My point is that the AI is so deadly not because of skill but because it's able to use infinite SCBs/chaff as a measure to make itself untouchable while running circles around me with equipment that it has no reason to have access to.
I have a theory as to why there's such a disparity in player opinion - ED's RNG seems to throw higher ranked ships at you as your combat rank increases. These higher ranked ships must be able to get better engineered components. At lower ranks, they're not much better than a player ship (or are worse) and to those who mostly do trading, exploring, mining, et cetera or have really only just begun a combat career, the problem may not be apparent to them as they'll probably be interacting with engineers over the course of their progression and therefore evolving at a rate that keeps up with the tougher AI they start to encounter later.
The higher ranked players - I am Dangerous - are getting totally tricked out enemies that far exceed any non-engineered vessel's capabilities. To compound matters, these players haven't been interacting with engineers over their career (since they only just came into existence) and are therefore possibly months of progress behind the bots they're encountering. This is the only explanation I can think of as to why many of the more combat oriented players are in a tizzy about the situation.
The solution, then, would be to reduce the odds of NPCs spawning with engineered components - make them rarer opponents.
This, I can wholeheartedly agree with.
The distribution of NPC ranks seems to be skewed towards the high end , particularly at higher player rank (I'm top-end Master, within a few kills of turning Dangerous myself). On principle I don't have
too much of a problem with this "gamey" mechanic, but it's totally unnecessary, so why did they do it? Just because one pilot ranks up shouldn't magically change the distribution of skill levels across the entire galaxy's NPC population. Just because an Elite Cmdr jumps into a low intensity RES shouldn't mean that suddenly everybody else in there has to deal with wings of Elite NPC pirates. Just because an Elite Cmdr jumps into a system shouldn't mean that suddenly more Elite adversaries are spawning in supercruise than there would be if the pilot arriving was ranked as a novice. Arrive in system X and see 5 NPCs in SC... say one novice, two competent, a master and one ranked deadly. This "spawn decision" should be made WITHOUT reference to
your rank, only to the situation of the system. Now, if you're ranked a novice yourself, any of them [i[]could[/i] decide to have a go at you but it's likely that unless you're carrying something particularly juicy, the master and deadly ranked NPCs will consider you beneath their notice. If you're ranked deadly, probably only the master or deadly ranked NPCs will try to take you on. THAT's how you rank-match encounters with NPCs rather than spawning them to match you. You spawn what you spawn, then modify their BEHAVIOUR in the light of your rank. If we want to fight higher ranked NPCs we know where to find them. If we don't then we should be able to know where it's unlikely to find them too, not have the odds follow us around like the miasma from a bad case of flatulence.
As for the prevalence of modifications, particularly on the high-end NPCs, I agree there too. There's too many of them.
Their actual piloting skill, however, those changes in the update I love and I wouldn't have FD change a thing.
Infinite SCBs/chaff are a greyer area.
We know how many chaff rounds a launcher holds. Similarly we know from our left UI how many of them the NPC has. If anyone can shoot a post-2.1 video showing that they dump more chaff bundles than all their launchers can hold, that would be something we can hold up to FD as a bug. That would not be me as I typically fly with a mostly fixed weapon loadout, but if there's such a video out there, shot post-update I WANT that bug reported and squished.
Unfortunately, SCB cheating would be more dodgy to prove. Heck, I've been accused of cheating in chat by another player when I simply managed to keep enough power flowing to my SCBs to always have one charged and ready to go. I'm not even that particularly good at PvP, I was just on a roll that night.
ETA: and as another post has reminded me, they DONT have infinite ammo for anything but MC rounds.
