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

[Birdnose]

So the concern here is: 1. it's either "working as intended", or 2. a key FDev developer cannot identify a bug as obvious as this. Which would you prefer is correct?

She may be a key developer, but weapon systems are apparently not her portion of a rather large code base. On a project like this people don't always know what's happening in someone else's code.

To borrow someone else's premise, if I asked a guy at a tire shop about a problem with my cruise control, his answer would probably be, "well, the tires look OK. Can't be that."

 

[Chongo]

This thread is a place on the forums to discuss the issue, coupled with player awareness and visibility on the bug itself. The silence on the matter by FDev has resulted in a lot of commanders not even being aware of it and blaming their bad fortunes on the new combat AI instead. I'm hoping to work towards separating the new improved AI discussions away from the topic of this bug, because they really are two separate issues and the last thing we all want to see is the AI dumbed down by FDev instead of this bug being fixed.

I think you can agree with that goal, right?

Yeah - this. It's messing up the perception on AI.

 

[Fyrd Judge]

Any one tried this, reverse when NPC interdict you, keep reversing in a straight line and NPC come right at you and glue themselves to the nose of your ship. Absolutely hilarious.

Decided after a few deaths to fit an Anaconda with 7 Shield Boosters + 5 shield cell banks and i can hold out against NPC Anacondas. Use best shield generator, military bulkheads, powerful power plant and AFM.

 

[Birdnose]

I have tried to use stealth builds and silent running to smuggle into a station, only to watch as 3 vipers charge straight at me with cargo scanners deployed, which they ping me with from the maximum range. Yet still, Frontier insist that the AI sensors are affected by silent running and stealth.

In my experience they are affected, but they do have very good sensors, and silent running doesn't make you invisible. From what I can tell it *does* decrease the range at which they can successfully initiate a scan down to 1-2 km, though.

I haven't tried in 2.1 yet, but my tactic for smuggling was generally to go to silent running as I dropped out of supercruise, then make directly for the mailslot at full throttle, ignoring the speed limit. Usually I'd see 'scan detected' a couple seconds before I went through the toast rack, but there wasn't enough time for the scan to complete before I got inside. If I wanted to be extra sure I'd pop some chaff once the scan started, especially if I had a bigger ship that I had to slow to maneuver through the slot. I rarely got caught this way; when I did it was usually because I didn't line up properly and had to slow and maneuver close to the station.

Being able to get through the mailslot at high speed with a minimum of faffing around is the key, here. Watch how some Buckyball racers do it if you want to see good technique in action.

 

[LKx]

Yeah - this. It's messing up the perception on AI.

Agree, if they fix the ray of death i think we could have proper feedback on AIs.

 

[pipo zelvelder]

I just think it is a disgrace that if this really is a bug, they did not downgrade back to 1.6. There are several threads with much responses about players loosing well earned money made through many playing houirs, which they lost in mere seconds. I for one have stopped playing to wait for an upgrade/downgrade were this is fixed. But if it takes much longer, it will propably be the end of it. I was enjoying the game very much, but it was already very hard for me (only trading and mining was hard enough) and now has become impossible. lost all my money in the last three runs and now face bancrupty or have to sell my ship. And reading the threads i am not the only one.

And frontier? No sign of them.. Is someone busy at all with this? Some sign would be great... Ah well, back to Diablo III for me

 

[Cori]

Note: I haven't got the slightest clue how shields work in Elite, but: I'll go ahead and assume shields regenerate when under fire. If they don't, you can disregard everything that follows.

The test in video is very bad for testing shield strength. It tests mostly shield recharge. If the test would be conducted with a weapon with even less dps (if there's one, I don't know) you might get 4PIP shields to show up as being *gasp* infinitely strong, when they'd recharge faster than the test weapon could deal damage.

Correct way to test shield strength would be to find a weapon with great burst damage, and measure how many shots/hits/damage bursts a shield with 0/1/2/3/4 PIPs can take within a very short time. That would minimize the effect of shield recharge, giving better indication on whether PIPs have effect on shield strength or not.

