Am I the only one who thinks the AI is challenging?

[Sylow]

The issue has always been that the AI is too predictable. You can take a trade fit T9 and easily handle any Elite rank AI if you understand the logic behind their offensive capabilities. It is no fault of Sarah's, programing AI to behave like humans is incredibly difficult, we had a brief period of dangerous AI, no idea what she did to them, however that period was unfortunately short lived.

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I very much think that this is the deciding point.
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The AI learned a lot of new maneuvers and tactics in the last year. For those of us who fight a lot, these upgrades came one after another. This means we were able to learn one thing after another, it were new puzzle pieces, but the puzzle itself stayed the same. The AI kept a certain level or predictability for the experienced pilot. At the same time, the bigger number of maneuvers hands a significally higher challenge to the new player, who just learns to fight and can't predict what maneuvers the AI is most likely do next.
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So for the beginner player combat indeed got significally harder, while for veterans things basically stayed similar, as long as you don't also take a look at engineering. As soon as you also get engineers into the picture you see that combat got noticeably easier for the experienced and fully geared pilots while beginners fell further behind. Unfortunately this will stay the same. The AI will get further upgrades, we veterans keep learning its new tricks without being overwhelmed by them and the gap between beginners and us grow again.
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The real problem is that this makes the game harder and harder to get into for new players. Unfortunatly i see this problem, but couldn't deliver a solution which wouldn't also disappoint veteran combat players.
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[Jason Lightning]

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I very much think that this is the deciding point.
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The AI learned a lot of new maneuvers and tactics in the last year. For those of us who fight a lot, these upgrades came one after another. This means we were able to learn one thing after another, it were new puzzle pieces, but the puzzle itself stayed the same. The AI kept a certain level or predictability for the experienced pilot. At the same time, the bigger number of maneuvers hands a significally higher challenge to the new player, who just learns to fight and can't predict what maneuvers the AI is most likely do next.
.
So for the beginner player combat indeed got significally harder, while for veterans things basically stayed similar, as long as you don't also take a look at engineering. As soon as you also get engineers into the picture you see that combat got noticeably easier for the experienced and fully geared pilots while beginners fell further behind. Unfortunately this will stay the same. The AI will get further upgrades, we veterans keep learning its new tricks without being overwhelmed by them and the gap between beginners and us grow again.
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The real problem is that this makes the game harder and harder to get into for new players. Unfortunatly i see this problem, but couldn't deliver a solution which wouldn't also disappoint veteran combat players.
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Upgrade the AI in higher level zones, HazRes, High intensity Combat Zones, Compromised Nav Beacons, etc.

Easy solution, new players can learn in the standard zones, combat players the high level areas. Everyone wins.

 

[Sylow]

Upgrade the AI in higher level zones, HazRes, High intensity Combat Zones, Compromised Nav Beacons, etc.

Easy solution, new players can learn in the standard zones, combat players the high level areas. Everyone wins.

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That's already been done. You get ships of higher rank and thus higher difficulty in those zones.
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Going any further would mean that ships of the same rank would be stronger in one location than another. This would open a can of worms, and people complaining that it's "gamey" and not fitting the picture of a "world simulation" would be the least of it.
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My actual hope here are Thargoids. That would mean that things in the bubble could stay the same, but CGs would funnel the veterans to the "boarder", where they could find much more challenging combat. It wouldn't solve the "AI is boring" problem veterans have when fighting the current ships, but it would avoid sending beginners into the meatgrinder. Time will tell how that turns out.
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[HBK]

Going any further would mean that ships of the same rank would be stronger in one location than another. This would open a can of worms, and people complaining that it's "gamey" and not fitting the picture of a "world simulation" would be the least of it.

Ships are already spawned depending on 1/ the ship you're flying, 2/ your combat rank (and a mix of all that if in a MP instance).

Remember when you were Harmless and barely even saw anything higher than Competent?

And now that you're Elite you almost never see Harmless AI and mostly see Deadly & Dangerous?

Yea, it's contextual.

 

[Noctover]

Yes.

The AI is painfully bad imho.

