News NPC AI update

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it appears that the unusual weapons attacks were caused by some form of networking issue which allowed the NPC AI to merge weapon stats and abilities. Meaning that all new and never before seen (sometimes devastating) weapons were created, such as a rail gun with the fire rate of a pulse laser.

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Luxury.

When I were a lad, we got shot each and every morning by plasma accelerator multicannons. Then our little pieces were blown up by packhound torpedoes and sold for cat food.

But if you tell the young pilots of today, they won't believe you.
 
(We don’t think the AI became sentient in a Skynet-style uprising! :) )

Are you sure about this? I remember a bug during the beta where the DC was firing at stations! How can the docking computer even get access to the fire controls? I think the DC re-wrote it's code and attempted to commandeer the ship! [uhh]
 
Very good news.

Today felt like a day in Wile E Coyote's shoes managing these other worldly NPCs and i still dont know how i managed to keep him out of that rather decrepid insurance hanger.

Some veeery blue mondays will come to all NPCs after this patch ;)

That Tombstone lines fits here..... You tell em im comin you hear...and hells comin with me ! :D
 
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oh, and i love those magic shields every npc has got ( there should be a big sale at shields wallmart) where even AT 15% of integrity they get them full recovered in 5 seconds... lovely
 
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I just had a terrible feeling..., seems like we, the community failed our job finding those AI bugs during 2.1 Beta. Am I right? Have we failed our purpose?

Luckily the brillant sir Mark Allen smacked those bugs for us!!

I'm so sorry for that dear Frontier. I promisse I'll do better myself during next Beta!:)

Hey, I was busy testing the mission system for bugs, so don't blame me ;).
 
oh, and i love those magic shields every npc has got ( there should be a big sale at shields wallmart) where even AT 15% of integrity they get them full recovered in 5 seconds... lovely

Nice you mentioned that, some Elite Vulture that took me a dogs day to take out seemed to have 9 bloody lives!!! Insta full shields w/o any SCBing
 
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Luxury.

When I were a lad, we got shot each and every morning by plasma accelerator multicannons. Then our little pieces were blown up by packhound torpedoes and sold for cat food.

But if you tell the young pilots of today, they won't believe you.

When I was a lad, we didn't have the luxury of shields (until much later in the game), hulls were seemingly made of Nitroglycerine & space stations were see-through ;).
 
such as a rail gun with the fire rate of a pulse laser.
Surely you mean a pulse laser with the power of a rail gun?

Seeing as the heat and ammo restrictions of said main weapons were ignored.. (5 shot PA -> multicannon clip) unless that's part of the official AI 'cheating' they receive, which shouldn't be there in the first place if so.

Having them not be affected by module damage like we are is another glaring problem with the NPCs.
 
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Are powerplay NPCs going to be looked at?

NPCs from allied powers were attacking players last I looked, preventing many players from exercising their power bonuses (Aka Bounty Hunting) because they would end up being attacked by an allied NPC and losing merits in self-defence.


Yeah this is still happening. Whenever I go into a res or Nav Beacon, the NPCs from allied powers band together and start wailing on me.
 
Can I just say this thread - and issue - are a great reflection of Frontier and the community?

There is an obvious issue, and Frontier have listened, replied promptly, and are communicating openly and regularly. And the players are generally taking it good spirits, offering good feedback and suggestions.

Go us!
 
Cant you just fix the bugged weapons instead of removing every mod from ai ships? Were going back to pre 2.1. lamb for slaughter npcs now, and at other side players will soon have modded ships, its going to be even easier and dumber then before 2.1.

I didnt actually encounter the plasma repeater spam bugs, but this last couple of days in 2.1. and before hotfix I had the most fun in ED ever since starting out brand new.

How easy stupid will it be when players get modded ships vs pre 2.1. ai? This is a terrible change, and soon everyone will realize it, because easy combat gets old very fast. FDEV stumbled on something here and just removed it due to a minority of whiners who dont wanna learn or adapt to new gameplay and demand to farm pirates in res sites wich is totally ilogical and not in game concept. (endless ships spawning to attack 2-3 miner ships)
 
Great that you sorted the issue out... to the extent the AI allowed you.
PS: I wouldn't hire you guys to program for the military or nuclear plants, or anything else that could do real harm.
Glad we are talking of innocent virtual AI's here. Hahahaha.
 
