2.1 Discussion on AI weapon spam "rate of fire" bug

[The Chairmaker]

There was nothing like this in Beta and I did a lot of combat.

I recollect Sandro saying something in one of the launch Videos about them looking to amend the blueprints so they erred on the side of extreme benefits. I wonder if this has resulted in something akin to an extra "0" being added to the code in error.

The main culprit appears to be the Plasma Accelerator

With regard to upgrades one in particular strikes me as a major suspect.

Phasing Sequence :Bleed through Modulating burst fire system designed to defeat shielding.
A small amount of damage is able to "bleed“ through shields and attack the targets hull directly, at the cost of minor damage reduction

Looks to me like the burst fire system is not working as intended. Wonder if players are able to replicate the same effect with sufficient modding.

 

[FX2K]

Only for extended firefights as having no energy in the capacitor means the shield can't recharge. Anyways, this does prove the AI cheats. Unlimited ammo, unlimited capacitor energy, ect. I don't care if they deny it. They're lying.

Here is a video showing the difference with pips (in v2.0)

Spoiler

[video=youtube;RrSXvCEergY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrSXvCEergY[/video]

But still, a bug is a bug and clearly... there are a few new ones in the galaxy.

 

[Reverend TZW]

She deleted tweet because it is not first time her words is used against her by some childish players. She wanted to avoid controversy. I saw that comment. It was right on nose. Player did fail there, with or without bug. Or we are in "all players should be treated as spoiled kids" territory now. If that's so, I really hope you all will leave really soon.

Absolutely outrageous comment.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

It's still fixed weapons, as you can see in one of the videos with the two clippers shooting at each other. Most of them miss and fly in a straight line into nothingness.
So you can dodge them. Not by flying in a straight line boosting, however, you have to use thrusters, which works or not depending on the size of your bucket.
Anything larger and less manouverable than a Viper/Vulture is at a disadvantage, since there the AI can just follow up with it's volley and has better reaction time than humans.

Maybe the purple death PA multicannons are countered by some engineer modded shields and are in preparation of the xenorace invasion (and what alien invasion would be fun, if they did not bring extremely high-tech weaponry with them), but then I guess they should be limited to very few Elite NPCs.

And while those engineers should provide some clear advantage, I think giving the new weapons the ability to 100-0 a 1.6 ship in seconds, without confining it some way that a commander is able to asses the risk, is not really helping.

i tried that approach with dodging. it still had me in its sights. i have asp with 5A thrusters and it was a viper mk 3. if it had modded thrusters to turn and keep me in sights or not it sure as heck could keep up and fire at long rangers when i tried boosting. it didnt miss at any point either when i was trying to do the evasion (not long because my shields were disappearing rapidly), nor when i tried to boost out of range. which in itself was pointless exercise unless it worked because every hit the FSD blipped offliine. anyways so the npc i faced didnt miss although its hard to be 100% sure of that during the evasion part i was kind of busy. but it was still hitting me a lot even if not every shot for my shield to be going down. he turned once behind me insanely fast to get me on target again.

maybe the evasion is what made the shield last so long - 20 seconds. perhaps if i had just decided to try boosting first once i made the lets go decision i would have lost the ship before the police jumped in with us.

this is a wild idea just came to me... are these npcs a secret dev thargoid test cloaked as normal npc ships? surely im just wildly speculating... if we had a shield mod to buy us more time from the weapons, the thargoids if they do that will be truly EPIC fights. especially if thargoid AI is even harder than the new AI. it would also explain not missing - octagonal ships with weapons all round was how they were in the original game. you had no place out of their fire except from beneath maybe and good luck getting there.

 

[Tigerlight]

What I have a problem with is NOT that the AI is tougher or smarter, by God it needed it. Their tactical choices, combat manoeuvring, etc. are way better and I approve. The rest of it, the insta-gibbing, that HAS to be a bug, plain and simple. And unfortunately NOT an isolated one.

Where I DO have a small problem, and I sympathise with a huge tract of the player base, is the argument of "this was intended from the beginning". That is all well and good, but that WASN'T what we had from the beginning. What's occurred with 2.1 is that, literally from one day to the next, there has been nothing less than an exponential rise in difficulty across the board. And in some cases, perhaps many, impossibly difficult.
IF this was the intent from day one and is the intent going forward, you CANNOT introduce such a massive change overnight. I call it a massive change because it has become probably THE single most game-killing feature introduced in this update. It's NOT that the AI is difficult, it's NOT that this is the game in line with its intended difficulty, it IS that this dramatic shift upward wasn't phased in but dropped on people, old and new. And YES, for some/many it is TOO hard too fast.

There WILL be players lost. There WILL be posts and rants and negative Steam reviews all over the place which will affect the rep of Frontier and the game as a whole. There WILL be an effect on the bottom line of Frontier over this. Intended or not.

 

[Goose4291]

It certainly does. I have successfully smuggled with my Python. In fact I have not been scanned (while running cold) in 2.1 at all.

2.1 has been out a grand total of four days. In that time I've seen the same things I've mentioned in my prior comments regarding NPC's with unlimited ammo/countermeasures and no incurring of heat damage happening still, admittedly though I have yet to be scanned carrying illegal goods (which is what my hold is usually full of). Don't forget the 2.1 build won't be the same as the beta we've been fiddling with for the past few weeks.

 

[Crash1099]

After watching the videos time to take a break from elite. No way 4 pips to sys would save you.

