'Attack of the AI' III

[smiths121]

Hello,

I cleared save on Saturday so in a Sidewinder with 1000Cr. currently worth 4MCr in a Cobra. As I am playing self imposed iron man mode I have no choice but to survive.
I have found the game quite playable since the 2.1.1 server side updates. Before that I was dying multiple times a day. I have basically spent a week remembering how to run away.

I hasten to add the threat level at harmless to novice is much different to the wing you are talking about, but that is the point of the scaling.
There is no point trying to take on a wing like that in a stock sidewinder that is silly. A T-7 should be dropping cargo if it is interdicted by a wing like that and high waking.

Simon

There is an New NPC Abilities Hole in Yours Mate.
Currently NPCs are very well Capable of Aiming for Thrusters and FSD Drives.
Needless to say they Drop your Shields very Fast and Drop Rockets on your Rear meaning your Thrusters Give out almost Instantly in alot of Cases.

I had one case where I wanted to Run simply cause I didnt want to waste the Time Fighting.
Take a Guess what happened


One Guy Interdicted me. (For an Grandious Cargo of 1x Palladium and 1x Resonating Whatever I found on a Planets Surface and took along because unlike Space Goods you can Apparently Gather Stuff on Planets without it being Illegal.)
Then 2 other Guys Joined in Right Away.

1 Viper MK4
1 Eagle
1 Federal Gunship.


No Missions and Nothing Else Involved. Flying in a High Security System.
No Bountys or anything else on me either.



So I Submitted.
I Boosted.
And then my Class 6 B Shield Dropped before my FSD had even Cooled Down. (I had 4 Pips in Engines cause otherwise I would never make the Distance to actually use FSD Properly with the Fairly Slow Python)

Ok who Cares. Some K Repairs. I am an Older Player so I got a Few Million in the Back no reason to Worry.
And then Despite my Rear Point Defense Missiles Struck me.
Thrusters Out. Ship Turning Violently.


So 4 Pips on Shields and 2 on Weapons. Deploy Hardpoints and Return Fire.
Taking out the Eagle and then Aiming for the Viper while Finally the Security Response Force Arrived to give me a Hand with the Gunship.

I can Guarantee. I would not have gotten out of this with a Type 7.
And I take Bets you would not have Survived this Either.



Mate no Offense.
But what your Talking Shows only one thing.
And that is that you have been around before this Update and thus have the Required Equipment for this Stuff.

I.ll Give ya a Hint.
Buy an Sidewinder.
And Take a Note of your Bank Account.
And Just try Starting out a Game.

Basicly Limiting yourself to an Sidewinder with 1000 Credits or what People get currently.
And then Try Reaching 7 Million WITHOUT using the Money you got from your other Stuff.

Which pretty much means your First thing to do will be to Fly your E Grade Sidewinder with Fixed Pulse Lasers on a None Ranked Delivery Mission. (Make sure you dont use the Bigger Missions)
And lets see how long you need before you can get towards this 7 Million.
In 2 Months give us a Heads Up on How many Times you Died Trying.




Others are more Honest than you at least.
And rather than trying to Claim that People can actually Survive.
Already Switched to the Rail of. Well Dying is Part of the Game. Deal with it.

Not in the slightest bit more Acceptable. But at least Honest.


Stop Claiming that this is something just in Peoples Minds.

Difficulty is currently Too High for Non Combat Oriented Players. FACT.

 

[Wyaston Hypatia]

Basicly Limiting yourself to an Sidewinder with 1000 Credits or what People get currently.
And then Try Reaching 7 Million WITHOUT using the Money you got from your other Stuff.

Which pretty much means your First thing to do will be to Fly your E Grade Sidewinder with Fixed Pulse Lasers on a None Ranked Delivery Mission. (Make sure you dont use the Bigger Missions)
And lets see how long you need before you can get towards this 7 Million.
In 2 Months give us a Heads Up on How many Times you Died Trying.

I believe you are right that this would be difficult. It will be difficult as you still have your high ranks and you are treated as such.

Belive me getting to 7Million from a restart is not difficult. I have done it twice already - I play self Ironman. My current commander has 10.5 Million in assets - an A-Rated DBS and a D-Rated T6 made since the last patch. I bought the T6 when I had just enough spare cash for it after A-Rateing the DBS and have been running missions in it for the last day or so without any real issues. I've kept to High sec systems and relied on the cops turing up in time, but to be honest so far I have been ok without them.

Now I do know what I'm doing so that helps a bit but the start for a fresh start is not any harder than before. In fact given the missions I'd say that it's a bit easier to earn money now. It's a totally different case than for those with high level ranks.

 

[JesusOnEez]

My personal opinion is that it's about right.

