Newcomer / Intro Combat Mission not worth the time when AI cheats.

[Suromir]

I know. Get Good right? Doesn't matter how "skilled" you are, if you don't kill an NPC fast enough (and even sometimes, I'll explain later, even that doesn't matter) they'll just FSD out. Ok, fine. If I'm losing I'd try to run, so why shouldn't the AI? Right? Until you add in the fact that module damage either a) doesn't do crap or b) causes self-destruct even if you are just trying to disable to use hatch breakers on it or some such. Cheating AI =/= challenge, nor doesn't it make it "fun."

I've not only had the NPC's FSD at 0%, still targeted, and unloading on them full blast(s) to have them FSD out, but I've also had AI NPC's WARP OUT WHILE IN THE MIDDLE OF EXPLODING. Which has happend at least 3 times (probably many more times I just never noticed) in my (under a month) time of playing. That's right, the animations for a ship exploding is playing out (y'know booms going off over it, the typical "I'm blowing up now" sounds that accompany it) and then, WOOOOOSH, warped out and no kill/mission credit.

Also the way missions play out is pretty stupid. Seems only time kill x of y faction ships counts towards multiple missions is if one of those "x of y factions" you also have a kill specific "pirate/deserter/etc) of y faction" that matches the faction. I had 10 kill x of y faction missions but each ship kill only counted as one kill for ONE of those missions. That makes no sense. If I have 4 missions (1 kill 1 of y, 1 kill 3 of y, and 2 kill 6 of y, or any mix of numbers for same y faction) then killing a ship should give me a 1 kill count in ALL of those missions. Why if I'm sent out by multiple factions to kill x of "Cheaters of ED" faction does 1 kill only count towards 1 of those faction missions and not all of them that I have? It literally makes no sense, and is an idiotic "mechanic" if it's intentional.

Yes I realize this comes across as nothing but a whiny complaint post. And I really wish my first post wasn't one of this nature, as I do love this game. This kinda crap is absolutely not only infuriating but downright idiotic if said "issues" are a "feature."

So my question is, how do you stop this kind of crap from happening (the escaping thing I mean, obviously the idiotic kills counting only towards one of the many missions for the same faction can't be fixed via "getting gud")??

Thanks for any "tips" in advance. Sorry but had to vent. Love the game, but damn if there aren't some idiotic downright cheating "features."

 

[Chris Simon]

Don't apologize, most of your points are valid and have been brought up before.
Things like mission NPCs mysteriously repairing themselves immediately or the dubious counting of mission target ships.

I wouldn't agree with the module sniping, though. At least not fully. Destroying a powerplant to disable a ship has been a tactic of mine for a long time. But I agree that the NPCs sometimes don't behave as they should.
You can raise your concerns and improvement propositions in Suggestions and Feedback section. We have to keep reminding FD of these things.

 

[aRJay]

Also raise or confirm or vote for a bug report on the issue.

 

[Morbad]

NPCs being able to jump virtually irrespective of circumstance is one of the few ways in which they don't play by the same rules as CMDRs and has been an issue since before launch.

Not sure they'll ever get around to changing it, but in the meantime it's good practice for minimizing one's TTK.

 

[Maenden]

In my Anaconda, if I decide to retreat, it takes a long time and a lot of boosting away from the battle - but recently I had an enemy 'Conda, surrounded by ships, including me up close, tight against a megastructure - and it just disappeared in seconds.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Missions used to stack kills, and it led to exploits where players were earning hundreds of millions of credits per hour stacking conflict zone missions. This was rightly patched out. Personally, I don't see why anyone would willingly choose to pay you twice for one job, so I would disagree that you should get paid in the way you wish for stacked kill missions. Given how lucrative mining is right now, perhaps the rewards for kill missions should be looked at. Either that or maybe mining profits should be nerfed, but it's not safe to advocate such heresy around these parts.

As for the module sniping - if you actually get the FSD to zero, the ship shouldn't be able to wake out. I can't recall seeing it happen, and I always target the FSD first. The FSD charge sound plays, but the ship stays in the instance. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, only that it hasn't in my experience. If you bug report it, I suspect video evidence would be very useful.

When your target wakes out as it's exploding, does it drop materials? I've killed plenty of ships as their FSD counts down, and even had the wake-out noise and effect, but the ship drops mats. I don't often do assassinations/massacres these days, so I don't know if the kill count increased in that situation. Again, video evidence would be really useful for the bg report, as would the log file around the timestamps that this happens.

