Newcomer / Intro The NPC that just won't quit...

[George Jetson]

Hi guys, I'm wondering what you make of this.

I'm new to ED and have been playing strictly solo for maybe a week. Just running boring missions and dabbling in trading to scrape together some cash to open up further options. Perhaps a day or two ago a trading type mission sent an NPC enemy after me - nothing unusual here, it happens all the time. This time though (after interdiction) the NPC was seriously deadly - 10 seconds and my lightly armed keelback was toast. As someone in another thread put it, it wasn't a fight so much as an execution, and a quick one at that.

Now I would have thought that this would be the end of it. There was some swearing, I did the rebuy thing, the cargo is gone, the mission is a failure and I learned not to read guides written before this 'update' I hear about that introduced the badass NPC's. The same guides which suggest that traders need not get involved in combat if they don't wish to, more or less.

But here's the weird part, that same NPC is still actively coming after me no matter what I do. I have no cargo, I've taken on no new mission (tried taking on a mission too - same result), but he's still on me if I spend any time in a system, certainly before I get close to docking with anything.

And docking is what I really need to do because I keep respawning at a station with no shipyard, so I can't even see a way to change over to a sidewinder and make these experiments less costly. Fighting this guy appears to be completely out of the question, as my best attempts so far have only extended a 10 second kill to a bit less than 20 seconds. Yesterday I gave up before running out of cash, hoping that a 24hr break might change something, but nope. I log in today and the same NPC is trash talking me in chat before I even launch.

Anyway, I'll be back in a sidewinder after losing everything any moment now as I've pretty much reached the rebuy loan limit (I'm assuming he'll go away at that point?). It's frustrating but I'm not quite at the ragequit stage, more just baffled by what is going on here. Is this possibly a bug? Is this normal NPC behaviour that I can expect more of? As a noob, am I overlooking some obvious way out of this trap?

Trivia: while searching around for similar experiences and solutions, I notice the name of the NPC is the same as someone involved with the kickstarter project, presumably a contributor. Were these people rewarded with annoying overpowered NPC-on-steroids namesakes?

 

[CMDR Mr. Boombastic]

Not sure if this will solve the problem, but may help.
Have you abandoned/cancelled the mission that you failed?

If not, go to your left-HUD --> TRANSACTIONS tab; select the 'Failed' mission; select 'ABANDON'.

Other than that maybe you have become unfriendly to one of the factions due to the failed mission, which you can see in your right-HUD --> STATUS tab --> REPUTATION panel. So maybe better to move to another part of the bubble.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

If this NPC keeps coming back and does indeed drive your CMDR bankrupt. Open a ticket (support link in the game launcher), and FD support will be able to look into it and probably refund your losses, and hopefully bury your nemesis.

 

[Codger]

If you're really not still on the mission, and you've abandoned it, and the NPC still comes after you, then I would submit a ticket. That sounds like a bug.

That said, yes, mission NPCs can be *very* persistent. You have to be very careful about what missions you take on, what the rank of the mission is, and how many missions you take on at once.

It's quite easy to get overwhelmed, otherwise, especially in a stock ship that's not even A-rated.

Once your ship is fully upgraded, and has some Engineering upgrades, you'll be a lot harder to kill, and have a lot more time to escape. Take it slow, and you'll get there eventually. It's not a quick process.

Try to enjoy the journey, that's what it's all about.

 

[aioun]

Follow the advice the others have given.
If you encounter the NPC, then submit to the interdiction. Drop into normal space and immediately turn towards him and throttle up at full speed. Set a quick jump point, anywhere to get away from him. Boost. Boost. Boost. Boost. If you have mines, drop them. If not, just boost and vary your course in a not-straight-line towards your jumppoint. Boost until your FSD charges then get away.

The first, and crucial step is to submit to the interdiction. I've had pesky NPC's myself, but I can always, almost always outrun them, even in a D rated SW.

Goodluck CMDR, the games gets more and more fun and interesting as you progress. There is an abysmally steep learning curve to it all, and just when you think you've got something down, you'll find that you're lost again.

Ask questions here as much as you need to (I did) and take a deep breath.

 

[LeetNoob]

This NPC sounds like a bully. I haven't seen this behavior before. OP you sure you don't have a bounty?

Anyway if it's still happening, I've got a highly engineered combat Python. Maybe if I wing up with you and even the odds a bit it will change his tune. What ship does the NPC fly?

 

[Alex D]

[...]
immediately turn towards him and throttle up at full speed. Set a quick jump point, anywhere to get away from him.

This sounds like a contradiction - rather get facing away from him as soon as you go out of SC and then boost

 

[Ankor Grammaten]

I had something like this happen yesterday. I was taking 64 units of titanium to the CG mission at the ironically named "Love" station. Immediately on entering the final system, an npc interdicted me. I ran away, no damage. He then kept after me and hit me another four times, finally during docking with my DC. I had no trouble getting away from him, but I've never seen this kind of persistent behavior before. I shut down the game with my ship docked there, having delivered my cargo, and now I'm wondering if he will come after me again when I leave the station. If he does I think I'll fight him. I need to test the offensive stuff on my AspX. For the record I don't have any bounties or anything else that might attract special attention.

Incidentally, my 64 units put me straight into the 75% bracket!

 

[aRJay]

This sounds like a contradiction - rather get facing away from him as soon as you go out of SC and then boost

This is supposedly a good trick if you can remember the key binding for Flight Assist off, which I can't, the idea is you turn faster and get behind him before more than a couple of shots are fired then have longer to cool down and jump while the NPC turns more slowly.[uhh]

This is not a trick I have tried, I struggle to point towards space when turning using Flight Assist off, nor is it one I have seen proposed much since mines started being effective.

