Poll about NPC rights

[CMDR Pugwash]

I definitely agree with your second sentence, but I do not understand your use of the term magic in this context. I assume you mean it to be a derogatory term.
In the context of the game engineers provide technical upgrades to our systems.
These are just as 'magical' as the original unmodded weapons. It is all digital coded magic.

LOL. Yeah you got me. I call them the wizards and their upgrades magic because the whole system has been lifted from a Dungeons and Dragons style game. All they have done is change the names around. If any logical thinking had been applied then we would be able to pop our space ships into the space equivalent of Kwik Fit and pay cash for the improvement that we seek. Instead we must embark on a quest for the wizard so that he will grant us his magic charm.

I understand that were looking for a way to counter all the money some people have but this is not a good solution.

Slightly leading question as I, like Mike, think that engineering is vastly out of hand already. And when it comes to combat then you basically have no choice but to do it.

I'd say NPCs should use it more, but not start until Master, go up 1 grade at a time and no G5 mods.

Master - Grade 1 mods
Dangerous - Grade 2 mods
Deadly - Grade 3 mods
Elite - Grade 4 mods

Ideally it would only spawn engineered ships if you were in a ship carrying weapons, not sure how much of a stretch that would be.



NPCs already do use engineered modules

I don't think so. Unless that's changed recently.

 

[Ozric]

I don't think so. Unless that's changed recently.

They have done since Engineers were introduced They were reduced in 2.1.03 so that only Deadly and Elite ships use them for the most part.

- Reduced the number of engineer mods on AI ships substantially, now only Deadly & Elite rank ships are guaranteed to have mods and any below Master are guaranteed to have none

 

[RamirezKurita]

I'd like to see the NPCs use the full range of stuff, but not to use engineered stuff by default. Give Elite enemies the full range of G5 mods with all the special effects but make them appropriately rare, while the lower grade mods can filter down to the upper-middle ranks like master and dangerous, and the little G1 mods would be fairly common among the middle ranks.

Elite NPCs should give full PvP kits a run for their money ideally, they should represent the greatest pilots available. They could even make Elite NPCs persistently named and equipped, with each faction, superpower, and system having its own little selection of elite NPC pilots (so a faction could have a large named NPC ship, 2 medium named ones that appear as a wing or a little named squadron of 4 small ships. If they really wanted to be smart about it, they could even program some kind of basic self-learning reequipping code where each Elite keeps track of it's K/D ratio (or even rebuy vs rebuy ratio to keep things consistent) and they either alter a random piece of gear or revert to a previous setup depending on their performance.​

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

They have done since Engineers were introduced They were reduced in 2.1.03 so that only Deadly and Elite ships use them for the most part.

Noooooooooooooooooooooo....

I just knew you sounded informed and were about to pull out some of those pesky facts.

Last time I had this conversation someone equally informed proved the opposite. That was a while ago though because I have been out in the black. Think I'll victual up and cast off my lines once again.

 

[Cosmo]

Adapting this philosophy for game balance would inevitably have to include changes to mission structures and payouts. I still think it's the only way to actually get 'a living, breathing galaxy'.'

Mass Effect has a living breathing world, because its populated with lots of detailed and interactive NPCs. The environments such as the Citadel are limited, but it feels alive due to the vehicle traffic and NPC characters. ED would feel more alive if there were NPC populations in stations and planetary bases as well.

Behind the scenes stuff won't change the perception of the world.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Although this might sound good, the skill difference between cmdrs is huge.
I do believe that we can't do without adaptive npc skills.
But judging the skill by combat rank of players is completely insufficient.
The Elite combat rank means very little. For most of us it only means we played long enough to have killed enough (very often with the assistance of authority vessels).

They could quite easily make NPCs a viable challenge without simply resorting to some kind of autoadjust. The world of Elite is very broad and there's a massive variety of potential ways of encountering enemies, so it would simply be a matter of balancing the likely enemies with the areas you face. The issue with the current game is that the whole game's difficulty is far too condensed, where the "hard" difficulty sections are still considered to be fairly easy. This would allow players to choose their relative risk without any kind of stupid scaling, newbies would play carefully by taking the safe options while those with kitted out military ships can throw caution to the wind and venture into most places.

