Engineers CZs you gotta be kidding me

[Max Qarnac]

I decided to try out a CZ for the first time since 2.1

I was flying a fully A spec Federal Corvette with over 1,600 shield (my half billion credit flagship).

My first attempt. In the time it took me to kill a single viper a vulture took out my shields despite me using a full load of A class shield cell banks. I powered up my 2nd set of shield cell banks and got back to full shields and started chasing the vulture. 2 more ships started firing on me, my 1,600mj of shield lasted all of 10 seconds and i had to jump out getting away with 77% hull.

My second attempt. I killed a cobra, then attacked a vulture. 2 more ships started firing on me, my 1,600mj of shield lasted all of 10 seconds and i had to jump out getting away with 80% hull.

My third attempt. The moment i chose a side, 3 ships fired on me and took my shields out in less than 5 seconds. I cant remember how much hull i had left.

My first thoughts are, did the patch the other day that removed bugged engineer upgrades from NPCs work?

If it did and things are working as intended then i have to ask FD, are you kidding me? CZs should not be no go areas for the biggest baddest combat ship in the game. I shudder to think what would happen if i went in with a FDL or vulture, insta death?

Now FD, i can accept that combat may have needed to be made harder, but this is ridiculous. Game design 101, when you increase the difficulty of something in a live game, you increase it by a reasonable amount you dont multiply the difficulty by a factor of what in my opinion is at least 20. I used to be able to kill ships in CZs until i got bored/tired, maybe killing a hundred ships or more in one visit. To change that to 'lucky to kill one ship and get out alive' is not reasonable.

Please FD, be reasonable, i really want to play this game but i am starting to think that you dont want me to. For the time being, i will consider CZs off limits, but if this situation is not resolve then i can assure you i will be leaving this game. Any combat is not fun anymore, even 'safe' fights 1v1 vs a wanted ship is just a frustrating waste of time spending minutes to kill ships that used to be taken out in seconds.

It is a crying shame to see a game that is a fantastic technological and programming maserpiece fail because of poor game design and shoddy balancing.

Regards
Max

 

[h347h]

Meh I've managed to stay in one for an hour or so before I got all the mats I needed. Are you targeting smaller ships first and dropping easy kills like Pythons and Asps after that? Leave the Cobras, Vipers, and Vultures for later when your NPCs can support you. Reason being they are too fast to kill in a reasonable amount of time solo vs these other ships. However once you have the aided fire power NPCs they melt like butter and the fight gets lopsided.

 

[Cooperman]

yeah the fast ships are a git to kill,as Heath said kill slow ones and the old bill will help wiv rest mate.

oh and btw use F.A off and thrusters more to turn better. hope that helps.
coops.

 

[xondk]

I decided to try out a CZ for the first time since 2.1

I was flying a fully A spec Federal Corvette with over 1,600 shield (my half billion credit flagship).

My first attempt. In the time it took me to kill a single viper a vulture took out my shields despite me using a full load of A class shield cell banks. I powered up my 2nd set of shield cell banks and got back to full shields and started chasing the vulture. 2 more ships started firing on me, my 1,600mj of shield lasted all of 10 seconds and i had to jump out getting away with 77% hull.

My second attempt. I killed a cobra, then attacked a vulture. 2 more ships started firing on me, my 1,600mj of shield lasted all of 10 seconds and i had to jump out getting away with 80% hull.

My third attempt. The moment i chose a side, 3 ships fired on me and took my shields out in less than 5 seconds. I cant remember how much hull i had left.

My first thoughts are, did the patch the other day that removed bugged engineer upgrades from NPCs work?

If it did and things are working as intended then i have to ask FD, are you kidding me? CZs should not be no go areas for the biggest baddest combat ship in the game. I shudder to think what would happen if i went in with a FDL or vulture, insta death?

Now FD, i can accept that combat may have needed to be made harder, but this is ridiculous. Game design 101, when you increase the difficulty of something in a live game, you increase it by a reasonable amount you dont multiply the difficulty by a factor of what in my opinion is at least 20. I used to be able to kill ships in CZs until i got bored/tired, maybe killing a hundred ships or more in one visit. To change that to 'lucky to kill one ship and get out alive' is not reasonable.

Please FD, be reasonable, i really want to play this game but i am starting to think that you dont want me to. For the time being, i will consider CZs off limits, but if this situation is not resolve then i can assure you i will be leaving this game. Any combat is not fun anymore, even 'safe' fights 1v1 vs a wanted ship is just a frustrating waste of time spending minutes to kill ships that used to be taken out in seconds.

It is a crying shame to see a game that is a fantastic technological and programming maserpiece fail because of poor game design and shoddy balancing.

