So... I just came back to the game...

Mastermindx

M
Hey guys. I know I'm probably just beating a dead horse here...

I just came back to the game after like... nearly 2 years. I haven't experienced much of what changed yet. I came back and first thing I set up to was to go CZ! It was one of those things I really enjoyed before.

Now... My memory might be fuzzy, but I'd swear I did anywhere between 30-60 kills per hours back in the days. Now, I do 15-20 (ok maybe 25 if my side is steamrolling). I mean... Ok, they increased the ship's HP... I can accept that. But then we have mission to kill 90 ships in 21 hours... That's a freaking 6 hours (1/3) of my day. I mean... OK, they think the ships were too easy (Hint : They still are, they are just meatier punching bags), but shouldn't have they adjusted the kill count from missions? Or at least give a few days to get to 90 kills? Or am I just bad? I mean, I'm not in a vulture, I'm in a Federal Corvette, not perfectly engineered yet, but still, 2(H) OC multicannon, 3(1L, 2M) efficient beam.... How long does/should it take with an endgame settings?

Also... what? I can take a solo mission to kill 60 ships for 20M, or I can take a wing mission to kill 32 for 20M... really? I mean... Wing missions came out nearly 2 years ago and reward still aren't balanced?

So anyone can tell me what's going on these days over here?
 

CMDR X

CMDR X
NPCs aren't harder, some of them are just broken, I think. With instantly regenerating shields and unlimited SCB's.
Especially the Dangerous Cobras. Took me 7 minutes to drop one with an engineered Vulture.
My shields never lost 1 full ring, but I pretty much ran out of G3 Oversized Incendiary MC rounds.

It only took about 3 minutes to pop a Deadly Anaconda though. Go figure.
 

MickyG1982

M
Depending on when the OP last played NPC's have increased considerably in difficulty. I still remember someone bug reporting that they could not roll over elite Annie's in their "heavily armed" type six any more. If that doesn't say how easy NPC's used to be, then nothing will.
 

Scoob

Scoob
I do often see particularly tough ships and oddly weak ones. Like a Cobra MkIII that seems to have very resistant shields or an Anaconda that goes pop way sooner than expected. I just assume it's down to equipment and Engineering level of the ship.

Last night however I was fighting a Federal Gunship who had really resistant shields, despite myself and a friend pounding on him for a couple of minutes. We finally took out his shields then, seconds later, they're FULL again. I saw none of the classic shield cell battery usage effect, plus his shields were down, yet they were full again. So, weird stuff does happen.

I do like that NPC's can be tougher, I'm not the best pilot by any means, but my skill and loadout has improved somewhat over time. I'm also only Dangerous, so I don't know what that means for probably NPC difficultly levels.

Generally though I find the variation of NPC ability and equipment to be fairly decent. It's cool when a "this'll be easy" encounter proves more challenging.

Scoob.
 

d8veh

d8veh
X2611 said:
NPCs aren't harder, some of them are just broken, I think. With instantly regenerating shields and unlimited SCB's.
Especially the Dangerous Cobras. Took me 7 minutes to drop one with an engineered Vulture.
My shields never lost 1 full ring, but I pretty much ran out of G3 Oversized Incendiary MC rounds.

It only took about 3 minutes to pop a Deadly Anaconda though. Go figure.
Click to expand...
If you come across an NPC with SCBs, don't waste time shooting it. Ram it to knock its shields off-line, then you can finish it quickly with your weapons. That works especially well for NPC Anacondas. When they try to scan you, you can ram them several times. They won't even shoot at you until you shoot at them, so you can take them to nearly dead in complete safety before you open fire.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
Yeah, there's an issue with normal and wing massacre missions. Getting the kills is possible in the right ship (I did a wing 72 kill mission last night in a couple of hours - 50 million reward). The Corvette will take a beating and get good numbers of kills, but I found after some practice in an FDL I've really boosted my kill count. Enemies don't even feel like bullet sponges in that ship.
 