 

[Jason Lightning]

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That's already been done. You get ships of higher rank and thus higher difficulty in those zones.
.
Going any further would mean that ships of the same rank would be stronger in one location than another. This would open a can of worms, and people complaining that it's "gamey" and not fitting the picture of a "world simulation" would be the least of it.
.
My actual hope here are Thargoids. That would mean that things in the bubble could stay the same, but CGs would funnel the veterans to the "boarder", where they could find much more challenging combat. It wouldn't solve the "AI is boring" problem veterans have when fighting the current ships, but it would avoid sending beginners into the meatgrinder. Time will tell how that turns out.
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I don't think you understand, the current Elite AI is a joke, increase the power of the Elite AI but make it less likely for a new player to find them in the wild, so new players won't get pulled by an Elite NPC but if they feel confident could try their luck in a Hazres. (For those fast learners)

It's not really 'gamey' either, lore wise Elite in combat should be extremely proficient in combat and a rare sight, instead the current Elite NPCs are everywhere and rather poor at maneuvering.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

i find the AI plenty challenging. my best combat ship is my FAS with its overheat problem. my other ships are a general mission and surface mission/trade cobra mkiv, a passenger runner cobra mkiii and two asp explorers - one unarmed and for exploring only and one as an armed miner because unarmed mining with npc pirates around is also known as charity, or poverty, or mostly suicide. even in my FAS i have to run from combat occasionally, and i have come unstuck being greedy trying to fight a python after my cargo that interdicted me, assuming i could live long enough for the system security to drop in and i would also get a bounty. i lost the mining asp on that occasion plus 1 t of low temp diamonds and some other stuff i had mined for a couple of missions. greed...rebuy screen.

people can say its a joke over and over and 99% of them say also they dont see why they have to drop down from their top end massive combat only build ships that no AI can dent the shields before the turrets and plasmas wipe them to dust. i have little sympathy for those saying the AI is a joke. i have nothing but contempt for the subsection who want ALL AI buffed because THEY dont think about anyone without that fed corvette and god-like gaming skills and top end nitrogen cooled obscene waste of money gaming only pc. fortunately thats not all of them. i also see no reason why there should not be VERY VERY dangerous combat zones (im stuck for a name for the CZ type but it would be fun to call them low intensity, high intensity and OMG DONT ENTER!) along with USS threat level 7 (minor skirmish) and 8 (major engagement) where none of the pilot levels is lower than dangerous, the ships are all in wings and often its a major power naval engagement with another power and in the level 8 there are capital ships guaranteed and maybe more than one per side. of course level 9 and 10 threat wont happen unless general warfare breaks out between two powers - or between humanity and the thargoids. when you think of those uss think of the return of the jedi where the rebel fleet and imperial fleet fight around the second death star.

 

[Ddraig]

The AI is better than when I started playing Elite back in 2015.
However, when you learn and you reach endgame with overpowered ships combat becomes repetitive.
However from time to time you get some more challenging fights, specially with Elite interdictions.
I think it is totally viable to have combat zones or RES zones with different difficulty settings, beyond that the type of ships that populate the place or if there are cops or not.
Or to add certain conditions to systems that enforce hard NPCs in the area, but only in those systems in that state.

 

[Theodrid]

It can be, it depends entirely on which ship I'm flying and/or how careless I get in certain situations, one thing is for certain though I've had an absolute blast on occasions when I've been in far less than optimal ships for the job at hand.

I can't think of many MMO type games where, once you are in the top gear that the AI/NPC's don't become a breeze be that in world, in 16 man raids or in 4 man or single player content.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

.
I very much think that this is the deciding point.
.
The AI learned a lot of new maneuvers and tactics in the last year. For those of us who fight a lot, these upgrades came one after another. This means we were able to learn one thing after another, it were new puzzle pieces, but the puzzle itself stayed the same. The AI kept a certain level or predictability for the experienced pilot. At the same time, the bigger number of maneuvers hands a significally higher challenge to the new player, who just learns to fight and can't predict what maneuvers the AI is most likely do next.
.
So for the beginner player combat indeed got significally harder, while for veterans things basically stayed similar, as long as you don't also take a look at engineering. As soon as you also get engineers into the picture you see that combat got noticeably easier for the experienced and fully geared pilots while beginners fell further behind. Unfortunately this will stay the same. The AI will get further upgrades, we veterans keep learning its new tricks without being overwhelmed by them and the gap between beginners and us grow again.
.
The real problem is that this makes the game harder and harder to get into for new players. Unfortunatly i see this problem, but couldn't deliver a solution which wouldn't also disappoint veteran combat players.
.

