Discuss the AI here!

What do you think of the new AI?

  • Too hard

    Votes: 954 46.7%
  • Just right

    Votes: 838 41.0%
  • Too easy

    Votes: 117 5.7%
  • Other (give reason)

    Votes: 134 6.6%

  • Total voters
    2,043
  • Poll closed .
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Jex =TE=

Banned
Perhaps it is too early to judge, I've been in my favorite HazRes post just for half an hour, and got my ass beaten pretty bad by wing of two incredibly slippery 'dangerous' Vultures (I am flying FAS), but I'd say AI difficulty is just about right. I'll see how it goes, some adaptions of my play style should be definitely necessary.

You're right, it's way too early to judge. The thing with AI is that any change you get a load of people whining. 6 months later however and everyone's complaining how the AI is too easy. People need to learn how to deal with them and that's going to take a couple of weeks.
 
Ok I'm the first to admit I am not the best at Combat but I do OK sometimes, until today of course!. I went into a low hazard combat zone in an A Rated Vulture and before I could take down an Eagle's shields 6 other ships destroyed me. I would say approximately 10 seconds after choosing my faction.

Like I say I have never been into Combat really but I am ranked as Expert, last night after the upgrade I was in a Dropship and got two kills before having to leave. But today was just ridiculous, no one could have survived, don't care how good they were. One shot took out my power plant and thrusters.

Seems a bit hard to me, it was the Low Risk zone after all ;-)
 
But you are clearly not a beginner...you don't have the same perspective as a new player. You can do things with starter ships that those of us who play every day with them could never do.

Two days ago, I was doing that in a sidewinder, albeit with some care...today, simply jumping to an easy res resulted in a very swift death in a mk3 something...the 350k ship.

Of course the older players are happy...but newer players like me are suffering...and when we say we are suffering, you guys jump down our throats telling us we have to "adapt"...starting to feel as though you guys have forgotten what it's like at the bottom...feels as though yer talking down at us and that ain't so cool at all.

For the elitist snobs, this update is the best thing since sliced bread...for the rest of us, it's a nail being hammered into a coffin...I'm actually close to bankrupt now even though my insurance is less than 20k...does that sound like I'm "adapting" to you?
When reading stuff on here, I see most people talking about the bigger ships. I can't afford the best upgrades at the moment and consequently deadly encounters are often exactly that.
 
Nope, it's going to get better. :) Well, needs another balancing pass perhaps, more variety in tactics (to make mid ranks a little easier), and new skills for higher ranks to make them a little less predictable. :)

cool, looks like ED might actually do what SC promised. Indistinguishable AI from human players. (well lets forget about those hollow icons for a while)
 
But you are clearly not a beginner...you don't have the same perspective as a new player. You can do things with starter ships that those of us who play every day with them could never do.

Two days ago, I was doing that in a sidewinder, albeit with some care...today, simply jumping to an easy res resulted in a very swift death in a mk3 something...the 350k ship.
I don't really see anything wrong with new players not being able to dive right into a focused site with combat like that - they should be a challenge, it's something to aspire to - but if the newbie ranks are still getting some of the high rank/modded attacks randomly plying newbie trade and routes then that's too harsh I'd agree.

\o/ to the mother of minions. good lord i'm terrified what the real enemy will be like now :S
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
Same here. I've stuck to solo mode, because in my experience human opponents in general tend to be overly aggressive and always on the look out for 'easy pickings' regarding other newer players. I'm sure the majority that aren't like that, but the thought of some spotty teenager handing me my butt on a plate and then taunting me about my newbiness doesn't appeal. Maybe when my combat skills are refined somewhat and I can take on higher ranked NPCs with impunity then I will take the plunge.

Or you could work on losing that Ego.... ;)
 
the lesser ranked ai need to be adressed for shure a novice sidewinder should not be melting noobs lol. leave the elite ranked ones just as hard.
 
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Ok I'm the first to admit I am not the best at Combat but I do OK sometimes, until today of course!. I went into a low hazard combat zone in an A Rated Vulture and before I could take down an Eagle's shields 6 other ships destroyed me. I would say approximately 10 seconds after choosing my faction.

Like I say I have never been into Combat really but I am ranked as Expert, last night after the upgrade I was in a Dropship and got two kills before having to leave. But today was just ridiculous, no one could have survived, don't care how good they were. One shot took out my power plant and thrusters.

Seems a bit hard to me, it was the Low Risk zone after all ;-)
Nah you just need to get good.
 
This is the single best update to the game IMO. If you want to fight in a HiCZ or HazRES, you need a well equipped combat ship OR some friends on your wing. Even if you have one or more good ships, you need to fly smart and hone your skills.
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If you meet the above criteria, you *will* succeed. HazRES and HiCZ are ED's "hard level" so they should be tough, but honestly they're not impossible.
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If you're having a hard time, fight in a less hazardous area; improve your skills and improve your ship.
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I really think ED have nailed it with the AI.
 
Nope, it's going to get better. :) Well, needs another balancing pass perhaps, more variety in tactics (to make mid ranks a little easier), and new skills for higher ranks to make them a little less predictable. :)

+1 virtual rep. Cannot rep you atm.

Even less predicability would be greatly welcome. It's already quite good!!! And feels like Xmas in May :D

Please don't reduce the Master ranks and above though. Those are the only ships providing a fullfilling challenge. And they are my bread and butter ships :)
 
This is the single best update to the game IMO. If you want to fight in a HiCZ or HazRES, you need a well equipped combat ship OR some friends on your wing. Even if you have one or more good ships, you need to fly smart and hone your skills.
-
If you meet the above criteria, you *will* succeed. HazRES and HiCZ are ED's "hard level" so they should be tough, but honestly they're not impossible.
-
If you're having a hard time, fight in a less hazardous area; improve your skills and improve your ship.
-
I really think ED have nailed it with the AI.