CMDR Valleys

C
Missions have been broken and unbalanced since i can remember. Any improvements have swiftly been wiped out buy the next patch. Hopefully the cycle will change when the next big update gets released. They should have had enough time with it by then to plan it properly

Yes NPCs are harder now. It’s killed my CobraMKIII game play, i liked using Multi’s but they don’t have enough amo to do the job anymore. It’s brutal out there in the black.

FD FIX THE MISSIONS..... PLEASE
 

KarmaCop

K
d8veh said:
If you come across an NPC with SCBs, don't waste time shooting it. Ram it to knock its shields off-line, then you can finish it quickly with your weapons. That works especially well for NPC Anacondas. When they try to scan you, you can ram them several times. They won't even shoot at you until you shoot at them, so you can take them to nearly dead in complete safety before you open fire.
Click to expand...
Just no! :ROFLMAO:

Gaming the play is not an answer. It's exactly like waiting for the wanted pirate NPC in a HazRES to turn & fly away after its scan completes before shooting it, so gaining a huge advantage.

Frontier deserve some criticism for this of course because the NPC in question should really be asking itself what a clean combat ship - with no cargo racks, fully loaded & hardpoints drawn - is doing in a RES.

"Hmmm - could be a bounty hunter after the not-inconsequential reward for my destruction? Nah I'll just turn my back on them & fly away slowly - what could possibly go wrong?!"

The same applies to ramming; after one ram the NPC should turn hostile.

That is merely hollow buffoonery of the highest order & I couldn't imagine a more expedient way to play these flawed mechanics.

I dare you to do better.

NB: Apologies for quoting dialogue from a certain JJ Abrams movie - I know many of you want to boil his bunny! (Btw that's not a euphemism!)
 

Cmdr BH Surfer

C
No, you're not bad Commander. I've recently returned, and posted about the exact same issue in the suggestions board recently. CZ missions and kill x number of pirate missions are very bad right now. I don't think anyone really disagrees with that either.

Really hoping Frontier does something about that, because those are my FAVORITE types of missions. Very disheartening when these is a full list of them on the board and I can't accept any of them because I know I can't complete them in time.

Welcome back!
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Mastermindx said:
Hey guys. I know I'm probably just beating a dead horse here...

I just came back to the game after like... nearly 2 years. I haven't experienced much of what changed yet. I came back and first thing I set up to was to go CZ! It was one of those things I really enjoyed before.

Now... My memory might be fuzzy, but I'd swear I did anywhere between 30-60 kills per hours back in the days. Now, I do 15-20 (ok maybe 25 if my side is steamrolling). I mean... Ok, they increased the ship's HP... I can accept that. But then we have mission to kill 90 ships in 21 hours... That's a freaking 6 hours (1/3) of my day. I mean... OK, they think the ships were too easy (Hint : They still are, they are just meatier punching bags), but shouldn't have they adjusted the kill count from missions? Or at least give a few days to get to 90 kills? Or am I just bad? I mean, I'm not in a vulture, I'm in a Federal Corvette, not perfectly engineered yet, but still, 2(H) OC multicannon, 3(1L, 2M) efficient beam.... How long does/should it take with an endgame settings?

Also... what? I can take a solo mission to kill 60 ships for 20M, or I can take a wing mission to kill 32 for 20M... really? I mean... Wing missions came out nearly 2 years ago and reward still aren't balanced?

So anyone can tell me what's going on these days over here?
Click to expand...

It's not you.

CZs have been "re-balanced", apparently to reflect the idea that the ships likely to participate in a "war" will be outfitted with all the latest toys - shield boosters, SCBs, HRPs, MRPs and military hulls.
Basically, all the ships in CZ's are now bullet-sponges.
The result is that that almost every ship in a CZ is pretty hard to kill, to the point where, in an un-engineered ship, it can take a couple of minutes to kill even an Eagle or a Viper.

If you want to check that you're not going nuts, go to a Haz-RES or nav-beacon and try exploding ships there instead.
You'll almost certainly find it much, much easier.

As for what else is going on, the main thing is probably mining.
Deep-core mining is now pretty-much the way to earn credits.
Have a look on Youtube for more info'.

There's a few more engineers to unlock (most of them in Colonia), there's a bunch of new modules, based on Guardian technology, to unlock, there's been some updates/additions to various things but there's not really a lot happening right now 'cos FDev are busy preparing a "new era" update for next year.