They could, for example, make NPCs scale much more with missions or with cargo value (using local value for cargo value, not galactic average), so a trader dealing in bulk but mostly worthless goods wouldn't be worth the time of any but the most useless pirate, meanwhile the usual Imperial Slave runs that many players favour would see players being attacked by some fairly serious opposition. Similarly, a courier mission to deliver 50 tonnes of cargo for 50 million credits would attract the attention of pretty much every high-rank NPC in the area. Adding in states beyond anarchy to represent complete control by criminal elements would be great for bounty hunters, but beware the wings of enforcers that come down upon you the moment the local cartels find out that you are packing a KWS. CZs could have intensities added beyond high to represent the most influential and climactic battles in a given war, which would be populated by appropriately threatening NPCs.

 

[Riverside]

Noooooooooooooooooooooo....

I just knew you sounded informed and were about to pull out some of those pesky facts.

Last time I had this conversation someone equally informed proved the opposite. That was a while ago though because I have been out in the black. Think I'll victual up and cast off my lines once again.

If it helps I regularly get attacked by Elite Anacondas when near civilisation & haven't seen any obvious signs they use engineered weapons. Maybe thrusters or something less obvious.

I left the bubble before 2.2 (I was around 6kLy away when the beta arrived) and returned to dock (in Colonia) in the exact same ship & loadout I left with in December 2017. The Elite Anacondas are about the same as before once you are fighting them, the threat & damage isn't noticeably different (and I haven't been practicing combat). They are much easier to see coming in supercruise though, which I'm happy about. We still have the 'glorious new AI' introduced in 2.1.

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

If it helps I regularly get attacked by Elite Anacondas when near civilisation & haven't seen any obvious signs they use engineered weapons. Maybe thrusters or something less obvious.

I left the bubble before 2.2 (I was around 6kLy away when the beta arrived) and returned to dock (in Colonia) in the exact same ship & loadout I left with in December 2017. The Elite Anacondas are about the same as before once you are fighting them, the threat & damage isn't noticeably different (and I haven't been practicing combat). They are much easier to see coming in supercruise though, which I'm happy about. We still have the 'glorious new AI' introduced in 2.1.

Yeah man, I'm being dramatic. I fully intended to go back out anyway. I just came back to try different ship setups.

 

[CMDR Redcrest]

When the code is sentient, such as in a recent episode of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror, then we'll discuss NPC rights.

 

[Shadowed]

2.1 beta gave NPC's engineered modules. It quickly went away....

 

[Louis Calvert]

In the beta section of the forum there are tons of discunions about buffs, nerfs, grandfathering, engineering and what not.

In one thread I put forward the following statement:

'Plenty of aspects(of the game) need to be adjusted for players to stop being a master race and become part of the galaxy.

NPCs in general(not just ATR and Thargoids), should have equal opportunity to access equipment. It is fairly obvious that what players currently have access to, is to much.

We need to think: How good(well equipped) should the NPCs I encounter be allowed to be?

That's how good we should be allowed to be.

Adapting this philosophy for game balance would inevitably have to include changes to mission structures and payouts. I still think it's the only way to actually get 'a living, breathing galaxy'.'


I just wanted to know how the community feels about this?

Do you say:

A: NPCs should be allowed equal opportunity and I'm willing to take quite a bit of nerfing and restrictions to get there.

or

B: I payed good money and worked hard for my stuff. I deserve better stuff than a simple block of code.


Your choice.


Source of original discunion: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...out-shields!?p=6357570&viewfull=1#post6357570

Option A all the way.

 

[Faybs]

In the beta section of the forum there are tons of discunions about buffs, nerfs, grandfathering, engineering and what not.

In one thread I put forward the following statement:

'Plenty of aspects(of the game) need to be adjusted for players to stop being a master race and become part of the galaxy.

NPCs in general(not just ATR and Thargoids), should have equal opportunity to access equipment. It is fairly obvious that what players currently have access to, is to much.

We need to think: How good(well equipped) should the NPCs I encounter be allowed to be?

That's how good we should be allowed to be.

Adapting this philosophy for game balance would inevitably have to include changes to mission structures and payouts. I still think it's the only way to actually get 'a living, breathing galaxy'.'


I just wanted to know how the community feels about this?

Do you say:

A: NPCs should be allowed equal opportunity and I'm willing to take quite a bit of nerfing and restrictions to get there.

or

B: I payed good money and worked hard for my stuff. I deserve better stuff than a simple block of code.


Your choice.