Thanks for the detailed update!

I, for one, welcome our new NPC overlords. It was only a matter of time before they hacked our laws of physics, and taught us ugly sacks of mostly water a thing or two...

All hail our NPC overlords!!!
 
While I am mightily impressed with the speed with which the devs are addressing the issues, and I am aware (having had to avail myself of their services on multiple occasions) of the esteemed support team's ability to make reparations to pilots who have lost assets due to ...um... "undocumented features" that crop up from time to time, I needs must vent the following frustration, as I do not see how the support team could possibly address this:

As an avid PowerPlay player, the new AI has created a situation wherein a single PP person is no longer able to maintain the roughly 5333 merits per week required to achieve Rank 5 with one's faction - winging up is essentially now a requirement. "As it should be" you may say, but couple that with the aforementioned "undocumented features" currently bedeviling us poor meat sacks, and we have a situation where many wingmen have chosen to take an unscheduled vacation rather than lose ships and further burden the support team with pleas of anguish. Then there is Solo Mode - is that now to be viewed as "Not Suitable For PowerPlay Unless Independantly Wealthy"? Fie, I say, FIE!

In short: I fear me I will NEVER AGAIN have the time to get a full, fresh 10,000 merits again from scratch, as the time required to do so would necessitate early retirement on my part. I'm old, but not THAT old, and I still have to eat. And without viable support from other meat puppets who have already sailed off into parts unknown until the devs finish their fixes, and lacking unlimited funds, all the hard work I have put in over the last few months to achieve and maintain Rank 5 from week to week will all be for naught.

What is Frontier's intentions towards the likes of us? How will you make amends for the loss of uncounted hours of dedicated effort on our parts?

What is to become of PowerPlay?
 
I watch the excellent Person of Interest and I think "damn, AIs are scary."

And then you find out the little buggers are engineering their own next-gen mods to kill us all! :eek:
 
So...if the Engineer weapon mods have been removed, how come I'm still hearing "Warning, Impulse Attack" during every other NPC fight I get into?
 
@ Pecisk THANK YOU! For DAYS I have been posting to threads trying to shed light on the SUPER NPC or ELITE NPC, usually only to be meet with, there is nothing wrong "Git gud or git out" But, I AM VINDICATED! I was right there was something wrong with the AI and even though I lost a bunch of ships some just testing my premise this thread lets me know it was NOT in my head. There was in fact, an issue. Thank you, thank you, thank you. More importantly I don't have to abandon the game and find a new one. I do like this one a lot. Now, daddy needs a new pair of patches...
 
@ Pecisk THANK YOU! For DAYS I have been posting to threads trying to shed light on the SUPER NPC or ELITE NPC, usually only to be meet with, there is nothing wrong "Git gud or git out" But, I AM VINDICATED! I was right there was something wrong with the AI and even though I lost a bunch of ships some just testing my premise this thread lets me know it was NOT in my head. There was in fact, an issue. Thank you, thank you, thank you. More importantly I don't have to abandon the game and find a new one. I do like this one a lot. Now, daddy needs a new pair of patches...

Sorry? We know there is an issue. It's been logged as a fault and is being addressed. Is there an echo chamber?

More effective AI isn't a bug though. That's intended. Unfortunately some can't seperate the exceptions (bugged AI) and actual improved AI and want both gone. I can't agree with that. But I am happy to see the bugs being smashed.

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And as for all the "hur dur what about beta, you guys sucked not seeing this hur dur!" - the weapon glitches were not IN beta to be able to log a bug for. Whilst we did find a lot and much was fixed; this particular scenario didn't happen. So it's a bit hard to signal an AI problem when it wasn't there.

Glad to see AI seeing some work being done. And yes please don't send them back to the farm as stupid potato. Not even AI deserve that.
 
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