I recently got back from exploring and wanted to try the new mission system. I headed to my home system of Guuguyni. Eager to crack on, I made some slight alterations to my exploration kitted Asp Scout (added weapons, chaff and a bit of cargo) and picked up a couple of missions to salvage experimental chemicals for about 600,000 credits each mission. Not bad wages.

The first one went without incident...easy money.

The second?

I headed to the destination and thought I'd have a look at a couple of signal sources on the way. One of them had some nice engineering parts, so I scooped them, and head to the mission signal source. Next thing I know, I'm being interdicted by Mace Windu (immersion breaking) who's in a DBE and ranked Deadly.

I do what I always do. Submit, deploy, boost, FA Off to turn, chaff and blast away.

It's at this point a realise, that this DBE is twisting and turning like a snake with a fork in its back, chaffing, and generally doing...well, pretty much everything I do to avoid getting hit. Except he's also hitting me.

I also realise very quickly, that I didn't kit my ship out properly. I have 3D shields (I should have 4A) that have now dropped, and my hull is quickly being dispatched (standard lightweight hull). I have no shield banks/boosters.

I run.

I get to supercruise with about 40% hull and decide to carry on to the mission target. I drop in, and it's all quiet, until Mace Windu drops in again.

I do something I've never done before. I drop my cargo and leg it with 14% hull.

I supercruise out of there and head to the nearest station to heal and replenish. Unfortunately it's not good for outfitting and I can't improve my build. Still, I'm repaired, and decide to go for the mission again.

Windu is waiting, and this time he just wants me dead. I run like the wind. Luckily, the police show up, and this is too much for Mace Windu. He high-wakes out of dodge, and I return to find that an Eagle and an FDL have swiped the mission cargo, and the police are currently killing them.

I decide to nick the bounty money (160,000 for the FDL), head back to Shen Terminal and kit my ship out properly.

So, tonight I'll have another go at this mission, and hopefully I'm ready for Mace Windu if he shows up again.

TL;DR - Got hassled by Mace Windu and it was brilliant fun. Would under-equip ship again.

 

[Commandr Sam]

My personal opinion is that it's about right.

I recently got back from exploring and wanted to try the new mission system. I headed to my home system of Guuguyni. Eager to crack on, I made some slight alterations to my exploration kitted Asp Scout (added weapons, chaff and a bit of cargo) and picked up a couple of missions to salvage experimental chemicals for about 600,000 credits each mission. Not bad wages.

The first one went without incident...easy money.

The second?

I headed to the destination and thought I'd have a look at a couple of signal sources on the way. One of them had some nice engineering parts, so I scooped them, and head to the mission signal source. Next thing I know, I'm being interdicted by Mace Windu (immersion breaking) who's in a DBE and ranked Deadly.

I do what I always do. Submit, deploy, boost, FA Off to turn, chaff and blast away.

It's at this point a realise, that this DBE is twisting and turning like a snake with a fork in its back, chaffing, and generally doing...well, pretty much everything I do to avoid getting hit. Except he's also hitting me.

I also realise very quickly, that I didn't kit my ship out properly. I have 3D shields (I should have 4A) that have now dropped, and my hull is quickly being dispatched (standard lightweight hull). I have no shield banks/boosters.

I run.

I get to supercruise with about 40% hull and decide to carry on to the mission target. I drop in, and it's all quiet, until Mace Windu drops in again.

I do something I've never done before. I drop my cargo and leg it with 14% hull.

I supercruise out of there and head to the nearest station to heal and replenish. Unfortunately it's not good for outfitting and I can't improve my build. Still, I'm repaired, and decide to go for the mission again.

Windu is waiting, and this time he just wants me dead. I run like the wind. Luckily, the police show up, and this is too much for Mace Windu. He high-wakes out of dodge, and I return to find that an Eagle and an FDL have swiped the mission cargo, and the police are currently killing them.

I decide to nick the bounty money (160,000 for the FDL), head back to Shen Terminal and kit my ship out properly.

So, tonight I'll have another go at this mission, and hopefully I'm ready for Mace Windu if he shows up again.

TL;DR - Got hassled by Mace Windu and it was brilliant fun. Would under-equip ship again.

Great to see players enjoying the risk and knowing when to run from a fight!

 

[Vorxian]

Curious to hear if folks actually downgrading equipment 'for the challenge' use mouse and keyboard.

One suspects that to throw a ship around like is needed with higher AI 'skill' you need some form of input control that has more uumph than a good old fashioned mousey-moo.

 

[lysan]

Still not BETA 4 levels however ok so far.

I would like more action on planets, the AI still need some tweaking, MoM should watch the new video from Isinona to get some Ideas

 

[HBK]

This is great stuff to report - there are only a handful of accounts from the high-ranked ranked folk seeing silly low-end attackers, and testimony that it's happening in both directions adds massively to the pile of evidence that there is something genuinely wrong and it's not just people finding it hard.

