Cheater NPC-s with Railguns, or something like that, mostly vultures

[Ian Doncaster]

In terms of rails, they don't seem to require the same time on target before firing that we do. They just line up and fire - and never miss.

I'm nowhere near the best combat player in the game, and I don't line up on target and then fire with my railguns either - I start the firing sequence, then finish lining up, then if I'm on target by the end of the sequence I fire and if I'm not I try to release the fire key before the end of the sequence and save the ammo. Entirely fair for the NPCs to do the same, but from the outside you don't see the shots they give up on firing.

They did tweak the AI a while back so that it does sometimes miss with rails regardless (as opposed to what it was where it would reliably cancel firing if it was off-target so you never saw it miss, it just didn't fire), but it probably depends what you're flying - they miss my Krait quite a bit, but I wouldn't expect them to miss an Anaconda much because I don't miss Anacondas with rails much either...

 

[_ZT_]

for reference:
robots = bots = the script for the accuracy of the shooting of the game character DOES NOT MISS!
1000 shots = 1000 hits.
The developer of the game, in pursuit of making the game "playable", INTENTIONALLY makes an error in the accuracy of shooting for the NPC.
___

question arises (technical):

Frontier Developers,​

what is the "accuracy" setting for the game NPCs of the specified ships with Railguns ???​

 

[pakriksz]

OK - DOOD.
By definition NPC's don't cheat. They are programmed to spawn and respond based upon your situation and rank.
Railguns are NOT GIMBALLED. YOU are just not getting out of the way. Time their shots, and BOOST just before they fire. Don't be there when the round arrives.
Since you're using 'Cheater' over and over, I assume you're NOT able to fight Spec-Ops Vultures? They're tough, but they are not designed to cheat. They are quite predictable, once you've seen them a few times. Learn their weaknesses, and use it to your advantage.

Before theirs shots? They shoot twice in a second, continously if they can turn towards me (my ship would explode because of of heat, but AI does not have heat, ammo, or other problems...ever. That's cheating too).

I've also seen aimbots, how accurrate, and fast they are. That's why the developers give some inaccurracy for AI (in other games), to make them work like a human would, just like as they did for player gimballed weapons...


And how can i make such tough small ship? Let me think... i can't, even with engineers.

 

[Bashy81]

Before theirs shots? They shoot twice in a second, continously if they can turn towards me (my ship would explode because of of heat, but AI does not have heat, ammo, or other problems...ever. That's cheating too).

I've also seen aimbots, how accurrate, and fast they are. That's why the developers give some inaccurracy for AI (in other games), to make them work like a human would, just like as they did for player gimballed weapons...


And how can i make such tough small ship? Let me think... i can't, even with engineers.

well lets think. I guess everyone is a toxic troll & wrong and youre correct. yeah must be that. unlessss... its a massive coverup and all these 'other people' are fdev shills trying to keep the conspiracy under-wraps. Deepstate gamedevs wind me the hell up xD

 

[pakriksz]

well lets think. I guess everyone is a toxic troll & wrong and youre correct. yeah must be that. unlessss... its a massive coverup and all these 'other people' are fdev shills trying to keep the conspiracy under-wraps. Deepstate gamedevs wind me the hell up xD

Did you read the topic? Others wrote that the AI has no constraints like players have (heating, ammo, etc)... Simply FDEV didn't cared about balancing this part of the game. As written (not just by me) aimbots nearly never miss. That's why the developers in other games, programming artificial human like inaccurracy, and the same constraints like player have.

Tell me, why it's normal, if a lower end small ship in game (cobra, viper, vulture) has better armor than a high end huge ship (anaconda, corvette)? Also a gunship, dropship, FDL are much weaker than those small ships in CZ...

Also please show me how can a player shoot with railgun in each second without overheat, while having extremely tough armor, and constant chaff, while using SCB too!

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Did you read the topic? Others wrote that the AI has no constraints like players have (heating, ammo, etc)... Simply FDEV didn't cared about balancing this part of the game. As written (not just by me) aimbots nearly never miss. That's why the developers in other games, programming artificial human like inaccurracy, and the same constraints like player have.