I have only been saying this for nearly 3 years.

 

[Jason Lightning]

It can be, it depends entirely on which ship I'm flying and/or how careless I get in certain situations, one thing is for certain though I've had an absolute blast on occasions when I've been in far less than optimal ships for the job at hand.

I can't think of many MMO type games where, once you are in the top gear that the AI/NPC's don't become a breeze be that in world, in 16 man raids or in 4 man content.

4 man missions or Raids would be nice, we don't have those right now.

 

[Theodrid]

4 man missions or Raids would be nice, we don't have those right now.

I know, I was referring to other games........and I'm not sure I want them in elite but that's another discussion entirely!

 

[XW_Ziggy]

If you think the AI is challenging, there are a few simple tips that will have you improve with minimal effort (though you may have to re-wire your thinking or rebind some keys to make it happen).

Firstly, I'm not a PVP player so these things generally won't work against a human where you have to evaluate each encounter and adjust your behaviour on the fly. For the AI though, they all follow the same basic logic with improved accuracy and aggression the higher up the skill ranks you go.

1) Always fly in the blue zone as much as possible.
2) Boost away if you end up in front of your attacker.
3) Make sure you are always strafing in a curved path.
4) Don't joust (that's what the AI tries to do and it is likely to boost-turn better than you and have more time-on-target than you).

The first point is obvious, but in a dogfight the pilot who turns fastest has the upper hand in a fight. When two ships are relatively close, the pilot who turns fastest controls the engagement.

The second point is obvious - if you're in front of your attacker, you're being shot at. Try to move out of the way - and the best way is to the left or right of your attacker, since that is their least-agile direction.

The third point is the most important one to master: Dumbfires, kinetics - in fact any projectile with travel time will miss you if the path you are taking is curved. That means you should be laterally/vertically thrusting AND rolling, or switching between lateral and vertical thrust whilst facing your opponent so that your path across their firing arc is not a straight line. This does NOT work for hitscan weapons like rails or lasers, but it is highly effective against pretty much everything else.

Finally, the last point is that you really want to avoid jousting unless you have a clear firepower and hitpoint advantage. If you end up jousting it is because you (or the AI, or both of you) are overshooting all the time - boosting AT each other. The single biggest advantage of a boost is NOT the straight line speed, but the massive kick it gives you in a new direction. Use the boost primarily to dodge left/right/up/down or to change direction quickly. If you're facing your opponent at a distance of over 1km, don't boost without laterally boosting. The AI will almost certainly be flying straight at you, so the best thing to do is to work out which way you need to boost to be moving sideways out of its way (this means the AI has to yaw which is slow, or roll and pitch, which is still slower than just pitching). Once you've given yourself a good kick in that direction, the AI will turn to fly at you and joust in most cases. You are going to want to roll so that you can track them with your pitch controls rather than your yaw controls (for obvious reasons) whilst continuing to hold the lateral direction you boosted in.

The end result of this maneuver is that you break the joust cycle, avoid being rammed, use your pitch rate against the AI's yaw rate, track them (whilst firing) as they pass, and of course, the combination of roll and lateral/vertical thrust ensures that you are not following a straight path - making you far harder to hit with any weapons except lasers and rails.

I haven't even mentioned FA-Off flying yet, but I can confim that using these general flying rules, I managed to complete all of the training combat scenarios, including the last one at work where I didn't even have a mouse button bound to FA-off toggle. FA-off control is just icing on the cake, but it's useless if you're not evading fire or positioning yourself correctly in the first place

 

[Aashenfox]

I've no idea why they decided against guilds but I do remember the argument against cargo storage as well as player selling goods to another player.