I don't know how to say this without sounding overly condescending but I find it very hard that FD doesn't already have this data.

This has been happening to me from day one. Obviously I wasn't at master rank day one but even when I was flying Couriers and Vultures at something like deadly rank everything that interdicted me was some crappy Eagle (at best a Viper) at novice or so rank. I just felt weird at the time and still feels weird now. "I'm gonna kill you!", well I'm in a FdL and you're in a DBS, good luck with that mate!

My personal experience with current AI is rather simple, interdictions happen now and then for mostly no reason. Sometimes I'm hauling some stuff so that could explain pseudo-pirates, but most of the time I'm just exploring in combat fitted ships because I like combat! Anyway most of those interdictions are from low rank ships literally made of paper.

Then if I go into RESes, I encounter mostly top tier enemies that wouldn't be so hard to kill if they weren't either: looping in ways which I doubt are humanly possible, spamming SCBs, spamming chaffs, having a crap ton of health (I'm guessing they have full HRP builds, but then again how do they pirate?), or any combination of the above.

To be totally honest now every ship is able to damage me (previously only the Fed mobile turrets would be able to shoot at me), so that's also part of the reason it complicates the fights.

But, and that would be the conclusion of this post, like some other people said in this thread, I don't really mind the increase in difficulty in RESes, pick your fights wisely and all that, but the current AI is not very fun to fight against. You just wait until it starts to get gangbanged by other ships and claim the bounty while you chirp off its health.

 

[frostypaw]

I don't know how to say this without sounding overly condescending but I find it very hard that FD doesn't already have this data.

I suspect they have such a vast amount of data that if they don't know what they're looking for it's nigh on impossible to spot - I can't blame them as long as they listen and investigate now.

It could well be deep in considered safe and solid code as for a long time the NPC level hasn't really made much of a difference so those getting the high end attention wouldn't have found it particularly bothersome - but now it matters.

 

[Queex]

With regards to shields seeming significantly weaker than they used to be: I can see several possibilities:
1) A conscious design decision to give more space at the top end for modded shields.
2) A side-effect of rejigging damage types and effectiveness that's accidentally left shields feeling especially weak against certain weapons.
3) A new bug somewhere in the damage calculations.

In any case, I think they should possibly be tweaked back up a bit; unlike a wargame where you may not much care how much hull damage your forces have as long as you win, repair costs and system failures have significant impact on play. Plus, shields are not only the first line of defence against enemy ships; they're also the first line of defence against glitches, lag and aberrant AI behaviour. So having a mite more breathing room than you would have for a 'perfectly balanced' combat model makes sense.


As an aside - I don't recall E being sold on the 'Dangerous' part. Did I miss some promotional material? Games that use their difficulty as a gimmick have their place, but Elite doesn't need that sort of cheap gimmick.

 

[frostypaw]

As an aside - I don't recall E being sold on the 'Dangerous' part. Did I miss some promotional material? Games that use their difficulty as a gimmick have their place, but Elite doesn't need that sort of cheap gimmick.

ED homepage

WHAT IS ELITE DANGEROUS?
TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR OWN STARSHIP IN A CUT-THROAT GALAXY.


Elite Dangerous is the definitive massively multiplayer space epic. With a connected galaxy, evolving narrative and the entirety of the Milky Way re-created at its full galactic proportions.


Starting with only a small starship and a few credits, players do whatever it takes to earn the skill, knowledge, wealth and power to survive in a futuristic cutthroat galaxy and to stand among the ranks of the Elite

It's not a gimmick, but it's been 100% clear from day 1 that avoiding all combat would be a pipe dream to me at least - I don't see how anyone can read that as it being an easy safe game.

ps. homepage looking very spanky, well done guys

edit> actually that text is from tools.elitedangerous.com which i'd ended up at somehow - it's not all on the new one, but the new one is very shiny too.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

ED has been always sold on "hardcore" label a bit...while accessible for newcomers. "Easy to get into, hard to master" and all that jazz. It hasn't changed since Alpha. I am really surprised people pull out "it wasn't advertised that way" card. You can't make stuff up - people check facts you know.

 

[Queex]

ED homepage

It's not a gimmick, but it's been 100% clear from day 1 that avoiding all combat would be a pipe dream to me at least - I don't see how anyone can read that as it being an easy safe game.

ps. homepage looking very spanky, well done guys

edit> actually that text is from tools.elitedangerous.com which i'd ended up at somehow - it's not all on the new one, but the new one is very shiny too.

None of that implies 'challenge difficulty' across the board, though. It's standard excitement boilerplate. You could read the same blurb for a text game.

 

[frostypaw]

None of that implies 'challenge difficulty' across the board, though. It's standard excitement boilerplate. You could read the same blurb for a text game.

