Anaconda: the 2nd most maneuverable ship in the game!

[DaveB]

NPCs have never been able to use FAOFF

No they just plain cheat...same diff.

You're perfectly entitled to that opinion. Until you back it up with facts as evidence I'll still take the word of the person who wrote their code over an unsubstantiated opinion, sorry. If you do have evidence that demonstrates NPCs are doing things with the flight model that a skilled pilot cannot, file a bug report.

Where the flight model is concerned I have seen lots of folks who had a hard time outflying an NPC getting all salty over it and claiming they cheat, but not a shred of hard evidence. When it comes to scanning, detecting cold drifting ships "visually" when they really shouldn't be able to "see" you and their turrets/gimbals seeming to be less vulnerable to our chaff than ours are to theirs, I'll concede that there may be issues there but referring solely to their flight model, in my time playing (since PB) and watching videos of pilots much more skilled than I taking them on, I have not seen a single piece of hard evidence that they use a flight model any different from ours. Period. In a similarly equipped ship I could always match their pitch, roll and yaw rates, acceleration and max velocities both from main engines and lateral thrusters.

Even without the programmer describing how they were coded (and she has no reason to lie about it) I would still not believe a cmdr claiming that an NPC has access to a tweaked flight model that we cannot configure a similar ship to match without a lot more than "I got outflown by an NPC! This can't be happening! They must be cheating!"

 

[CariadocThorne]

A good tactic but unfortunately all turrets on NPCs ignore chaff since Horizons came out so you'll loose shields pretty quicly. Chaff does still work against gimballed weapons on NPCs though.

Erm, no they don't.

Killing NPC Pythons in my DBS would be one hell of a lot harder if the turrets ignored my chaff. In fact, I doubt I would ever manage to kill them without losing my shields if that were the case, or maybe even kill them at all.

Beam, MC and Frag turrets will still land some hits despite chaff, but a lot less than they do if you don't chaff.

Edit: I'm not just assuming that chaff works on the turrets because I don't get blasted apart like I would expect to. I have literally watched the turrets dancing their shots all around me when I popped chaff, and I have seen how accurate they are when I had forgotten to restock and ran out of chaff.

 

[ronin516]

Also getting tired of them coming from nowhere to interdict me. Sensors are clear then BAM they are interdicting.

 

[CariadocThorne]

Yes I noticed that too. Sometimes they never shoot back. AFAIK that is due to a bug in pip management where they put no pips in WEP initially. But most times Anacondas (and other NPCs) start shooting their turreted beams as soon as I open fire (preferably behind them) and they never stop until they blow up. When I dive for their belly they quickly roll to get me in reach of their turrets again.

I may well be wrong (seeing as there is mention of a Pip allocation bug), but I always assumed this was because turrets are effectively fixed until you fire once to activate them. The NPC doesn't fire just to trigger the turrets like a player would, they wait until they get a shot lined up like they would with normal fixed weapons, so if you stay out of the way, they never fire the "fixed" turrets, and thus never activate the turrets.

 

[Krieger]

Erm, no they don't.

Killing NPC Pythons in my DBS would be one hell of a lot harder if the turrets ignored my chaff. In fact, I doubt I would ever manage to kill them without losing my shields if that were the case, or maybe even kill them at all.

Beam, MC and Frag turrets will still land some hits despite chaff, but a lot less than they do if you don't chaff.

Edit: I'm not just assuming that chaff works on the turrets because I don't get blasted apart like I would expect to. I have literally watched the turrets dancing their shots all around me when I popped chaff, and I have seen how accurate they are when I had forgotten to restock and ran out of chaff.

Well I tested it again tonight. I took my FAS to a hazardous RES and shot at Dangerous Anacondas so they engaged me. I waited until I saw a blue spot on my shields (and on the hologram on the right in the HUD) from one of their beam turrets. The blue spot was rock steady, just a tiny wobble. Distance 1 to 1.5 km. I popped chaff and the blue spot didn't move at all, it stayed rock steady. I could also confirm that by looking at the beams directly from the cockpit. Same with multicannon turrets.
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I'll file a bug report tomorrow. Unfortunately I can not record videos but it is easy to test. Maybe this bug is specific to certain ship types?

