Discuss AI here (After Engineer mods removal)

[yodajedifishmaster]

It is because of those yahoos that I'd rather play solo.

the word you were looking for is pillock, although immature spoiled child is also acceptable. grow the F@~* up is the proper repsonse to someone who tries ramming you like that. and they are why i will never leave solo. it would be nice if someone does that regularly if the game could detect it, make them disintegrate without damaging their victim and also give them a 100k bounty in all inhabited space. for 3 weeks (it doesnt go away with death.) the griefer bounty. AND no station or outpost will let them dock once in space again after destruction for the same time - in fact station defences would fire on them until the 3 weeks are up.

 

[WR3ND]

The 'debate' reminded me of this video I had watched a while ago...

[video=youtube;ILtCi--aE-Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILtCi--aE-Y[/video]

 

[audiodistortion]

Turn rates of the AI are a little if ask me.

The AI jousting is getting quite boring.

 

[tawittle]

The AI seem a lot easier now.

But either way they never gave me any problems.

 

[Robert Maynard]

FAS don't need FA Off, as they can do fast doughnuts inside a station. Try it. It's fun!!

<adds FAS to "be very wary of" list> OK then....

 

[Mohenjo]

Wrong.

Not wrong. Don't be dismissive.

ONE Sidewinder obliterated my 4A shield in less time than it took for my FSD to recharge (so I could high wake out...). Probably something like 5 seconds. Of course, there were TWO of them there, so there was NO WAY to survive that encounter. No matter how I flew that, I was NEVER going to be able to counterattack. My ONLY option was to try and flee, which is what my ONLY option is going to be from now on.

That distresses me.

I don't necessarily want to be the best at anything in the game, that's not a priority to me. What I enjoy is being able to do a bit of everything. I want to be able to explore a bit when the mood strikes me, and be decent at it. I want to be able to trade, carrying cargo from here to there, and be decent at it. I want to be able to fight if the mood strikes me and the enemy is not overwhelming. Up til now, I've been able to do that.

Now, I can't fight ANY foes at all, they're ALL overwhelming.
BUT, I also can't trade or explore because I'm constantly being interdicted by foes I can't fight, and who do so much damage escape is exceedingly difficult.

The game simply isn't any fun this way.

As I've said before, if it's too easy, there are ways you can make it more challenging FOR YOU without disrupting anyone else's ability to play. If you make the AI harder, there is NOTHING weaker players can do to make it LESS challenging. Those players are screwed, and it shouldn't be that way.


Now, as I've said elsewhere, I'm not crying DOOM at this point. I'm saying the balance point has not yet been found. It needs to be easier, and I expect to see the situation improved upon in the near future.

I expect the thing to do is make the scale of the enemies more in keeping with their combat rank, which should be limited by the combat rank of the player.

Lower level NPC enemies should have AIs, perhaps even weaker than we had before.
Mid level NPCs should be about where they were before the original patch.
High level NPCs should be where they are now.
Certain, special NPCs might even be harder than they are now, more like they were before the most recent update.

In ALL cases, NPC ships should have the SAME limitations WE do. Their turn rate, ammunition supply and so forth should be limited the same way ours is.

Players should NEVER be interdicted by enemies above their own level. They should only have to fight such enemies if the PLAYER initiates the attack.

Interdictions should be less frequent. I thought the frequency before was fine. More, enemies should not be interdicting us or attacking us if there's no reason. My ship has no cargo aboard, there's no reason for them to attack me. Perhaps they could do the interdiction in order to scan me, but when there's nothing in my hold, they should just leave.

 

[lineagerulz]

As I understand it, most of the NPCs difficulty was in their higher DPS.
Now, after the change I am back to hunting wings with ease, which is a bit of a letdown.

On the other hand, they ARE better than they were prior 2.1, so I'm fine.

you hunt wings?, i wonder with what ship.
i was interdicted by 2 eagles today and to be honest i needed 10 minutes to kill them as they just flew on top of my ship ( Corvette )
so all of u experts here who say that ai's are easy point me to a video where you kill a wing of 4

 

[Riverside]

Just had a go in a high RES (in a high security system) & earned about 2mCr over an hour or so in a Vulture. In that respect the AI was fine, but I was still attacked by engineered weapons on higher ranked ships so they are still out there, just less frequent.

The Ai seems a little too good to me, not because of my skill level, they just don't seem to make enough mistakes. They still do the boring circling round you presenting their dorsal side so you can get some shots in (ie a programmed mistake) but once they've done that for a few seconds & go back to shooting you it just becomes a game of who has the most shields or armour again.

Frankly I can deal with this perfectly well in a bounty hunting ship (I normally use this vulture for lols in a CZ) but I'm not going to want to spend 20mins killing a cobra in any PvE ship set up to actually carry stuff or have a decent jump range.

