Well ye know how in a high CZ a fully engineered Conda can become hostile to both sides and not need to retreat because NPCs seem to use water pistols for hardpoints? Well perhaps if NPCs had better built ships in a high CZ the player in the instance couldn't be a one man army. Both sides being balanced wouldn't detract from the challenge if both sides had strong and dangerous ships. But it would need to be rewarded heavily by both credits and influence
CZs STILL not fixed
- Thread starter Maeyat
- Start date
That wouldn't change the current meta at all though, which is
- find group of allied ships targeting a ship
- join in, and follow their targets using "target closest threat" (same logic the ai uses for target selection)
EDIT: If you want a challenge that has different scales according to player skill, which aren't 5th-columnable, they can't be ones where you "pick a side"... that or the rewards for the disadvantaged side need to be far superior to the advantaged side's rewards (some scenarios are actually structured like that). That's why some form of mission or scenario would be better than just "beefing up" ships in CZs.
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My meta is to kill any and every ship I see, not to snuggle up to allied ships. Making it two sides filled with spec ops would make it more difficult, same as making it two sides of shieldless T6s would make it easier
I find low intensity can be more dangerous if you are flying a big ship.
I find none of them dangerous in the slightest if you're flying an engineered big ship
I've found if you friendly fire the good guys everything turns red, but the "freindlies" don't actually open up on you unless you keep at it.
So you can still win an all hostile CZ if you are careful about targets.
I've been noticing the same thing. Enemy ships don't seem to do anymore damage but they suddenly take a lot more time to kill. It like they have suddenly doubled their hull strength. I've not noticed a pattern to it though as it seems to randomly change when the cz refreshes but something definitely changes and they get harder to kill
CZs are not in a diabolical place, but those saying there are no issues are obviously not doing very many.
It does frequently happen that if the wing is formed inside the CZ, the ships stop spawning.
It does frequently happen that the CZ is just empty. I believe this is during a 'reset' period after someone else has cleared it.
It does frequently happen that module strength is all messed up. Chieftains seem to have less drive integrity than canopy integrity, yet their Shield generators are sometimes completely indestructible.
It does frequently happen that one of the Spec Ops kills does not register.
It does frequently happen that the progress bar for the zone just disappears, after that it is uncompletable
It does sometimes happen that dropping into the CZ does not change the velocity of objects in your frame of reference (i.e. the CZ marker zooms away from you at orbital speed)
However, the vast majority of CZs work properly 90% of the time.
It does frequently happen that if the wing is formed inside the CZ, the ships stop spawning.
It does frequently happen that the CZ is just empty. I believe this is during a 'reset' period after someone else has cleared it.
It does frequently happen that module strength is all messed up. Chieftains seem to have less drive integrity than canopy integrity, yet their Shield generators are sometimes completely indestructible.
It does frequently happen that one of the Spec Ops kills does not register.
It does frequently happen that the progress bar for the zone just disappears, after that it is uncompletable
It does sometimes happen that dropping into the CZ does not change the velocity of objects in your frame of reference (i.e. the CZ marker zooms away from you at orbital speed)
However, the vast majority of CZs work properly 90% of the time.
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Power creep bullcrap at its finest.
That's all optional though. No difficulty slider in an MMO, so you do it yourself via ship, module and engineering selection.
But in case you haven't realized, what you don't want to happen, happens everytime. As soon as a player chooses a side, the instance is unbalanced. It does change the balance of both sides as soon as a player supports one of them. In order for that to be balanced more NPCs have to spawn for the losing side (that also prevents 5th c in case they do friendly fire, there will just spawn more friendly NPCs to hunt him down). I mean you don't just watch the fight and doing nothing as a coordinator when realizing the enemy has got reinforcements, right? CZs are static and like NPCs utterly predictable.
Spawning more, more dangerous NPCs with fully G5 fitted ships can even out a CZs against players, even with the utterly limited and AI behavior.
That would probably set the bar too high for the average player, which in an MMO is always the baseline.
No, it would set the bar too high for the success addiction players we have too many of in Elite. I rarely have seen players getting defeated by NPCs over an over again. The average KDA in PvE is like, what, 100:1?
No idea, mines a lot higher than that thousands against one since I highwake before my shields drop (which is rare).
"How do I survive in a CZ" threads are a very regular topic so its still challenging for some no matter ship and loadout.
Err... yes. I literally address that in the section you didn't quote.
That a player can come in and support one side or another and tilt the balance in the favour of their chosen faction is exactly how czs are meant to work... conflicts as a whole even (i.e. an uninterferred conflict will always resolve as a draw at the end of 7 days)
But when you go in to a high intensity cz, you don't know if spec ops will spawn only for your side, or the enemy, or both. Depending on your skill level, that can make or break the fight. And again, that's fine, because you can't tell in advance which way it's going to swing.
If the spawns are in your favor, it can make the cz a cakewalk, and if they're against you, it can make it mildly challenging to very difficult, individual skill dependent... but nonetheless favorable spawns make things easier.
If you create a cz type where the odds are always against you... its now predictable and totally exploitable by 5th columning it, unless as i said in the follow up post it's clear who's going to have the advantage, and that the advantaged side gets far less benefit from the win... even less than a low intensity cz.
I don't know man. I always found thargoids, ATR and NPCs in general not challenging at all as they are predictable and don't optimize strategies and loadouts.
Spec ops? Just another NPC meant to be squished. Even if a CZ would consist of all ATRs, it would probably still be as challenging as a minecraft dungeon spawner.
The odds should always be against the player, really. But dynamically adapted so that 5th c is not possible. Also, you could just refuse a palyer to support a faction if they were doing miserable repeatedly.
my shield nver drop in CZs, not even in my 200 MJ Bi-weave FAS hulltank.
I've no idea what my MJ'age is, I do ram cutters to death though.
CZs are a bit of a joke, there's so many things that can break them and there haven't been any fixes to them in ages.
Does this still happen to anyone?
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSiWU84mmz0
Also, capital ships seriously need a buff. The way to fight them shouldn't be "put a few pips to shields and lazily drift around them."
Does this still happen to anyone?
Also, capital ships seriously need a buff. The way to fight them shouldn't be "put a few pips to shields and lazily drift around them."
There is an info panel on your right, you can see your ship's stats there. This is mentioned in the tutorials somewhere, I am sure they'd do you good.