How well do npc crew members fly/fight in your main ship?

[Kenpachi85]

Sup everyone I was wondering how well npc crew members can perform in a mothership vs a slf. My co pilot somehow passed me up in rank and is now dangerous while I'm still competent and was thinking of handing her control and taking a slf out for a spin sometimes. It's weird cause she was harmless when I got her and I was mostly harmless and even with me doing 99% of the killing she now outranks me:S. Figure if she's such a hotshot now I ought to be able to trust her with the helm sometimes huh? If that sounds risky though I'll have her stick to distracting other ships with a slf which is mostly what she does right now.

 

[metatheurgist]

They perform just as well as any other NPC of the same rank. Use that as your measure. Can you fly better than an NPC you're attacking at that rank? Would you trust that to a rebuy? One advantage is that at least your ship won't be built to NPC standards so it should be more likely to survive than an NPC ship under NPC control. Assuming you've built your ship right.

 

[Kenpachi85]

I've taken out deadly npcs, haven't ran into any elite npcs that I can remember but I can definitely take out ones above my rank np. My krait mk2, conda and vette are all a rated and fully g5 engineered except for their hulls/scbs cause I've been too lazy to go get enough credits to get reactive armor for them. Also still need to unlock lori jameson to get my scbs up to g3. Going to get around to that soon and I have Selene Jean unlocked and will get even resistances on my hull armor when I get the reactive sets. Shields already have even resistances and plan on trying to get prismatics soon.

Might take it slow and see how well she does in the krait before letting her take control of the big boys. Either way I wont have her at the helm when in heavy combat or anything. Thanks for the advice metatheurgist

 

[Stinja]

They fly decently at higher ranks, but poorly at low ranks, as per the usual AI. And yes they rank up much faster than humans.
They have the advantage that they can aim-bot with fixed weapons, reverski, and use laterals fairly well, but don't in general fly as well as humans. They seem to perform better 1v1, than fighting groups.

At Elite, taking the above into account, they can generally handle themselves. In a SLF they can destroy most low level NPC single ships alone, and provide a great distraction against say wing-assassination targets.
I don't trust them to fly my own ship much, unless it's super tanky, but when I do I find they fair better in the more pitchy motherships.

On balance they can be kinda useful, and can add quite a bit of dps. At the moment I have an Elite NPC in a Guardian Trident, which performs decently well against all targets.

 

[Kenpachi85]

Good to know stinja I read somewhere that they are good at using fixed weapons and I was thinking of using my copilot as training wheels for learning to use fixed weapons myself. Figured I could let her cut in if I'm having trouble with a target and of course this would only be for 1v1 fights in a easy low res site or something. I just did a bit of searching online and it seems dangerous is the starting point at which most say they are good enough to handle the helm in 1v1s so may give this a go. I've been using long rang gimballed beams, pulses and multicannons but if I could get good at fixed I'd make more use of that extra range and be able to use PAs and rails.

One thing I was worried about was whether they were smart enough to use scbs and heatsinks and it appears from what I read that they will use em. With that being the case I'll make sure I have at least 2 banks and if I see her firing them off I'll swap back to the helm and bug out if need be and let the slf blow up. As long as it's only 1v1 against easy targets and I keep a eye on her sounds like I'll be ok. Got half a billion in the bank so rebuys wouldn't cripple me but training a new copilot from harmless again would suck.

I read something about binding "attack my target" and spamming that command every 10sec or so to make them attack faster. Something about it makes them face their target and keep firing instead of trying to fly around. Not sure if there's anything to it but that's basically how I fight when bounty hunting in a res. I come to a stop and spin around like a gyroscope luring pirates in with long rang weapons and usually have them dead or almost dead by the time they get to me. With this method I can commonly get them to blow up within a 1.5km radius and let my collectors scoop up mats easily. It's pretty funny when they limp over and blow up on the bow of my vette they look like a boxer that's taken too many hits and leans forward onto their opponent.

 

[Stinja]

re: orders and AI, i think there's been some changes over various patches, so be very dubious of any info which is older.

Personally i map only 3 commands for my pilots:

- Attack My Target
to engage a specific target, say i want tied up while i kill something else, or to chase down a fleeing ship, or just cycle which thing to attack. I don't believe you need to spam this over and over any more, as they seem to attack very regularly now.

- Dock
if re-instancing the spawn, retuning to get ammo etc

- "Orders"
to select any other sub orders. Typically i only really use "Fire at Will", to micromanage them less; and maybe "hold position" if i'm flying the SLF and don't want them interfering.

 

[Nepeta Uchiha]

I always let my Deadly pilot take control of Corvette only in Haz Res sites. He basically deletes anything I tell him to.

 

[Kenpachi85]

The info I was looking at was at least a year old maybe more can't remember so your prolly right stinja things could be different now. I just got the game this past October(for some reason the world kept this a secret from me ) and most info I pull up online is a few years old usually.

 

[Kenpachi85]

I always let my Deadly pilot take control of Corvette only in Haz Res sites. He basically deletes anything I tell him to.

Nice I was paranoid at first that turning over the helm to her in a res would mean a quick trip to the rebuy screen but feel better about letting her handle stuff sometimes with careful observation that is. Just got back from davs hope and engineered a set of fixed weapons for my vette so will be trying stuff out soon.