Welcome back. :)
 

Riverside

Riverside
KarmaCop said:
Just no! :ROFLMAO:

Gaming the play is not an answer. It's exactly like waiting for the wanted pirate NPC in a HazRES to turn & fly away after its scan completes before shooting it, so gaining a huge advantage.

Frontier deserve some criticism for this of course because the NPC in question should really be asking itself what a clean combat ship - with no cargo racks, fully loaded & hardpoints drawn - is doing in a RES.

"Hmmm - could be a bounty hunter after the not-inconsequential reward for my destruction? Nah I'll just turn my back on them & fly away slowly - what could possibly go wrong?!"

The same applies to ramming; after one ram the NPC should turn hostile.

That is merely hollow buffoonery of the highest order & I couldn't imagine a more expedient way to play these flawed mechanics.

I dare you to do better.

NB: Apologies for quoting dialogue from a certain JJ Abrams movie - I know many of you want to boil his bunny! (Btw that's not a euphemism!)
Click to expand...

What you describe is how I play. However play your own way, let them play theirs.
 

Mastermindx

M
Just to be clear if I wasn't already... I'm not really complaining about the NPC being "harder". I mean... That somewhat sucks, but it's not crazy bad. It's more having the best $/kills missions requires about 6 hours of gameplay within about 21 hours of realtime that bugs me. Instead of a 90 kills for 30M$, I'd rather have missions for 45 kills for 15M$. One can always take additional missions. Or at least, give us 2-3 days to get those 90 kills. 50 kills missions pays only 10M$ which is kindda suboptimal. (That's based on same faction, same relation, etc...)

I thought maybe my ship's build was antiquated, but from what I hear, it would appear my setup is at the very least still relevant/decent.
 

Cmdr BH Surfer

C
Mastermindx said:
Just to be clear if I wasn't already... I'm not really complaining about the NPC being "harder". I mean... That somewhat sucks, but it's not crazy bad. It's more having the best $/kills missions requires about 6 hours of gameplay within about 21 hours of realtime that bugs me. Instead of a 90 kills for 30M$, I'd rather have missions for 45 kills for 15M$. One can always take additional missions. Or at least, give us 2-3 days to get those 90 kills. 50 kills missions pays only 10M$ which is kindda suboptimal. (That's based on same faction, same relation, etc...)

I thought maybe my ship's build was antiquated, but from what I hear, it would appear my setup is at the very least still relevant/decent.
Click to expand...

Putting a little bit of engineering into your ship will make a huge difference, if you haven't already. But no, as already stated - npc's are bullet sponges in CZ's and we've all been screaming at Fdev to adjust the missions for both those and pirates.

It's not you..
 

CMDR Harada

CMDR Harada
KarmaCop said:
Just no! :ROFLMAO:

Gaming the play is not an answer. It's exactly like waiting for the wanted pirate NPC in a HazRES to turn & fly away after its scan completes before shooting it, so gaining a huge advantage.

Frontier deserve some criticism for this of course because the NPC in question should really be asking itself what a clean combat ship - with no cargo racks, fully loaded & hardpoints drawn - is doing in a RES.

"Hmmm - could be a bounty hunter after the not-inconsequential reward for my destruction? Nah I'll just turn my back on them & fly away slowly - what could possibly go wrong?!"
Click to expand...

Of course, my question to that same NPC would be " WTH are you hoping to grind out a few thousand credits with these small time miners with a huge price on your head ? You should be at the VO hotspot.. "

But I don't have any doubt what a heavily armed ship is doing in a HazRES.. the correct answer is NOT MINING. Whether or not they decide to scan a fully engineered 'Vette, with a combat elite pilot, sporting PP farmed modules/weapons...and turn away is not my choice, but it makes the job ( or kill ) easier.

This goes back to a lot of things.. like seeing a triple elite Corvette/Cutter asking for docking privileges.. I'd think a Prince/Rear Admiral would get priority. Or asking the same pilot to run a report two systems over for 50k credits. Really ? It's like asking Clint Eastwoods character in a western to stop the local teenagers from throwing rocks at the ducks.
 
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