Tell me, why it's normal, if a lower end small ship in game (cobra, viper, vulture) has better armor than a high end huge ship (anaconda, corvette)? Also a gunship, dropship, FDL are much weaker than those small ships in CZ...

Also please show me how can a player shoot with railgun in each second without overheat, while having extremely tough armor, and constant chaff, while using SCB too!

Small ships in CZs don't have better armour. 3 salvos of PAs on my FdL will finish an Eagle and Viper mk3s aren't much better. Bigger ships need much more than that.

Question is with the small ships- are you actually hitting them? They are quite nimble and gimbals do have a level of jitter which will affect things.

NPCs do also have heatsinks and I have some builds that I can manage a pair of Imperial hammers without having much heat problems. Just needs a bit of pip management.

 

[Oytis57]

I see many "optimists" here who say AI does not cheat,well I think it's quite the contrary in many ways but...we'll never have proof from Fdev about that,then to each his own.

 

[BDelacroix]

I don't think anything has changed but consider that both turrets and NPCs are computer controlled. NPCs are just flying turrets.

 

[Bashy81]

Did you read the topic? Others wrote that the AI has no constraints like players have (heating, ammo, etc)... Simply FDEV didn't cared about balancing this part of the game. As written (not just by me) aimbots nearly never miss. That's why the developers in other games, programming artificial human like inaccurracy, and the same constraints like player have.

Tell me, why it's normal, if a lower end small ship in game (cobra, viper, vulture) has better armor than a high end huge ship (anaconda, corvette)? Also a gunship, dropship, FDL are much weaker than those small ships in CZ...

Also please show me how can a player shoot with railgun in each second without overheat, while having extremely tough armor, and constant chaff, while using SCB too!

NPCs dont suffer from heat, (either their own heat or your icy temp) can run all systems on 0% powerplant, and are best using railguns. an elite crewmate in a Lance SLF is pretty handy.

they dont really manage pips & frequently manoeuvre specifically to give you a huge broadside target to shoot at.

you too can fire railguns every second if u have 1/2 or 1 pip to weapons and more than one rail, or just ammocap mod. or imp hammers.

NPCs are in CZs balanced against engineered cmdrs. so are spongey.

Fdev have prioritised their notion of gameplay balance over internal logical consistency. This has always been the case, which is why we fly ww2 style instead of Peter F Hamilton / Ian M Banks style.

small ships are harder to hit. they dart about & some have tricky module locations. your complaint, corrected, is they take longer to kill than bigger tougher ships. yes this will happen, if you build your ship to be weak against small agile targets, and exacerbate the issue with your flying style.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

NPCs have super human aim with hitscan because they dont 'see' you the same way you see them. R2D2 isnt sitting at a PC watching a monitor and playing like you are. They can make thousands of micro adjustments as they track you. NPCs however are truly awful pilots. Great aim, terrible at flying. You have the advantage over them at flight because you can learn. NPCs only know joust, facetank and evade. And their evade is "turn ~90° and boost". They are compelled to evade even if they are flying an FDL and all you hit them with is a small pulse turret. Use their terrible flight skills to your advantage and you will see that flying well matters more than aiming well in PVE.

 

[Just Paul]

The only "cheat" npc's have is that they know where you are aiming at. Don't know about ammo as they usually explode before any magazine could be empty.
Chaff works on them if they have gimbals, they stop shooting with them. For rails you only have to be on target then you release, some people start charging the rails far of the target. The higher their rank the better they are with pip management and fixed weapons and most of the builds they use are not power starved at all. Easily can power all weapons and FSD with 40% PP output. Same as SCBs, they run out of them in the same way a player does.

 

[Flankhard]

A Viper IV with military armour and standard hull reinforcements in its military slot and just two of its size 1 optionals has 1005 hull (and can go up to 2415 without even needing engineering) ... plus the Viper IV is way harder to hit than the Anaconda so it feels tougher even when it isn't.

Yeah, I vote for the Viper IV as most obnoxious NPC in CZ when flying a large ship. Low time on target and bloted armour makes it incredably annoying to fight, and you can't ignore them either because their railguns will eventually wear down your OP shield. The only easy counter to NPC Mk IV's, chaff, railguns etc. is to bring a Vulture.

