Engineers This simply... sucks....

I like to doing some Missions, some Trading and Exploring, but this really sucks. Graphics good, but the Gameplay is nothing for me anymore. I got shot down by NPCs now 4 times in a row, and usually I am the one that shoots them down. My ASP is equipped wit A Components only, Military Hull and good weapons, but I loose my A5 Shield now in a few seconds, can not even stay behind Eagles and if I do, then my Modules are failing and I just sit there and the pirat just shots me like a sitting Duck, until my ship explodes. Stupid Commentaries from these young hardcore fighters do not impress me, I am 58 years old and just want to have some fun. I lost lots of Money the last two days, just before I wanted to upgrade to a Python and I lost my interest in that Game, too. This is not fun anymore. If you think this is the right way, go ahead, but I do not understand, why the game was altered so much in the "Make it hard" direction. I have trouble enough in real life. I do not need that in my free time. I will now stop right here. I am done with Elite.
 
Yes you can. Trade missions are denoted by the trade rank, which implies difficulty or pursuers if there are any. The trade mission descriptionn itself tells you if you can expect hostile ships, and it even has a nice red warning sign if said mission exceeds your current trade rank. entrepeneur+ missions have more dangerous ships sent after you. I would suggest that if you own Horizons, you do salvage missions in your Asp. They are mostly enemy free, and pay well for what they are.

For trade missions always fly with 4 pips in sys and 2 pips in engines in supercruise. If you are interdicted press hostile target key to see what's chasing you. If it's smaller then you then submit immediately, boost towards your goal and go back into supercruise as soon as you can. 4 pips in sys should strengthen your shields to withstand some amount of damage. If it's something that can mass lock you, then immediately submit and select the nearest system you can jump to, and start charging your drive.

As for survival, if you only have two shield boosters, the other two utilities should be a chaff launcher and a point defence. If you are losing shields fast, chaff and wiggle the ship while charging your drive to make it harder for the enemy to hit you.

Are you sure you read my posts and the update-notes? Yes, the Missions have those warnings. But the one with enemies is always there, never saw a trade-mission without those, and the warning that the mission is above my level I saw only once. Rank is not important anymore for the missions offered, as far as I know. And the tactics you described wont work. It was working that way pre-patch, not now.

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But to say this update sucks... Blaspheme!!! :mad:
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I did not say that. I think I made very clear which part of the update sucks, in my opinion. I dont even say the way this went is wrong, just that it went to far down the road...... and the hill...... and so on :D
 
How to fly a trading ship and survive:
1. Equip an A-rated shield
2. Equip shield boosters
3. Equip chaff launcher
4. When interdicted, just submit
5. Boost away. Once he starts to attack you, deploy the chaff and set 4 pips to SYS while waiting for FSD cooldown to finish
6. If you have access to engineers, try to upgrade your FSD, shields, shield boosters, distributors and thrusters to at least grade 1.
 
How to fly a trading ship and survive:
1. Equip an A-rated shield
2. Equip shield boosters
3. Equip chaff launcher
4. When interdicted, just submit
5. Boost away. Once he starts to attack you, deploy the chaff and set 4 pips to SYS while waiting for FSD cooldown to finish
6. If you have access to engineers, try to upgrade your FSD, shields, shield boosters, distributors and thrusters to at least grade 1.

And if you encounter one of the Super NPC's you might as well be peeing into the wind.. Check out the videos on Rails and PAC's firing full auto with seemingly unlimited ammo and heat. I have lost 2 or 3 Pythons and a couple of FDL's all within a few seconds. Not even enough time to bring guns to bear. If you doubt this then check out the many threads in the Bugs forum.
 
Are you sure you read my posts and the update-notes? Yes, the Missions have those warnings. But the one with enemies is always there, never saw a trade-mission without those, and the warning that the mission is above my level I saw only once. Rank is not important anymore for the missions offered, as far as I know. And the tactics you described wont work. It was working that way pre-patch, not now.

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I did not say that. I think I made very clear which part of the update sucks, in my opinion. I dont even say the way this went is wrong, just that it went to far down the road...... and the hill...... and so on :D

I beg to differ, they work for me because my Asp hasn't gotten trashed yet, and neither has my trade Conda, but then again, I probably haven't met the singe shot killing npcs. And missions are not rank LOCKED anymore, that is true. But the rank still influences the difficulty of the mission. It says so in the mission description as well. That is why I said to try the salvage missions, as those 90% of the time don't involve missions spawned enemies. If you meet someone they are randomly spawned and as long as your cargo hold is empty, they will leave you be. Mission enemies will follow you even if you wake out, all the way to the station.
 