I don't understand the term "challenge difficulty" I'm afraid so I'm not sure how to respond.

To me, and from experience with the previous games, it entirely met my expectation that it wasn't going to be a safe sandbox and that it would be challenging. I was really really weirded out when I got here and it was and actually spent much of my first week doing entirely pointless evasive stuff.

 

[HBK]

I've always read the "cut-throat" text to be ... you know ... the open-ganking PvP part of the game, not the PvE one.

But that's arguable I guess.

 

[Queex]

I don't understand the term "challenge difficulty" I'm afraid so I'm not sure how to respond.

To me, and from experience with the previous games, it entirely met my expectation that it wasn't going to be a safe sandbox and that it would be challenging. I was really really weirded out when I got here and it was and actually spent much of my first week doing entirely pointless evasive stuff.

'Challenge difficulty' means the entire point of the game (arguably) is the extreme level of difficulty (as perceived, anyway). I Wanna Be the Guy, for example, or the ROM-hacked Super Mario Brothers levels that are pathologically difficult. Some golden oldie games had that difficulty, but that was because the science of ludology was in its infancy - the old single-man dev teams didn't know any better and the field was so limited that any old tripe could get played over and over again.

There's a middle ground between 'constantly interdicted by Deadly/Elite AI ships' and 'safe sandbox'. The older Elite games hit that sweet spot (at least after you had mastered the black art of manual docking without any instructions on how to do so), and it's hardly strange that players would expect it from E: D. If someone just wants to haul goods around without bothering overmuch with combat, let them do so. They shouldn't have to learn advanced escape techniques just to get away.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I've always read the "cut-throat" text to be ... you know ... the open-ganking PvP part of the game, not the PvE one.

But that's arguable I guess.

Yeah, because in other MMOs PvE isn't really threatening you in any shape or form.

Still not really an excuse.

 

[HBK]

Yeah, because in other MMOs PvE isn't really threatening you in any shape or form.

Still not really an excuse.

:notsureifserious:

Most MMOs are total cakewalks in PvE yeah, solo AND group content.

And I'm not searching for an excuse, I'll adapt or I'll leave. I'm old enough to know what's fun for me and what's not. So far I'm good.

I simply find it funny that people have to resort to quoting the title of the game to explain how the game is supposed to be played, like how it's supposed to be "dangerous". Wooooo.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

:notsureifserious:

Most MMOs are total cakewalks in PvE yeah, solo AND group content.

And I'm not searching for an excuse, I'll adapt or I'll leave. I'm old enough to know what's fun for me and what's not. So far I'm good.

I simply find it funny that people have to resort to quoting the title of the game to explain how the game is supposed to be played, like how it's supposed to be "dangerous". Wooooo.

Title of the game in early days was used by FD to hint what kind of game it will be. That has changed over time, however FD advertising has been very consistent in that regard.

Most likely people's confusion raises from impression they got from actual gameplay and feedback about ED so far - lot of people pointed out that they have heard that this is harmless game with nice vistas and huge grind. NPC AIs has never been mentioned as worthy to worry about.

However this is MMO and everyone following MMOs in general knows they tend to change - a lot. However, again, they usually get nerfed for casual players, NOT going in opposite direction.

So there's lot of expectations not really connected with FD advertisement, but with de facto experiences. As this experience changes, feedback will change accordingly. Lot of players will leave. Lots of new players will discover ED. There's certainly a big niche market for good, challenging PvE games.

 

[HBK]

There's certainly a big niche market for good, challenging PvE games.

Maybe, maybe not.

Thing is, right now the game isn't exactly challenging for everyone. I for one find myself perfectly comfortable in either my FdL or my Clipper. What I can't kill I can run away from. So, other than being minor annoyances, and having "harder" opponents for example when farming RESes (even that, just "pick your fights" and you're safe), are only so "meh" in the grand scheme of things. I'm not really feeling the newer "challenge".

And the thing is that due to the nature of the game, it'll be pretty hard for FD to balance this out. I found perfectly reasonable that you could do some basic combat in a combat fitted trade ship for example. Now ... not so much. I'm fine in my combat ships. I'm not sure if other players such as those going by the trader's way feel the same.

 

[frostypaw]

There's a middle ground between 'constantly interdicted by Deadly/Elite AI ships' and 'safe sandbox'. The older Elite games hit that sweet spot (at least after you had mastered the black art of manual docking without any instructions on how to do so), and it's hardly strange that players would expect it from E: D. If someone just wants to haul goods around without bothering overmuch with combat, let them do so. They shouldn't have to learn advanced escape techniques just to get away.

Yeah there's plenty of discussion going on over that though - people have some pretty extreme ideas of what that means and there seems to be something bugged in the way NPCs are selected to attack you so gotta see how that works out before we cry too foul

Either way the total peace situation was never ever suggested, certainly not everywhere but....