Personally, I don't envisage the type of game you would like, I'm not a PvP person, demonstrably since I only Solo, and the current level of game is good enough for me. To be honest the scenario you describe is pretty off-putting and there's no way I'd enjoy such a thing. But that's me and I'm sure that there are a few commanders that would like your ideas. Unfortunately for you, and fortunately for me, I suppose, such a game play for a minority of players is unlikely to materialise any time soon although the Thargoids might do something like that.



That's a good tip and if I ever decided to get my Elite combat rating, I'll be sure to remember it.

I don't ever PvP either, I play in solo, because open is pvp mode. If there was a PvE mode, I would play that. Also, I'm struggling with what you find ofputing about having extra content in the game? How would something be off putting to you if you didn't have to do it? I assume you find at least one of the core activities boring? Exploring? Mining? Trading? Most people find at least one of those boring, and therefore do not do it. Why should multiplayer PvE content be any different, how would its existence bother you? I'm not asking for rewards for it that you can't get, I'm just asking for encounters that I can play with equally skilled players that we are working towards a more challenging goal than delivering someone to a planet's surface. What's unfortunate for everyone is the lack of meaningful things to do in Elite. Currently, all there is, is to increase your net worth or explore the galaxy. That's it. Mining, combat, trading, it's all a means to the same end, more ships, stronger ships, more weapons, bigger weapons. What's the endgame? Why am I collecting all this wealth and power? Sure, Thargoids, but you know what...how are you gonna explain that they don't come in fleets? If you were an invading alien, why wouldn't you come in a fleet? Will one solo mediocre-skilled un-engineered player be able to take down 50 Thargoid ships on his own? If so, would that be rewarding or immersive for you?

 

[Arindor]

On my journey to Elite, my A-rated un-RNG'd vulture got shredded by three NPC eagles in less than 20s (all fitted with rails too). Overall, I'm not impressed with the AI one bit. Anyway, once I reach Elite (currenly deadly at 9%, so a long way to go), and because it feels as though FD have forced most of us to RNG to balance NPC combat, I'll be off back to exploring.

 

[XW_Ziggy]

On my journey to Elite, my A-rated un-RNG'd vulture got shredded by three NPC eagles in less than 20s (all fitted with rails too). Overall, I'm not impressed with the AI one bit. Anyway, once I reach Elite (currenly deadly at 9%, so a long way to go), and because it feels as though FD have forced most of us to RNG to balance NPC combat, I'll be off back to exploring.

I'm not sure why you thought you should stand a chance in this scenario - it's 3v1 and each of those three eagles is much faster and slightly more maneuverable than your vulture - and your large hardpoints offer very little benefit against eagles because they have no hull hardness in the first place. Combat in this game is about more than just dps and shield strength.

Essentially you were being shot at by NINE hardpoints and you only brought two to the fight. The Vulture is a "big ship killer" that is compromised against smaller ships so in this case it was a bit of bad luck - both in the 3 vs 1 situation, but also in the fact that slow vultures are easy prey for jousting eagles and you ended up bringing scissors to a rock fight. Rail guns are extremely common on smaller ships because they are suited to the higher maneuverability and offer good piercing to compensate for the drawbacks of smaller hardpoints.

You can't win every encounter because the encounters aren't always fair. Knowing when you are in trouble and needing to run (3 eagles would trouble even an FDS or FAS, most likely) is an often-overlooked part of combat. Fly safe CMDR o7

 

[Jon flint]

It can certainly be challenging, but it really depends on what you're flying. Any of the big 3 when fully engineered simply overpower the AI with brute force, usually destroying the AI ship with 1 or 2 passes, regardless of the ship type or NPC rank.

Flying a smaller ship (or a big un-engineered one) will always yield much more fun and challenging fights

 

[CMDR Corlas]

I am firmly in the "the AI needs to be buffed" camp but, as others have pointed out, that doesn't mean "I want fights to be harder", even though combat isn't really much of a challenge typically. I'd personally like them to be harder, sure, but that's not the goal of better AI.

