Bullet Sponge NPCs - Does Anyone Enjoy This?

It's a little too much. I don't think it makes sense that you have to use half of the Frag Cannons ammo (two high capacity G3, screening shell and drag munitions) and two SCB just to take down a FAS (or was it an FGS? can't remember).

My Mamba's two C3 OC screening shell frags usually last for an entire high CZ without synthesizing more ammo. I strip their shields with beam lasers and rip the hulls apart with frags. No problem.

Krait Mk2 with 3 large beams and 2 medium MCs (1 corrosive, 1 autoloader) also works very well. The beams are reasonably effective against hull in combination with corrosive.
 
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It's a little too much. I don't think it makes sense that you have to use half of the Frag Cannons ammo (two high capacity G3, screening shell and drag munitions) and two SCB just to take down a FAS (or was it an FGS? can't remember). Or half the Multi Cannons ammunition to complete a Low CZ (two overcharged G5). I constantly get and average of 5-6 ships per Low CZ. That average gets even worse if you happen to engage with a T10 or a conda during your Low CZ session. At least double the amount of ammo we can carry maybe?

Well. That how OP our ships are. Fully engineered ships = 10x stronger than vanilla. Are you asking for an defensive engineering nerf ?

The best part is that FDev intentionally did not mod the NPC's shields to the max because it would become too long to kill them.

But since FDev went the "never remove the legacy mods" route, they can't nerf the engineering mods without a category 5 forum firestorm.
And even without that, they would still get hammered from players that are into the whole godshields big ships for PvE and the risk of making them unviable in PvP.

Painted themselves into a corner looks like.

The only way out would be a full rebalance from the ground up (including enineering, perma boosting, shield mechanics and the flow of combat in general).
Do the rebalance internally, test it at FDev. The do a first NDA alpha test with a bunch of players. Then move to Beta with clear lines of what can and cannot
be changed. Shrug off the Firestorm. Profit.
 
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The only way out would be a full rebalance from the ground up (including enineering, perma boosting, shield mechanics and the flow of combat in general).
Do the rebalance internally, test it at FDev. The do a first NDA alpha test with a bunch of players. Then move to Beta with clear lines of what can and cannot
be changed. Shrug off the Firestorm. Profit.

That's what I'm promoting. But you should to understand, that this massive work will have much less output, than less difficult generic content development, like the Guardian stuff.

The devs has put the combat into the deep *ss after the Gringeneers were introduced, and cannot pull it out without a massive whining. The bigger part of the community doesn't care about interesting combat, and will be against any game complication. My personal attitude towards them is extremely contemptuous, but FDev cannot afford such an attitude, or just doesn't want.

That will make no profit for FDev.
 
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That's what I'm promoting. But you should to understand, that this massive work will have much less output, than less difficult generic content development, like the Guardian stuff.

The devs has put the combat into the deep *ss after the Gringeneers were introduced, and cannot pull it out without a massive whining. You should to understand, that the bigger part of the community doesn't care about interesting combat, and will be against any game complication. My personal attitude towards them is extremely contemptuous, but FDev cannot afford such an attitude, or just doesn't want.

That will make no profit for FDev.

Indeed. It is crystal clear (to me) that FDev will likely never take such steps. Lots of pain, no gain ($).

It's exactly the same problem seem with lackluster AI's in strategy/grand strategy games : push expansions and DLC's ($$$) but don't attempt to revive brain dead AI's (lots of pain, no gain ($))
 
I hope that Star Citizen will become competitive soon, and it's combat will be much more fun than this product of the players's bad taste and gamedesigner's incompetence. Competitor is the only hope to make FDev move.
 
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Krait Mk2 with 3 large beams and 2 medium MCs (1 corrosive, 1 autoloader) also works very well. The beams are reasonably effective against hull in combination with corrosive.

Exactly this loadout used to work well for me, too. But since 3.3 it's simply pants.
 
If you're going to give players a sense of the breadth of potential loadouts within the game, I think it's important to have ships that are bullet sponges. Taking out (eventually) my first FDL Spec Op in a CZ was an eye opener, because it made me realize just how tough a ship COULD be. That in turn reminded me of how fragile my own ship could be against a superior opponent, and got me rethinking how I'll approach armor in the future.
 
Have you tried engineering? Or if the T-10 is too beefy go after softer targets. I would really enjoy fighting a fleet of sidewinders though.
 
As I metnioned on the discord and will state here for public evaluation...While I agree that bullet sponges aren't the only way or the best way to accomplish a difficulty hike; compared to what we had before, yes, I enjoy the new CZs more.

CZs aren't a place to just go shoot a few NPCs and collect a few credits, that's what RES and CNBs are for. CZs are the place where BGS wars are won and lost. There are two important things that the new system promotes...

