Possible to have HARD elite NPCs at CNBs/HazRez/HighCZ/piratelords?
- Thread starter sb413197
- Start date
The game is simply too easy for some.
My Anaconda is only mildly modded, I could go a lot further with it, but I won't, because I've already hit the point where I accidentally made life too easy.
My Python is the same.
When you can waltz in to a HAZ RES or CNB, and forget you're carrying a load of cargo, and just continue as normal, the game is too easy.
Heck, for lolz, I went to a high security system, murdered a load of PowerPlay targets, while carrying cargo.
I ended up with security, pirates, bounty hunters, and PowerPlay ships all shooting me. I did have to low wake eventually.
Once I'd killed off all the PowerPlay ships that were there.
Then went back and did it again.
I also tried, by people's recommendation to nerf myself, carrying 180t of rare cargo, in an unarmed Python, with just 300~mj of shields. Didn't even get interdicted to test what would happen, even if I sat in supercruise just reading the map. Lol
I've basically tried everything to make life difficult. Nothing works.
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
My Anaconda is only mildly modded, I could go a lot further with it, but I won't, because I've already hit the point where I accidentally made life too easy.
My Python is the same.
When you can waltz in to a HAZ RES or CNB, and forget you're carrying a load of cargo, and just continue as normal, the game is too easy.
Heck, for lolz, I went to a high security system, murdered a load of PowerPlay targets, while carrying cargo.
I ended up with security, pirates, bounty hunters, and PowerPlay ships all shooting me. I did have to low wake eventually.
Once I'd killed off all the PowerPlay ships that were there.
Then went back and did it again.
I also tried, by people's recommendation to nerf myself, carrying 180t of rare cargo, in an unarmed Python, with just 300~mj of shields. Didn't even get interdicted to test what would happen, even if I sat in supercruise just reading the map. Lol
I've basically tried everything to make life difficult. Nothing works.
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
How about a cz hazardous. We have res low, high and haz. And in there are engineered npc ships, with random amount of engineered modules. The higher rank you have, the greater number of mods engineered.
well, that's mostly true but also part myth. the ai was never really challenging except for bugs.
you have basically two do-it-yourself options:
- handicap yourself (don't engineer, fly small ships, be outnumbered)
- go pvp
given the experiences so far with frontier fiddling with the combat mechanic i would strongly advise they do NOT invest any more time in that and concentrate on issues they do have expertise in, like visuals and building a galaxy. we would all be better off, and the combat thing we can sort out ourselves.
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but the alternative is DONT try playing elite anymore if you are a new player. survivability is now 0 if you dont already have an engineered ship because players with billions wont drop down to lesser ships or unengineered ones and demanded all npcs be buffed to THEIR pro l33t GaMoRZ skill level, and those same players assume EVERYONE plays with dual hotas, FA-OFF and fiddling with their pips every .0005 ms on their liquid helium cooled quadruple nvidia titan double crossfire with intel/AMD 5000 core 6000000GHZ and 1 tb of gddr10 ram and 6 tb of 24748ghz normal ram quad channel.
leaving aside the parody, this post is a classic case of 'so what if my ship is OP why should i care if new players can actually play because I WANT MORE CHALLENGE and i dont even think about those who DONT find npcs easy because dont have 9000mj shields that never go down'.
[video=youtube;WgOpR_rMAGk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOpR_rMAGk[/video]
The reward is survival by keeping up in the arms race against other CMDRs who are just as determined to outmatch others in personal skill and equipment as I am.
The NPCs are a joke, even without engineering. I can make six million credits an hour in a ship that has no mods that cost three million to slap together.
If my first and last impressions of a "Deadly" ranked AI's response to my attack is "what the hell does this think he trying to do?", something is wrong.
They are, but that's not saying much.
The AI has never, not even at it's 2.1 best, ever had sound tactics, even if they occasion demonstrate technical piloting aptitude. They don't behave plausibly and they aren't a challenge because of it.
Been there, done that.
Yes, I can eventually cram enough hostile robots in an instance to overwhelm my PvP Corvette, but that's hardly a satisfying sort of challenge.
Plausibility of a setting is a big thing for me and handicapping myself in situations my CMDR should rightly view as deathly serious goes against all sense of immersion or suspension of disbelief.
I prefer challenge level to be based on where I am, what I'm trying to accomplish, and who I've made enemies of in the past, with the occasional random outlier in the mix.
Five thousand hours, give or take. I fight NPCs in whatever PvP vessel I happen to be in at the moment, an SLF, or my Nostalgia Viper, which I keep unmodified for the nostalgia.
The spectrum of NPC ability is too narrow. It's fine for some of them, even the overwhelming majority of them to be completely incompetent...that's plausible demographics. However, the best among them barely get into the 'pretty bad' range.
Having the occasional NPC that could mop the floor with the average CMDR wouldn't be bad for anyone, except those who felt they had to be able to destroy any NPC they came across with ease.
I agree. It would be nice to just fix any bugs so we get a baseline of how FDev intend it to work. After the past couple of years of updates I am jaded when I get wind of any changes to the AI now. The lack of communication about plans, what is a bug & what isn't doesn't help.
I want you to be able to find the right challenge (even if it's in a less capable ship), I want to be able to think my way out of a situation rather than shooting or scanning being the only interactions available.
That's not even relevant - This game already has DESIGNATED areas of difficulty.
If you're a new player, you shouldn't be going to a HazRes in your E-rated Sidewinder.