Regards
Max

It sounds odd it would only last 10 seconds under one ship fire, should take a bit more then 3 ships to take it down that fast.
That said, the 'problem' seems to be that NPC's in terms of weapons are now a on level with players, meaning they will use heavy weapons such as plasma accells railguns, missiles and everything, so I would ask that you get 3 people to shoot on you and see how long you last, and try to get them with fairly heavy weaponry.

If you last longer against a heavy player assault then 3 npc's assaulting you, (Though it being CZ there could have been more, you just didn't see?) then yeah then something seems up.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

I decided to try out a CZ for the first time since 2.1

I was flying a fully A spec Federal Corvette with over 1,600 shield (my half billion credit flagship).

My first attempt. In the time it took me to kill a single viper a vulture took out my shields despite me using a full load of A class shield cell banks. I powered up my 2nd set of shield cell banks and got back to full shields and started chasing the vulture. 2 more ships started firing on me, my 1,600mj of shield lasted all of 10 seconds and i had to jump out getting away with 77% hull.

My second attempt. I killed a cobra, then attacked a vulture. 2 more ships started firing on me, my 1,600mj of shield lasted all of 10 seconds and i had to jump out getting away with 80% hull.

My third attempt. The moment i chose a side, 3 ships fired on me and took my shields out in less than 5 seconds. I cant remember how much hull i had left.

My first thoughts are, did the patch the other day that removed bugged engineer upgrades from NPCs work?

If it did and things are working as intended then i have to ask FD, are you kidding me? CZs should not be no go areas for the biggest baddest combat ship in the game. I shudder to think what would happen if i went in with a FDL or vulture, insta death?

Now FD, i can accept that combat may have needed to be made harder, but this is ridiculous. Game design 101, when you increase the difficulty of something in a live game, you increase it by a reasonable amount you dont multiply the difficulty by a factor of what in my opinion is at least 20. I used to be able to kill ships in CZs until i got bored/tired, maybe killing a hundred ships or more in one visit. To change that to 'lucky to kill one ship and get out alive' is not reasonable.

Please FD, be reasonable, i really want to play this game but i am starting to think that you dont want me to. For the time being, i will consider CZs off limits, but if this situation is not resolve then i can assure you i will be leaving this game. Any combat is not fun anymore, even 'safe' fights 1v1 vs a wanted ship is just a frustrating waste of time spending minutes to kill ships that used to be taken out in seconds.

It is a crying shame to see a game that is a fantastic technological and programming maserpiece fail because of poor game design and shoddy balancing.

Regards
Max

Yep.... its borked completely.

I "think" they've gotten the gist of the problems as they've been incredibly silent for a while now. I'm hoping there are some sweeping changes coming this week. They typically patch 2-3 times after a major release immediately. So just mine and do other stuff in the meantime - protect your assets until this gets sorted.

 

[Macros Black]

Use the 'snowball' technique. When entering the CZ you need to start the 'snowball'; select the largest baddest ship engaged in the edge of the CZ. Side with his faction and help takeout the enemy he is engaging. When done, follow him and stay close at all times while helping more and more of your allies defeat the other side. At all times stay close to your initial friend. This is the snowball. Do not lose it.

 

[Max Qarnac]

@ Heath and Cooperman. Greetings Commanders. Thanks for your replies. I think you may have misunderstood, im in a Combat Zone, not a Res site, unless im missing something, no cops or mats in a CZ that i know of.

Regards
Max

 

[h347h]

@ Heath and Cooperman. Greetings Commanders. Thanks for your replies. I think you may have misunderstood, im in a Combat Zone, not a Res site, unless im missing something, no cops or mats in a CZ that i know of.

Regards
Max

Yeah trust me I know what a CZ is, ive made 2 billion credits farming them. You can indeed stay for extended periods of time in CZs still. Just do as a I suggested which leads to a snowball even faster than MarcosTheBlacks suggestion as you are freeing up way more friendly AI to focus fire targets.

 

[Max Qarnac]

Yeah trust me I know what a CZ is, ive made 2 billion credits farming them. You can indeed stay for extended periods of time in CZs still. Just do as a I suggested which leads to a snowball even faster than MarcosTheBlacks suggestion as you are freeing up way more friendly AI to focus fire targets.

Ok. cool, i will give that a try. But i think i will wait for a patch.

 

[Jpotter]

You had 4 PIPs to shields/sys the WHOLE time right?

 

[Marcus Franconium]

I decided to try out a CZ for the first time since 2.1

I was flying a fully A spec Federal Corvette with over 1,600 shield (my half billion credit flagship).

