The AI is broken. Interdiction spam is the result.

[Arconedas]

I haven't played much since the update until today. Did a fair bit of trading in my Conda but didn't get interdicted too many times and none of them were too much of a threat except for maybe 1 lawless Anaconda which took down 1 ring of my shields pretty quick with some heat weapons but I was preparing to dock so wasn't in too much danger. If it happened in the middle of nowhere maybe but I also might have had enough time to get away.

Also did some mission running out of Aditi in my Python. Just regular cargo no smuggling. All missions were Tycoon or lower. There was one elite mission but I avoided that just to see what the NPC's would be like with the other missions. Was only interdicted once or twice over 20 jumps on the way back.

I was expecting things to be a lot worse from what I have heard but it wasn't bad at all. So maybe some RNG is involved with interdictions? I don't know.

Were you playing in solo/group/open? This might also be a factor. Also if you stay long periods milking the same trade route this might also cause more interdictions the longer you stay in the same systems.

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

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...

You only need one mine launcher, and if you have at least three hardpoints that leaves one free for your mining laser and another free for an anti-fighter weapon. Fleeing with mines is fun, as you say, so why not continue doing that?

Why, why, why, Delilah?

Sorry, couldn't resist that last bit

 

[Whiterose]

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.

Suggesting to other players to quit the game is not a good idea. However, I do have some sentiment, I got interdicted 22 times last night during a 105 minute session. I am master rank 18 of those were elite, 2 were deadly and 2 dangerous. That's roughly once every 5 minutes. Personally I don't have problem with this, but I can see that others might.

 

[Arconedas]

Suggesting to other players to quit the game is not a good idea. However, I do have some sentiment, I got interdicted 22 times last night during a 105 minute session. I am master rank 18 of those were elite, 2 were deadly and 2 dangerous. That's roughly once every 5 minutes. Personally I don't have problem with this, but I can see that others might.

Interesting.. thats more or less the experience i'm getting these days in elite (no problems with the AI, i can handle them). Do you play in solo mode? What do you do usually? Trade/mine/missions... ? Do you stay on the same trade route or mining place for long periods of time?

 

[Whiterose]

Interesting.. thats more or less the experience i'm getting these days in elite (no problems with the AI, i can handle them). Do you play in solo mode? What do you do usually? Trade/mine/missions... ? Do you stay on the same trade route or mining place for long periods of time?

Play in Open with a Python running missions as I am trying to rank up at the moment, so I am all over the place, I admit some of my interdiction stats may be skewed as some of the missions have people coming after me.

 

[Arconedas]

Play in Open with a Python running missions as I am trying to rank up at the moment, so I am all over the place, I admit some of my interdiction stats may be skewed as some of the missions have people coming after me.

Ok, thanks for answering

I'm usually in solo mode mining in my python (well armed). Selling my mined stuff to same stations in same systems, some mining missions (mostly osmium). I usually get interdicted every second time i enter supercruise. Either from the mining ring or the station i sell my materials to. Luckily this usually happens only once during the trip since i always destroy the attacker.

 

[Liet Atreides]

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.

Bounty hunting ships I encounter is broken this way too. I fly for Federal powerplay faction and have some bounty on me for killing Imperial ships, but not much. They are sending cheap ships like expert-master tier (Adders *, Diamondbacks or Cobras).
Why its broken :
Chaff 80% of the time ; shooting all the time having infinite capacitor/ammo or something like that ; superb maneuvering - having trouble to catch them even with flight assist off, which is ridiculous considering this ships have same level of maneuvering as my Python (mostly A upgrades, no they dont send Eagles).
Obviously there is difference between pirates npc and these "bounty hunters" and faction ships.
I suspect npc also don't have heat damage.

 

[Codger]

I did a controlled test of my own, which I've posted in the bug thread so I won't rehash it here. What I found is that the interdiction rate has increased hugely, even in High sec systems, not on a mission, no PP. You are not imagining it. But it's still possible to escape and trade successfully, it's just more irritating. I hope they dial back the frequency, it's not much fun like this.

FD is looking into it. Post your experiences and helpful info here , as they've asked.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=257889

 

[kushan]

Bounty hunting ships I encounter is broken this way too. I fly for Federal powerplay faction and have some bounty on me for killing Imperial ships, but not much. They are sending cheap ships like expert-master tier (Adders *, Diamondbacks or Cobras).
Why its broken :
Chaff 80% of the time ; shooting all the time having infinite capacitor/ammo or something like that ; superb maneuvering - having trouble to catch them even with flight assist off, which is ridiculous considering this ships have same level of maneuvering as my Python (mostly A upgrades, no they dont send Eagles).
Obviously there is difference between pirates npc and these "bounty hunters" and faction ships.
I suspect npc also don't have heat damage.

This is my biggest problem: constant chaff, unlimited ammo and the AI's ability to make any ship turn on a penny. I kid you not, i had a wanted Type 7 turning at the same rate as my vulture, with full pips to engines while in the blue yesterday. I could barely believe it.

 

[Chummy62]

For those of us who are not combat centric, we are playing the wrong game. Bide your time playing something other than ED until "No Man's Sky" gets released. Hello Games understands what it means to make a FUN game.

 

[Whiterose]

For those of us who are not combat centric, we are playing the wrong game. Bide your time playing something other than ED until "No Man's Sky" gets released. Hello Games understands what it means to make a FUN game.

I am not combat centric, but I still enjoy the game. The challenge has been put back in. as for No Mans Sky I don't like the cartoony like appearance.