1) It means that a few casual pilots who aren't BGS specialists, jumping in and killing a few ships for a laugh, is unlikely to be critical in the outcome of a war if BGS players are putting dedicated effort in. In the past, CZs were easy enough that a group just having an afternoon in a CZ could have a strong effect on the war.
2) New pilots with less well equipped ships and or less developed skills, are rightly and properly, not able to keep up with CZ monsters such as those that we employ when we want to actually win a conflict.

Essentially, conflict zones are not just toys and should not be accessible to 'just any' player. I like that they have now shifted toward being an end game activity. But once again, yes, bullet sponges seems a little unimaginative. But I'm loathe to complain, as they're so much better than what we had. When FD irons out the details of the mechanics, I'll be really happy with them, bullet sponges and all. :)

I agree with everything you said with one caveat. CZs were necessary locations for farming certain manufactured mats offered pretty much exclusively by authority/combat ships in CZs. Maybe I'm wrong about this, hopefully you can clarify for me. I've really enjoyed the new CZs but I haven't been able to mat farm in them very effectively any more since I'm focused on fighting.

So I guess this is a round about way of saying bullet sponges mean no more mat farming in CZs, so where should I go to farm lol?
 
I'm finding that the T-10s go down pretty fast ...if you're flying a ship that does high sustained DPS (which usually means you're not trying to run long range mods on your weapons). What bugs me more is the increased self-preservation model these NPCs have COMBINED with their hardened armor, especially in CZ.

I don't mind that the NPCs bug out -- it's "smarter" play on their part. But if you bug out of a PvP duel, that's a loss (aside from those unending wing fights where people bug out and come back in, over and over). A ship that wakes out of a CZ ought to count as a kill (and toward the resolution of that battle instance). That would go a long way toward making the higher hull hardness less annoying.

Sometimes it seems harder to finish off one of those high-velocity, Deadly or Elite Viper III's than it is to kill a CZ Challenger or T-10! The way they joust boost, they can be 4K away before you get turned around. If you don't kill them on their first or second pass and make the mistake of getting them down below 25% hull, they're gone! (Rail users -- yeah, yeah, we know you don't have that problem :p )
 
Just curious, not a rant at all.

My personal opinion on bullet sponge NPC's is, I don't like it. :p
Most NPC's aren't particularly difficult to kill, they just take a long time.
Which in most cases (especially CZ T-10s), just involves holding the trigger until a pretty explosions happens. Not difficult at all, just a slow process, and you're rarely in any danger, and you don't even need to do much else.

Spec ops in CZs can be quite lethal in groups, but 1v1 is never an issue.
Again, they just take a long time to kill.

Personally, what I consider a fun battle, is being outnumbered by high damage output NPC's, but with weaker shields and hulls.

A good way to do this pre-3.3 was carry cargo in to RES sites and CNBs.
All hell would break loose, you'd be quickly under attack by multiple opponents, most of them weren't particularly tanky, but offen did a lot of damage.

Back in the old days of 1.4 I believe, some missions would spawn 11 sidewinders in wings to try and kill. Unfortunately a bug meant they weren't flagged as mission targets, but still, diving in to and 11v1 fight was hell of a good fight. Offen being pecked to death in the process. (pre-Engineers!)

All my favourite battles seem to involve fighting when I'm outnumbered, and outgunned.
Even a bugged assassination mission doubled up two Elite Corvettes to take on, in my Python.
That was fun. :D


If it were possible, I'd ask FD to tone down the hitpoints on NPC's, and increase their damage and numbers instead.

What are your opinions?
Do you like the bullet sponges, more weaker opponents, or something else?


I hate it in any game. Its just feels too fake and a dumb mechanic.
 
I enjoyed this when I was mostly harmless and flying around in a viper, dreaming of the day I could melt NPC's at will. Now some 1700hrs into the game and in Corvette I simply can't engineer anymore and with a 45m rebuy, no I don't enjoy this one bit. I fully expect to be melting everything in my wake and having NPC's bow down an lick my balls quite frankly. If I want a challenge then I could jump in an unengineer'd B module type-7 and give these a go, but I don't expect the same trigger finger blisters and sweat/stress emptying my entire ammo to get a Cobra's hull to 40% after this amount of grind to get where I am it's just absurd.
 
I enjoyed this when I was mostly harmless and flying around in a viper, dreaming of the day I could melt NPC's at will. Now some 1700hrs into the game and in Corvette I simply can't engineer anymore and with a 45m rebuy, no I don't enjoy this one bit. I fully expect to be melting everything in my wake and having NPC's bow down an lick my balls quite frankly. If I want a challenge then I could jump in an unengineer'd B module type-7 and give these a go, but I don't expect the same trigger finger blisters and sweat/stress emptying my entire ammo to get a Cobra's hull to 40% after this amount of grind to get where I am it's just absurd.

That's why NPCs are so weak, lol. "I don't want to git gud, I've bought a Death Star and want to destroy planets with it" .

