3.0: Please get rid of ATR's "magic modules" - there are better solutions

Then how come the actual military does not use such weapons in conflict zones? Surely they'd at least use them on capital ships? Don't buy it. With regards to effectiveness, it is simply unnecessary. It has always been true that even against the toughest PvP ship, there is a magic number of ships that will be able to crack it. It is only a matter of how many. Furthermore, there are existing engineer mods and other modules such as grom missiles to augment their abilities. You don't need to give them god-modded ships.
Also, they can use something like reverberating cascade torps. Most players don't use them because each player has only one ship, and once they've used them that's half their loadout gone. However, NPCs have no such limitation. They can cycle vipers into the fight with reverberating cascade torps and just dump more ships as soon as they've spent their payload.



Did you not actually read my post?

Also, this won't help with seal-clubbing at all because the response times are still far too long. The seal clubbers will carry on just as they always have.

To be honest, I didn't. Lol
 
Okay smart guy what's your answer?

You have one but your thread title implies multiple solutions.

I expect five diverse different answers.

Yeah, how 'bout no?

The people demanded more effective policing. Welcome to the age of 2.1 reborn.

Now they just need to undo the interdiction change of 2.2 or somewhereabouts so people can't break free without trying and we're good.

The age of 2.1 reborn, with smart, engineered police would be wonderful. Sadly that is not what this is, unless you're for some reason referring to the blatantly bugged plasma accelerators with the firerate of a beam laser.
 
Because it can be effective without resorting to cheating modules. Or did you not actually read my post?

A high volume response, is no more realistic, nor inventive than an overwhelming one. I find it perfectly reasonable that the Authorities have higher grade tech than me, or us.

I can't see it making a difference, now. That conversation is long over.
 
A high volume response, is no more realistic, nor inventive than an overwhelming one. I find it perfectly reasonable that the Authorities have higher grade tech than me, or us.

I can't see it making a difference, now. That conversation is long over.

Yet the military doesn't use it for some reason, in conflict zones. Not even on capital ships. Don't buy it. It's a rationalization for a lazy solution.
 

Powderpanic

Banned
I think the noob murderers are just having a hissy fit because they can no longer murder noobs. :p

It's going to be hilarious.

Overpowered ATR FTW!

I'm personally looking forward to it, mainly for the mountains of salt that it will generate. Lol

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

Do you honestly believe this statement?

Wait for the Beyond drop, you are going to be unpleasantly surprised :) I promise :D

Making Murder Hobo'ing great again :)
 
Yet the military doesn't use it for some reason, in conflict zones. Not even on capital ships. Don't buy it. It's a rationalization for a lazy solution.

Trying to discuss this is a bit meta with obvious goals, so I will just stop right there.

Lazy solution? Hardly. AI programming and balancing gameplay is not lazy.

I guess you guys just want powerful ships en masse so you can fight them off for long time and not being forced run away (*cough* shield meta *chough*)

But design goal is to make you run away. That's all ATR will do. It will chase you out. They aren't endgame boss.

For that design they are designed exactly how they should be - small yet hard hitting forces with extra spice you can't counter. It is not a lazy design, it is EXACT design with goal to chase you out.
 
Yet the military doesn't use it for some reason, in conflict zones. Not even on capital ships. Don't buy it. It's a rationalization for a lazy solution.

Because they are a strike force kept in reserve for specific incidents (i.e. players). Of course, you can refuse to accept any explanation, as you are doing - but that is down to you being unreasonable, rather than the explanations themselves being lacking.

I'd suggest that all your complaints come down to the simple fact that you don't like the ATR. Which is fine. It doesn't mean that they are cheating, though, or that they "break immersion".
 

Powderpanic

Banned
Because they are a strike force kept in reserve for specific incidents (i.e. players). Of course, you can refuse to accept any explanation, as you are doing - but that is down to you being unreasonable, rather than the explanations themselves being lacking.

I'd suggest that all your complaints come down to the simple fact that you don't like the ATR. Which is fine. It doesn't mean that they are cheating, though, or that they "break immersion".

ORLY?

You don't think that if station guns on ships was a thing before P&P, that the capital ships and federal navy would be rocking them on their military ships in Conflict zones?

