Do AI pirates cheat through shields?

StewartScott

StewartScott
OK, I haven't been void mining long and any mining for that matter but here I am alone and mining away and a AI pirate shows up seemingly out of nowhere 'and somehow first disables my drives' and then begins stealing my opal cargo with limpets while my shields are up and at 100% power? WHAT?? what??? I couldn't move at all and the limpets kept taking my cargo away so I just said &^%$ it and I logged off. When I logged back on I had lost 20 opal containers.

This is an intended game mechanic? Please advise! If this is a intended mechanic then I have to call on this one, thanks for any and all classifications!
 

StewartScott

StewartScott
Jmanis said:
Limpets go through shields.

Also, what do you mean by "disable drives". You are mass locked while "in" a ring, and need to leave the ring before you can FSD out.
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I mean the AI first disabled my drives period so I had no engines to even thrust with away with period, I wasn't mass locked, I kept getting message 'module malfunction' when I tried boosting, and I had no damage at all .
 

Steve Solo

Steve Solo
No offence...but it pays to do research before heading into the black. Also dont drop into the ring with cargo, pirates love that.
 

B.Roberts

B.Roberts
I did see engineered NPC pirates with weapons penetrating shields ( got hit pretty hard few times) and as it was mentioned above limpets designed to go through shields. For example you can use your collector limpets without lowering your shield.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
StewartScott said:
I mean the AI first disabled my drives period so I had no engines to even thrust with away with period, I wasn't mass locked, I kept getting message 'module malfunction' when I tried boosting, and I had no damage at all .
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Module Malfunction will be coming from the hatch breakers busting your cargo hatch. As for not boosting, hard to tell without a video accompanying it. Did you have pips in ENG? If you were mining, it seems unlikely that you would (I usually have 4 in wep for lasers, and 2 in shields in case i bump a roid, and 0 in eng because I don't need to boost around the place)
 

nosleepdemon

nosleepdemon
I didn't know there was an engineered effect that shut down drives, and in any case you would expect such an effect to only work with shields down. OP you had your shields up right? Not trying to be a smartie pants just trying to diagnose what happened.

[Edit]

Agree with Speedcuffs: OP is your ship above power capacity when you deploy hardpoints? Could your mining equipment have put power capacity above 100% causing drives to shut down if they had too low a priority? In such an event retracting hardpoints would not immediately bring your drives back online, they have a boot up time. The module malfunction could have been your cargo hatch as was pointed out above.
 
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WinterKing2112

WinterKing2112
StewartScott said:
OK, I haven't been void mining long and any mining for that matter but here I am alone and mining away and a AI pirate shows up seemingly out of nowhere 'and somehow first disables my drives' and then begins stealing my opal cargo with limpets while my shields are up and at 100% power? WHAT?? what??? I couldn't move at all and the limpets kept taking my cargo away so I just said &^%$ it and I logged off. When I logged back on I had lost 20 opal containers.

This is an intended game mechanic? Please advise! If this is a intended mechanic then I have to call on this one, thanks for any and all classifications!
Click to expand...
Yep, hatch breaker limpits go straight thru shields. Two ways round this: have a ship faster than the pirates (I use a Krait Phantom explorer/miner build with D rated thrusters and G5 dirty drives, it can boost to over 500m/s), then start boosting as soon as the pirates show up. Once they are off radar, keep going for a few kms, by then you've lost them and can safely start mining. Or, if you have a large ship with spare hard points, put some weapons in those hard points and kill those thieving scum!

But if you decide to stay and fight make sure your ship is combat ready. It's not good when you've been mining for a few hours, log out, then log back in again, decide to stay and fight when the pirates spawn, then they kill you! Happened to me a coupla weeks ago. Turns out my miner/exploraconda was not combat ready! 😢
 

WinterKing2112

WinterKing2112
Steve Solo said:
No offence...but it pays to do research before heading into the black. Also dont drop into the ring with cargo, pirates love that.
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This. And don't log out in the middle of a mining session OP. The moment you log back in, pirates will spawn to take away what you mined the previous session. If you have to log out before you're done mining, see my previous post.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Limpets have to go through shields or fuel transfer and repair limpets would be a lot less convenient to use.

Some ways to deal with hatchbreakers that haven't been mentioned yet:
- point defense will shoot them down, provided you put them in the utility slots nearest your cargo hatch. You may need to experiment a bit as to how many you need and where.
- an ECM pulse only costs one utility slot and can go anywhere, and will take out all limpets in range. But you have to fire it yourself, whereas the point defense is passive.
Depending on your ship you might have enough utilities spare to do both.
 

Hossi

Hossi
As has been said: Hatch-Breakers go through shields, thats working as intended.
The easiest way to prevent that: Get a Point-Defence. Small, light, cheap. Shoots down the Hatch-Breakers.
Or get a ship that fast enough to run away from these pirates.

As for your 'engine malfunction'...
There is no weapon in game that does that. The drag effect just slighly reduces performance. Thrusters can be disables with weapon fire, and while there are weapons that get somne damage through the shields, its pretty much impossible to cause enough module damage without dropping the shields during this.
Can't have been power priority since you have been succesfully mining, and you need the hardpoints for that.
Its hard say what happened without having been there, but I would guess, you simply hang on a rock. Happens quite often when you maneuver through them. Your ships is bigger then you think. When you are sitting between the rocks, and you can't move despite trying to accelerate, try wiggling a bit with small thrust forward. Up, down, left, right, together with a bit of rolling back and forth.
The 'module malfunction' message was most likly from the hatch-breaker.
 
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Hossi

Hossi
Ian Doncaster said:
Strictly speaking, there's the Ion Disruption experimental on mine launchers - but there's no way a random NPC belt pirate would have access to that.
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Right, forgot these. I even have a set of these (pretty useless for practical applications).
But yeah, never seen a pirate trying to use mines.
 

Krieger

Krieger
Hatch breaker limpets cause cargo hatch/scoop malfunctions. If a cargo scoop is malfunctioning it won't close. With the cargo scoop open you can't boost. With the cargo scoop open a ship moves a lot slower than normal. When you're startled by unexpected events you can easily perceive slow moving as not moving at all.

Could that be a plausible scenario for what happened?
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Krieger said:
Hatch breaker limpets cause cargo hatch/scoop malfunctions. If a cargo scoop is malfunctioning it won't close. With the cargo scoop open you can't boost. With the cargo scoop open a ship moves a lot slower than normal. When you're startled by unexpected events you can easily perceive slow moving as not moving at all.

Could that be a plausible scenario for what happened?
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Damn, good analysis, totally forgot that an open hatch due to breakers would prevent boost. Good pickup!
 

Vandaahl

Vandaahl
Dunno where you are mining in. I know I'm mining in a Krait or Python, and in those you have 0 to fear from pirates. Boost 3-4 times, fly at flank speed to somewhere for a minute or 2 and they are gone.
 
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