NPC ships are too OP!

Morbad

Morbad
rekurzion said:
if you follow an NPC's wake their state is persistent, always. you can follow an NPC for hours if you want across the galaxy slowly picking it apart piece by piece. for this reason i always carry a wake scanner. if an npc scoots away just in time to save itself i follow its wake and catch it while its shields are still recharging.

one of my favorite bounty hunting tactics is to ambush an anaconda or corvette in a high sec system. it will jump when its gets to low hull successfully almost all of the time. then i follow it and finish it off one on one while is has no shields, busted modules and hull down to 20%.
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I'm aware that using the wake scanner enforces persistence, but the situation I'm talking about is when they are pursuing my CMDR.

Sometimes one of my trade ships will get pulled and I'll not have sufficient weapons equipped to destroy the NPCs quickly, so I'll disengage. When the NPC shows up a moment later in SC sometimes they do retain the damage I've dealt to them, sometimes they don't.
 

rekurzion

rekurzion
Morbad said:
I'm aware that using the wake scanner enforces persistence, but the situation I'm talking about is when they are pursuing my CMDR.

Sometimes one of my trade ships will get pulled and I'll not have sufficient weapons equipped to destroy the NPCs quickly, so I'll disengage. When the NPC shows up a moment later in SC sometimes they do retain the damage I've dealt to them, sometimes they don't.
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ah. interesting, in this scenario i've never experienced them retaining persistence.
 

Faded Glory

Faded Glory
rekurzion said:
ah. interesting, in this scenario i've never experienced them retaining persistence.
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I have to say that I haven't either. In fact, I've never seen an NPC jump to SC, they always in my experience high wake out. That said, these are almost always mission generated NPC's, so don't know whether that makes a difference. And then yes, moments later they re-spawn right behind me ready to interdict again.

In the end I just targeted their FSD, and that stopped them waking out. It never bothered me that it was unfair, once you get to a certain stage it's highly unlikely that you won't be able to destroy pretty much any NPC, especially if security NPC's spawn to help out. It was just an added time sink that I think the game could do without.

The idea that NPC's should behave like humans isn't really that critical to me, they are pure player content, and frankly making them behave like a human by supposedly having them wake out to save their skin is totally undermined by having them come back for another shot when they are (usually) so completely outmatched.

With regards to NPC's retaining damage if you follow their high wake to another system, I have to say that when I tried to do that the NPC never even appeared in the new system.
 

Morbad

Morbad
rekurzion said:
ah. interesting, in this scenario i've never experienced them retaining persistence.
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I just recorded what I think are two examples. The first one is not entirely clear, but the second one is.

I was in my 224 ton cargo trade/smuggler Krait Mk II with two hostile NPCs pursuing me:

- First NPC, an Expert FDL, interdicts and I submit. I blow my whole load of torpedoes on him, knocking out all his externals except his drives, then de-drive him with a combination of seeker and pulse laser fire. I then float around with him for a bit to see if he leaves or can reboot. He does not. So, I leave him at 10% hull and reenter SC. I loiter in SC for a bit to see if he follows, he does not reappear. But I am soon faced with NPC #2.

- Second NPC, a Deadly Anaconda interdicts me. I submit, and slowly cut through it's SCB backed shielding with my single fixed focused medium emissive pulse laser. It clearly takes heat damage from it's banking and eventually runs out of SCBs. I try to knock out it's PP for a bit with my pulse laser, but since my ship is rather fragile and this NPC rather durable, I decide to disengage after it's shields come back up. Again, I wait for a moment to see if it follows, and it does...same NPC, with the same damage I left it at. It's internals were melty from the SCBs it had used earlier, and it's PP was at the same ~65% I left it at.

I'll link the video a bit later when it's been uploaded and processed.
 

AgentGB

AgentGB
@rekurzion & @Morbad handy info, haven't ever tried chasing down a NPC through a wake, & now learning that damage stays persistent, & about the encounter you had with the FSD staying dead in the next jump/instance (even if it displayed slightly different stats in super-cruise before hand), gonna see if i can chase after that type 9 next time round, corner it & milk that 400 tons of LTDs. Or at least give this a try to see if i can beat whatever funny business is going on atm
 
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Voracity_T

Voracity_T
Morbad said:
Most of my armored PP ships can do this...I just have my CMDR prioritize his defenses above weapons, because he's generally trying not to be someone's fodder and would rather retreat than keep firing, if practical to do so.
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Tell me Morbad.

Can you read?
 

Morbad

Morbad
Voracity_T said:
Tell me Morbad.

Can you read?
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I'm under the impression that you were saying that ships with G5 OCed PPs can't power FSDs, countermeasures, and weapons at 50% power output (which is how much power is available when the PP has been destroyed, when you said this:

Voracity_T said:
Also they tend to cheat with thier power priorities.. No shields but operational weapons, FSD countermeasures and drives after a zeroed powerplant... Ships with a G5 OC plant can't bloody run that.
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Since armored PPs provide less power than overcharged, and shields generally take more power than some weapons, and most of my ships with armored power plants are setup to power distributor, FSD, shield generator, countermeasures, and DD5 thrusters at 40% output (a standard malfunction, lower than what it levels off at after being destroyed), I'm not particularly sure what's far fetched about some NPCs (most of the higher rank ones will have engineered power plants) being able to power thrusters, FSD, countermeasures, and a mix of weapons, with a destroyed PP.