 

[Yaffle]

My gripe is they jump with 1% hull, badly damaged modules, and reappear behind me as soon as I enter super-cruise with 100% hull, 100% shields, and often a different config. In the last system it happened to me, it meant the NPC had jumped 45 LY, docked at a station (nearest with a L pad, where they had spare modules stored, natch), repaired, outiftted, jumped back in the time it took me to get into supercruise.

 

[aRJay]

My gripe is they jump with 1% hull, badly damaged modules, and reappear behind me as soon as I enter super-cruise with 100% hull, 100% shields, and often a different config. In the last system it happened to me, it meant the NPC had jumped 45 LY, docked at a station (nearest with a L pad, where they had spare modules stored, natch), repaired, outiftted, jumped back in the time it took me to get into supercruise.

That wasn't the NPC it was his clone, the cloned pirates stopped including their version number in their names once they realised that it would confuse people, apparently they got the idea from either an old TV show called the Revengerers or a documentary series about Albert Einstein and his clones battling aliens made by somebody called Andy Gerryson.
The names might be a bit muddled ancient 20th century history was never my strong point.

 

[Suromir]

Missions used to stack kills, and it led to exploits where players were earning hundreds of millions of credits per hour stacking conflict zone missions. This was rightly patched out. Personally, I don't see why anyone would willingly choose to pay you twice for one job, so I would disagree that you should get paid in the way you wish for stacked kill missions. Given how lucrative mining is right now, perhaps the rewards for kill missions should be looked at. Either that or maybe mining profits should be nerfed, but it's not safe to advocate such heresy around these parts.

I would, obviously, disagree. If you want to argue that it should be that way from a gameplay/balance standpoint. You have a case and it is perhaps logical. We could have that discussion. However logically/realistically it does NOT make sense. If two factions want you to destroy 2 ships from "cheaters of ED" you shouldn't have to destroy 4 to please both of them. Each one hired you for 2, not 4. For example if Microsoft and Apple hired you to paint "Google Sucks" somewhere (silly example I know but it's a simple one that makes the point) then neither company (the faction in this case) should or would know the other hired you to do the same and either way if Apple came along, after you painted "Google Sucks" on some billboard, and said "no Microsoft is paying you for doing this too so we need won't pay you unless you do it again) not only makes no sense but gives both companies (factions in this case) a 2 for 1 deal. Again perhaps bad example (certainly is a silly one) but it makes the point. From a realistic/logical point of view it, in fact, does not make sense and makes you do twice (or more, if more than only 2 factions/companies hired you to do it) the work they required. Again, however, balance/gameplay wise you have an argument. Otherwise, not so much.

Hate to say it, but honestly I'm on your side about the mining thing. Deep Core at least. Something needs balanced there vs missions because why do missions for say 10mil an hour when you can go deep core mining and make 100mil+ an hour. Not sure if that means nerfing mining gains or boosting mission gains (or something in-between) but there is definitely a severe imbalance, gameplay/balance wise there.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

NPCs being able to jump virtually irrespective of circumstance is one of the few ways in which they don't play by the same rules as CMDRs and has been an issue since before launch.

Certainly as of 3.3 taking out their FSD seems to work. First module I go for on any NPC I want to actually kill - outside of things like CZs where they mostly stick around regardless, anyway.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Also the way missions play out is pretty stupid. Seems only time kill x of y faction ships counts towards multiple missions is if one of those "x of y factions" you also have a kill specific "pirate/deserter/etc) of y faction" that matches the faction. I had 10 kill x of y faction missions but each ship kill only counted as one kill for ONE of those missions. That makes no sense. If I have 4 missions (1 kill 1 of y, 1 kill 3 of y, and 2 kill 6 of y, or any mix of numbers for same y faction) then killing a ship should give me a 1 kill count in ALL of those missions. Why if I'm sent out by multiple factions to kill x of "Cheaters of ED" faction does 1 kill only count towards 1 of those faction missions and not all of them that I have? It literally makes no sense, and is an idiotic "mechanic" if it's intentional.

If the missions are offered by different factions, then a kill in one mission should count for all of them. That certainly was how it worked for a while - I haven't done any of those missions for a bit, so it may have got broken somewhere.

If the missions are offered by the same faction, then it'll only count for whichever the earliest you picked up was - what you effectively have is a single "kill 1+3+6+... of y" mission which you can complete and get paid for in stages.

(If you had ten missions, it would have been a pretty impressive feat to have all of them offered by different factions. Normally in my experience each separate faction has its own enemy and finding ten who all wanted the same targets dead would be very rare - clearly you have a local faction everyone hates!)

