Elite AI feels right but isn't worth fighting
- Thread starter Shaamaan
- Start date
There is something not right with the AI recently. They had a pretty good balance a few weeks ago then they changed something. Ships chaff spam waaaaay too much. Maybe chaff needs to be gotten rid of altogether. I never use it and find that all chaff does is lengthen a fight unnecessarily making it a fight of attrition or who has the most chaff. Also the AI seems to be able to turn way faster then any ship I own. I have a fully modded Imperial courier, that has been made to be super light and super fast. It has the advanced thruster modded to grade 5 dirty drives with a ridiculously good stats roll. An A2 power-plant (to save weight and increase speed/maneuverability) but has overcharged grade three (it too got a super lucky roll with better thermal than the original, but almost max power increase and no mass increase. Basically it can do over 650m/s boost (490m/s top speed with 4 pips) in combat load-out and turn like crazy, especially with FA off and lateral thrusters, BUT it can't out turn any NPC's even heavy slow Anacondas. I sit on an expert (same combat rank as me) Anaconda's tail, I have 4 pips to engines, in this super light, super fast super maneuverable ship, yet a Combat heavy Anaconda still manages to out turn me all the time. I then have to resort to the boring stupid boost/jousting match, which is only every suitable for big ships. I brake and turn early to get behind its tail again, stay there for a short while then it again out turns my far more maneuverable ship. The AI is definitely messed up. It takes 15 minutes to finally kill this thing (some other fights just had to boost out before I lost my shields as I couldn't out maneuver a heavy slow ship). Not to mention another time sink added to combat slowing everything down. Oh not only was it chaff spamming, but it seemed to have endless SCB's too that didn't seem to affect it (heat wise) in any meaningful way. The only way i could finally finish it was to stick dangerously close (risk if it ramming me) and hit it with everything I had, so that when it chaffed, my guns would still hit it regardless. That type of battle might be fun once per play session, but every single time? Hell no. It wasn't an Elite ship either. Frontier please stop fiddling with the AI. It was fine about 4-6 weeks ago. Oh and maybe rethink the chaff. Boring!!! make people think about combat without chaff. It would make combat faster and more dynamic.
Im flying an FDL in mu koji and while waiting for the convoy beacons to start working (hasnt happend yet) I did a little bounty hunting. Took out iirc a federal gunship that paid like 650 credits.
I dont think that even paid for the hull damage accrued from dropping him out of frameshift with an interdictor, let alone ammo. Thats what i mean by bounties dont pay enough. These measly little bounties dont pay more because you are flying a supposedly hotter ship.
You can check how much their bounty is worth before you pull them out of super cruise.
Well its an avocation
The point is that bounty payouts are not proportional to the effort, risk and resources expended.I really don't like the idea that NPCs level is tied to your own combat rank. It kind of breaks immersion too, because once you reach combat elite (which i have), it's like suddenly the whole galaxy contains nothing but dangerous/deadly/elite pilots. Sure I get that lower rank pilots probably won't attack higher ones, but combat rank really don't mean anything other that you have spent enough time in the game. IMO NPC pilots should be propotional maybe according to gauss scale or something. Not every NPC encounter needs to be as hard as possible.
SCB spam has been an issue for a long time- it's just that only recently has this been introduced to PvE, too. I maintain that this approach would go a long way towards better / more satisfying combat: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/164381-Shield-Cell-Banks-Alternative-Implementation
While somewhat off topic, I found that the default mapping scheme in ED is a bit weird.
By default the mouse controls pitch and yaw, which is sort of understandable, as it's most "natural" when you consider FPS games. However I found it very tiresome given EDs mechanics.
In ED ships roll really fast, pitch is second in speed (depends on blue zone, but still), while yaw is the slowest. Also, a keyboard is a "digital" input, meaning you can't fine-tune your key press - it's always pressed "fully".
What this means is that with the default setup the pitch works well, but roll is somewhat uncontrollable (you always roll at max speed, which makes it difficult to fine-tune) and yaw is even slower than before (slight delay before you go to max yaw in either direction when using the mouse).
