Discuss the AI here!

[frostypaw]

Thank you.. With this post you just showed why the stronger AI was needed. PP should never have been rank 5 for a couple hours of grinding. It should have been something to strive to but was to easy to do before. PP might mean something now that it has to be earned instead of being spoonfed

I thought the same - what he basically said was "PP rewards are unbalanced and combat is far too easy"

 

[FleetAdmiralJ]

The interdictions? which specific part? this was about general ai no? referring to the police forces and such?

It is. Just meaning that one of the past updates made interdictions harder, which there was a big bru-ha-ha about then as well. Just nothing that just because that quieted down doesn't mean people necessarily ultimately happily accepted the change, heh. I'd guess the same will be true here. Just because things eventually quiet down (and they will) doesn't mean a lot of people aren't doing any more than just putting up with it.

 

[RagingxPenguin]

Xbox commander here,

Mother of minions did a fantastic job. Loving the new AI. Combat shouldn't be easy. At all. It should be the most dangerous profession in the game. Full stop.


I'm desperately hoping they don't reel them back in as I'm getting a nice balance of easy targets (Master etc) that are killable in a few seconds and some that take me five minutes of burning gas and setting fire to the night sky.

 

[RoninCahill]

sadly I am not a good combat pilot, but have tested the AI for the last day. my total insurance losses are now 26,500,000 ish as I just lost my fed gunship (fully A rated) to an interdiction from a viper mk 4. I was barely able to hit him and my 4 turrets didn't do jack to his shields. I lost 488 shields and 800+ armor in under a min. I chaffed, boosted, did reverse to get him into my sights, bascially I did everything I usually did prior to the patch, but nothing worked. I lost my fed corvette yesterday to an even smaller ship of which im very distraught about. my point is that some of you are great pilots and want the challenge, and lots of us don't want the challenge or stress they have created. they need a system, at least in Solo play mode where you can select the difficulty so those of us who just love to fly, explore, smuggle, or do some low risk bounty hunting can still make a bit of cash. I lost too many ships in a resource dev site that was lower than the low level on.they type with no hardness indicicator next to it. now I find myself afraid to leave my base, as the gunship I just lost was a few sec into supercruise from my base via an interdiction. reinforcing my fears even more. I need the slider to go all the way to the bottom to be able to play, and yes I suck, but if this world is moving to a more inclusive mindset then the developers need to make the game accessable to players of all ability levels.
Ronin

 

[Codger]

Interesting that the "too hard" votes are increasing steadily, it's nearly 40% as of this post. I guess I'm not so alone after all.

 

[CMDR_Vyse]

Xbox commander here,

Mother of minions did a fantastic job. Loving the new AI. Combat shouldn't be easy. At all. It should be the most dangerous profession in the game. Full stop.

Then it should pay more money.

 

[Lucifer Hate]

Mainly trader with some exploring done, have novice rank in combat only, got interdicted by a master level npc, no chance at all to fight him and even when boosting away he's faster then my unladen asp explorer (that has decent upgrades) ... this is a load of .

Keep the new ai for actual combat areas, and have the old one for open space so people who don't care about fighting but enjoy flying through space and trading/exploring aren't put against [edited out this users swear] enemies.

No because this game has been missing the dangers for to long now. Trading or exploring was never meant to be easy. You just need to work on new tactics.. The risk finally is inline with the reward

 

[Ziljan]

Then it should pay more money.

Maybe, but as long as they keep the Master AI and above at a good and slippery level like this, I'll be quite happy making any amount of money.

It's the brain dead AI where they just slowly drift in front of your guns (which the expert and below still do!!) . That is what cannot return.

Brain-dead drifting AI is boring. Strategic AI that tries to constantly get on your six is extremely fun and challenging.