In my opinion, I cant for the life of me understand why anyone would think 2.0 had better difficulty when you could stay in a RES and just farm your butts off from killing unintelligent NPCs... Where was the challenge?? Now, I've lost a few multirole ships and I'm loving every second of it. I mean it's not perfect, but damn close! Interdiction are easier to evade now but if you submit, run. Ofc, getting interdicted every 100 ls isn't particularly fun... But this was the case pre 2.1 to begin with. :)
 
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Welcome to Elite, this is how it should have been from the start. I am not going to say anything like 'git gud' because that is in the extreme.

But you have to understand that the unforgiving nature of an Elite game has been completely absent in ED up until now. Its gamers attitudes that are at fault, not the game itself.

Unforgiving nature not means enemies cheating. There are issues what FD needs to investigate.

My opinion after some day:

Improved AI was statistically was improved. And it contains things what not "I" based like fire rate, weapon and shield strenght.
I think it is a cheat. Just to make an NPC pilot smarter it shouldn't has to mean the ship is a pimped engineered deathspray.
I cant accept, that NPC ships has all or any upgrades in the start, while players must grind for days to raise enginers level to 2nd 3rd.
How could an eagle vaporize a 5th grade shield within seconds? We need balance and better simulation in the fights.

I agree game was in easy mode before 2.1, sometimes i didnt enjoy the killfest what happened in RES sites.
In a real situation pirates like these already wiped out all the pilots like us. It seems now wanted NPCs ruling the galaxy, but it cause economic collapse, and chaos. And if galaxy collapse, FD will too :(

Im big fan of ED, i lost only a cobra after 2.1 but im playing like a bunny now, if i see a wing im running, never enter Threat 3 zone in my FDL and trying to pimp my equipment.
I fight for my fun :D

Fly safe Commanders!

Al3x
 
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4. When interdicted, just submit
....

A problem i am noticing more in 2.1 is the 'gravity well flip' when getting interdicted, sometimes causing instant FSD fail. and if you do submit, you may (in my case always) will get chased and interdicted again and again by the same ship, and if you are near a planet, you get flipped all the time and fall out of hyperspace.

this is very irritating. If this bug was not here,I could fight an interdiction and not be chain interdicted all the way to a station. Chains of interdiction can be enough (coupled with FSD fails) to ware you are damaged enough to cost more in damage than a mission is worth, or even get you killed.

added:

I am lucky that i had the cash before the update to upgrade my asp, and use other ship to get materials to mod my asp, making me a fast runner... But its still very irritating that i get flipped out of hyperspace in a second and then chain interdicted all the way home :(
 
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Have to disagree based on the following. You start out in a small ship with hardly any cargo space and you fly trade, fight, explore your way to a point where you can upgrade your current ship or go for a different ship. This is what Elite was always about for me from back in the original game days and then on to the Frontier game. Ok neither of those games had as much variety as ED but essentially the basic premise of the game was the same.

The game should not be as difficult as it is now after the recent update. The balance has shifted too far in favour of the npc ships.

The way I see it is, if you want a combat challenge (PVE) you go into haz res and high conflict areas, that is what I thought they were for. I don't think the game should be as unforgiving as you are perhaps suggesting. Surely that game would only appeal to those who are highly skilled in combat? But I don't think that is the whole of the problem.

Before the update, if i lost an interdiction and knew I had no chance of taking on the interdictors I would run, and most of the time I would get away, generally by the skin of my teeth. That is what I expect from the game. I agree that the higher ranked NPCs were too much of a push over in most cases but now it seems even the lower ranked NPCs have an unerring ability to take down shields ridiculously quickly. I have to agree with the OP there needs to be a bit of tweaking, it is just a little bit too much in favour of the NPCs at the moment.

BTW thanks for not being one of the "git gud" brigade.

My recollection of the original elite was that the level of difficulty was based on the type of government. In democracies it was pretty safe with only the occasional appearance by hostile ships. In anarchy, it was almost literally murder. So I agree, there should be a method whereby commanders can choose their level of peril.
 
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My suggestion to OP: forget about ASP, return to Cobra and learn/'search info' how to fly and work on your skills (and knowledge how ED works) with low lose costs. Issue is not AI or your ship, issue is lack of basic flying skills (and experience how game works) ... and please its not meant like insult, practically everyone started on ED with lack of flying skills and 0 experience. Question is if you want to learn do things right, or complain about the game.
 
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I feel sorry for new or casual players playing the game now. Iv got my wealth from the earlier easier versions of the game.

Iv played it since launch in Dec 2014, I did most of my trading in the early days & Im now an Explorer. Iv amassed enough credits now to keep me going in rebuys (should I lose any ships) & have good rated Asp, Python & 'Conda ships, kitted out for Exploration.