In a CZ I'd expect every AI ship to be fully geared up for combat. In a RES I'd expect the pirates to have more normal loadouts, after all pirating is hard work & doesn't pay much in this game.

There seem to be way more powerplay AI than in 2.0, in a RES. If they are wanted it'll just be a 400Cr bounty for the pot shot they just took at another powerplay ship. Fair enough those that do powerplay have somewhere else to find targets, but why not give them a decent bounty so they are worth something to a non-powerplay pilot too?

So for dedicated combat, fine. For everything else in the game it's just too aggressive. I'm not a masochist, I play Elite so I can feel awesome, not to just fill every slot with hull reinforcements & SCBs to survive.

Have the AI be a little less accurate, a little less perfect & it could be great. Scale their skill by their accuracy & ability to time the perfect SCB recharge (or whatever), rather than have every action be perfect except for the scripted 'mistakes' as it seems at the moment. They should be simulating real pilots, not programmed drones.

 

[Anson22]

I'm not purely combat so my vote of just right is based on trading and cleaning out the bad guys in my home system. Running from the AI in my T6 is generally effective. I did meet one persistent NPC that I had to use some guile to lose (he took my hull down to 19%). Hunting bad boys in my Vulture is easier now they don't have the super charged weapons. The tactics they use are much better than pre-2.1 and I find I'm having to work a lot harder to get the kill against higher ranked opponents. In fact - sometimes it's easier to run! The return of the security forces in secure systems is handy as a tactical resource when you meet a very hard opponent. Overall, it's a good improvement over 2.0 and I find the interaction with the AI enjoyable and usually more challenging than in the past.

 

[DaveB]

Ah. Now I feel dumb. I am very careful about FF and am well aware of the hazards of that. But I just remembered I've been ignoring a small fine I received a while ago!

Thing is, I must have had this fine for a while and I'd been getting scanned all the time but not blown to oblivion! (both before and after 2.1)

Is it that only Federal Cops care about Federal fines and vice versa?

Nope. They don't attack you for outstanding fines and an outstanding fine doesn't make you wanted. However, if you're in a furball alongside a bunch of cops when the timer on a fine in that system expires and it turns into a bounty.... Suddenly you're wanted and in the middle of a bunch of cops with their fangs hanging out.. not exactly a nice warm fuzzy place to be, although they'll probably try and arrange the "warm" part for you...

 

[nothingfaced]

Blame lies entirely at Frontiers feet. All of this mess. People played 2.1 and ranked up to dangerous or whatever against the AI. You say their skills were gained shooting fish in a barrel?

OK. So who's fault is that? The players playing the pre-2.1 game? They played against the enemies they were presented with.

Then Frontier altered the AI, it's now much harder. The same players are unable to cope and complain that their game is no longer fun. Of course they do. Why wouldn't they?

Pointing at folk and telling them serves them right for building combat rank shooting said barrelled fish doesn't help anyone. Makes you a . There are a lot of      .

The rules were changed by Frontier in 2.1. And it's their fault all of this bull    e is being discussed.

For me. I think the game is worse. No one plays CQC, they upped the ingame AI to meet a need. New players will suffer the most. Without new players this game is dead.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Not wrong. Don't be dismissive.

ONE Sidewinder obliterated my 4A shield in less time than it took for my FSD to recharge (so I could high wake out...). Probably something like 5 seconds. Of course, there were TWO of them there, so there was NO WAY to survive that encounter. No matter how I flew that, I was NEVER going to be able to counterattack. My ONLY option was to try and flee, which is what my ONLY option is going to be from now on.

That distresses me.

I don't necessarily want to be the best at anything in the game, that's not a priority to me. What I enjoy is being able to do a bit of everything. I want to be able to explore a bit when the mood strikes me, and be decent at it. I want to be able to trade, carrying cargo from here to there, and be decent at it. I want to be able to fight if the mood strikes me and the enemy is not overwhelming. Up til now, I've been able to do that.

Now, I can't fight ANY foes at all, they're ALL overwhelming.
BUT, I also can't trade or explore because I'm constantly being interdicted by foes I can't fight, and who do so much damage escape is exceedingly difficult.

The game simply isn't any fun this way.

As I've said before, if it's too easy, there are ways you can make it more challenging FOR YOU without disrupting anyone else's ability to play. If you make the AI harder, there is NOTHING weaker players can do to make it LESS challenging. Those players are screwed, and it shouldn't be that way.


Now, as I've said elsewhere, I'm not crying DOOM at this point. I'm saying the balance point has not yet been found. It needs to be easier, and I expect to see the situation improved upon in the near future.

I expect the thing to do is make the scale of the enemies more in keeping with their combat rank, which should be limited by the combat rank of the player.