They could use even more moves though. Just not whale vs whale please

 

[stevesideas]

Okay. Let me put the whole AI combat thing in perspective. Just imagine Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and a whole plethora of other space combat films/series being a case of slowly.......circling...around....each....other....waiting.....to....line...up...and...take....a...shot ! How boring. No one would watch it ! I just played another half an hour of combat in a high res zone. Yes the AI ships are much harder in terms of their weapons and that isn't the thing that bothers me in fact I welcome that to make them more of a challenge. It's all about their maneuvering ability/strategy (if that's what you want to call it). I just did the same maneuver with different ships. Circling round each other ....afraid to boost or turn another direction because you'll end up getting shot and probably killed. I got so bored and frustrated that I just took my hands off the keyboard and mouse and said, "What the hell is this?".

When you were fighting three large ships(3 x pythons or similar all with rank deadly) in a high res zone prior to 2.1 it was a tricky task but the combat was exciting. I wouldn't even want to attempt that now...you'd end up getting killed by the two other ships in the nme wing whilst you circled with the other guy.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

More fantasy imaginary predictions based on zero fact whatsoever.

As demonstrated already - there are FOUR of the D...Souls games - many people love REALLY HARD games.

This isn't a REALLY HARD game - it's a tough game where you have to learn how to stay alive. Get some perspective, the sky is not falling - you're just finding it tough.

im not finding it anything atm the 3 encounters i have had with ai npcs were at or below my level and thats not enough to judge. but if this game was demon souls your argument is valid. its not. elite is a different game. i think elite is even more niche than demon souls. and the original was nowhere near as hard as this game was pre 2.1, except maybe on bbc micro and that was more due to the realistic flight physics of two spaceships flying past each other at high speed. i still havent voted in the poll because until i played some more, it wouldnt be a correct opinion.

 

[Lucifer Hate]

Given that the NPC AI has been ramped up for combat, I think that the rewards for combat should be increased to compensate for the higher difficulty compared to pre-1.6 - they need to be worth the increased risk or repairs or rebuys.


e.g. Combat Bonds for fighting in Conflict Zones should be worth more, as should Bounties for patrolling a RES. (If they already are, then great!)


Combat shouldn't be nerfed as a means of making a living in-game. It shouldn't be so much harder to make good money from it that it drives people to avoid combat - or the game itself - altogether.


I also think that the combat ranking system should be adjusted to account for the increased difficulty. It is now going to be a lot harder to reach Combat Elite than it was before 1.6, and that does not seem to me to be remotely fair for new players or for any existing players who aren't yet Combat Elite.




So... AI NPC combat skill doesn't need to be knocked back down again, but with increased risk and difficulty there should be increased rewards...

I might have to say I partially agree here. I saw a post where a guy got a 140k repair bill on an 80k bounty. perhaps there needs to be a look at bounty payouts for the higher end AI. I would leave the low end AI alone as they dont pose the significant threat to waarrant an increase

 

[concangian]

I was just telling my wife how much I liked this community, and then this happens. Most of y'all are bickering like little children over a new toy. Have some common decency as human beings, see that people have points, they feel the way they do for a reason. It is not because they are an elitist, or a farmer. This is a game, and meant to be enjoyed a variety of ways. Find the common answer and quit assuming that yours in the only answer.

It is a game. A game. Respect each other.

Well said, rep added

 

[JerryLove]

I like that the AI has better pilots. That's good. Spinning in place is bad.

Here's what I don't like.

1) AI frequency and difficulty go hand-in-hand. If a RES(Hazard) is now too tough, so I go to an RES; I don't just get fewer Deadly Anacondas, I get fewer enemies overall. Which might be great if I was mining, but I'm BH.
2) Speaking of BH: I stopped doing assassination missions after wings came out. Never know when I'll stumble into a wing I cannot kill (most wings of 3 if I'm their only opponent); and that's even more likely once I build a ship to try to escape as I am no longer capable of doing the damage. Sure: I could likely do well with 30k missions; but I don't really feel like grinding for hundreds of hours. I want to be able to buy and try new things.
3) They also massively increased the load-outs on the AI ships. This I like far less than #1. These moded, high-damage, consumables are the ED equivelant of "Critical Hits" in RPGs. That is to say: they advantage the NPCs (who only have one encounter to survive) compared to the player (who has to survive them all)
4) As pointed out by someone else: there should be more <Dangerous AI ships out their and their flying skill should scale accordingly (their equipment supposedly does).