You also need a certain degree of luck as to not get insta popped. I can't wait for more people to experience the insta popping. Then you'll be complaining.
 
As an avowed casual, i do , as i suspected i would, find the AI too hard now. Not ridiculously so, but too hard still.

For combat i fly a full kitted Vulture, and mind you i haven't died yet, but i got pretty close on what was either novice or competent bounty mission. Ok so i did make a power management mistake (i have to deactivate FSD when i fight other wise i run out of power) right after i interdicted them (a wing of two, one eagle and one viper) which meant they started firing at me before i could fire at them, but we're talking a novice mission and they pounded my shields so quickly i didn't have time to kill the Eagle which was the mission target. I got his shields down, started hurting their hull, but before i knew it i was running for my life, got two missiles fired into me, hull was at 80% and my thrusters were damaged. maybe that doesn't sound "pretty close to dying" but considering once my shields got down my hull dropped at 80% in maybe 12 seconds, i think it qualifies. 2 more missiles and i'd have been maybe at 60% with my thrusters (which they seemed to be targeting) probably unable to get me away from them (perhaps i'd have had time to combat log, which no i'm not above doing against npc). Before i could find a system to repair in (they followed me to the station i tried to stop at in the system where the fight happened) the mission had failed.

so i went in combat zones, i had to be extremely careful but it wasn't too problematic when i was picking targets my allies were already firing at, but anytime i went into 1 on 1, i had problems (2 on 1, forget it, get out of there and fast), even against only expert. i faced i think a master or dangerous eagle and i never could touch them. When i stopped trying to, they were taking my shields down fast and sent me running to hyperspace. Other than that, I took me 3 times the time it normally took me before to kill an expert asp scout. They were also often flying circles around me. Killing the 18 enemies i needed for my mission took me something like an hour and a half.

I already found it difficult before to survive an encounter with more than one enemy. Now i simply just have to run.

Now i know you're probably reading this and thinking, "well guess what? you suck at combat". Yeah i know that, i said i was casual. But i still have played this game for hundreds of hours, made it to combat rank dangerous (i need to update my sig, it's several months behind) which means i at least learned a thing or two about combat. Those things seem pretty useless now. I would like to think i represent the skill of the average (in every meaning of the word) Elite player the one who probably normally doesn't post on forums (i find usually forum users in any game tend to represent the higher skilled players because they are usually the passionate players)


Here's my opinion, if you want REALLY tough combat and REALLY intelligent enemies, you play MP (i don't, i said i was a casual....).

Now i'm not against an AI increase, i think there were things the enemies did before that were highly illogical or just plain dumb, but in no game should the AI be equal to the average player either. We're the players for a reason, we're EXPECTED to be able to take down dozens of enemy ships before they can take us down (not all at once though.......) In a way combat zones are more boring now, because i wont' attack an enemy unless they've already been pounded (or if i can tell at a glance at least 3 or 4 allies are on them). I used to like to take on an anaconda or python by myself, i wouldn't ever dare to now.

I mean i'm not even against elite enemies being, you know, elite (just as long as they can't do things we can't, btw is endless missile supply for npcs a thing of the past now? i would sure hope so). But i think i meet my match way under that level and it seems that it shouldn't be. ED is putting the sim in space sim perhaps, but it's personally not the game i bought. I DONT WANT to have to train in combat techniques for dozens of hours before i can have some fun.

To be fair i have yet to play enough missions to make a definitive statement on the current level of the AI, but right now i'm gonna say too hard. Maybe in a week i'll change my tune. OR i'll have died 3 or 4 times and rage quit. See for the top players in this game who have like 200 millions, dying isn't an issue. But when you've got under 20 mils, it's a little more so (i never did any of the exploits, the only reason i was able to afford a clipper is because i grinded powerplay for a month when it came out). At some point, i'm trying to get somewhere.
 
Nope, it's going to get better. :) Well, needs another balancing pass perhaps, more variety in tactics (to make mid ranks a little easier), and new skills for higher ranks to make them a little less predictable. :)

It's definitely better than what we had in 2.0, thanks Sarah. Big thing I would look at after fighting in Conflict Zones is how close Vultures tend to hug your ship. I'm in a Corvette and they're blatantly ramming me because of their desire to stay close.
 
Maybe in my limited experience I ran into a storm of an enemy instead of the "norm." I just can't imagine that there's even one person defending FD if that NPC I encountered is representitive of them all. I didn't even have a chance to react. So my piloting skills weren't even relevant in that encounter.

Again with the denial and excuses, we are all facing the harder enemy, we are all having close shaves. I can only assume you had one pip in shields so you could stack it on weapons, and were hit by a huge plasma accelerator or a couple of rails, they wipe shields out in no time, it happens all the time in pvp with players not ready for it
 
What could be done is better scaling regarding the difficulty (talking about RES sites only atm). HazRes should be the playground for players in wings, classic mid-RES for either the experienced soloers or those with really big ships, low RES for the rest.

I suppose this is exactly what the devs wanted to do, but after checking out mid-RES I can see why many people are having problems there as well: below dangerous NPCs are still pretty tough, and they use 2.1 modded weapons a bit too much perhaps.
 
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One of biggest issues I have/had with NPC AI is their inability to accomplish the oh so difficult multi-tasking required to scan a ship while flying, and NOT crash into the target...

Has anybody noticed an improvement with this regarding the new NPC AI? It's bad enough at a station, but in the middle of a dogfight...
 
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