I’m a combat oriented commander, and don’t find the new AI particularly impressive while in a proper ship. Still I fell in love with mining several months ago, and this has given me new insight into the plight of my fellow commanders not focused on combat.
Since the Engineers I routinely experience interdiction spam when returning to base. This occurs whether I’m on a mission or mining free-style. The interdictors are usually elite or dangerous level NPCs. After the hot fix, most no longer had death-star weapons. But
Still they manifested a number of fantastical things — interdicting from ahead or to the side, instal-warping after interdiction, appearing directly in front of one during a drop from low wake, unlimited chaff and missiles, and so on. Its NPC cheating. And the NPC or an alternative version interdicts again, and again, and again, as one tries to make it to a station.
So yes, the AI is broken whether or not the weapons powers are broken.
To deal with this I’ve tried a number of strategies. The first was to make incremental progress to the station, get within the no fire zone, and let the station kill the NPC. Another was to fight, but as expected, ships optimized for mining or trade are not terribly effective. Fleeing while using mines is fun, but setting up for mines means you don’t have the weapons to deal with smaller NPCs in belt. If this was a rare event, as it would be in a galaxy like our own, that would be ok. Because it is routine, it is not.
A final option is quiting the game. I’ve taken to do this because Frontier is simply trying my patience and wasting my time. I suggest others do so as well. Frontier has metrics to spot this, and it may send them a heads up to fix matters for members of the community not dedicated to combat.
Since the Engineers I routinely experience interdiction spam when returning to base. This occurs whether I’m on a mission or mining free-style. The interdictors are usually elite or dangerous level NPCs. After the hot fix, most no longer had death-star weapons. But
Still they manifested a number of fantastical things — interdicting from ahead or to the side, instal-warping after interdiction, appearing directly in front of one during a drop from low wake, unlimited chaff and missiles, and so on. Its NPC cheating. And the NPC or an alternative version interdicts again, and again, and again, as one tries to make it to a station.
So yes, the AI is broken whether or not the weapons powers are broken.
To deal with this I’ve tried a number of strategies. The first was to make incremental progress to the station, get within the no fire zone, and let the station kill the NPC. Another was to fight, but as expected, ships optimized for mining or trade are not terribly effective. Fleeing while using mines is fun, but setting up for mines means you don’t have the weapons to deal with smaller NPCs in belt. If this was a rare event, as it would be in a galaxy like our own, that would be ok. Because it is routine, it is not.
A final option is quiting the game. I’ve taken to do this because Frontier is simply trying my patience and wasting my time. I suggest others do so as well. Frontier has metrics to spot this, and it may send them a heads up to fix matters for members of the community not dedicated to combat.