SYS pips affect the rate at which your SYS capacitor refills energy. As long as there is energy in your capacitor, your shield regenerates at a constant rate - 1 MJ/s (double for biweaves). It does not seem that pips directly affect shield regen rate.

They do, however - and testing has been done on this - directly affect the strength of your shield; a shield with four pips in it can take more damage than a ship with none, even though they regenerate at the same rate.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I just think it is a disgrace that if this really is a bug, they did not downgrade back to 1.6. There are several threads with much responses about players loosing well earned money made through many playing houirs, which they lost in mere seconds. I for one have stopped playing to wait for an upgrade/downgrade were this is fixed. But if it takes much longer, it will propably be the end of it. I was enjoying the game very much, but it was already very hard for me (only trading and mining was hard enough) and now has become impossible. lost all my money in the last three runs and now face bancrupty or have to sell my ship. And reading the threads i am not the only one.

And frontier? No sign of them.. Is someone busy at all with this? Some sign would be great... Ah well, back to Diablo III for me

Its a bank holiday in the UK, tomorrow will be the first working day since they released 2.1. We've been through this before with some odd bug killing loads of us, and once they were back in office they fixed it pretty fast and automatically gave everyone all insurance costs back since releasing the patch. Its annoying for sure, but within a few days it'll be over and it'll basically be forgotten until something similar happens in a new patch. Its actually common enough an issue that the veterans here all know not to fly their expensive ships the first days after a new major patch. And most importantly, dont lose your ships. Lost insurance will almost certainly be paid back, but lost ships due to being unable to pay the insurance generally not. So either give it a few days or hop into a cheap ship. Even the greatest newbie can have tons of fun in a stock Sidewinder in high-security systems. Get a head-start on your data/materials collection for the engineers, for example.

 

[Steve Solo]

I believe I only encountered that bug once around the current CG. Managed to escape but scared the hydrogen outta me. Ever since then things have been fine though. Guess I was a lucky one....

 

[Vincent Starson]

SYS pips affect the rate at which your SYS capacitor refills energy. As long as there is energy in your capacitor, your shield regenerates at a constant rate - 1 MJ/s (double for biweaves). It does not seem that pips directly affect shield regen rate.

They do, however - and testing has been done on this - directly affect the strength of your shield; a shield with four pips in it can take more damage than a ship with none, even though they regenerate at the same rate.

This is all correct. Also ships take ~5 seconds or so of not taking any damage to start recharging.

 

[W4rSkuLL]

I saw this Vulture today with a pulse laser or something shooting multiple beams. It looked like a huge beam of many smaller beams. It completely annihilated other ships. Nevertheless we got it down, but it was always a concern it would suddenly point its "mutated" gun towards me and my brother in our wing.
Today we both died in the Zargas High difficulty RES. Because of pot shots on the police. No mercy given there "Ohhh", you pot shot a federal security ship. "All ships drop your current target no matter its danger status and annihilate the commander which gained 400 cr bounty because of a pot shot".....................gahhhh.. BOOOM.
"Job well done". Why cant we just pay of those pot shots instantly. Pay of the fine with one of the police officers.

 

[Steve Solo]

I saw this Vulture today with a pulse laser or something shooting multiple beams. It looked like a huge beam of many smaller beams. It completely annihilated other ships. Nevertheless we got it down, but it was always a concern it would suddenly point its "mutated" gun towards me and my brother in our wing.
Today we both died in the Zargas High difficulty RES. Because of pot shots on the police. No mercy given there "Ohhh", you pot shot a federal security ship. "All ships drop your current target no matter its danger status and annihilate the commander which gained 400 cr bounty because of a pot shot".....................gahhhh.. BOOOM.
"Job well done". Why cant we just pay of those pot shots instantly. Pay of the fine with one of the police officers.

"Stop right there criminal scum!"

 

[z4.MAFIA]

This game is called Elite: Dangerous for a reason. The NPC's are still NOT hard enough. I vote for making them even tougher.