 

[CariadocThorne]

Well I tested it again tonight. I took my FAS to a hazardous RES and shot at Dangerous Anacondas so they engaged me. I waited until I saw a blue spot on my shields (and on the hologram on the right in the HUD) from one of their beam turrets. The blue spot was rock steady, just a tiny wobble. Distance 1 to 1.5 km. I popped chaff and the blue spot didn't move at all, it stayed rock steady. I could also confirm that by looking at the beams directly from the cockpit. Same with multicannon turrets.
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I'll file a bug report tomorrow. Unfortunately I can not record videos but it is easy to test. Maybe this bug is specific to certain ship types?

It must be a bug. I can definitely tell the difference when I use chaff in either a DBS or a Courier. I try to stay at under 500m range whenever possible (I use fixed frag cannons and PA), so I still take some hits, but if I run out of chaff the shields on my DBS last for seconds

 

[froggy368]

Ai is getting ridiculous sometimes. I have even gone solo in my t9. But sill getting interdicted and blown up loosing millions from relentless Ai masslocking. The last one was yesterday and took me out in under 20 seconds. With shields, That is unacceptable. It makes trading in a t9 useless.

I've had a fully fitted python for a while and except for a time or two where NPCs in a wing got on my case and I had no other choice but run away, I always won my battles and because I had a few extra credits available I decided to buy the "reinforced Alloy"; a 24 million credit purchase! So last weekend with my brand new bulkhead I go to a RES searching for "wanted" ships when an other python attacked me and in about 20 seconds my canopy was failing, my shields and power plant were down with no possibility to boost out of there and in about 30 seconds I was blown to pieces! Apparently I got myself a bulkhead full of holes but my question is what happened?
I did have insurance but because everything with ED seems to be a secret especially when it comes to weapons and protection I have no clue what I am buying. It's just there for sale and you're on your own to figure out the rest. Now I am back in my python but NO reinforced alloy.
Anybody had this kind of one sided experience?

 

[Grumpy181155]

Again with this tired old chestnut?

Yes there are places where NPCs play a little fast and loose with the rules that players do. They don't track projectile ammo usage, but that's reasonable, because NPCs only last for a single engagement against a player (either they die/flee and they poof out of existence when they are no longer in the instance or the player does, with the same result) and who runs out their entire magazine in a single engagement? There's some iffy behavior around scanning and how they apparently have much better eyesight than any human to pick up a cold drifting ship visually far beyond where we'd even be a single pixel on another players screen..

But one place we know that they do not cheat is on the fight model. We have that directly from MoM herself. The Mistress of Minions wrote that code and she assured us that she wrote it such that the AI code pilots its ships by providing control inputs to the same flight model that applies to every other ship in the game, ours included. They may be insanely precise with those control inputs, which will make them a real handful if they are using FA-off as they do at the higher ranks, but a skilled human pilot could at least potentially match their flight behavior in a ship of identical loadout.

Anecdotal evidence from me would support your statement. I fly an Anaconda and it seems to me that the NPC's have the same manoeuvrability as I do.

 

[metatheurgist]

Also getting tired of them coming from nowhere to interdict me. Sensors are clear then BAM they are interdicting.

Are you one of those people that think upgrading sensors is a waste of money?

 

[GammaZ]

Ai is getting ridiculous sometimes. I have even gone solo in my t9. But sill getting interdicted and blown up loosing millions from relentless Ai masslocking. The last one was yesterday and took me out in under 20 seconds. With shields, That is unacceptable. It makes trading in a t9 useless.

Which means... you are doing it wrong.
Dying in T9 to NPC means that either something is wrong with your loadout or your actions during the attack.

Are you one of those people that think upgrading sensors is a waste of money?

Do you mean that sensors affect detection of targets in supercruise? IIRC they do not, the only advantage of better sensors is detection range in normal space.

 

[Terry Bruge-Hiplo]

The turning on a dime thing happens to me too, despite my best efforts to continually move out of their line of sight, in large and small ships. As per Krieger's great description of how ships move out of the mail slot - the anaconda continues following its flanking direction around you - but suddenly it will belly flop 90 degrees and face directly at you in, literally, about a second. All the while, it continues to flank. I get that such moves are possible with FA off, but it's more the rate that it turns that's dubious to me.

 

[vernonator]

The turning on a dime thing happens to me too, despite my best efforts to continually move out of their line of sight, in large and small ships. As per Krieger's great description of how ships move out of the mail slot - the anaconda continues following its flanking direction around you - but suddenly it will belly flop 90 degrees and face directly at you in, literally, about a second. All the while, it continues to flank. I get that such moves are possible with FA off, but it's more the rate that it turns that's dubious to me.