Lower level NPC enemies should have AIs, perhaps even weaker than we had before.
Mid level NPCs should be about where they were before the original patch.
High level NPCs should be where they are now.
Certain, special NPCs might even be harder than they are now, more like they were before the most recent update.

In ALL cases, NPC ships should have the SAME limitations WE do. Their turn rate, ammunition supply and so forth should be limited the same way ours is.

Players should NEVER be interdicted by enemies above their own level. They should only have to fight such enemies if the PLAYER initiates the attack.

Interdictions should be less frequent. I thought the frequency before was fine. More, enemies should not be interdicting us or attacking us if there's no reason. My ship has no cargo aboard, there's no reason for them to attack me. Perhaps they could do the interdiction in order to scan me, but when there's nothing in my hold, they should just leave.

I think a lot of the pain on the forums comes from vastly misunderstanding the outfitting. A t4 shield on a T6 only gives 148MJ in shielding, and only if you are below 285T in total. A T6 will usually be above 300, so your actual shields will be at +-115MJ or so. A 5A shield barely gives more: while the optimal shield value is better, the total shieldings of a T6 are always mediocre. As you're not interested in recharging shields during a battle, I'd go for HRP. Replace the 4A shield with a cargo rack (so you lose +-115 MJ shields and gain 32T extra cargo), and replace the smallest three internals with HRP (gain 650 hull, lose 16T cargo). The net effect is 16t more cargo and >500 more hitpoints. To make it even better, the HRPs dont cost energy, the HRPs are combined 1.5 million cheaper than the 4A shields, and due to the reduced energy requirements you can downgrade your powerplant too.

So now you can ship more cargo, have more hitpoints, a bonus 1.5 million in the bank and a vastly reduced insurance. Add two chaff and one ECM for good measure and off you go!

 

[Davadin]

The game I purchased at the beginning of the year was great, it allowed me to trade backwards and forwards between stations, occasionally I would be interdicted and I would lose, but the vast majority of the time I would WIN! like everyone else I began with a Sidewinder, after weeks and weeks of trading and completing missions I managed to upgrade to a better ship, constantly improving my profits and this continued slowly until eventually I managed to collect enough credits to afford a Python, I then spent more weeks trading doing missions and exploring and earning credits so that I could upgrade my Python with all 'A' grade internals and not being a great combat pilot, I choose all turreted weapons and these worked really well for me, although occasionally they failed and I would die, but this was fairly rare, but that was acceptable I knew that this was part of the ED mechanics.

Then the 2.1/1.6 update arrived... My Python, the one I have spent so much time building is killed within 3 to 4 seconds, rebuy cost 12m crs so back to my regular station to rebuy and out again with cargo, and WOW! same again another 12m crs gone and cargo, so back to station, exit and don't play again, realising that this could be a 2.1/1.6 bug, I follow all the Frontier Forum comments, lots of anger, nasty remarks, insults etc what a wonderful community.

No longer a game to enjoy, Frontier then announce that they recognise that there is a problem and remove the bugs from these NPC's, so I return to the game I really love, thinking that I can now continue playing the game that I originally purchased, what a stupid person am I, I should have known, I set off to do my regular run with my regular cargo, only get interdicted once and just manage to fight my way to the station I am heading for, result I think I have my game back!!! so returning empty back to my home station I see a USS and decide to investigate, maybe some scrap or goods to collect to supplement my cargo run. No sooner do I drop out of supercruise into the USS and 3 ships kill me, didn't even get a chance to see who they where or what type of ships the only thing I noticed was 3 yellow blips on the radar.

So, sadly, that's me done! I didn't buy and play this game to be destroyed everytime I went trading or exploring, it was really hard and time consuming to get to the Python, the game has lost it's fun it's no longer an enjoyable experience, unless you enjoy the fear of being attacked all the time and don't mind losing your valuable ships until you end up with zero crs and back in the Sidewinder, so absolutely no progression in this game anymore. You will all eventually end up back in Sidewinders.

So I wish you all well in your lovely little Sidewinders, have fun?, I'm off now to see if I can find a suitable alternative to Elite Dangerous if not I'll just keep playing FSX.

Bye, bye Everybody, Bye, bye

are you aligned with one of the factions?

that's what happened to me.


then i dropped Hudson like a rock. byebyecyalaterkthxbai.


no more overly-aggresive pythons calling "YOU PICKED THE WRONG FACTION, BRUH!" before proceeding to obliterate my ship.