 

[Liet Atreides]

This is my biggest problem: constant chaff, unlimited ammo and the AI's ability to make any ship turn on a penny. I kid you not, i had a wanted Type 7 turning at the same rate as my vulture, with full pips to engines while in the blue yesterday. I could barely believe it.

Yes it happens. I think this all is a part of "npc upgrade" that completely broken. So many tools on this forum even voted "this is fine", like hundreds of them(see poll) and still saying "Git gud" too.

 

[Arconedas]

I would not say 'my interdiction' frequency has gone up since the patch 2.1 was introduced. I got approximately the same amount of interdictions also before 2.1. Back then they were just a minor inconvinience since the AI wasnt much of a threat back then. After they introduced patch 2.1 i had few close calls with the new AI since i only had class 6B shields, D thrusters no armor etc. But after upgrading to 6A shields with 2 shield boosters and some point defence, A class thrusters and some armor i'm back to level where the AI again doens't cause much problems.

 

[sucresalesucre]

I'm at the point that I wonder if I should wait the next patch before playing Elite again... or get my AspX and go for a loooong trip out of the bubble...

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

This is my biggest problem: constant chaff, unlimited ammo and the AI's ability to make any ship turn on a penny. I kid you not, i had a wanted Type 7 turning at the same rate as my vulture, with full pips to engines while in the blue yesterday. I could barely believe it.

You can also chaff all the time if you want, they use tools at their disposal. No unlimited ammo, except for multi cannons. And AI turn within range of capabilities. They use PIPs - even with delay - but they don't hesitate.

So no, AI being this good is not your biggest problem.

 

[Red Fox Four]

I kept getting interdicted all the time.

Enter solar system.

15 seconds afterwards: "That wasn't hard at all. High value target located".
15 seconds later, despite pirouette maneuvers and full throttle in Supercruise... interdicted.
Submit to interdiction, floor it and warp back to Supercruise.
15 seconds later, despite pirouette maneuvers and full throttle in Supercruise... interdicted.
Submit to interdiction, floor it and warp back to Supercruise.
15 seconds later, despite pirouette maneuvers and full throttle in Supercruise... interdicted.
Submit to interdiction, floor it and warp back to Supercruise.
Once in Supercruise... fly straight at full speed for 10 seconds and manually drop out of supercruise.
NPC magically appears in the same instance RIGHT BEHIND ME!

Floor it and warp back to Supercruise.

Finally reached station.

Land.

Deliver vouchers, claim mission rewards.

Buy Sidewinder.

Launch.

Boost Sidewinder into the interior wall of the station... Warning! Eject! Eject!

Bounties cleared. No more interdictions.

Game forced me to suicide myself to avoid the constant, never-ending and impossible to evade interdictions.

Good job Frontier.

I would be perfectly fine with being hunted when I have a bounty on me... but when being hunted there should be a possibility of escaping, such as outmaneuvering them to avoid interdiction starting in the first place, or dropping out of supercruise and then back up to supercruise to force them to wake scan to keep up with you.

But no... currently they just use cheat mode and instant-interdict and teleport themselves into your instances.

Suicide is only way out.

 

[Arconedas]

In order to get rid of those evil chain interdictions, try jumping to another system instead and jump back and try to reach that station again, this usually helps.

 

[kushan]

You can also chaff all the time if you want, they use tools at their disposal. No unlimited ammo, except for multi cannons. And AI turn within range of capabilities. They use PIPs - even with delay - but they don't hesitate.

So no, AI being this good is not your biggest problem.

I know FD claim that only MC's have unlimited ammo - which i think is still unfair - but ive never seen an AI ship suddenly stop popping chaff due to them "running out". If they pop it once, theyll keep popping it till one of you explodes. The exact same goes for shield cells.

Ill definitely concede the point that i am capable of popping chaff endlessly - problem being that im trying to minimise my number of repair/rearm trips. The AI doesnt care - it only cares about this fight, here and now,and arrives to each fight completely fresh and fully supplied.

Regardless, there is definitely something iffy about the turn rate of AI ships.

Anyhoo - im going somewhat off topic with this as it doesnt really relate to interdicitions, just the AI in general.

 

[Red Fox Four]

In order to get rid of those evil chain interdictions, try jumping to another system instead and jump back and try to reach that station again, this usually helps.

I have tried this, and half the time you still get the message from an NPC indicating they are going to interdict you. Only change is name of the NPC and the ship he is in.

So gambling on the NPC not spawning by jumping in and out of the system, well... You know what? It is faster to just log out to Main Menu and log back in. If you get NPC message, then log out and back in. Rinse, repeat until no message.

Or do what I did.

Buy Sidewinder, boost it into wall of station.

Problem solved.

Again, if the interdictions could be evaded it would be fair to deal with them. But in current state of the game it is easier to combat log, jump in and out of main menu or just suicide to avoid it altogether. Optionally leave powerplay and use combat logging for a week.

Frontier, fix your NPCs and force them to operate within the same limitations that we have.

 

[RandomGun]

Wow. I do believe you all. However, our experiences seem to be wildly different. I have seen at most one interdiction per hour in my Asp.

Yesterday I specifically tested if it is feasible to trade with a cheap "beginner" T-6 (mostly D rated, rebuy under 200k) in 2.1.02 SOLO mode (no PP). Within three hour trade/missions run in high/medium security systems I got interdicted only three times (expert FDL, I always won the mini-game). I also dropped one wannabe interdictor to the sun. So it was a fairly peaceful evening.

I suspect that there is a logic bug that triggers constant interdictions for some players, ships (Python?), outfits, cargo types or missions.