 

[StevieG]

There is already a bug report post in the appropriate forum for this bug, but per Agony Aunt that post is not for discussion of the bug, only for posting evidence of it. So I'm making this post here so that people can discuss this horrendous bug out in the open. Plus a lot of players might now even be aware of it yet.

The bug report thread is here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=255442

For people who don't know what this bug is: basically there is a huge bug in 2.1 where the weapons of some AI npc's totally break the rate of fire rules, and they essentially spam certain weapons at super fast rapid fire speeds. Most notably the plasmas and railguns are extremely deadly when bugged, and an AI Sidewinder with one of these can take down an A rated Cutter filled with shield boosters and hull reinforcements from full health to zero hull in literally seconds. The bugged npc's basically ignore shields and hulls and are extremely deadly, usually killing commanders within seconds of being hit.

Here are some videos of this wicked bug in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZN_yZ07-18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr8ljCGxQSU

These two clearly show the AI spamming plasmas like an AK-47:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_6HjebZFYs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM1ZXMaTPoA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dHdsYrmKnM

http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Ha11ywood/video/18013422

http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/ImmovableThrone/video/18038491



This is a game breaking bug that is negatively affecting combat in 2.1, and by virtue of the game being so combat focused, this affects nearly every aspect of the game. Every interdiction and instance of combat is essentially Russian Roulette where you face a very good possibility of being insta-gibbed in mere seconds, no matter how good at combat you are, and no matter what ship you are flying. In fact I'm betting that a lot of the complaints about the new AI being too hard are most likely actually complaints about this bug rather than the actual state of the new combat AI.

Due to Power Play changes in 2.1 where rival AI ships spawn and attack pledgees more frequently and in many new areas, the PP commanders seem to have been hit the hardest by this bug. It seems like simply because PP players now face a lot more interdictions, by simple probability they end up losing the Elite 2.1 game of Russian Roulette with this bug.

NOTE: this thread is not to discuss how easy or hard the new AI is, only the rate of fire bug that randomly affects the AI ships.

I personally lost my A-rated Python last night to a bugged DBS within seconds of being interdicted. I literally submitted, boosted, and had just begun to juke when within the first second my shields dropped, a second later my ship's computer was yelling "module mal...." and before she could finish the warning my hull was gone and my ship was space wreckage. I have no idea what weapon the DBS was using, there was no time to find out. Took all of three seconds, never had any chance at all. I am now flying cheap small ships until this bug is fixed, the insurance costs are more tolerable and I won't mind dying so much. Besides, Haulers and Eagles are fun now and then.

Yeah we might want to fix this one.

 

[Noddie]

Its a bug. I just hope they dont roll back the AI.

 

[frostypaw]

No mercy given there "Ohhh", you pot shot a federal security ship. "All ships drop your current target no matter its danger status and annihilate the commander which gained 400 cr bounty because of a pot shot".....................gahhhh.. BOOOM.

This deserves it's own thread and a good push near the next update - we need "Fined" and "Wanted" as separate statuses where fined doesn't get you destroyed! Done now it'll get lost in this bug and the AI thing, mustn't derail.

 

[tawittle]

it's not a bug, it's thargoids using alien technology.

 

[Birdnose]

I just think it is a disgrace that if this really is a bug, they did not downgrade back to 1.6

I doubt that's possible, unless they also rolled back everything that happened post-upgrade, which would make a lot more people unhappy.

 

[relayer]

"Stop right there criminal scum!"

Do you get to the Cloud District very often?

[video=youtube;pGOZ0tN2QTM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGOZ0tN2QTM[/video]

 

[Don Alvarez]

First I;m hearing of it. Guess I should read more, but this might explain what happened to a wingmate and I earlier when my A-rated FdL with over 800 shield strength literally went to no shields and 26% hull left in an instant from what my wingmate identified as a Sirius Security Python. I escaped with 4% left.

Seems to me this is costing a lot of people unnecessary re-buys, which ought to be compensated.