My first attempt. In the time it took me to kill a single viper a vulture took out my shields despite me using a full load of A class shield cell banks. I powered up my 2nd set of shield cell banks and got back to full shields and started chasing the vulture. 2 more ships started firing on me, my 1,600mj of shield lasted all of 10 seconds and i had to jump out getting away with 77% hull.

My second attempt. I killed a cobra, then attacked a vulture. 2 more ships started firing on me, my 1,600mj of shield lasted all of 10 seconds and i had to jump out getting away with 80% hull.

My third attempt. The moment i chose a side, 3 ships fired on me and took my shields out in less than 5 seconds. I cant remember how much hull i had left.

My first thoughts are, did the patch the other day that removed bugged engineer upgrades from NPCs work?

If it did and things are working as intended then i have to ask FD, are you kidding me? CZs should not be no go areas for the biggest baddest combat ship in the game. I shudder to think what would happen if i went in with a FDL or vulture, insta death?

Now FD, i can accept that combat may have needed to be made harder, but this is ridiculous. Game design 101, when you increase the difficulty of something in a live game, you increase it by a reasonable amount you dont multiply the difficulty by a factor of what in my opinion is at least 20. I used to be able to kill ships in CZs until i got bored/tired, maybe killing a hundred ships or more in one visit. To change that to 'lucky to kill one ship and get out alive' is not reasonable.

Please FD, be reasonable, i really want to play this game but i am starting to think that you dont want me to. For the time being, i will consider CZs off limits, but if this situation is not resolve then i can assure you i will be leaving this game. Any combat is not fun anymore, even 'safe' fights 1v1 vs a wanted ship is just a frustrating waste of time spending minutes to kill ships that used to be taken out in seconds.

It is a crying shame to see a game that is a fantastic technological and programming maserpiece fail because of poor game design and shoddy balancing.

Regards
Max

The combat zones are fleet battles and not random interdiction or Haz res it takes another aprouch in combat larger ships have to stay with the main fleet to support each other
leave the main boddy in a corvette and your a target . as combat zones ar militairy operations they are mil spec ships having a 500 milion corvette is bringing a t9 to a hazress you got no chance at all. as a combat corvette will cost 1 bilion credits and more.

 

[Chongo]

Weird, I've been flying around them with the cargo scoop deployed, 4 pips to shields, 8 limpets out, and a combo of mc turrets and gimballed. Nothing special on the flying, just managing shields. Pretty fun as far as collection activities go.

 

[Max Qarnac]

The combat zones are fleet battles and not random interdiction or Haz res it takes another aprouch in combat larger ships have to stay with the main fleet to support each other
leave the main boddy in a corvette and your a target . as combat zones ar militairy operations they are mil spec ships having a 500 milion corvette is bringing a t9 to a hazress you got no chance at all. as a combat corvette will cost 1 bilion credits and more.

My vettete is 560odd million worth, i have A class everything, prasmatic shields. The only thing i dont have is a military hull, does that really cost 400mil, ouch

 

[Turjan]

The NPCs in Conflict Zones are broken in a different way from those in Res sites as far as I can see.

Those zones do share one thing in common though - in both of them, a player's greatest asset now is not his skill, nor his ship...it's other NPCs.

In a Res site, anything ranked higher than Competent is about 90% likely to have railguns and an uber-modded Engineer engine, meaning they can out turn...well, just about anything really. Certainly anything with a player in the cockpit. Cop NPCs are a handy counter for this though because they have the same Engines. They don't tend to have railguns, but they do sometimes have missiles, and they certainly have numbers on their side, so it evens out in the end.

In a Conflict Zone though, the free-for-all nature of the zone means you're much more likely to often have just one NPC ally at a time, and everything now seems to have missiles...

CZ NPCs still have crazy Engineer modded engines, but they don't feel quite as crazy to me as the ones used by single opponents in a Res site. That's subjective though, I could be wrong on that. However, what's certain though is that if they do lack something in engines, CZ NPCs make up for with kamikaze tactics of flying straight at your cockpit. And when they're not doing that, they're firing missiles.

Missiles that now destroy your weapons, utilities, and thrusters.

Upshot is, unless you get lucky applying the 'Snowball' NPC herding tactic (and it's by no means a certainty now, because 2.1 NPCs pancake into anything in their path - including their friends...), you'll end up surviving a few one-on-one encounters (each taking about 10 times longer to take down than pre-2.1 because of their incessant "boom'n'zoom" tactics), but then if 2 or god forbid 3 enemy NPCs open up on you at once, you're toast.

If you try to outrun them, you'll find your thrusters taken offline in seconds because of the new splash damage mechanic that missiles have. Which, I might add, affects exterior modules first, so your Point Defence will almost certainly die after the first missile manages to dodge its fire.