This - I was in a High CZ last night in my Vulture (agility 9) and wondered how these iClippers (agility 2) could stay nose on to me no matter what I did. Sure they obey the flight mechanics, they just don't obey the maneuverability rating for their ships. No way No how....

 

[GammaZ]

This - I was in a High CZ last night in my Vulture (agility 9) and wondered how these iClippers (agility 2) could stay nose on to me no matter what I did. Sure they obey the flight mechanics, they just don't obey the maneuverability rating for their ships. No way No how....

Did you ever fly clipper?
Maneuverability rating is just a number that means nothing at all, often ships with less rating are more maneuverable.

 

[DaveB]

The turning on a dime thing happens to me too, despite my best efforts to continually move out of their line of sight, in large and small ships. As per Krieger's great description of how ships move out of the mail slot - the anaconda continues following its flanking direction around you - but suddenly it will belly flop 90 degrees and face directly at you in, literally, about a second. All the while, it continues to flank. I get that such moves are possible with FA off, but it's more the rate that it turns that's dubious to me.

The Anaconda is a ship that is very maneuverable for its size/mass, particularly with uprated thrusters. I fly one myself and I do the "turn on a dime thing" myself too when I need to. I started experimenting with ways to optimize high-speed axis changes in a big ship after being outflown by an NPC when I flew one in beta and now that I'm flying one in the live game my big snake turns as rapidly as NPC 'condas do. In part, the maneuverability of the 'conda seems to be part of the "distinctiveness" that FD have tried to build into ships from different manufacturers. For their size and mass, the distinctive "flying wedges" coming out of the Faulcon DeLacy yards tend to be right up there amongst the fastest and most maneuverable ships of their class, which is reasonable since Faulcon specialize in turning out quality multirole ships.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

Are you one of those people that think upgrading sensors is a waste of money?

the problem isn't the money its the weight (reduced jump range) and energy it consumes that it's not worth.

 

[FurtivePygmy]

Poor things seem to have no idea what to do 99% of the time, just turning around and flaring boost randomly.

Lol, yeah I used to have no problems taking them out left and right when I still had my Vulture. It is definitely harder to get a flawless victory in bigger/less agile ships...

I agree... sort of. But they fly very different than human pilots do. They control their velocity vector independently from their ship's attitude. You can see that clearly when you follow an NPC out of the mail slot. When it clears the bull bars it's attitude changes to point to the star they are going to jump to but while it's attitude is changing it keeps flying perfectly on a straight line resulting in (sometimes huge) slip angles both in pitch and yaw. It continues flying with these slip angles until it gets further away from the station where it lines up it's velocity vector with its longitudinal axis and initiates a jump.
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Such manoeuvring shows how their control software works: they direct their velocity vector by varying the thrust levels of the main and lateral thrusters (within limits that also apply to players, so no cheating) while the attitude of the ship is pointed at a target (maximum pitch/yaw rates are applied, so no cheating). When NPCs have no target selected their attitude is kept aligned with their velocity vector. It is close to FAOFF but the slight "cheat" here is that AFAIK players can not proportionally control their lateral thrusters. We can only switch them on/off. So even with FAOFF we can not fly as accurate as NPCs do in this way (provided we could do the math required for that in our head).

This is the crucial point I think. Much like the AI might be said to "cheat" in games like StarCraft because they can essentially execute hundreds of actions every second with total precision, the AI here I think is simply operating at a very high level of precision and micro-management. Which isn't to say that a person couldn't come close to matching it with enough practice, and the right hardware (allowing for analog thruster inputs for example). Because of their ability to precisely maneuver like this, it gives a human pilot less room for error, unless they already have a big agility advantage (i.e. Vulture). Whether this sort of thing really counts as cheating is debatable I think. Perhaps it is somewhat unfair, but given the potential advantages that a human player still has over an NPC, it probably balances out.

 

[Moardak]

I've done a LOT of RES bounty hunting, in a Vulture, Python, and FDL. And I can say I've never had much problems in any ship against Anacondas. Nor have I gotten the impression that the NPCs are cheating or doing anything a player couldn't do. First off you shouldn't ever engage an Anaconda until you're already up close and behind them. Once you're there, it's not that hard to stay there. Some of the Eilte ones do use FA off, and they'll fly backwards to keep you in front if you ever get in front. Once you get into this state I'll admit it's pretty hard to get out of it in a bigger ship like FDL or Python. If you boost past them you'll usually overshoot and then you'll both turn around and be facing each other again. Turns into a head on jousting match. Best bet is to avoid this state from the start. I've found the Elite Clippers and Drop Ships to be even more dangerous than the Elite Anacondas because they're more maneuverable.

