Ai was buffed to behave like humans in beta of 2.1, they were not easy to fight and you couldn't farm them, people with no combat ability died to them and cried about it. It got removed in the next beta phase.
3.0: Please get rid of ATR's "magic modules" - there are better solutions
- Thread starter Elethiomel Zakalwe
- Start date
Ai was buffed to behave like humans in beta of 2.1, they were not easy to fight and you couldn't farm them, people with no combat ability died to them and cried about it. It got removed in the next beta phase.
Top-end ships can easily have hull integrity in that ballpark and will survive ATR long enough to make kills on soft targets and then escape, even if ATR engages the aggressor immediately.
So can pretty much every ship I've ever built.
They aren't, even with their reverberating cascade lasers.
This was brought up essentially the day the beta started.
I don't agree.
Better AI would easily trump the weapons they have in effectiveness.
The problem with ATR is that they aren't really more effective because they didn't really improve upon any of the real problems with security, which are as follows:
1. Lack of instance-to-instance persistence.
2. Too reactive, instead of proactive.
3. Poor tactics.
I think the noob murderers are just having a hissy fit because they can no longer murder noobs.
Do you really think if I decide to have my CMDR 'murder noobs' that ATR could even slow me down?
The day 3.0 goes live I'll have a 640m/s Clipper that is 100m/s faster than any ATR vessel and that will survive upwards of a full minute of concentrated ATR fire before having to wake away...that's about six times as long as most noobs would last against said clipper. If ATR shows up the moment I open fire on someone, they are still going to be destroyed, and I am still going to get away, essentially every time.
That gets repeated a lot.... but isn't at all true. There was never a mythical super-AI in 2.1. They merely gave the existing AI engineered ships and weapons to use, combined with a wonderful bug that meant NPCs had crazy weapon combos such as Multi-Cannons where every round had the damage of a torpedo.
When they fixed the bug they also decided to remove the engineer mods from NPCs too.
Do you honestly believe this statement?
Wait for the Beyond drop, you are going to be unpleasantly surprised
Making Murder Hobo'ing great again
Again, being honest, no. Lol
I might venture in to Open in some sort of murderhobo-bait Anaconda, and see what happens. Lol
It's just a shame I can't falsify my Deadly combat rank back down to Harmless.
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Magic modules are a silly, cheap choice to implement ATR. You don't need to cheapen your game design by doing this.
When a wing of 4 enemy PvPers drop on me, I know I'm in trouble. Depending on who I'm winged with, I already know I may not get out alive. My heartrate is 120 and the adrenaline is going. That's with regular ships available to players. You can create this level of challenge with ATR too.
Use hand-crafted builds, not procedurally generated stuff. Teach them to use cascade rails and superpens, shooting off our shields and then sniping our FSD so we can't get out. Have a wing of ATR with who collaborate to focus down a target, using complementary weapon loadouts (one with a cascade, one with an FSD reboot missile, etc). Have various 'tiers' of ATR depending on the crime level, starting with a wing of 4, going up to multiple wings and as the OP suggested, adding heavy ships.
FDev already has the tools to do this. Putting in ludicrous "cannot be beaten" superships is silly and unnecessary, and not to mention massively immersion breaking. If humanity has these super ships, we'd just use them against the Thargoids, ruining your story about humanity's struggle.
I fully agree with C&P consequences for player kills, and I think a tough police response (in civilized high security space) is appropriate. But let's avoid magic unkillable super ships.
When a wing of 4 enemy PvPers drop on me, I know I'm in trouble. Depending on who I'm winged with, I already know I may not get out alive. My heartrate is 120 and the adrenaline is going. That's with regular ships available to players. You can create this level of challenge with ATR too.
Use hand-crafted builds, not procedurally generated stuff. Teach them to use cascade rails and superpens, shooting off our shields and then sniping our FSD so we can't get out. Have a wing of ATR with who collaborate to focus down a target, using complementary weapon loadouts (one with a cascade, one with an FSD reboot missile, etc). Have various 'tiers' of ATR depending on the crime level, starting with a wing of 4, going up to multiple wings and as the OP suggested, adding heavy ships.