Therefore I swapped the yaw and roll around - yaw is now on the keyboard while roll is on the mouse (pitch remains unchanged). I can therefore perform rather precise rolls (and utilize faster pitch) with the mouse, while yaw is slow enough that it can be precisely controlled with the keyboard.
I've then refined it and added the fallback to mouse horizontal movements - usually you don't need to roll constantly in one direction (landings excluded). At the same time you can pitch for long periods of time when doing the circling dance during combat, so mouse vertical has no fallback.
Obviously a proper HOTAS would be better (especially with the added throttle control)...
Which brings me to this question... are there any people out there who are using FA-OFF for prolonged periods of time and using a keyboard + mouse control scheme? If so, how do you do it? Assuming I don't fly something bigger like the Conda (which is slow enough to be easy to control), I can juuuust about to keep my eyes on a target (and that's still with a lot of sway)... and that's EXCLUDING trajectory management. If I try to also keep my attention on trajectory then it all goes to hell pretty fast.
Another question regarding keyboard + mouse is... where do you have your energy management keys? By default they are on the arrow keys. If I keep my left hand on the throttle / roll keys, my right on the mouse, then managing pips is quite the task (not impossible, but annoying to say the least). I wonder if there's a better way to map keys so that pip management isn't such a hassle.
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I think I had a very similar suggestion a long time ago during the lengthy SCB discussions. Heck, more things should use the SYS cap, as it's really underutilized at the moment.
The only downside is that this might make some scenarios unresolvable - in case where both combatants have SCBs and they are both able to survive long enough to recharge the bank and the bank replenishes enough shields to mitigate whatever damage was taken during the recharge period.
There's a secondary problem to this. At the moment (for better or for worse) all shields recharge at almost the same rate (excluding the bi-weave, which are deliberately weaker in return for faster recharge rates), no matter the size of the ship. If the new SCBs work similar to engines (i.e. larger ones offer more shield recharge but take more power/s from the capacitor) then you effectively break that "constant recharge rate for all" mechanic which seems to be quite ingrained in ED. Perhaps calling it a "problem" isn't the right word however. It simply seems that Frontier deliberately crippled the shield recharge mechanics for all ships. Perhaps, again, to make sure that fights can always resolve?
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Other thing with Fed ships (it seems mainly) is the high ranks run MAX hull armour and reinforcement..... they can take quite a bit of punishment these days
I know last night in my FdL with 4x Grade 5 enhanced MC's (1 with incendary) it took several hundred rounds of ammo to pop his hull. Shields were down in seconds
Balance on ships i'm going for is shield breaking 1st and foremost.... they spam SCB's like crazy .... so break their shields ASAP and then wittle the hulls away
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Maybe they're 'meant' to be harder but i find HIGH res produce much more consistent and inceasant combat .... can earn 3m in an hour easily in HIGH
I know last night in my FdL with 4x Grade 5 enhanced MC's (1 with incendary) it took several hundred rounds of ammo to pop his hull. Shields were down in seconds
Balance on ships i'm going for is shield breaking 1st and foremost.... they spam SCB's like crazy .... so break their shields ASAP and then wittle the hulls away
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Maybe they're 'meant' to be harder but i find HIGH res produce much more consistent and inceasant combat .... can earn 3m in an hour easily in HIGH
There's no issue with difficulty here. But if the latter one is more rewarding AND easier, then why bother with the former?
NPC don't need heat sinks, they can activate as many SCB as they want, they do not need to bother with heat at all. Same goes with the rail guns.
endless rail gun shooting and no heat.
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That discussion is locked for some reason? however I like the idea.
Well its an avocation
I'be earned almost 300 million by bounty hunting. Not counting CG rewards in this number. I disagree and I would have to say that you are most likely doing something wrong if you cant make any credits from BH
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People complained about SCB a long time ago. FD "fixed" it by making SCB cook your ship when they are used and forcing people to use the clunky mechanic of combining SCB with heat sinks. The solution is worse than the problem ever was.
I would think so too if i were the only one with the opinion that the rewards should be increased. The rewards should be proportional to the risk.