 

[CMDR Mr. Boombastic]

This sounds like a contradiction - rather get facing away from him as soon as you go out of SC and then boost

Jousting is one technique of escaping, if you are in a slower ship and want to take some evasive action so the NPC is not always 'on your six' (in a dominant position) and firing at you.
E.g. Captain Kremmen in a Type-9 'Space Cow' transporting Imperial Slaves and being interdicted by an ELITE Python (jousting technique):

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;ReZ0kd4Sq98]https://youtu.be/ReZ0kd4Sq98[/video]

But generally the submit & boost technique is better e.g. Vindicator Jones in a Type-6 trading ship with D-rated shields (boost, boost away):

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;woy8nmaVuVg]https://youtu.be/woy8nmaVuVg[/video]

 

[CMDR Mr. Boombastic]

I had something like this happen yesterday. I was taking 64 units of titanium to the CG mission at the ironically named "Love" station. Immediately on entering the final system, an npc interdicted me. I ran away, no damage. He then kept after me and hit me another four times, finally during docking with my DC. I had no trouble getting away from him, but I've never seen this kind of persistent behavior before. I shut down the game with my ship docked there, having delivered my cargo, and now I'm wondering if he will come after me again when I leave the station. If he does I think I'll fight him. I need to test the offensive stuff on my AspX. For the record I don't have any bounties or anything else that might attract special attention.

Incidentally, my 64 units put me straight into the 75% bracket!

If you high-wake out of there and it was only an NPC after your cargo then you should be fine. I'm assuming the NPC was only after you cargo as I've not heard of CG specific NPCs, although I have seen CG systems can get busy with NPCs as well as CMDRs which I assume is due to the increased economic activity.

I was going to suggest avoiding shipping lanes (shown on the bottom-left of you main HUD in some but not most system) because if you travel straight from the jump-in point to the station and your HUD shows 'SHIPPING LANE' and not "DEEP SPACE' then NPC pirates will hang along these routes. But you mentioned that the NPC interdicted you as soon as you jumped-in, so maybe this technique won't be so effective.

The first part of this 2014 video shows you how to avoid shipping lanes and decrease the interdiction rate (although at the time the video was produced there was no 'shipping lane' indicator on the HUD) and also explains why in some cases taking the parabolic route can be faster (if the station is not on the nearside of the celestial body):

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;1nC3KmSF85Q]https://youtu.be/1nC3KmSF85Q[/video]

 

[Ankor Grammaten]

If you high-wake out of there and it was only an NPC after your cargo then you should be fine. I'm assuming the NPC was only after you cargo as I've not heard of CG specific NPCs, although I have seen CG systems can get busy with NPCs as well as CMDRs which I assume is due to the increased economic activity.

Yes, I think that's right. I'll see what happens, I'll be getting more titanium and repeating the exercise, so it should be interesting.

I was going to suggest avoiding shipping lanes (shown on the bottom-left of you main HUD in some but not most system) because if you travel straight from the jump-in point to the station and your HUD shows 'SHIPPING LANE' and not "DEEP SPACE' then NPC pirates will hang along these routes. But I you mentioned that the NPC interdicted you as soon as you jumped-in, so maybe this technique won;t be so effective.

It was fairly soon after jumping in, but I think I was established on course to the station, so I will try the technique and see what happens.

My main concern was with the tenacity of the dude, which I've never seen before, though I've read about it on the forums many times. It was strange to be attacked while docking. There was no interdiction as I was already out of ftl drive. The DC switched itself off, and I was left wondering what to do. Boost away and retry the approach? Try to dock? I boosted and took evasive maneuvers around the station and eventually he stopped attacking long enough to allow me to re-engage the DC and it docked with no further problems, just one layer of shield gone.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Ankor Grammaten]

End of story ... avoiding the shipping lanes stopped the interdictions until I got very close to the station, so I guess I'll keep doing it.

 

[Ilma]

There is a bug I have hit where when I get the notification on a attacker while I am docking at the endpoint station that the NCP will respawn over and over again. Sometimes you can kill them and they will just respawn, and when you escape them they do so in a way that makes it impossible to evade. If you are unlucky to have the RNG spawn a NPC that greatly exceeds your ship and you cannot sell gear to buy a ship that can beat them I think a ticket is the only option. Especially if you have already completed or abandoned the associated mission.

I had the fun of having one spawn a fer de lance that could fire without overheating and keep up with my Asp, plus it would randomly disable my systems due to engineer enhanced weapons. I couldn't get print screen to work on my windows 10 machine and a keyboard without a windows key (old IBM type M) so I finally gave up and sold off enough gear to buy a Vulture to kill them.

If you can get some screen shots and file a ticket I would highly encourage you to do so. This has ended several of CMDRs involvement with the game but I don't think that Frontier has enough information to figure out where the bug is happening.

If 4 pips on the engine and two on SYS doesn't let you boost far enough away try frame shifting to another system. They cannot mass lock you with inter-system jumps like they can with super cruise. But please do file a ticket if it is a zombie mission NPC attacker, I know there would be lots of people whom would enjoy getting this bug fixed as it does tend to make the game unplayable when it does happen.

That said I guess it did teach me how to find a station with no hud and the timer ticking down on my life support with a broken canopy...you don't appreciate how much easier that yellow circle makes it to find your destination. It is not easy looking for point light sources among a sea of point light sources when it is gone.