat!) I should have really known how lacking in maneuverability it is, now that lack of maneuverability has noticeable consequences (outside of station docking stunts). The Clipper might have huge inertia, but at least it turns on a dime in terms of orientation.
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The simple fact of the matter is that the AI is at a massive disadvantage because they dont have the same shielding we have.
Their movement is really fluid now and i simply cannot begin to imagine the complexity of the code. Ive been writing intelligent systems for over 20 years so im in awe of what is going on under the bonnet.
If you gave them the same loadouts as us (ie stacked cells) the tears would flow like Niagra Falls.
I defy anyone to beat an Elite Conda with even a heavy fighter and no cells. I have tried and failed in my Courier loads.
I can easily jump in a celled up FdL or Python and just face tank until their shields drop and then gimbal their plant but it doesnt require any skill.
If they targetted subs or drives and stacked cells...different story.
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I like what you're doing here! keep up the good work.
It depends if you're in a High Conflict Zone and your target is attacked by more then you alone it's still the same as before but I had several moments that a Python lured me out of the group, I chased him and had a pretty rough 1v1 fight and you can clearly see Conflict Zones are a bit harder then before which makes it more challenging and fun, atleast for me
AI has definitely improved with 1.3. I think that improvement is being hampered though by the way npe's are randomnly generated for any given situation. Pirates aren't matched to ships they're intending to pirate (nor are they winged up when it makes sense to be). Combat zone's seem to have a weird npe ranking mechanism at work with low ranking ships - while not being terribly aggressive - seem to have a loadout that can take a beating. Res's likewise still need tweaking. All of this combines to limit the effectiveness of AI improvement.
I hope we see those fixes come before the next phase in ai rework since it seems unlikely that anyone can get a good feel for the improvements and advancements when they're being put in sub-optimal situations in the game.
I hope we see those fixes come before the next phase in ai rework since it seems unlikely that anyone can get a good feel for the improvements and advancements when they're being put in sub-optimal situations in the game.
Then do we just sit back and watch her minions deal with them?