ED Concord its fine, but don't try and pretend it isn't a lazy fix that isn't going to have the desired affect anyway.
 
Trying to discuss this is a bit meta with obvious goals, so I will just stop right there.

Lazy solution? Hardly. AI programming and balancing gameplay is not lazy.

I guess you guys just want powerful ships en masse so you can fight them off for long time and not being forced run away (*cough* shield meta *chough*)

But design goal is to make you run away. That's all ATR will do. It will chase you out. They aren't endgame boss.

For that design they are designed exactly how they should be - small yet hard hitting forces with extra spice you can't counter. It is not a lazy design, it is EXACT design with goal to chase you out.


Once again, someone who clearly did not read my original post. IT. IS. NOT. NECESSARY. to give them magic weapons to accomplish this. There's always been a magic number of ships that will crack anything. There are also things like reverberating cascade, which in the hands of NPCs which spawn in endless waves do not have the limitation that they have with players of sacrificing too large a portion of your loadout.

Yes, they are lazy. They just threw all the normal rules of the game out the window because they couldn't think of a solution that works within those rules. If that isn't a lazy solution I don't know what is.

ORLY?

You don't think that if station guns on ships was a thing before P&P, that the capital ships and federal navy would be rocking them on their military ships in Conflict zones?

ED Concord its fine, but don't try and pretend it isn't a lazy fix that isn't going to have the desired affect anyway.

Exactly, lol. The notion that they'd hold something like this in reserve if they had the ability to easily defeat Corvette shields with a ship the size of a vulture is hilariously implausible.
 
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I'm with the OP, why can't they just be a wing of G5 engineered ships? Maybe not FDLs since NPCs cannot FDL at all, but vettes, vultures and vipers might make a good mix. I like the idea of reverb cascade torps (or mines, but I don't think the AI can mine).

If they did some tweaks to the AI behavior they could probably handle mines a bit better. Torps too. Combat in general.
 

Deleted member 38366

D
Personally, I've always been a fan of "Authority and Special Military Vessels can carry Military-Grade Equipment unavailable to civilians, including CMDRs of the Pilots Federation".

Given the "flexibility" the NPCs still need and their limitations, it's the only way to present a Threat capable of overcoming and containing even heavily Engineered Wings of Combat Players.

IMHO the biggest assistance any Criminal is getting is the "ATF arriving in XmXXs", which basically permits precision actions and -decisions and is a huge helping hand to avoid facing ATF.
For all I know, that's seriously fair enough.

I believe Targets never get a "Authority/Reinforcements arriving in XmXXs" Message when under attack.

PS.
I take it this C&P approach is heavy-handed because it has to be. We've seen too much epic fail in that regard for two entire Seasons spanning 3 full years. The original toxic Design Decision(tm) needs to be buried for good.
Plus, trust into the C&P System now has to be build from scratch. It must be durable and reliable to achieve this.

Having a more granular approach (less digital escalation means) will take time, but they're already thinking in the right direction.
System Authority still needs and might get Engineer Mods, maybe some of the original V2.1 logic in order to finally give those some teeth.

If the C&P System really works we'll see.
If Players are able to fly into Deciat or buzz around in Eravate or Shinrarta Dezhra without getting perma-Ganked anymore, we'll know it served its purpose.
If Ed(tm) is able to have a Livestream in Open and we witness a Wing of stream snipers getting hammered and blown up live (instead of seeing another Ed(tm) Rebuy moment)... we'll know it works.

After 3+ years of total Anarchy and a 100% fake pseudo C&P in place...
Time is now overdue for 3 years worth of retribution. So unleash the ATF and let them roam & rule the Galaxy. After these 3 years, there virtually is no such thing as "overpowering" ATF.
 
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Finally, I think it's entirely reasonable and expectable that the military have weaponry that's vastly more powerful than the civilian population. They're the military, for pity's sake, the actual military, not some snivelling ragtag mercenary "auxiliary navy" they let us affiliate ourselves with. It seems to me that they'd have some secret military-only weapons to be deployed against particularly nasty targets when the regular military gets overwhelmed, be they enemy military units or rogue civilians. If the "general public" on 21st century Earth drove around in horribly beweaponed personal battleships, I would expect my country's military to have advanced weaponry with enough firepower to be able to bring any psycho or criminal driving one into line. Else, what's the point in paying tax dollars and having a military at all?