 

[metatheurgist]

I see many "optimists" here who say AI does not cheat,well I think it's quite the contrary in many ways but...we'll never have proof from Fdev about that,then to each his own.

Except a post from the AI dev firmly stating what they do and don't do. I guess you can call her a liar if it makes you feel better about being beaten by AI.

 

[Several Puffins]

Did you read the topic? Others wrote that the AI has no constraints like players have (heating, ammo, etc)...

Those others aren't right- they're just not as good as the NPC at heat management. I certainly wasn't six months ago. A lot of people don't know the right strategies and so they see it as cheating. Small SCBs don't overheat me, so why should they overheat an NPC? Large SCBs usually cause an NPC to break lock because they have to pop a heatsink to cool off, just like I do. They hit twice quickly with rails because they fire two rails with a short gap, and any AX player can confirm that this is a useful heat management strategy.

A cursory look at EDSY tells me that I can get >4k kinetic hull on a viper MK4 on a military grade composite with plenty of internals left over. Given that you barely hit small ships at at all with gimballed multis at 1.8km (you can tell because they don't get status effects). They can appear tough but they're just not getting hit.

They are uncannily good with hitscans, but they still have to fire forward, so don't fly in front of them in a small ship, or tank it in a large. Put pips to sys when they do their attack run.

 

[d8veh]

NPCs do indeed cheat. They read your controls directly, so they don't need to wait to see what you're doing or where you're going. Whichever direction you go, they're already adjusting their position and aim before you ship started to move or change direction.

 

[MishaTX]

NPCs do indeed cheat. They read your controls directly, so they don't need to wait to see what you're doing or where you're going. Whichever direction you go, they're already adjusting their position and aim before you ship started to move or change direction.

They have to do it some way, to "mimic" human reactions and, since they're not true AIs but merely algorithms, the only way they can "guess" at your intentions is to read your input. Not ideal, I agree, I just don't know how else do "fix" that until we get the computing power to simulate true AIs. They don't have sight, hearing, intuition etc. They're just algorithms as in "if X, then Y" and they need their input from somewhere.

Ironically, that makes them even more predictable once you've figured out what their response is to input "X" (and I'm nowhere near that point yet. Still working on it).

 

[Quantis Trap]

And NPCs are really good with fixed weapons. I mean when they get their harmless pilot license, they already learned how to aim with fixed weapons

Wish that was true with hired NPC co-pilots!

 

[pakriksz]

Another big cheat: destroyed an NPC cutter's power plant, it had about 10% overall hull, turned 180, boosted, no "Surge detected"m but surprise, it jumped away... with destroyed power plant. It's not fun after shooting at it for 5 min... And as i remember a ship should blow up if the powerplant is destroyed...

Can a player do the same?
but at least i've learned that cannon is nice to bring down hull fast. Maybe i'll use it after FDEV fixed these problems, but i now i find another game to play instead this pile of bugs

Of course the NPCs are cheating very heavily...

 

[here_it_comes]

Another big cheat: destroyed an NPC cutter's power plant, it had about 10% overall hull, turned 180, boosted, no "Surge detected"m but surprise, it jumped away... with destroyed power plant.

Can a player do the same?

Of course the NPCs are cheating very heavily...

NPC PPs at "0%" simply operate at 50% after rebooting. And instantly repair to 100% after waking out.

If you are a regular combat pilot, this is why you fly builds that either have the firepower to drop targets before they wake, or carry the means to disable their ability to wake. It's not 100%, but it does reduce irritation significantly.

 

[pakriksz]

NPC PPs at "0%" simply operate at 50% after rebooting. And instantly repair to 100% after waking out.

If you are a regular combat pilot, this is why you fly builds that either have the firepower to drop targets before they wake, or carry the means to disable their ability to wake. It's not 100%, but it does reduce irritation significantly.

So they're cheating. That's the point. I don't think player can't jump with 0% powerplant, nor can't repair instantly, nor use the ship like nothing happened, without any pause.
Why can't i fly without powerplant? My ship would be much lighter... and cheaper too

I thought this game is logical, but this isn't logical at all. It's rather ridiculous..
Now which module makes a ship blow up? In early times PP made them pop. Few days ago i was shooting a T10, only it's weapons were >0%, but still didn't blow up.