FDev already has the tools to do this. Putting in ludicrous "cannot be beaten" superships is silly and unnecessary, and not to mention massively immersion breaking. If humanity has these super ships, we'd just use them against the Thargoids, ruining your story about humanity's struggle.
I fully agree with C&P consequences for player kills, and I think a tough police response (in civilized high security space) is appropriate. But let's avoid magic unkillable super ships.
You can ask support for a one time reset of your combat rank.
Actually you are at least partially incorrect. AI in general was a lot better, using smart tactics such as retreating to recover shields, banking early, and in general flying better. Combined with the engineer mods, it made them a lot better. The actual bug was that (and my description is imperfect) weapon attributes were somehow merged with other modules such that certain weapons sometimes had properties of both (all?) modules. For example we had railguns and plasma accelerators with the firerate of beam lasers. Yes, they cooked themselves, but they killed you long before it started to matter.
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Hello, Mr Zakalwe.
As much as I'd prefer to see more 'realistic' solutions to many things in ED, I have to concur with the view generally expressed here: it's difficult to see what will be effective against the most hardened players that doesn't in some way involve 'cheating' AI.
As Morbad and others have noted, it seems unlikely that the ATRs will be entirely effective against the most dangerous players. If FD can't bring down the Potters and Morbads with the ATRs, then it seems inevitable that they'll eventually have to up the ante anyway - so even if they'd started with fully-plausible ATRs, they'd surely still have to reach for the magic weapons later.
Your own solutions thus far don't seem to be any more convincing in this regard. If you have a suggestion that seems (a) workable and (b) likely to bring down top-end players, then I invite you to share it. Otherwise, this entire debate is somewhat moot, is it not? Realism in this area is self-evidently irrelevant, if it's doomed to be abandoned, sooner or later.
All of that's not to say that the ATRs are unwelcome or non-useful. They may not be fully effective against Morbad, but the rest of the community's another matter. The average ganker's not much of a ship-builder or a pilot, from what I hear. If they feel the impact, then it's all to the good.
In any case, times change and even the best pilots make errors. Sooner or later, Morbad will make a mistake - or FD will throw something harder at him - and he'll lose. He'll wake up in a detention centre and lose a sizeable portion of his shirt paying off bounties. Just like everyone else.
Whatever else happens, it seems like great justice is just around the corner.
As much as I'd prefer to see more 'realistic' solutions to many things in ED, I have to concur with the view generally expressed here: it's difficult to see what will be effective against the most hardened players that doesn't in some way involve 'cheating' AI.
As Morbad and others have noted, it seems unlikely that the ATRs will be entirely effective against the most dangerous players. If FD can't bring down the Potters and Morbads with the ATRs, then it seems inevitable that they'll eventually have to up the ante anyway - so even if they'd started with fully-plausible ATRs, they'd surely still have to reach for the magic weapons later.
Your own solutions thus far don't seem to be any more convincing in this regard. If you have a suggestion that seems (a) workable and (b) likely to bring down top-end players, then I invite you to share it. Otherwise, this entire debate is somewhat moot, is it not? Realism in this area is self-evidently irrelevant, if it's doomed to be abandoned, sooner or later.
All of that's not to say that the ATRs are unwelcome or non-useful. They may not be fully effective against Morbad, but the rest of the community's another matter. The average ganker's not much of a ship-builder or a pilot, from what I hear. If they feel the impact, then it's all to the good.
In any case, times change and even the best pilots make errors. Sooner or later, Morbad will make a mistake - or FD will throw something harder at him - and he'll lose. He'll wake up in a detention centre and lose a sizeable portion of his shirt paying off bounties. Just like everyone else.
Whatever else happens, it seems like great justice is just around the corner.
Hello, Mr Zakalwe.
As much as I'd prefer to see more 'realistic' solutions to many things in ED, I have to concur with the view generally expressed here: it's difficult to see what will be effective against the most hardened players that doesn't in some way involve 'cheating' AI.
As Morbad and others have noted, it seems unlikely that the ATRs will be entirely effective against the most dangerous players. If FD can't bring down the Potters and Morbads with the ATRs, then it seems inevitable that they'll eventually have to up the ante anyway - so even if they'd started with fully-plausible ATRs, they'd surely still have to reach for the magic weapons later.