Fixed loadout is: 2 huge g5 efficient PAs with plasma slugs, 2 medium g4 long range rails also with plasma slugs then 1 large and 2 small g4 fixed long range beams with thermal vents. Premium ammo synthesis on the PAs and rails restores the damage lost from plasma slug mods just gotta remember not to hit reload all at stations. 1st fire group is all weapons on primary trigger heatsinks on secondary but don't need em if beams are connecting. 2nd group has beams on primary and rails on secondary while the 3rd group has beams primary and PAs on secondary trigger.

My gimballed loadout has 2 huge g5 LR multis with corrosive/autoloader, 2 medium g5 oversized LR pulses, 1 large g5 LR pulse with emmisive and 2 small g5 LR beams with thermal vents. The fixed loadout is at least 2x the dps so if I can get good at fixed things should get pretty exciting. Distro is g5 charge enhanced with super conduits and power plant is g5 armored and is monstered so no issues powerwise with either loadout.

 

[Old Duck]

Since 3.3, the NPCs have been playing bumper cars a lot more than they used to (this is different than "scramming"), and for this reason alone I don't trust my NPC with my mothership. I'm assuming this is a bug and hope it gets fixed.

In the past I enjoyed giving my NPC the helm of my Keelback while I took the SLF out. My Keely had two turreted MCs and two rail guns. It's pretty hard for a NPC to screw up turrets, and they have a supernatural ability to land rail gun shots even at lower ranks.

My big complaint with NPCs (pre 3.3) is they waste consumables, so if you have a ship with missiles, they tend to spam these when not needed. There is debate whether turning off certain weapons in the module panel will prevent NPCs from using them,

 

[Nepeta Uchiha]

Nice I was paranoid at first that turning over the helm to her in a res would mean a quick trip to the rebuy screen but feel better about letting her handle stuff sometimes with careful observation that is. Just got back from davs hope and engineered a set of fixed weapons for my vette so will be trying stuff out soon.

I'm Paranoid to. I'm always watching the mothership's health which is displayed above the Fighter's health. If I notice too much dimming of the shields I hop right back.

Also, fixed weapons on a Vette. Bleh, too hard to aim. Hope you have max G5 Dirty Tune Thrusters or you won't hit anything that's moving.

Since 3.3, the NPCs have been playing bumper cars a lot more than they used to (this is different than "scramming"), and for this reason alone I don't trust my NPC with my mothership. I'm assuming this is a bug and hope it gets fixed.

I let my AI pilot fly my Vette recently and he didn't try to ram anyone. I only have NPC's ram me as a last ditch suicide attempt when they have low health.

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

I covered an Anaconda in beams once for meme purposes.

Watching an NPC go deathstar on things was beautiful.

 

[Nepeta Uchiha]

I covered an Anaconda in beams once for meme purposes.

Watching an NPC go deathstar on things was beautiful.

A Type-10 with several Pack-hound missile launchers is funny to see.

 

[Kenpachi85]

I'm Paranoid to. I'm always watching the mothership's health which is displayed above the Fighter's health. If I notice too much dimming of the shields I hop right back.

Also, fixed weapons on a Vette. Bleh, too hard to aim. Hope you have max G5 Dirty Tune Thrusters or you won't hit anything that's moving.



I let my AI pilot fly my Vette recently and he didn't try to ram anyone. I only have NPC's ram me as a last ditch suicide attempt when they have low health.

Yeah I found out pretty quick in a low res yesterday that I cant hit anything with the fixed rails and PAs. Luckily I swapped the fixed beams for gimbals so was able to still fight but went home and swapped back to a full gimbaled loadout. There was a couple times I landed a few rails at 5km or so but I think it was purely dumbluck. The one time I hit anybody with the PAs was when I got rammed on top of my bow and he pretty much covered my whole fov and was able to smack em at point blank. Gonna try some fixed weapons on my krait mk 2, fdl and a few other smaller ships but for my conda and vette im sticking to gimbals for now.

Im actually back flying the conda for now I'm not sure if its just my imagination but I seemed to take out ships faster and my shields seemed to be stronger than the vette. Both ships share the same core internals, 7A shield generator and utilities but have totally different weapons. The conda runs a huge LR beam with thermal vent, 2 large LR multicannons with autoloader, 2 medium LR multis with autoloader/corrosive, 1 large seeker missle rack with thermal cascade and 2 small seeker racks also with thermal cascade. Only downside is the vette can run 2 class 7A scbs while my conda can only run 2 class 6As though I rarely have to use em anyways.

 

[Kenpachi85]

Since 3.3, the NPCs have been playing bumper cars a lot more than they used to (this is different than "scramming"), and for this reason alone I don't trust my NPC with my mothership. I'm assuming this is a bug and hope it gets fixed.

In the past I enjoyed giving my NPC the helm of my Keelback while I took the SLF out. My Keely had two turreted MCs and two rail guns. It's pretty hard for a NPC to screw up turrets, and they have a supernatural ability to land rail gun shots even at lower ranks.

My big complaint with NPCs (pre 3.3) is they waste consumables, so if you have a ship with missiles, they tend to spam these when not needed. There is debate whether turning off certain weapons in the module panel will prevent NPCs from using them,

Yeah I might wait for now especially since I put off trying to use fixed weapons on large ships for the time being. Ive heard that npcs turn modules on and off on their own so there might not be a way to prevent them using stuff up. Gonna put the rails on my krait and see how well she does sometime.