Source of original discunion: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...out-shields!?p=6357570&viewfull=1#post6357570

Let us know when MIT's black mesa AI division can come up with something that doesn't need to be an aimbot to survive against mediocre human players, and then we can talk.

 

[kofeyh]

which is another thing which needs to be looked at. Elite ships are meant to be like hens teeth, and is the entire point of the name Elite : Dangerous.

Frontier has to support a broad range of capabilities; there are elite combat pilots who attained that AFK farming in Res/ CZ. Player Rank is a meaningless statistic (it's cumulative and only ever goes up until elite). Even Frontier understand this, even if they steadfastly refuse to admit it. Besides; there's no motivation to actually bother with combat proficiency, which only makes the situation worse.

In fact, AI should have very little relevance to the player rank; rather, the system security players are in, and the things players are doing. There is "the great fear" that challenging AI, under reasonable circumstances, isn't reasonable. The game has a foundation of limp AI performance. So the defacto of hopeless morons is maintained.

AI should be contextual, based on a set of factors. Not a silly number, just what is the commander doing (mission ranks are relevant here, as is criminality) what is the security of the system, how much repetition has there been, and lastly what is the player rank.

So for example if I am trying to run some very dodgy cargo, I face some stiff risk from hardcore pirates, but the payoff is disgusting in return. Plenty of close calls, lots of brown trouser alerts (and just a lot of fun). Or it could be a low paying, but low risk job I can stack just a bunch of, and make money over time. The classic tortoise with stable income, hare risking it all.

A whole range of stuff between "i am hopeless, be nice" to "i am become death, come at me br0" with scaling returns. Gives people some wiggle room to work out their engagement factor. As in; the AI is keyed to the situation, not the commander. Player's will still be the great unknown, but people are so used to doormat AI, anything even close to a peep out of them and the sky is falling and we will all die in five seconds.

There's just no consideration for a range of encounters, that are keyed with mission type, security, level of nefariousness and various other elements, so folks can find their relative spot. So that the occasional brown-trouser moment, isn't any more unreasonable as it as a righteous beating handed down to a hapless AI in the wrong place.

A range of encounters, that match what we are doing. With player rank used as a modifier. Right now, the game assumes people will never essential achieve any proficiency above 'most harmless', but then applies that across the board, regardless of commander proficiency.

Other games achieve this having varying areas with difficulties tagged to them. Frontier can do the same thing. Anarchy. Low Sec. High Sec. Combinations of moving between, or within.

There has to be a better way, than what we have; the one-size-fits-all AI is just - it's not good.

 

[Harley Quinn]

In the beta section of the forum there are tons of discunions about buffs, nerfs, grandfathering, engineering and what not.

In one thread I put forward the following statement:

'Plenty of aspects(of the game) need to be adjusted for players to stop being a master race and become part of the galaxy.

NPCs in general(not just ATR and Thargoids), should have equal opportunity to access equipment. It is fairly obvious that what players currently have access to, is to much.

We need to think: How good(well equipped) should the NPCs I encounter be allowed to be?

That's how good we should be allowed to be.

Adapting this philosophy for game balance would inevitably have to include changes to mission structures and payouts. I still think it's the only way to actually get 'a living, breathing galaxy'.'


I just wanted to know how the community feels about this?

Do you say:

A: NPCs should be allowed equal opportunity and I'm willing to take quite a bit of nerfing and restrictions to get there.

or

B: I payed good money and worked hard for my stuff. I deserve better stuff than a simple block of code.


Your choice.


Source of original discunion: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...out-shields!?p=6357570&viewfull=1#post6357570

We are supposed to have a bit of an advantage being members of the pilots federation while most NPCs are not, but I see your point.

However as NPCs trying to stop me delivering stuff can run away with 10% hull only to be waiting for me in SC in a new ship, or get left in my wake only to somehow make it to my target destination before me, they do get some advantages.

I know that’s the way RNG spawning works but chasing off the same NPC 3 times, running low on ammo with Hull damage only to find them attacking you again in a new ship is an equaliser.

 

[V'larr]

I vote A, just so it will highlight how horribly bad power creep is.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

We are supposed to have a bit of an advantage being members of the pilots federation while most NPCs are not, but I see your point. .

i would argue being 100% invincible is quite the advantage

 

[Harley Quinn]

i would argue being 100% invincible is quite the advantage

Yep too much. But it can vary the other way too, I get regularly pulled by Elite or Deadly NPCs in Conda no matter what I’m flying. Hauler v Elite Conda, sorry I’m not even close to that good and definitely not 100% invincible.