It's not rocket science or leaving out new people. Choose a difficulty location — LowRes, Res, HighRes, HazRes, LudicrousRes, PlaidRes or whatever you wanna call it.
I would like to see the combat difficulty scale with not only CMDR combat rank, but with opponents destroyed within a certain time.
Like Dc = Rpc *((Knpc + Kcmdr )/t)
where Dc is an aggregate of npc comba rank / ship / outfitting / mods
Rpc is CMDR combat rating
Knpc is number of npc kills
Kcmdr is number of cmdrs killed
t is a unit of time (minutes perhaps)
Needs to be more complex to take missions into account and K totals aligned with time spent in combat, but this is just a quick thought, not a detailed design discussion.
Like Dc = Rpc *((Knpc + Kcmdr )/t)
where Dc is an aggregate of npc comba rank / ship / outfitting / mods
Rpc is CMDR combat rating
Knpc is number of npc kills
Kcmdr is number of cmdrs killed
t is a unit of time (minutes perhaps)
Needs to be more complex to take missions into account and K totals aligned with time spent in combat, but this is just a quick thought, not a detailed design discussion.
Lucky you. One at a time for me 
Agree that Extreme Rez Sites or Combat Zones should be created for a bigger challenge for some though I find it hard enough as it is to be fair but it's about proving a decent level of challenge to suit all types of player.
Agree that Extreme Rez Sites or Combat Zones should be created for a bigger challenge for some though I find it hard enough as it is to be fair but it's about proving a decent level of challenge to suit all types of player.
im getting thoroughly sick of 'npcs are a joke.' said by people with OP ships, who obviously have 'god like' skills and WHO ASSUME SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE AND WANT NPCS BUFFED TO SUIT THEMSELVES AND NOT CONSIDER NOT EVERYONE IS 13 WITH 13 YEAR OLD REFLEXES AND WITH A BILLION DOLLAR GAMING RIG AND INFINITE TIME TO PLAY.
think before posting because your laughable npcs have nearly had me rebuy in my FAS more than once and its just a matter of time before i do see it. im enjoying the npcs now. but i left the bubble because of over buffed npcs. the result was a trip in unmodded FSD asp ex 14200LY out which meant i missed out on the updates after engineers right up to commanders. now you may say 26ly range i could have got back easy in less than 6 months. why did it take so long? BECAUSE SCOOP JUMP SCOOP JUMP BECAME SUCH A GRIND FEST I WAS OFTEN RELUCTANT TO LOG IN.
buff npcs again, i wont bother leaving the bubble. i will leave the game and new players will too because they wont be able to get anywhere in 90% of cases. so stop being so selfish and sell your boring ship and buy something and DONT engineer it or A-rate it. from what you say a stock sidewinder would provide some small amount of challenge - at least it will be better than the ship you engineered.
sadly there is no 'im totally P**sed off with the lot of you jerks demanding npcs be impossible except in engineered corvettes' emote
think before posting because your laughable npcs have nearly had me rebuy in my FAS more than once and its just a matter of time before i do see it. im enjoying the npcs now. but i left the bubble because of over buffed npcs. the result was a trip in unmodded FSD asp ex 14200LY out which meant i missed out on the updates after engineers right up to commanders. now you may say 26ly range i could have got back easy in less than 6 months. why did it take so long? BECAUSE SCOOP JUMP SCOOP JUMP BECAME SUCH A GRIND FEST I WAS OFTEN RELUCTANT TO LOG IN.
buff npcs again, i wont bother leaving the bubble. i will leave the game and new players will too because they wont be able to get anywhere in 90% of cases. so stop being so selfish and sell your boring ship and buy something and DONT engineer it or A-rate it. from what you say a stock sidewinder would provide some small amount of challenge - at least it will be better than the ship you engineered.
sadly there is no 'im totally P**sed off with the lot of you jerks demanding npcs be impossible except in engineered corvettes' emote
The problem with that line of thinking (I agree with you BTW) is that we live in a participation award society. If you can handle the superres I'm entitled to be able to use it too even if I'm not capable. That is the reason that the game is tuned for the lowest common denominator.
Found one
Plenty of room to flesh out the upper end of ability without unduly forcing impossible encounters on everyone. A few truly dangerous NPCs in the mix, with known haunts, or who are hunting targets worthy of their ire, are not going to be disruptive, but would add a lot to the game.
You're the one who needs to "think before you post" — There is room for both the new players and the high-skilled/high-engineered players, based on the simple fact that YOU CHOOSE THE DIFFCULTY BASED ON WHERE YOU GO.
i agree i had a bad night and got little sleep (post traumatic stress). i apologise. and i do think npcs could be harder in high intensity CZ and hazrez at least. also, why not have USS that are more dangerous than level 4?
and i feel i need to apologise to all - i just saw in my head yet another npc are a joke lets make em all much harder idea that wasnt thought through. i see so much of it and i snapped.
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If anyone has problems with PvE, there's always PvP. But the difference in difficulty between an Elite NPC and even a modestly skilled, PvP-oriented human pilot is incomprehensibly massive.
Done with A-rated unengineered eagle, AI still incompetent.
Harder NPCs are needed, they are currently braindead, though at least they don't do that pointless spin that occurred in the pre-2.0 NPCs.
That's a thing, it's called fast grinding bounties, the right build makes it super safe yet efficient for fast PVE/BGS work.
omg dont mention the spin - it might come back :O