One of those small things that are easily overlooked. Maybe they should add a "Crew fees: -5% 142,225 cr" line to the payout screen when closing the mission?
It's a miracle! NPC instantly gains 100% health AND shields after waking away 10 seconds earlier!
- Thread starter Webgear
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I don't believe it is "intended behaviour", I think it is sloppy "oh that will do" programming. Seriously, if they send a mission-specific named NPC after you then that actual NPC should be the one in action until it is destroyed or the mission ends. The "another spawned NPC with the same name and ship" is not a good argument, it is just what we get 'cos they have not programmed it otherwise.
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Assassination missions not completing unless you destroy the target in the specified system has always been the case. Not sure whether it's a bug or a limitation of the code, but if it's the latter (which I strongly suspect) then it's simply a design compromise and I wouldn't expect it to 'be fixed' any time soon. You're absolutely right that if it were not the case, then not only would installing a wake scanner be worthwhile, but what are ultimately very shallow mission experiences might have the opportunity to get just a little more depth.
Note that I'm not disagreeing with you about the frustration / irritation with bugs. Having been playing since beta (and partaken in pretty much all the betas since) I've certainly filed my fair share of bug reports and understand the frustration when either nothing is done about them, or just as irritating when previously fixed bugs make a reappearance for no apparent reason. Unfortunately I too have somewhat lost confidence in FD being able (or unwilling) to fix many of the non game breaking bugs.
As to the OP, as has been stated, this isn't a bug, just a compromise based upon the non persistence of NPCs. Yes, it's irritating, yes it puts a dent an anyone's 'immersion', but for me it's not really game breaking, and when I play the game I simply try to shrug off these inconsistencies. Sadly, this approach doesn't really get easier with time...
I'm not saying it is a good solution, I'm saying that a good while back now, when a mission target could indeed flee and if you didn't follow you couldn't complete the mission. Around there is when this behaviour started to happen.
Personally I don't know how it is sloppy? how would you solve it? simply making it so people fail the mission if they do not hunt the target down properly?
Blackcompany
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Both are due to an utter and complete lack of persistence. It's not the same NPC. The game just creates a new object with the same name. Its incredibly poor design...but comparatively easy versus persistence.
Blackcompany
Banned
More poor design: with all these 10 ton computer modules, most combat ships cant equip wake scanners
Poor game design. Simple as that.
They were able to get this right in FE2 back in 1995 - indeed, following the target in a ship with a better jump range (and thus less time bassed during a jump) and ambushing them as they came out of hyperspace was the best way to carry out assassinations.
Deleted member 115407
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No doubt. It breaks immersion and continuity, and is just bad.
And good design would be?
The point is that a random NPC that interdicts you and jumps away with damage can be encountered again without its damage being repaired. So that NPC is basically persistent, therefore there is no reason that a mission-specific NPC cannot also be persistent.
So that is what I am calling sloppy, all they have to do is make a mission-specific NPC be persistent and not spawn a new version of that "mission target" every instance-change.
See above.
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Good design would be to allow spawning of an NPC with a state, the state being ship and equipment type, name and gender, ship hull state, module state and shield state. I cannot imagine, that this is impossible. At least the name works evidently. The mission/AI script or whatever needs only to save these few variables and respawn the NPC with it. Problem solved. I do not care if it is 'the same' NPC as an object. It can respawn every time it turns on me, as long as it has the same state as it had before. This is not rocket science. Just careful and clean mission scripting...
And the mission says kill Pirate Lord XXX, right?
Or does it say fertilize system A with Pirate Lord XXX body? Only the latter would allow for the mission not to count if the NPC is killed after following him to another system he jumped to, while fleeing.
I hope this answers your question.
Really...
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This was how it was previously, they ran and people could chase them, but people were generally not happy with it, and complained significantly about having to chase down npc's. Which is why I gather they implemented what is now.
See above mentioned, the intention is for people to hunt down the npc after they run away, their states were preserved.
However there were a lot of complaints, on the topic for a ton of different reasons. And that is when I believe this began happening, them spawning a new npc in the mission area.
Personally I would agree that the old way was better, but yeah, and failure should also be an option, I mean you can just take a new mission, and if your connection is unstable so you disconnect constantly you aren't going to get anything done anyway?
All I'm saying is that it was like this previously and is intended that you hunt them down, but now it seems to if you do not, or say you disconnect or a whole host of other things, they give people another chance to start fresh?
And if you jump after the npc as it is currently everything persists and mission should complete, which seems to be the answer to the problem presented? just hunt the npc?
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If they want, that we hunt the NPC (which is fine with me, even better), then the mission must count, if we catch him/her, no matter where. Also I think it is better when NPCs also flee - but not every time. This is very annoying, especially for players with a bit unstable connections. We all know that flying in one system usually works, but jumping to another system (=instance) may fail.
The mission should also state, that the target may flee and should be hunted - this to inform the player, that he needs a Wake Scanner, not necessarily default for each combat ship, especially not for the smaller ones.
And NPCs which stop random pilots with an interdiction should either never flee, or they need to be saved too. And if the NPC flees to another system, it should be theoretically possible to follow it, but if not done the NPC should be deleted. It is extremely annoying if you have 3 interdictions, and damage the NPC every time and it is back in 15 seconds - did not happen to me, because mostly I win interdictions, but I have read about that too.
I do not understand that a modern and well designed system like ED does only have 'ghosts' instead of NPCs, which are objects as long as they are needed. This problem seems to introduced by an AI which now also flees. Maybe this should be changed until the system is able to do it right. It is not so important that a NPC 'gets away', because he only has a ghostly temporary existence.
The mission should also state, that the target may flee and should be hunted - this to inform the player, that he needs a Wake Scanner, not necessarily default for each combat ship, especially not for the smaller ones.
And NPCs which stop random pilots with an interdiction should either never flee, or they need to be saved too. And if the NPC flees to another system, it should be theoretically possible to follow it, but if not done the NPC should be deleted. It is extremely annoying if you have 3 interdictions, and damage the NPC every time and it is back in 15 seconds - did not happen to me, because mostly I win interdictions, but I have read about that too.
I do not understand that a modern and well designed system like ED does only have 'ghosts' instead of NPCs, which are objects as long as they are needed. This problem seems to introduced by an AI which now also flees. Maybe this should be changed until the system is able to do it right. It is not so important that a NPC 'gets away', because he only has a ghostly temporary existence.
We're in the same boat. Got many thousand hours as well, and still no good combat pilot. I've done FAOff landing and combat, and done okay (NPC only, no PvP), but the fixed weapons... forget it. And I agree with you, new players are confronted with a lot of frustrating bugs and issues that just shouldn't be there anymore.
We've been asking for some NPC persistency since... ever. This would also solve the "system being populated only after you jump in" problem.
Well I don't remember it being like that in the four years I have been playing - are you talking Beta or first release? I remember this situation of continually re-spawned pirate lords and miraculously repaired NPCs from my first months in the game.
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Got to be honest, me neither.
It is I believe true that if you follow an NPC when they high wake out by using a wake scanner you will find them again and their state is preserved, however, it is also true that assassinating a target in any system other than the one given by the mission will simply not count towards the mission and this has always been the case.
Hence there is no point in following NPCs (and they always high wake out, never go back to SC). If FD wanted players to 'hunt' NPC's that is the one thing they would need to fix, and they haven't fixed it in the best part of 5 years, so I'm not convinced it's what they either want or wanted.