Engineers Are NPCs cheating with massively boosted damage since 2.1 or are engineer mods just OP?

[Vikestart]

Before 2.1, my Type-9 used to be able to at least take a little bit of beating before the shield went down.

Now NPCs, even if it's a small ship, almost always down my shield in 1 or 2 seconds, and my hull goes down almost as fast..... It doesn't seem right.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

According to FD, NPCs do not cheat. I think they're just a lot better now, especially with power management.

 

[Nazgutek]

In that case, please show me a build of a small ship (say, a Viper Mk III) that can down 100MJ of shields in under three seconds.

 

[TankMaster]

I really don't see the problem, I fought a lot of NPCs during beta and if they seem to hit harder it's only because they're firing a lot more on you, they'll make a pass and then use FA off to turn as quickly as possible and keep firing on you... Quite fun but I've never seen them as OP.

I even managed to take down two Eagles that interdicted me one after the other on my mostly exploration fit Asp (was on my way to get meta-alloys), fitted with 4 class 1 MCs and 2 class 1 bursts... And class 3 bi-weave, which, on an Asp, will go down with 3 shots... It was a bit difficult with that loadout, my shields went down with the second one but still managed to beat it, and come to think of it, if the AI was cheating then the clipper that interdicted me yesterday would surely have killed me right away since it was firing PAs left and right, only it didn't hit me once.

And during the beta I tested an Anaconda and corvette, stock and then modded on a HAZ res and it was quite ok, even used the modded corvette on a CZ and that was also nice so I certainly don't think the AI is somehow cheating except perhaps with ammo but other than that it's so much more fun now!, maybe you just have to adapt to it.

Give AI a chance, it just wants you to like it!

 

[Yaffle]

Duplicate of the many AI threads.