Same ship or smaller. Ok pretty safe then.

Multiple ships of same size or greater, if in Cutter or combat fit should be ok but not other fits.

Yes NPCs should be improved, but not at noob level and with some scaling changes for higher. Meanwhile I can tell by simple scanning if an easy fight, hard or something to run from every time.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

I' sorry if this answer develops into a wall of text, but the OP's question cannot be answered in isolation, there are too many other variables tied into the galaxy to make such a binary choice workable. Allow me to explain what I mean by that...

Nerfing players kit is never going to fly, so all we could do to give NPC's equality would be to allow them access to the same sort of stuff we have. However just implementing that change on its own without a rake of checks and balances would also open a whole can of worms. Primarily NPC's are spawned for combat, and they are mostly in combat meta ships, and their combat rank is scaled to the players highest pilots federation rank, not necessarily combat just the highest. So if we take for example a harmless carebare elite trader and explorer who doesnt know the difference between a multicannon and a frag cannon, they will get mauled by elite npc's because of their pilots federation ranks in trade and exploration. But if we give NPC's access to high level engineered modules, just because theres nothing saying sid carebare explorotrader couldn't get engineered modules, said Dangerous/Deadly/Elite NPC's they will virtually one shot insta kill said trader/explorer. Which would clearly not be working as intended.

While I accept the idea that as we get better at the game it should get more difficult and thus remain entartining by virtue of staying challenging, as a triple elite CMDR, I'm sick of the sight of elite FDL's and 'Conda's interdicting me because I'm elite and in a big ship. If "Elite" really means best of the best, then we should only rarely see those ranks in NPC's, and when we do see them they should be truly formidable, and at that point we can unlock the engineering toybox for them to have some truly formidable ships. But while nearly every NPC that high ranking CMDR's encounter is a high rank, then giving the NPC's engineered modules would end up being a bit OP and force high ranked players to stay in flying fortresses.

To protect less combat proficient CMDR's from the murdering elite NPC's in their engineered ships there should be a cap on the combat rank of NPC's they see that scales up with the CMDRs rank. That is not what we have now, which is CMDR highest rank = NPC combat rank, and any big ship, even peaceful ones such as an exploro conda, or a trade cutter, will be met with a combat fit fer de lance or frigate spec annaconda. Possible exceptions to the cap should be in place, such as assassination targets - it wouldnt really make sense to have a mostly harmless pirate lord now would it, hazres and CZ's where you'd expect capable adversaries, but every wannabe pirate spamming the trader with interdictions shouldn't be totally beyond the CMDR's ability.

As a happy medium I'd like to see the likelyhood of higher ranked NPC's spawning logarythmically scaled down, and those that do spawn have ever increasing access to engineered modules, basically this is plausible as the longer they are fighting their way up the combat ranks the better equipment they will pick up along that journey. Similarly the diminishing numbers of them towards the top ranks would also make sense as just based on probability they will have lead more dangerous lifestyles to gain those ranks, and the higher exposure to danger would mean a higher chance of getting killed in action.

So if we bundle all of the above changes into a package at the same time then I'm all for it, as those changes collectively dovetail to form a balanced but challenging galaxy that scales with player ability. However if the choice is restricted to the simple binary A/B choice in the op's question of give ~NPC's all the toys or not, to try and keep some sort of balance in this game I'd say let the npc's do without.

 

[trollson]

It should be a fundamental goal of any MMRPG to make PCs and NPCs indistinguishable. It may be a long way off, but it is something to aim for.

 

[sollisb]

Couple of issues with this;

1. Not all players have Horizons, so there-fore do not have engineer access
2. Not all Elite players are of equal skill
3. Any AI created Elite NPC will simply beat you to death.

Right now, the AI is a farce. What makes the challenge is trying to beat the module strength added on by devs.

The game should be balanced [sic] to allow any player get to Elite rankings. After that they should be able to go to tougher sites to challenge themselves. But, as is the way in Fdev, they just up the modules in all ships. This means Horizons is 'pay to complete' because no player in a non engineered ship is going to be able to take on an Elite NPC Ship with an SLF. It's a pretty basic concept, one employed by every other MMO except FDev... Expansions add higher challenging areas. FDev just add boss mobs to low level areas.

Until they fix that garbage, it'll never be balanced.