Seriously met my match tonight

Marc_Hicks

Marc_Hicks
Decided to log on & do a couple of missions, & saw an assassination mission paying out about 2m credits. The mission rank was higher than my current rank, but I thought "what the hell!" Boy, was that a mistake ;).

First of all, I learned that agents of my faction's competitors had been sent to thwart me, but I managed to reach the target without running into any other enemy ships. Then once I am in the Signal Source, I am suddenly set upon by a ship......whom I suspect is my mission target! Wrong! Turns out it is one of the ships sent against me.....& *boy* is he tough. For a while I got the better of him, but once my shields came down I was toast!

So I spend my 3m credits on my rebuy, & head back to Sobek for Round 2. This time the hostile ship interdicts me en route, & ends up trashing my ship seemingly faster than last time. My attempts to bring down his shields are thwarted by his clever use of SCB's.

So here I am, facing another 3m credit rebuy......for a mission worth 2m credits. Well I know when I am beat, so abandoned the mission.

See, though, that is the kind of thing I mean when I say mission difficulties should match mission rank. I bit off more than I could chew, & I paid a high price for it.....& it was a beautiful thing.

If only.more missions could replicate that!
 

Marc_Hicks

Marc_Hicks
GreyAreaUK said:
OP, completely agree. In order for a game to be properly fun (for me at least) you need to be able to lose.
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Precisely, it actually felt good-& humbling-to say "nope, sorry, I just can't do this". More missions need to carry this risk at the high end of the mission rank curve. Courier missions whose time limits could allow for failure, or smuggling missions that fail if you are *successfully* scanned. That kind of thing.
 

zombieapocalypse

zombieapocalypse
Sounds fun. I'd love to see very high paying but incredibly risky/dangerous missions appearing on the bulletin board. The kind of missions where you need to be at the top of your game just to have a chance at success.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Now you know why I get so annoyed at people saying hte AI is ineffectual. It's very good at the high levels and when it wants to be. Sure they are somewhat predictable, but being able to predict the end of the world doesn't make it any less devastating when it happens. ;)

Next time try a wetwork mission that says 'we need you to take care of someone for us' (as opposed to the one that says to go scan a planetary outpost first) that's valued at over 2m. I can do any level of assassination nowadays, I am now being thwarted by these. One I did last night was a Deadly Clipper and SIX sidewinders escort. Because it was an illegal mission, the police also turned up. It was 11 to 1 when my shields went down and I decided that discretion was the better part of valour.

One of these days I'll get my victory over one of these on video. Oh and by the way, I only fly medium and small ships, just to add to the challenge. :)
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Mission related NPCs can be sometimes though as nails. Sounds like fun (really). And losing is part of the game, otherwise what's the point of credit hoarding.
 

777Driver

777Driver
Have found the best way to deal with those assassination missions is to simply fit cascade & deepcut torpedos, admittedly easy mode but still satisfying one shotting opponent ships as large as a Corvette. I'll launch a fighter to distract the target, move to around 3km for the arming time, game over. Engineered torpedos are a bit too powerful against NPC's, but it works, I don't even use shields on the T-10 when going against a Corvette.

There is always a way to beat the computer.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Losing is a staple of MMOs, and it's what makes them great, as they force you to keep improving. We took literally 200 attempts to down heroic 10 man Sindragosa in WoW, the Lich King himself was easier I think. What a battle.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
777Driver said:
Have found the best way to deal with those assassination missions is to simply fit cascade & deepcut torpedos, admittedly easy mode but still satisfying one shotting opponent ships as large as a Corvette. I'll launch a fighter to distract the target, move to around 3km for the arming time, game over. Engineered torpedos are a bit too powerful against NPC's, but it works, I don't even use shields on the T-10 when going against a Corvette.

There is always a way to beat the computer.
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Indeed, but a victory based on a technique that the AI can't defend against is no victory at all. I feel the same about Thargoids, I haven't yet soloed one, because I'm trying to win a dogfight with them, instead of kiting them, so far I'm just not able to out-DPS them. But I won't kite 'em, cos I would feel no pride in the win.

Having said that, I really need ot try some torps. Never used em.
 

777Driver

777Driver
Aashenfox said:
Indeed, but a victory based on a technique that the AI can't defend against is no victory at all. I feel the same about Thargoids, I haven't yet soloed one, because I'm trying to win a dogfight with them, instead of kiting them, so far I'm just not able to out-DPS them. But I won't kite 'em, cos I would feel no pride in the win.

Having said that, I really need ot try some torps. Never used em.
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True, but I honeslty see no point in dogfighting or pecking away at the shields of an assassination target, as mentioned it does feel like cheating, but it does the job quickly. My all torp loadout is primarily for defence during a cooldown in open. I just haul cargo, not really interested in combat anymore, I pick up those assassination missions to vary things a bit on trade runs. If you get the arming distance correct, 8 torps in one volley will finish any large target, internals are completely wrecked.
 
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Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Aashenfox said:
Now you know why I get so annoyed at people saying hte AI is ineffectual.
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The AI is actually pretty decent at the top levels, in terms of flying the ships, especially in something like a FAS with a forgiving agility profile. It's got a lot better in the last few releases, too.

