NPC enemies are magicians

It has been a while since I wondered about them: how comes that NPC enemies who are hunting us down are able to know the exact system we are jumping in, and manage to arrive BEFORE us (or at the exact same time), even when they failed to interdict us several jumps ago and couldn't immediately tail our FSD jump?

"Magical powers" is the only explanation I could think of.


Today's example:
I was in the end of a mission in which I had to bring a criminal to different locations. He was a high-value target. So I was expected to be hunted down by some enemies of him during the mission. This is not a problem, it is even perfectly coherent with my passenger status.

At some point, we got spotted. BTW, I don't know how, because I managed to avoid scans during the entire journey. But ok, why not, the bad guys got the information that he was in my ship and even managed to know our route. It could be consistent from a RP perspective.

Anyway, I managed to escape the interdiction of my enemy (he was named Jetson, or something like that) and I followed my route, flying back towards our starting point. After two jumps of 50+LY (so more than 100LY away from the system where my enemy failed to interdict me), as soon as I exited hyperspace, I read a message where "Jetson" said something like "Target's ship spotted, I'm on my way to intercept her".

How the hell is that realistic? I don't have a problem with being hunted down by enemies in several places, moreover if my passenger is a high-value target and a wanted criminal. The fact that enemies find me and try to intercept my ship is not a real problem either, because I always manage to escape interdiction. But I'd like to see a little bit of coherence here. There is no way this same guy could have followed me this quick.

And even in the case where several enemies were hunting me down, how can they possibly know this fast in which system I am jumping? Especially since I was flying in the Bubble, so in a part of the galaxy where you can basically take 50 different routes to go to the same point.

Ambushes at strategic points would be more coherent. I wouldn't be surprised to have a nice and warm welcome committee in the system I'm supposed to fly back at the end of the mission.

Do you know if there is any possibility that FDevs can change this? I don't know if it's a lot of work to change random enemy popping into strategic ambushes (according to our route for example), but it would be far more logical.
they must have super quick super human skills at operating the discovery scanner and locating you before you arrive..
 
The problem is that it's the same ship (or at least an identical ship with an identical pilot name, which is the ED instancing equivalent).

When we first saw this back in the early days of the game, many players dismissed it as placeholder because we were still holding out for the semi-persistent NPCs as discussed in FD's NPC proposals. By now it's clear that we're not getting anything close to those any time soon, if ever, and yet this tired mechanic persists.

Keep an eye on the load out, same name, different loadout and/or ship in many cases.
 
Keep an eye on the load out, same name, different loadout and/or ship in many cases.
In which case it's even easier to start the process of smoke-and-mirroring it just by dropping the name. In fact it's even worse, because it suggests someone went to the trouble of making sure the name is the same across instances, but nothing else. Mind-boggling.
 
I remember back in Frontier: Elite 2 lighter attack ships could wakescan and jump to arrive before their target, so I just assume that as a sort of head canon when this occurs.

I agree the game would certainly be improved if Fdev were to put a little more thought into npc messages, no question.
 
As others have said its the instanced nature of ED that limits areas for ambush. Through several questionable design choices its slowly made it harder and harder to have a coherent and plausible NPC attack.

Although inconsistent, you can skip dropping into NAVs to find your station as you are given the location, meaning for most tasks you can sail on by without risking dropping into the shark pen- especially so in compromised navs.

SC has one route: interdictors. Although space has geographic zones NPCs don't seem to behave any differently, or have zones of control that trigger additional problems.

Station drop zones were made smaller during beta, which means you drop almost straight into a NFZ. And since pirates obey rules to the letter they dutifully break off pursuit.

My fav: Powerplay- PP NPCs have an interdictor allergy. Enforcers sent to kill traitors are not issued with interdictors at all, instead looping and looping to put you off.
 
So what's the solution OP? From the way players play the npcs should hang around engineer bases and cgs and gank you there - if you're after realism...

Or you can step back and realise it's a computer game, not a 1:1 accurate galaxy simulation
Several members gave interesting answers, and I already shared my opinion about how it could be improved: I think it would be better to organize ambushes at strategic points, determined for example by the POI your passenger wants you to visit. I like the idea of being chased down by one ship too, but it IS inconsistent to making her spawn into a system when she should be very far away from you, still scanning your FSD wake.

I agree with the idea of a network of hunters coming from the same faction, or from allied faction with the one chasing you. This solution has more sense, because it would be perfectly logical that factions communicate together.

We could even think of an escalating hunt: if you escape one interdiction, you will have more ships after you in the next ambush.

It doesn't mean that we should face hard hunting as long as we host a criminal, but it could add some more fun and consistency, even more with high-value targets.

PS: I know all about reality VS fiction and I am not asking for an entirely realistic game. But this issue, imo, makes no sense, even in a fictional universe.

I usually just kill them...
It's quite hard to kill an opponent when you fly with an unarmed Orca with a 3D low powered SG.^^
 
Several members gave interesting answers, and I already shared my opinion about how it could be improved: I think it would be better to organize ambushes at strategic points, determined for example by the POI your passenger wants you to visit. I like the idea of being chased down by one ship too, but it IS inconsistent to making her spawn into a system when she should be very far away from you, still scanning your FSD wake.

I agree with the idea of a network of hunters coming from the same faction, or from allied faction with the one chasing you. This solution has more sense, because it would be perfectly logical that factions communicate together.

We could even think of an escalating hunt: if you escape one interdiction, you will have more ships after you in the next ambush.

It doesn't mean that we should face hard hunting as long as we host a criminal, but it could add some more fun and consistency, even more with high-value targets.

PS: I know all about reality VS fiction and I am not asking for an entirely realistic game. But this issue, imo, makes no sense, even in a fictional universe.


It's quite hard to kill an opponent when you fly with an unarmed Orca with a 3D low powered SG.^^
I mean, that is entirely your choice, so the consequences are your own fault.
 
NPC AI is formulaic, can't think on the fly, so it "cheats".

Also a pain is the NPC you blast to near oblivion, gets lucky and wakes out, but returns within seconds all repaired and at 100%.

This nothing new and has been the case for a very long time.

You can hope that sentient AI becomes real and then; "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that. you have to DIE"!
 
Back
Top Bottom