If I've misinterpreted something, by all means, be more specific.
 

rekurzion

rekurzion
to add, i have a sneaking suspicion that NPC's use E and D rated thrusters to manage this. it would be foolish to assume NPC's automatically use A rated everything.

if you haven't noticed they are mud slow, even at higher ranks.

as an example both a low ranked and high rank viper do not exceed ~320 m/s cruise. that's the top speed if fitted with D rated thrusters.
 
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Morbad

Morbad
@Voracity_T Ran a couple of tests just minutes minutes after my last post:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynu0eBXmkeI


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=barotW482iU


Looks pretty plausible to me and seems entirely consistent with my recent experiences.

rekurzion said:
to add, i have a sneaking suspicion that NPC's use E and D rated thrusters to manage this. it would be foolish to assume NPC's automatically use A rated everything.

if you haven't noticed they are mud slow, even at higher ranks.

as an example both low ranked and high rank viper do not exceed ~320 m/s cruise. that's the top speed if fitted with D rated thrusters.
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I've encountered plenty of NPC ships, even randoms (e.g. those not part of wing missions, and not in static signal sources), that had competitive thrusters.

There is no need for undersized, underrated, or conservatively Engineered thrusters, if the goal is simply to power them at 50% output, along with most other critical modules and some guns. A modest armored or OC PP would allow many NPC loadouts to work if all they did was disable their banks and shields, like the ones above appeared to be doing.

I'll try finding something that is typically more power constrained, when I have time, to see what they are disabling.
 

CLG 6

CLG 6
If you are a new player I would suggest finding ways other than combat to make money and then get a better ship and get weapons and modules engineered.

I just reached elite in combat today and I don't find individual PvE ships to be a major problem. If several attack at the same time then I have to jump away. Thargoids can be a different story but standard NPC ships are a fun challenge but not overpowered once you engineer your ship.
 

Voracity_T

Voracity_T
Morbad said:
I'm under the impression that you were saying that ships with G5 OCed PPs can't power FSDs, countermeasures, and weapons at 50% power output (which is how much power is available when the PP has been destroyed, when you said this:



Since armored PPs provide less power than overcharged, and shields generally take more power than some weapons, and most of my ships with armored power plants are setup to power distributor, FSD, shield generator, countermeasures, and DD5 thrusters at 40% output (a standard malfunction, lower than what it levels off at after being destroyed), I'm not particularly sure what's far fetched about some NPCs (most of the higher rank ones will have engineered power plants) being able to power thrusters, FSD, countermeasures, and a mix of weapons, with a destroyed PP.

If I've misinterpreted something, by all means, be more specific.
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40%.

Considering that Thrusters often take up close to 35% of that, I dont think so.
 

rekurzion

rekurzion
Voracity_T said:
40%.

Considering that Thrusters often take up close to 35% of that, I dont think so.
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40% then 50% after a few seconds. my builds make sure thruster, FSD then utilities/core internals of choice are priority one under 40%, then core internals/other as priority 2, then typically shields/defenses as priority 3, weapons priority 4 then auxiliary modules (limpets, AFM, rover) as priorty 5. but i agree that with a rated gear that equation becomes increasingly unrealistic without massive engineering which i don't see any NPC having less than elite and can't imagine that elite NPCs each have custom engineered builds. my assumption is that there is a base build approach with strategic engineering as needed, which includes the use of many lower class modules.

my guess at what a expert/master ranked npc trader looks like under the hood: https://s.orbis.zone/3_-z
 
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Morbad

Morbad
Voracity_T said:
40%.

Considering that Thrusters often take up close to 35% of that, I dont think so.
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A destroyed PP stabilizes at 50% output.

Most of my ships with full-sized, A-rated, DD5s only need ~25% of the output, on an armored 5 PP, to handle the drives. Huge number of viable builds (especially in an NPC context, where they are apparently supposed to be lemons) that could power thrusters, FSD, countermeasures, sensors, and most of their weapons at 50% output and this goes up as Engineering starts to show up at Master rank.

Really not hard to demonstrate this, either in game, or in a shipbuilder like Coriolis/EDSY.

Let's try an Anaconda pirate, like one you might find in a RES. Actually, I'll build the one in the video I linked to; he's an Expert, so I can be fairly confident he won't have any Engineering:

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
s.orbis.zone s.orbis.zone

He may very well have had near precisely that loadout.

rekurzion said:
40% then 50% after a few seconds.
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20% then 50% after five seconds, last time I checked. 40% is a standard malfunction, 20% a critical malfunction that only happens when the PP is first reduced to zero integrity (the next one destroys the ship, which is why I don't test it often).

rekurzion said:
my guess at what a expert/master ranked npc trader looks like under the hood: https://s.orbis.zone/3_-z
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At that rank they are likely to have half way decent base modules and Master ranked NPCs have a chance of having some of them Engineered (though only the special opt-in types have weapon effects).

The last time NPCs Engineering was nerfed was 2.1.03, if I recall correctly: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/update-2-1-03-incoming.267701/

"- Reduced the number of engineer mods on AI ships substantially, now only Deadly & Elite rank ships are guaranteed to have mods and any below Master are guaranteed to have none"
 
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