The problem is not a bullet sponge NPCs, but all ships. I will quote myself:

I've already said many times, long time-to-kill makes fight less skill-dependent, and more build-dependent. You can destroy armies in an old-school shooters or flight sims by proper positioning and shooting/maneuvering skill, but you cannot to do so in the modern shooters with the ttk of 0.5 seconds and more of the continuous fire.

Longer time-to-kill eleminates the skill element, and enlarges the equipment (weapons in shooters, air/spacecraft in sim) role. Any balancing issues are much more affecting with the longer ttk - 13% damage difference (for example) of the 200 ms/500 ms is a 26ms/65ms ttk difference result in absolute numbers.

That's why I consider so long ttk in E: D as a catastrophe - we have much bigger number ratios between different combat builds and between combat and any other role oriented crafts. Average TTK of a well-built combat ship is hundreds-thousands seconds; ship for any other role can have 2x or more times less health pool. Recalculate all TTK differences between different weapon/health loadouts and before-after engineering to absolute numbers, and you will se what I'm talking about.

And I can append, that so long fights are just silly, boring and require too much ammo.
 
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7 Days To Die has a similar problem, IMHO.

Back in an older Alpha release, zombies were easy to kill, and numerous, you could quickly get surrounded and killed.
But having too many zombies on screen was causing performance issues.
So instead of fixing said issues, they simply spawned less zombies, that were harder to kill.
Full on bullet sponges.
It quickly stopped being fun. Not only did they no longer surround you, because there wasn't enough, it was far easier to just run away, but should you need to kill some, it took ages. Lol

Which IMHO, was the lazy way out.
Luckily for 7DTD, it's moddable, so there are many ways to drastically increase the zombie count, and lower their HP to make it fun again.
(This may have been addressed in recent patches, but I haven't played it in a while)

I still believe ED would benefit from greater numbers of NPC's, which are equally damaging, but easier to take down. With some tweaks to BGS stuff, so wars aren't won instantly.
 
7 Days To Die has a similar problem, IMHO.

Back in an older Alpha release, zombies were easy to kill, and numerous, you could quickly get surrounded and killed.
But having too many zombies on screen was causing performance issues.
So instead of fixing said issues, they simply spawned less zombies, that were harder to kill.
Full on bullet sponges.
It quickly stopped being fun. Not only did they no longer surround you, because there wasn't enough, it was far easier to just run away, but should you need to kill some, it took ages. Lol

Which IMHO, was the lazy way out.
Luckily for 7DTD, it's moddable, so there are many ways to drastically increase the zombie count, and lower their HP to make it fun again.
(This may have been addressed in recent patches, but I haven't played it in a while)

I still believe ED would benefit from greater numbers of NPC's, which are equally damaging, but easier to take down. With some tweaks to BGS stuff, so wars aren't won instantly.

One or two hits one kill in vanilla 7 days to die, spiked club and crossbow. Sometimes you do need to drop them move in and finish them off.
 
While we're taking a break from the fact that the CZ enemies are bullet sponges, let's not forget those instances (which seem to be happening more frequently) where you jump in, take out a couple enemy too quickly, and the FDev balancing algorithms spaz out and decide your solo instance will only be "fair" and "challenging" if the enemy side gets BOTH a Spec Ops wing AND their Correspondents wing (while your side gets no bump at all).

30 seconds later it's just you and one surviving guy from your side (whose ticket gets punched four seconds later), and all five Spec Ops (and some random number of lesser dudes) are lighting you up, taking you from nearly full prismatics down to 22% hull in a hooker's heartbeat! [yesnod]:O
 
I don't mind the tough hulls too much, but do have some concerns about some of the smaller ship hulls. The Vulture and Viper Mk3 hulls are probably too high, with the Viper Mk4 being ridiculously high. I won't even attack the latter as it's not worth the effort.
 
While we're taking a break from the fact that the CZ enemies are bullet sponges, let's not forget those instances (which seem to be happening more frequently) where you jump in, take out a couple enemy too quickly, and the FDev balancing algorithms spaz out and decide your solo instance will only be "fair" and "challenging" if the enemy side gets BOTH a Spec Ops wing AND their Correspondents wing (while your side gets no bump at all).

30 seconds later it's just you and one surviving guy from your side (whose ticket gets punched four seconds later), and all five Spec Ops (and some random number of lesser dudes) are lighting you up, taking you from nearly full prismatics down to 22% hull in a hooker's heartbeat! [yesnod]:O

I had that once.
Fighting an Elite Asp and something else, then...
*fwip!*
4 Spec Ops spanwed about 6 inches behind me, then I ended up desperately trying to outrun them.
In an Anaconda.

That didn't work, so I lured them back in to the thick of the fight, guns blazing at an enemy a local Corvette was taking on.

When I came out the other side, I had a few bits of my ship missing. But I'd lost all the agro.
Sorry Corvette. You served your faction proud!
 
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