But the ATR aren't the military, they are the police. We have been fighting military ships in CZs for a long time. Even specialist police divisions like the SWAT teams, although they bring out better kit than regular police divisions, would never bring out gear beyond what the military has access to. An argument could be made that they are equivalent to MI6 or the CIA, but that level of force doesn't get involved with rampant property damage (which is technically what the majority of "murders" in the game are, due to escape pods being a thing) and as such tend to be reserved for things like high-profile assassinations and terrorist plots (the sort of stuff that belongs in missions).

If they wanted the ATRs crazy spec ships to be passed off as mere police, they should at very least make the CZ ships in a similar vein except more powerful.

Realistically, what they should do for ATR ships is to make a first wave of smaller survey ships that scan the offenders and then report to the main command what sort of ships we are using, keeping track of the offenders while fighting defensively. Then the second wave (and possibly 3rd wave onwards depending on the threat of the target) of actual combatants appears that are all tuned using G3ish mods plus specials that are all tuned perfectly towards countering the offending ships. Duracell Python? Good thing the ATR keeps a reserve of feedback cascade rails. All kinetic loadout that forgot the incendiary mods? Expect ATR ships with incredibly high kinetic resistance on their armour and shields. 8x SB stacking juggernaut with plenty of SCBs? Expect reverb cascade torpedo boats to be turning up. Reasonable shields but with plenty of point defence and ECM? They'll bring out the phasing sequence lasers to ignore your shields and whittle you away. Missile boating away? Expect wings of ships heavily laden with ECMs and PDs. Stealth running build that relies upon hull tanking? Good thing that thermal shock, thermal cascade and emissive are things in the game. By using the hard counters available in the game and the limited build options for a single ship (a ship that tries to generalise wouldn't be particularly strong at anything), the ATR could become an effective threat while also remaining technically weak.
 
They already have the "harder" AI already. It worked. The carebears cried. It got nerfed. Restore it, add an extra 50% and G5 modules, give them FDL's and Condas, and bingo - working ATR thats actually realistic. Effort: as negligible as restoring a retired code fork.
 
There are other ways to make cops tough without giving them modules that don't actually exist. You don't need to artificially inflate their stats. You have other tools already at your disposal that would make them just as effective.

I know some people will say, "was expecting CONCORD, got CONCORD," but honestly I do not think it is the right solution for Elite. I've always liked that Elite didn't really make a distinction between the players in the universe and the NPCs. You're just some random pilot flying your ship. Every tool that was available to an NPC, was also available to you, and vice versa (although they did tone down NPC engineering because people didn't like it for some reason.) Suddenly throwing in super-cops with artificially inflated stats breaks that. Really, all they'd have to do to achieve the same effect would be 1) increase the numbers and 2) give them real engineered weapons that actually already exist in the game, not magic pulse lasers and nigh-invincible shields.


For example, send in eight wings of fully engineered FDLs based on current PvP builds, backed up by a few wings of engineered Corvettes/Cutters/Anacondas and a few wings of speed-vipers equipped with reverberating cascade torps that maneuver in front of you and bomb you. Then give them half the current response time for good measure.


So really, it's not the fact that ATR are super tough that I take issue with; it's that they achieved that by giving them magic modules when there are more creative solutions that do not destroy immersion that I take issue with.

Last I checked, statwise these are just G5 engineered ships, the only 'magic' involved seems be shield disabling lasers?

If they are just G5 engineered ships then yeah they aren't "magical", has anyone been able to get ANY confirmation in this regard? because there seems to be a lot of speculation but not enough facts?

They already have the "harder" AI already. It worked. The carebears cried. It got nerfed. Restore it, add an extra 50% and G5 modules, give them FDL's and Condas, and bingo - working ATR thats actually realistic. Effort: as negligible as restoring a retired code fork.

harder AI?

the harder AI is here now, if you saw 1.0 ai now you'd die laughing at how easy it was.
They didn't remove anything from the AI they only removed engineered weapons which was what people were upset about. NOT the ai.
 
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