I'm still experimenting with the Python and FDL loadouts, but honestly I haven't been able to find a build that's better for bounty hunting than a Vulture with 2 large pulse lasers. In a Vulture I can stay on target almost 100% of the time and Power Plants therefore go down just as fast or faster than they do using bigger ships with more firepower but less maneuverability. And I take less damage and have less repair costs, and can stay out longer. Basically what I'm saying is if you're having problems bounty hunting in a RES in an FDL, just go back to using a Vulture.. I'm very much considering doing the same. The only thing that has kept me using my Python and FDL is because I want to learn to pilot them better, not because I think they're better for RES bounty hunting.

 

[Ydiss]

I've done a LOT of RES bounty hunting, in a Vulture, Python, and FDL. And I can say I've never had much problems in any ship against Anacondas. Nor have I gotten the impression that the NPCs are cheating or doing anything a player couldn't do. First off you shouldn't ever engage an Anaconda until you're already up close and behind them. Once you're there, it's not that hard to stay there. Some of the Eilte ones do use FA off, and they'll fly backwards to keep you in front if you ever get in front. Once you get into this state I'll admit it's pretty hard to get out of it in a bigger ship like FDL or Python. If you boost past them you'll usually overshoot and then you'll both turn around and be facing each other again. Turns into a head on jousting match. Best bet is to avoid this state from the start. I've found the Elite Clippers and Drop Ships to be even more dangerous than the Elite Anacondas because they're more maneuverable.

I'm still experimenting with the Python and FDL loadouts, but honestly I haven't been able to find a build that's better for bounty hunting than a Vulture with 2 large pulse lasers. In a Vulture I can stay on target almost 100% of the time and Power Plants therefore go down just as fast or faster than they do using bigger ships with more firepower but less maneuverability. And I take less damage and have less repair costs, and can stay out longer. Basically what I'm saying is if you're having problems bounty hunting in a RES in an FDL, just go back to using a Vulture.. I'm very much considering doing the same. The only thing that has kept me using my Python and FDL is because I want to learn to pilot them better, not because I think they're better for RES bounty hunting.

Pretty much spot on.

 

[JuicerPrime]

Normally I don't have any issues against NPC Anaconda's, but today was an exception. I ended up in a tussle with one and no matter how I maneuvered he stayed glued to my tail. Flipped with FA off and saw him pull a loop a Vulture would have been proud of.

The Anaconda has always been weirdly maneuverable, but that did seem to be taking the cake a bit. Ended up finishing him off but he shredded my hull to 49% and my power distributor to 6%. Nasty fight.

 

[SCTrojanbulldog]

Pretty much spot on.

I've done a LOT of RES bounty hunting, in a Vulture, Python, and FDL. And I can say I've never had much problems in any ship against Anacondas. Nor have I gotten the impression that the NPCs are cheating or doing anything a player couldn't do. First off you shouldn't ever engage an Anaconda until you're already up close and behind them. Once you're there, it's not that hard to stay there. Some of the Eilte ones do use FA off, and they'll fly backwards to keep you in front if you ever get in front. Once you get into this state I'll admit it's pretty hard to get out of it in a bigger ship like FDL or Python. If you boost past them you'll usually overshoot and then you'll both turn around and be facing each other again. Turns into a head on jousting match. Best bet is to avoid this state from the start. I've found the Elite Clippers and Drop Ships to be even more dangerous than the Elite Anacondas because they're more maneuverable.

I'm still experimenting with the Python and FDL loadouts, but honestly I haven't been able to find a build that's better for bounty hunting than a Vulture with 2 large pulse lasers. In a Vulture I can stay on target almost 100% of the time and Power Plants therefore go down just as fast or faster than they do using bigger ships with more firepower but less maneuverability. And I take less damage and have less repair costs, and can stay out longer. Basically what I'm saying is if you're having problems bounty hunting in a RES in an FDL, just go back to using a Vulture.. I'm very much considering doing the same. The only thing that has kept me using my Python and FDL is because I want to learn to pilot them better, not because I think they're better for RES bounty hunting.

This has always been my take. Honestly, combat Condas make little sense to me. You take away everything you like about combat and turn it into a system management exercise.

But I'm also the guy that sees the Corvette as a waste of resources and the Cutter as a wise long term investment. Printing money with no threat is a nice way to have fun doing other things.