Bottom line is, IMO they haven't improved the 'intelligence' of NPCs in 2.1 at all - they've really just buffed the damage they can deal.

That damage boost comes either in the form of the new missile splash damage, or that rail'n'bail tactic where Engineer-modded engines (and the new enhanced ones) allow NPCs to line up standard railguns more frequently, meaning more dps for them.

Personally, I'm now waiting to see what the next couple of patches do before I even consider CZs a viable source of anything other than repair bills...

 

[GluttonyFang]

The larger ship you fly the more attention you attract from NPCs, from what I understand.

 

[Max Qarnac]

The NPCs in Conflict Zones are broken in a different way from those in Res sites as far as I can see.

Those zones do share one thing in common though - in both of them, a player's greatest asset now is not his skill, nor his ship...it's other NPCs.

In a Res site, anything ranked higher than Competent is about 90% likely to have railguns and an uber-modded Engineer engine, meaning they can out turn...well, just about anything really. Certainly anything with a player in the cockpit. Cop NPCs are a handy counter for this though because they have the same Engines. They don't tend to have railguns, but they do sometimes have missiles, and they certainly have numbers on their side, so it evens out in the end.

In a Conflict Zone though, the free-for-all nature of the zone means you're much more likely to often have just one NPC ally at a time, and everything now seems to have missiles...

CZ NPCs still have crazy Engineer modded engines, but they don't feel quite as crazy to me as the ones used by single opponents in a Res site. That's subjective though, I could be wrong on that. However, what's certain though is that if they do lack something in engines, CZ NPCs make up for with kamikaze tactics of flying straight at your cockpit. And when they're not doing that, they're firing missiles.

Missiles that now destroy your weapons, utilities, and thrusters.

Upshot is, unless you get lucky applying the 'Snowball' NPC herding tactic (and it's by no means a certainty now, because 2.1 NPCs pancake into anything in their path - including their friends...), you'll end up surviving a few one-on-one encounters (each taking about 10 times longer to take down than pre-2.1 because of their incessant "boom'n'zoom" tactics), but then if 2 or god forbid 3 enemy NPCs open up on you at once, you're toast.

If you try to outrun them, you'll find your thrusters taken offline in seconds because of the new splash damage mechanic that missiles have. Which, I might add, affects exterior modules first, so your Point Defence will almost certainly die after the first missile manages to dodge its fire.

Bottom line is, IMO they haven't improved the 'intelligence' of NPCs in 2.1 at all - they've really just buffed the damage they can deal.

That damage boost comes either in the form of the new missile splash damage, or that rail'n'bail tactic where Engineer-modded engines (and the new enhanced ones) allow NPCs to line up standard railguns more frequently, meaning more dps for them.

Personally, I'm now waiting to see what the next couple of patches do before I even consider CZs a viable source of anything other than repair bills...

You said it much better than i did sir, thankyou. FD PLEASE LISTEN TO YOUR USERS WHILE YOU STILL HAVE ANY.

 

[Cooperman]

Yeah trust me I know what a CZ is, ive made 2 billion credits farming them. You can indeed stay for extended periods of time in CZs still. Just do as a I suggested which leads to a snowball even faster than MarcosTheBlacks suggestion as you are freeing up way more friendly AI to focus fire targets.

yup...this.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

Are you putting 4 pips to shields? Are you waiting a bit after entering the CZ until you pick a side, letting them focus on each other and whittle each other down a bit first? Are you skirting around the sides tactically picking your targets rather than sitting in the center? Are you paying attention to your radar and keeping away from large clusters of enemies?

If you answered yes to all of these then I don't know what to tell you. Personally I haven't had much of an issue you just have to fly smarter.

 

[4gui4]

Yesterday I ran the RES twice, with 40% hull, actually I log out, I hate the minigame module malfunction in 3300, hahaha ok. Keep shooting i´m out. On the third attempt I managed to get rid of the damned power play enemies, this guys are crazy.

But then everything went fine, small ships fighting without super powers, big ships fighting hard no cheating. I noticed NPCs using silent run, I didn't expect that, love it.

Today only did a rum to RES and all good again.

I think the changes are in progress and believe that less disastrous events will happen in the future

 

[Mr_sukebe]

Some good ideas guys, thanks.

A few questions if I may. I was considering trying the following, any thoughts on their viability:
1. Taking a clipper, x2 point defence, LOTs of hull re-inforcements. Go with the biggest ship initially, use speed to run away
2. Use an Imp Courier. Wait until an enemy is badly damage. Shoot it a couple of times, scoot out to 4km away and let it get blown up by an NPC.

Thoughts?