 

[Ian Skippy]

For those who don't know: we had a bug in the past that would cause absurd collission damage due to some error in the code. After a few days it was fixed, and all insurance claims during that period were automatically re-imbursed. If this is a bug (havent watched the vid yet), it'll be taken care of. Haven't seen anything strange in beta, and havent seen anything weird in 2.1 yet, but bugs can always happen.

 

[Lobstris]

Hmmmm. 'Purple wall of death', that takes me back to the good old days of being instakilled by iCouriers and iExplorers using plasma accelerators in FFE.
Nostalgia aside, this really needs to be removed quickly, via a hotfix.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

2.1 has been out a grand total of four days. In that time I've seen the same things I've mentioned in my prior comments regarding NPC's with unlimited ammo/countermeasures and no incurring of heat damage happening still, admittedly though I have yet to be scanned carrying illegal goods (which is what my hold is usually full of). Don't forget the 2.1 build won't be the same as the beta we've been fiddling with for the past few weeks.

it is refreshing not to constantly get scanned entering or leaving big stations now. makes smuggling to those at least an option without extreme measures now. or i could be missing the scans due to the traffic control voices

 

[frostypaw]

She MISSED or INTENTIONALLY AVOIDED the cause of player death. Both cases being either silly or insulting considering who she is and how long we waited to get HER back on the project, and how much love she had for her previous work.

Please - show some modicum of respect. She chose not to comment on whether it was a bug - don't read any more into that than what there is right there. It's not rude and she has no need to answer to you whatsoever, such things are dealt with in-house via their dev structures - attacking her for a problem in the weapons systems will get you nowhere.

For the sake of your own point consider how you're making it.

I think I have every right to be fed up...ain't played since saturday because the game is utterly unplayable for me.

I can understand you're upset, but please don't let this get you to such an extreme place so quickly. I've been nervous as hell after some people's reactions on here but not seen a peep of trouble so far - it very much depends on your combat rank and missions you choose - my flatmate is 'expert' and having a harder time! He's still managing to adapt though and he's not... the quickest.

Don't give up - and remember to just ignore some of the doomsayers on here who want to upset you and get you scared so you add to their manipulation attempts. If you want a hand and are near the top of the bubble just ask, tho will be down below soon too - i'm not some super-combat-high-rank do everything and not been playing that long, you will be ok

 

[Luniticisi]

Just a question, is there any pattern to these "insta-kill" ships appearing, as I am trying to get to triple Elite without dying (0 Insurance claims) and as there is seemingly no escape from this kind of attack it would be foolish of me to log in until it's fixed (which will probably be tomorrow or Wednesday)

 

[n4p0l3on]

I just survived an encounter with a master python that had one of those rapid fire rail gun, heck I killed it, my key was using lateral movement while jousting, the ray of death eluded me.

 

[joshman72nd]

I just survived an encounter with a master python that had one of those rapid fire rail gun, heck I killed it, my key was using lateral movement while jousting, the ray of death eluded me.

cool story now do it in a t9.
(yes thats what im flying now.)
no i havnt died yet because i got chaff, missle migee and ramming speed. only 150 cargo slots though.
more of a battle cow really.

 

[GraXXoR]

There's already another thread about it.

In fact several

<shrug>

You forgot to close your shrug tag... You're probably still shrugging right now.

 

[Ghosty]

As irritating as these bugs are, the plasma spamming got me rofling. I noticed it too but I thought it was just a multicanon with special ammo from the engineers. Only when I checked the ship's weapons did I notice it didn't have multicanons. That was the moment when it turned into a "brown-trousers moment". Though seeing it again in this video was realy amusing.

I'll just go back to trading for a bit or get the right stuff for the engineers until they fix this. That is, if I don't get interdicted by those "cheating" AI's because of a 1600cr bounty: "gimme that large prize" (or something). Seriously, its just 1600cr! Saterday I got some materials (4 tons/units) from a mission, all in all worth about 20.000 credits. I got AI's interdicting me for having a "large haul". Seriously...?

 

[1984]

I had this bug and many others. Which is why I have stopped playing.

 

[Mighty Dangerous]

cool story now do it in a t9.
(yes thats what im flying now.)
no i havnt died yet because i got chaff, missle migee and ramming speed. only 150 cargo slots though.
more of a battle cow really.

I flew a T9 unshielded all day Saturday. (without insurance too :O)
Survived every interdiction (just).

I did have video but it's corrupt so can't show it.
It is doable, I was carrying 496t cargo and survived all day but still I think it's only a matter of time before we get ganked by a wing or just caught out with low health or something.

 

[LKx]

There was nothing like this in Beta and I did a lot of combat.

I recollect Sandro saying something in one of the launch Videos about them looking to amend the blueprints so they erred on the side of extreme benefits. I wonder if this has resulted in something akin to an extra "0" being added to the code in error.

The main culprit appears to be the Plasma Accelerator

With regard to upgrades one in particular strikes me as a major suspect.

Phasing Sequence :Bleed through Modulating burst fire system designed to defeat shielding.
A small amount of damage is able to "bleed“ through shields and attack the targets hull directly, at the cost of minor damage reduction

Looks to me like the burst fire system is not working as intended. Wonder if players are able to replicate the same effect with sufficient modding.

Yeah, probably something like that happened.

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I just survived an encounter with a master python that had one of those rapid fire rail gun, heck I killed it, my key was using lateral movement while jousting, the ray of death eluded me.

Ray of death which could be fine facing some thargoids' advanced tech.... d'oh... i got it... they are already among us!!

 

[Kaybe]

yikes!