Increase USS lethality

[Maniac302]

It seems that Frontier has increased both the frequency and strength of enemies that show up at Unidentified Signal Sources, without listing it in the patchnotes.

I used to be able to just drop in on one and pick up materials in whatever ship I happened to be flying.

Now, if I`m not in a ship designed for combat, I either get severely damaged or destroyed, as hostile ships suddenly drop in and immediately open fire.
Even boosting away and charging fsd the moment they appear isn`t enough.

Sometimes they warn me, but open fire anyways, like the old dialogue has not been updated to match the new instant hostility.


Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[Biscuitannihilator]

Yes it seems to have increased the lethality of degraded emissions ( threat 0), since the update I've started to wait in a degraded emission uss for a few seconds to see if a nice joins me while waiting I target the nearest unexplored target , then if a npc appears I boost away and fire up the fsd to get away

 

[pnellesen]

Yup, been seeing this as well. If they've changed how these things work now, I wish they would acknowledge it - it was one thing to have a pirate drop in, scan your hold, see it was empty, and fly off wondering how we made a living, or else demanding a small "donation" from our cargo. It's another when 4 ships drop in 1ns after you deploy a limpet and light you up with no warning or scan or anything else.

Have there always been NPC murder-hobos, or are they a new thing?

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Yup, been seeing this as well. If they've changed how these things work now, I wish they would acknowledge it - it was one thing to have a pirate drop in, scan your hold, see it was empty, and fly off wondering how we made a living, or else demanding a small "donation" from our cargo. It's another when 4 ships drop in 1ns after you deploy a limpet and light you up with no warning or scan or anything else.

Have there always been NPC murder-hobos, or are they a new thing?

They've always been a thing, but they suddenly seem almost guaranteed to turn up now. It could be a bug rather than an intended change.

 

[Wyaston Hypatia]

Sounds similar to the salvage mission bug.

 

[KillaALF]

I've been in numerous USS (threat 0) since the patch dropped and in only one case have I been attacked. I can't be sure now, but I think in that one case I had a bunch of missions of the "hostile ships may be sent against you" variety on me. Other than that, these have been as tranquil as ever - drop in, fire off a couple of limpets, let them hoover up all the materials and leave, with not a soul in sight.

 

[pnellesen]

I can't recall for certain now, but I may have been at a USS in an Anarchy system in the bubble when that happened. I'm going to play around some more and see if there's any noticeable pattern, or if it's just RNG. I'm also wondering if the trigger is opening your cargo hatch or not - that seems to be consistent, I don't recall seeing the ships appear until after I do that. So drop in, send out limpets, wait for them to whine that the hatch isn't open, open hatch, load cargo, then high-wake out before murder-NPCs can finish me off

 

[Deacon Blues]

I'm new to the game so I don't know how it was before but yesterday I was attacked twice at two different USS. I had never actually done any combat before but I have armed my Python as much as possible. I was able to kill them both, and as a beginner, I would rate my combat skill as Sucks. So at least they don't appear to be bringing their A-game.

 

[Ziljan]

The game auto levels the difficulty of NPCs based on your ranks and actual performance, so it's not surprising that you were fine. I am triple elite and do quite well vs the toughest NPCs the game can generate.

Wherever frontier engages in power creep (as was done with 3.0 engineers) they also notch up the NPCs. This is what players are noticing, and once they get their ships to G5 then NPCs will be easy mode again.

I just finished G5 mods on my Chieftain's weapons, but my defense is still unengineered, and I can wipe out Threat 4 signal sources with ease.

 

[Askorti]

I've entered several threat 0 USS and haven't been attacked even once. Perhaps your assailants were due to missions or something?

 

[Deleted member 38366]

I can only recall a single (out of many! I've visited in V3 to scoop Mats) Degraded Threat 0 where a single Viper4 dropped in (I was in DBX).

Message was similar to the type "Hey that's out loot, don't touch that!", followed by it attacking.
But in like ~98% of all times, I found myself alone in the Signal Sources.

 

[pnellesen]

Ok, this was weird. I dropped into a system with a bunch of unexplored planets. Started doing some scans, and saw a "Degraded emissions" USS pop up. Dropped out, started looking at what was there, and an NPC pirate appears. He does his normal "Let's see what you have" (my hold was empty) and then the usual "Bah, why do I bother?" routine. I was flying away while he did this, and when he stopped I turned around thinking he would take off. However, suddenly he became hostile and states "I'm gonna boil you up!" then starts attacking me, unprovoked. I had to high-wake out to get away. (Note that I came back a couple minutes later to complete my scans, and was able to stop at 5 or 6 other USSs without incident. It does seem to have an element of RNG to it now...)