 

[Derath]

you hunt wings?, i wonder with what ship.
i was interdicted by 2 eagles today and to be honest i needed 10 minutes to kill them as they just flew on top of my ship ( Corvette )
so all of u experts here who say that ai's are easy point me to a video where you kill a wing of 4

For eagles in a corvette you just need the bottom and side (the C3 + 2C2's) to be turrets, jam down throttle while pitching downwards and the they stay at ~ 2-400m getting shredded by the turrets, doesn't work on the larger smalls because they take too long to kill but you can manage a wing of eagles.

I have no idea how you'd deal with 3 vipers, the damage output for smalls considering the time to kill seems blown way out of proportion, though it could be because literally all of them have modded weaponry.

 

[Ian Skippy]

you hunt wings?, i wonder with what ship.
i was interdicted by 2 eagles today and to be honest i needed 10 minutes to kill them as they just flew on top of my ship ( Corvette )
so all of u experts here who say that ai's are easy point me to a video where you kill a wing of 4

In a corvette: C4 fixed for fighting other huge ships, C3 gimballed for semi-agile ships, the rest turrets for tiny ships. The turrets rip through an Eagle in no-time, you should be able to kill both in a minute while standing still.

 

[the100thmonkey]

The 'debate' reminded me of this video I had watched a while ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILtCi--aE-Y

Yer man there has just totally the wrong end of the stick. It's sad.

 

[Derath]

In a corvette: C4 fixed for fighting other huge ships, C3 gimballed for semi-agile ships, the rest turrets for tiny ships. The turrets rip through an Eagle in no-time, you should be able to kill both in a minute while standing still.

this really is the run down i've come to lol I've tried lots of other combos but thats the only one thats worked for me, just a shame you can't get huge turrets.

 

[lysan]

Blame lies entirely at Frontiers feet. All of this mess. People played 2.1 and ranked up to dangerous or whatever against the AI. You say their skills were gained shooting fish in a barrel?

OK. So who's fault is that? The players playing the pre-2.1 game? They played against the enemies they were presented with.

Then Frontier altered the AI, it's now much harder. The same players are unable to cope and complain that their game is no longer fun. Of course they do. Why wouldn't they?

Pointing at folk and telling them serves them right for building combat rank shooting said barrelled fish doesn't help anyone. Makes you a . There are a lot of      .

The rules were changed by Frontier in 2.1. And it's their fault all of this bull    e is being discussed.

For me. I think the game is worse. No one plays CQC, they upped the ingame AI to meet a need. New players will suffer the most. Without new players this game is dead.

This discussion has been in the gaming community for a very long time. Players need to understand that they are not the hero in every game out there. I blame games like CoD, they narrowed the skill level, they made the game into a fruit slot machine where you are guarantied a kill every 10 seconds. The game makes sure that no one will leave the game without some kind of reward.

Ofc, these type of game will sell the pyjamas out of any other game where the skill level is "too high". Basically there are two type of players, those who want a linear satisfaction with XP gain to the character (character gets better, but you will not) and in the other camp, the gamer want to gain skills by playing the game thus the game keep rolling one as normal but you get better. (skill based)

You can't combine these two types of games, its impossible.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

This discussion has been in the gaming community for a very long time. Players need to understand that they are not the hero in every game out there. I blame games like CoD, they narrowed the skill level, they made the game into a fruit slot machine where you are guarantied a kill every 10 seconds. The game makes sure that no one will leave the game without some kind of reward.

Ofc, these type of game will sell the pyjamas out of any other game where the skill level is "too high". Basically there are two type of players, those who want a linear satisfaction with XP gain to the character (character gets better, but you will not) and in the other camp, the gamer want to gain skills by playing the game thus the game keep rolling one as normal but you get better. (skill based)

You can't combine these two types of games, its impossible.

ED has always been advertised as skill based game though. I don't know how and why so many people got impression it will go other route.

 

[pippo]

First time around, I voted "too hard" but in all fairness I did vote out of frustration at that time, and voted too quickly.
Playing a little more, I thought it was 'dangerous' which is good I guess and that I just needed to rethink strategies (i.e. not go on a rampage interdicting every single ship).
This is what I do now, I run away when outmatched (more often than not by a lower rank and lower graded ship, but that's the extend of my skills) and enjoy a long hard fight against NPC's more to my level.
But I have to say, as much as I enjoy the challenge now, CZ's and res are now out of reach, especially with the powerplay tag on my backside!
I did sign up for powerplay for the extra heat only a little while after FD released it. I'm a little upset now to have to consider leaving powerplay just to ease up on the NPC aggro.

All in all, the AI is fine. It's tough, unforgiving. Oh, I'm sure many fellas out there will always find it too easy, but I'm a casual. Any other game I play, I usually set them to 'easy mode' so I can enjoy the game stress free.
I'm not campaigning for a walk in the park, it is called elite dangerous after all and I'm pleased this is turning into just that... but I think that for now, I'm just going to go exploring again (first thing I did back in december 3300)