The problem it has is it's flying pretty terrible ships by player standards. My FDL can just sit and facetank an Elite NPC Anaconda, because I have far more shields than it does. My trade Python can pretty much do that, if it doesn't have a fighter, though it's closer. (But my trade Python has no SCBs - if I fitted one I'd still have a decent cargo hold and the Elite Anaconda would stand no chance in a face-tanking match)

Their ships have incoherent weapon selections, poor power priorities, limited and unsophisticated fitting of SCBs, HRPs, and MRPs, very limited engineering even at Elite rank, and a ridiculous number of point defenses when shield boosters would work better 99% of the time. Given those disadvantages the AI does a great job of flying them anyway ... but it's a long way behind the power levels a player can choose to bring.

Give the Elite NPCs fully A-rated G5 engineered ships with coherent builds (and some AI tweaks to let them use them, which will be handy for when people let the NPC crew fly their ship, too) and yes, they'll be a serious threat even to a high-end player ship. Of course, that would cause all sorts of issues for people who didn't have builds to match them, so it's not really practical to do for most things. (Assassination missions would be an ideal place for them, though)
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Ian Doncaster said:
The AI is actually pretty decent at the top levels, in terms of flying the ships, especially in something like a FAS with a forgiving agility profile. It's got a lot better in the last few releases, too.

The problem it has is it's flying pretty terrible ships by player standards. My FDL can just sit and facetank an Elite NPC Anaconda, because I have far more shields than it does. My trade Python can pretty much do that, if it doesn't have a fighter, though it's closer. (But my trade Python has no SCBs - if I fitted one I'd still have a decent cargo hold and the Elite Anaconda would stand no chance in a face-tanking match)

Their ships have incoherent weapon selections, poor power priorities, limited and unsophisticated fitting of SCBs, HRPs, and MRPs, very limited engineering even at Elite rank, and a ridiculous number of point defenses when shield boosters would work better 99% of the time. Given those disadvantages the AI does a great job of flying them anyway ... but it's a long way behind the power levels a player can choose to bring.

Give the Elite NPCs fully A-rated G5 engineered ships with coherent builds (and some AI tweaks to let them use them, which will be handy for when people let the NPC crew fly their ship, too) and yes, they'll be a serious threat even to a high-end player ship. Of course, that would cause all sorts of issues for people who didn't have builds to match them, so it's not really practical to do for most things. (Assassination missions would be an ideal place for them, though)
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Great post, but I say that FD do need to put ships in the game that the average player could not hope to defeat, and hang the complainers, but they do need to be appropriately contextual. For example, such a ship might come after you when you reach a million in bounties, they shouldn't pop up all over the place, that would be crazy and take away from the player's feeling of power.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
777Driver said:
True, but I honeslty see no point in dogfighting or pecking away at the shields of an assassination target, as mentioned it does feel like cheating, but it does the job quickly. My all torp loadout is primarily for defence during a cooldown in open. I just haul cargo, not really interested in combat anymore, I pick up those assassination missions to vary things a bit on trade runs. If you get the arming distance correct, 8 torps in one volley will finish any large target, internals are completely wrecked.
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I use it as cheap practice for pvp (and on one aspect it IS very good practice, despite the level of competition not being the same, one thing that the AI is even better than humans at, is keeping you in their weapons arc, so the more practice I have at staying out of NPC weapon arcs, while other players don't practice that so much, the bigger my positional advantage will be, but yeh, I do see why you just want to 'git 'er done' and move on.
 

Urbanski101

Urbanski101
The AI is fairly decent at times but I've noticed a few little hiccups with it and assassination missions in general.

So 90+% of the high paying (2m+) assassination missions are Corvettes. I've noticed that they only fire their 2 obligatory huge PA at the start of the fight and seem quite passive. They continue this behaviour until they actually land a shot with the PA, they then seem to wake up and all of their weapons start firing and they become far more aggressive with their flying. Not sure why that is but it is consistent behaviour with the vette targets.

I'd also like to see a little variety in the ships you face. I've never been up against anything other than a corvette in the high paying assassination missions for a while now, how about the odd conda or cutter? There are lots of combat capable ships in the game but I don't see them getting used much.

Also oddly enough I took a 500k assassination mission the other day and still got a corvette as the target? Normally it's a FAS or FDL, rarely but sometimes a Python...not sure how the RNG spat out a corvette for 500k.

I find them fairly easy in my FDL, the only issues occur when they ram me, then it's a tactical retreat to repair and come back for a reset.
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
When I was ranking up with the Feds at Tun I took a lot of Data missions. As I lifted off, the inbound enemy warning messages started rolling... I had 8 of em and most had at least 2 enemies attached to them. I jumped into the system and it was one interdiction after another, I decide to fight one and by the time I had his shields down 4 others had jumped in and I got the rebuy screen. It was a low security system and the cops showed up with popcorn and watched the fun. It sure did put the dangerous in Elite for me!
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Pville_Piper said:
When I was ranking up with the Feds at Tun I took a lot of Data missions. As I lifted off, the inbound enemy warning messages started rolling... I had 8 of em and most had at least 2 enemies attached to them. I jumped into the system and it was one interdiction after another, I decide to fight one and by the time I had his shields down 4 others had jumped in and I got the rebuy screen. It was a low security system and the cops showed up with popcorn and watched the fun. It sure did put the dangerous in Elite for me!
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I honestly don't mean to brag, but this happened to me as well once (only once cos I never let it happen again lol) I managed to kill three deadly anacondas in a pvp equipped FAS. I had 15% hull left when the last one popped and while repairing I ran out of time for the main target. GRRRRRRRR. Lol
 
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