Your own solutions thus far don't seem to be any more convincing in this regard. If you have a suggestion that seems (a) workable and (b) likely to bring down top-end players, then I invite you to share it. Otherwise, this entire debate is somewhat moot, is it not? Realism in this area is self-evidently irrelevant, if it's doomed to be abandoned, sooner or later.
All of that's not to say that the ATRs are unwelcome or non-useful. They may not be fully effective against Morbad, but the rest of the community's another matter. The average ganker's not much of a ship-builder or a pilot, from what I hear. If they feel the impact, then it's all to the good.
In any case, times change and even the best pilots make errors. Sooner or later, Morbad will make a mistake - or FD will throw something harder at him - and he'll lose. He'll wake up in a detention centre and lose a sizeable portion of his shirt paying off bounties. Just like everyone else.
Whatever else happens, it seems like great justice is just around the corner.
What Morbad is saying is not that they won't be effective against the most dangerous players. He is saying that as they are, they won't be effective against any players. That is because the problem with the authority ships is fundamentally different from what Frontier and most people here seem to think it is. No amount of god-modding will fix that because that is not the nature of the problem.
The problem is, as Morbad noted:
Cops, including the ATR, show up too late to be of any use in fixing "seal clubbing". Instead of just waiting around for someone to do something naughty, they need to actively chase wanted players out of their systems. They need instance-to-instance persistance for that. They also need better tactics and existing engneer mods, such as feedback cascading SCBs, mass lock munitions, etc. If you give them those three things there is simply no need for god-modded super cops. Trust me, there really isn't.
We got Engineers, they got ATR. What's the issue?
I am aware of this, I was there, there were two main problems, their equipment, and then their tendency to run away to get shields back.
Equipment was removed so they had no engineered parts, and their tendency to run away was curbed a bit. but other then that AI is the same now.
Because magical super-cops are a stupid, lazy mechanic. Also, who is "they"? The engineering changes will be good for everyone.
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To add some corroborating circumstantial evidence, I left the bubble in Oct 2016, partly because I was fed up with being regularly interdicted by Elite Anacondas. I returned to port in December 2017 (obviously in with the exact same ship & loadout) and the Elite Anacondas are still pretty well the same challenge as before once you are in normal space.
The difference is that they no longer spawn right behind you in supercruise, and other improbable spawn magic is less obvious, so they are easier to avoid if you are paying attention.
The AI remains essentially unchanged from 2.1, only the loadouts have changed including the ATR apparently.
It would be interesting to know whether the Thargoid AI is also 'just a different loadout' or actually different, I've never seen one in-game.
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Never personally seen a thargoid either (no interest) but from what I've seen of them they're fundamentally different beasts than normal NPCs. Their attack patterns and the attacks themselves seem to be at least partially scripted.
here's my suggestion for solution.
Corvettes, Pythons and Vultures Armed with a new module... LARGE & Huge Railguns! Something we have been asking for for a long time.
Here's an outlandish idea, that in theory sounds like a good idea.... Large & Huge Railguns being unique, offering a new Experimental... Reverberating cascade. Considering this would be a shield buster, it should be effected negatively, just as Feedback cascade, in terms of overall damage.
ATR should NOT have "magic modules" that can pick apart your shield generator as the stations do. Just send in better armed ships.
Corvettes, Pythons and Vultures Armed with a new module... LARGE & Huge Railguns! Something we have been asking for for a long time.
Here's an outlandish idea, that in theory sounds like a good idea.... Large & Huge Railguns being unique, offering a new Experimental... Reverberating cascade. Considering this would be a shield buster, it should be effected negatively, just as Feedback cascade, in terms of overall damage.
ATR should NOT have "magic modules" that can pick apart your shield generator as the stations do. Just send in better armed ships.
Yeah, though I think the bigger problem was the number of bugs - like the multi-cannon style PA's and Rails that NPC's had. I think the Beta for 2.1 - v4 was the best AI I have ever dealt with. Yeah, they ran, but it just taught you to pick the right targets and use the right weapons for said targets.
I think most folk would well and truly struggle with an NPC equipped with an reasonably G5 engineered ship with a few choice special affects.
I think "Elite" ranked NPC's should, in general, be armed this way, and behave like the 2.1 Beta 4 AI.
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