There's probably no winning. Make a game interesting for the people who spend scores of hours mastering builds and play style and the casual gamers die by the score. Make a game a player with lesser skills and lesser time can see progress in and you bore the high-end players. The only solution I can imagine is to allow players to set a "difficulty" level to adjust the game to their play style.

 

[FleetAdmiralJ]

Xbox commander here,

Mother of minions did a fantastic job. Loving the new AI. Combat shouldn't be easy. At all. It should be the most dangerous profession in the game. Full stop.


I'm desperately hoping they don't reel them back in as I'm getting a nice balance of easy targets (Master etc) that are killable in a few seconds and some that take me five minutes of burning gas and setting fire to the night sky.

I guess my thing with it is this: I don't mind that they are harder if you seek out the combat. If you want to go to a HazRES, then by all means, make the AI as difficult as possible. It might make it harder for me to bounty hunt, but I usually do that as a side thing anyway. My problem is when I'm shipping merits and an Elite conda pulls me out and wrecks me before I can high wake.

I've seen someone suggest that harder AI be mostly confined to areas where people actually go to fight: RES sites, war zones, powerplay control systems, etc. while they remain more....tame if you randomly encounter them in supercruise. I would actually find that to be an OK compromise.

 

[stevesideas]

im not finding it anything atm the 3 encounters i have had with ai npcs were at or below my level and thats not enough to judge. but if this game was demon souls your argument is valid. its not. elite is a different game. i think elite is even more niche than demon souls. and the original was nowhere near as hard as this game was pre 2.1, except maybe on bbc micro and that was more due to the realistic flight physics of two spaceships flying past each other at high speed. i still havent voted in the poll because until i played some more, it wouldnt be a correct opinion.

I love hard games. I play Arma 3 but there is strategy that needs to be adopted in that. Can you do the same thing with ED ?

 

[Cybrdroyd]

sadly I am not a good combat pilot, but have tested the AI for the last day. my total insurance losses are now 26,500,000 ish as I just lost my fed gunship (fully A rated) to an interdiction from a viper mk 4. I was barely able to hit him and my 4 turrets didn't do jack to his shields. I lost 488 shields and 800+ armor in under a min. I chaffed, boosted, did reverse to get him into my sights, bascially I did everything I usually did prior to the patch, but nothing worked. I lost my fed corvette yesterday to an even smaller ship of which im very distraught about. my point is that some of you are great pilots and want the challenge, and lots of us don't want the challenge or stress they have created. they need a system, at least in Solo play mode where you can select the difficulty so those of us who just love to fly, explore, smuggle, or do some low risk bounty hunting can still make a bit of cash. I lost too many ships in a resource dev site that was lower than the low level on.they type with no hardness indicicator next to it. now I find myself afraid to leave my base, as the gunship I just lost was a few sec into supercruise from my base via an interdiction. reinforcing my fears even more. I need the slider to go all the way to the bottom to be able to play, and yes I suck, but if this world is moving to a more inclusive mindset then the developers need to make the game accessable to players of all ability levels.
Ronin

I would rather see clearly understood areas of the game that are easy, and medium, and difficult. Right now, its all impossibly difficult for the casual players like me.

 

[CMDR DarkxXPhoenixXx]

Please take a moment to answer this mass survey. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HC4-7POqAHvXsRUuzCc1Vi9Q57-VXmUi1h9uPwvV0is/viewform

 

[CMDR_Vyse]

You know, I really hate consolidation threads like this. Blizzard does it all the damn time when controversy strikes and it is nothing more than an attempt at CYA and mitigating potentially bad press.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

I would rather see clearly understood areas of the game that are easy, and medium, and difficult. Right now, its all impossibly difficult for the casual players like me.

System security levels.

No really. Good security + you being clean = police on your side.

 

[Ximrats]

You know, I really hate consolidation threads like this. Blizzard does it all the damn time when controversy strikes and it is nothing more than an attempt at CYA and mitigating potentially bad press.

Or...it's to stop a massive spam-fest of pages and pages of exactly the same thread being reposted endlessly.