The problem with the AI isn't that it's "too easy" (although the specific way that it's too easy for some is a symptom of the problem). The problem is that it generally doesn't mind if it gets shot or if it dies.

The AI does basically two things, and it does those things pretty well:

1) The AI tries to face the player
2) The AI shoots

This limited means of combat is a part of why high-end and overly-engineered ships offer such an advantage. It's also why some players will find combat as difficult as they do, even in high-end ships. For example:

Let's say we have a well-off player CMDR in a Python, and an NPC pirate in a Clipper. The Clipper scans the CMDR and the CMDR, a not-so-great pilot but one who is confident in his shields and weapons, opens fire. Since our CMDR isn't that great a combat pilot, he mostly just face-tanks the Clipper. He can do that and still win, because he had stronger shields and stronger weapons. His strategy may not be the best, but barring some errors, he'll still win.

But the NPC also just face-tanks the player. There is no way at all that this strategy will win him the fight. But the NPC is too stupid to know this or care. He'll still sit there and pound away, possibly dealing not-insignificant damage to the CMDR's shields, maybe even getting them to pop chaff or a shield cell or two.

Now, that fight - two ships face tanking each other - wasn't "hard". It was point and click with a few defensive reactions. But over the course of it, the player almost lost their shields. They blew a lot of chaff. They went through shield cells and either also some heatsinks or they took some module damage. At the end of it, their shields are low, they're down on defenses, and they feel like they just barely made it through. Why would anyone want better AI?

Except here's that fight with better AI: The CMDR opens fire, and Clipper realizing it's outmatched in a simple face-to-face matchup, tries to evade (gasp!). This means that the Clipper isn't returning fire, and the CMDR is taking no damage, unless he's outmaneuvered. If the CMDR can keep from being mostly outflown, he will end up taking significantly less damage than he would vs the "easier", but dumber, AI.

"But that's a biased story!", someoneone will say, "You said the CMDR wasn't a great pilot, yet when it's the scenario you like, he magically can outfly the AI!" Thanks for pointing that out, internet strawman, because the solution for that issue is already in the game. NPC ranks.

I'm pretty sure it's already in the game that the lower NPC's get in rank, they worse they are at thruster use and staying in the blue zone, as well as them having crappier equipment. That might need to be exaggerated more, but it's a perfect mechanism to allow an unskilled combat pilot still take on and win vs opponents that don't just sit there and let you shoot them.

Basically, a better AI will actually make a large number of fights "easier" (in terms of the damage you take), although longer. Because with a better AI, once you have the advantage, you'd put your opponent on the defensive so they're less concerned about trying to shoot you, and more concerned about not getting shot and trying to regain a good position.

 

[HBK]

I am firmly in the "the AI needs to be buffed" camp but, as others have pointed out, that doesn't mean "I want fights to be harder", even though combat isn't really much of a challenge typically. I'd personally like them to be harder, sure, but that's not the goal of better AI.

...

While you make a very solid post, I'd argue that a "good" AI is neither a "realistic" AI, nor a "tough as nails" AI.

A "good" AI is an AI which makes the player feel good. They are here to serve (and be served if it pleases the player).

That's the real difficulty in setting up a good AI. It's not just a matter of having semi-realistic behavior, or interesting fights.

It's all about pleasing a large number of players (you can't please everyone).

That being said, you again make very valid points which would likely make the AI "good" at least in pleasing many combatant players.

 

[Aashenfox]

The thing is that a computer is very good at processing variables and reacting fast. Both things it can do MUCH MUCH faster than humans. So you have a choice to either slow down its decision making (tougher than it sounds) and make the behaviour more complex (holy grail of AI), or keep the behaviour simple, but allow them to be godlike at that one tactic. The result is that as soon as you learn not to stand and trade (the second rule of boxing too, coincidence? ) with an equivalent opponent, you've cracked it.

I'd personally prefer to continue to have the latter situation until more pressing game matters are sorted out (such as forcing people to play solo or PVP).