Im not a pewpew fanboy & will avoid it everytime, my combat rank of 80% Mostly Harmless has only come from shooting rocks & Skimmers on planet surfaces. Iv never pledged to a faction, don't do PP, I just try to get Allied with as many factions as I can in the very brief time that Im in the bubble.

What I am seeing - not just now, but with previous updates too - is that Im having to think more on how to avoid potential contact while in the bubble. In the early days, I could go where I pleased & even if I was interdicted then would win 99% of the time.
Now it's harder, Iv won 2 from 3 interdictions since 2.1, but I still notice that I don't have too many NPC's on my back.
However that only comes about because I don't trade or do PP, won't pledge to anyone & now Im more careful that I don't pick any missions that will have NPCs chasing me.

I did get nosey yesterday & got chased by an Eagle & faceplanted into a star, the Eagle followed me, but I managed to escape both him & the Star's heat & got away with 50% hull - but that's not how I want to play MY style of Elite!

Pity for FD that Im now missing out on quite a lot of what they offer & how they intend the game to be played, I spend a lot more time in the bubble plotting system by system to get to where I want to go with as little hassle for ME!

Still got a couple more weeks to go before the CNE trip, trying to upgrade a few modules on my Asp & 'Conda b4 then.

Can't wait to get out in the black again, but it's a shame that the old 'Play the game as you want to' statement doesn't hold true anymore - not for everyone anyway!
 
And if you encounter one of the Super NPC's you might as well be peeing into the wind.. Check out the videos on Rails and PAC's firing full auto with seemingly unlimited ammo and heat. I have lost 2 or 3 Pythons and a couple of FDL's all within a few seconds. Not even enough time to bring guns to bear. If you doubt this then check out the many threads in the Bugs forum.

I forgot to mention, try to evade attacks while boosting and deploying chaffs and waiting for the FSD. I have seen those as well but I don't think they were cheats, it just happened they got the extreme end of their upgraded modules. Like in life, sometimes you still fail despite the best effort you give, but do note that happens rarely. So overall, given my pointers you should have a very high survivability throughout the game.
 
The allready narrow game play is reduced even more to combat and exploring

The moment you use multipurpose ship with some cargo, with some jump range, non combat related internals and you put something valuable in cargo it is only matter of time when you will be killed by NPC's.
Mining, trading is out of question now.

Yes if I take my 100% combat ready der del lance or refit my corvette or conda to be 100% combat ship with all internals for combat (Hull packages, SCB, military grade armor...) I would feel pretty comfortable in combat. With ship that jumps 10LY i will be probably stuck in single system with haz RES and shoot down NPC's ad nauseam, then come to forum and write that NPC's are fine and not OP
 
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My recollection of the original elite was that the level of difficulty was based on the type of government. In democracies it was pretty safe with only the occasional appearance by hostile ships. In anarchy, it was almost literally murder. So I agree, there should be a method whereby commanders can choose their level of peril.

Welcome to Frontier: First Encounters. Fly you Saker Mk 3. with some commodities to the closest system you can jump to. Auto pilot towards base.. 2 minutes later attacked by pirates. Missile incoming. R.I.P. Commander. I think I last a lot longer in Elite Dangerous then I did in FFE xD
 
I forgot to mention, try to evade attacks while boosting and deploying chaffs and waiting for the FSD. I have seen those as well but I don't think they were cheats, it just happened they got the extreme end of their upgraded modules. Like in life, sometimes you still fail despite the best effort you give, but do note that happens rarely. So overall, given my pointers you should have a very high survivability throughout the game.

I remember one time in one of my slower ships I got interdicted, got a tad mass locked, he gained on me, I made a quick 180° FA-off-turn and boosted past him in the opposite direction and got away easily. :) So much satisfaction!
 
The allready narrow game play is reduced even more to combat and exploring

The moment you use multipurpose ship with some cargo, with some jump range, non combat related internals and you put something valuable in cargo it is only matter of time when you will be killed by NPC's.
Mining, trading is out of question now.

Yes if I take my 100% combat ready der del lance or refit my corvette or conda to be 100% combat ship with all internals for combat (Hull packages, SCB, military grade armor...) I would feel pretty comfortable in combat. With ship that jumps 10LY i will be probably stuck in single system with haz RES and shoot down NPC's ad nauseam, then come to forum and write that NPC's are fine and not OP
You can still trade right? I have been trading in my type-7 for a while in 2.1 and its fine.

You just have to think about were you go and all that.

Its normal that a combat ship kills a trade ship , trade ships are not aimed at combat.

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I remember one time in one of my slower ships I got interdicted, got a tad mass locked, he gained on me, I made a quick 180° FA-off-turn and boosted past him in the opposite direction and got away easily. :) So much satisfaction!
You adapted and played the game ! something many dont want to do
 
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