 

[Chris Simon]

Hate to say it, but honestly I'm on your side about the mining thing. Deep Core at least. Something needs balanced there vs missions because why do missions for say 10mil an hour when you can go deep core mining and make 100mil+ an hour. Not sure if that means nerfing mining gains or boosting mission gains (or something in-between) but there is definitely a severe imbalance, gameplay/balance wise there.

Allow me to disagree, here. Not all has to be balanced. Not all ships have to be the same and neither do jobs. People like different things. I sell tea IRL and I am doing it because I like doing it and accepted the low income that goes with it. I don't write complaints about how tea business should yield the same incomes as film industry or professional football. I enjoy what I'm doing and it keeps me alive.

Same in the game. You do what you like to do. EVERY activity earns you enough money to sustain your playstyle. If your only concern is how much money per hour you're earning, well, go with the meta and burn yourself out on grinding some activity you don't really enjoy. Otherwise just do what feels good and the money will come eventually. You won't be a billionaire after six hours abut after six weeks. So what?+

 

[FrogsFriend]

Multiple kill missions from one faction don't stack.... one faction won't pay you multiple times for the same kill.
However, if each mission is from a different faction then they do stack and each faction will pay you for each kill.

 

[aRJay]

Certainly as of 3.3 taking out their FSD seems to work. First module I go for on any NPC I want to actually kill - outside of things like CZs where they mostly stick around regardless, anyway.

If I was trying to pirate the NPC or liberate someone then I can see the point of trying to take out modules, generally I just target the whole ship working on the principle that when the hull is down to zero they aren’t going to go anywhere other than a cloud of debris. So as long as my turrets keep shooting at them so do I.

 

[aRJay]

Oops!

 

[the100thmonkey]

I would, obviously, disagree. If you want to argue that it should be that way from a gameplay/balance standpoint. You have a case and it is perhaps logical. We could have that discussion.

We don't need to - the devs agree with me.

However logically/realistically it does NOT make sense. If two factions want you to destroy 2 ships from "cheaters of ED" you shouldn't have to destroy 4 to please both of them. Each one hired you for 2, not 4. For example if Microsoft and Apple hired you to paint "Google Sucks" somewhere (silly example I know but it's a simple one that makes the point) then neither company (the faction in this case) should or would know the other hired you to do the same and either way if Apple came along, after you painted "Google Sucks" on some billboard, and said "no Microsoft is paying you for doing this too so we need won't pay you unless you do it again) not only makes no sense but gives both companies (factions in this case) a 2 for 1 deal. Again perhaps bad example (certainly is a silly one) but it makes the point. From a realistic/logical point of view it, in fact, does not make sense and makes you do twice (or more, if more than only 2 factions/companies hired you to do it) the work they required. Again, however, balance/gameplay wise you have an argument. Otherwise, not so much.

Well, no. If the same company hired you to do two separate deliveries, you'd have to do... two separate deliveries. In terms of logic, if there are two missions from the same faction to kill two ships each, you'd expect them to want you to kill two sets of two ships. Why would they offer the same job twice, then pay the same person twice to do one job?

As for different factions wanting you to do the same thing for them, any sensible organisation would just flat out refuse to hire you to do the job if they knew you were going to do it anyway. Why pay for something you can get for free? They'd certainly offer a different deal. So you're just wrong.

 

[Suromir]

We don't need to - the devs agree with me.
Well, no. If the same company hired you to do two separate deliveries, you'd have to do... two separate deliveries. In terms of logic, if there are two missions from the same faction to kill two ships each, you'd expect them to want you to kill two sets of two ships. Why would they offer the same job twice, then pay the same person twice to do one job?

As for different factions wanting you to do the same thing for them, any sensible organisation would just flat out refuse to hire you to do the job if they knew you were going to do it anyway. Why pay for something you can get for free? They'd certainly offer a different deal. So you're just wrong.

Except I wasn't arguing about ONE company hiring you to do two things. That's why my stupid example didn't involve any kind of exchange of goods or the like (something tangible) but instead was intangible. And since when do companies/factions share who they hire for and for what with each other? Yes, if one company asked me to deliver 10 units of something to one place and 10 units of the same thing to another place I'd obviously need 20 total. That wasn't my argument, you're not listening.

And arguing that we don't have to agree to disagree because the dev's "agree" with you is, sorry, a copout argument. But I'm dropping this here as it doesn't seem like you're the type to actually have a debate about something, instead dismissing it entirely. And I didn't come to these forums looking for drama. So, peace.

 

[Suromir]

Seems I stand corrected on at least one thing in my gripe. I didn't even think to check if any of the missions were given by the same faction. That was probably the case, though, in which it does make sense they wouldn't stack kill counts. So there's that, I'll have to pay attention to that next time.