Does the AI cheat or was this a bug?

[Lucius-Darcia]

*sighs*
But they don't suffer from heat at all, whether in damage or firing terms. They aren't affected by silent running. They have infinite ammo.

That is cheating. No matter how you wish to defend it, it's cheating. Komodo is much better than Stockfish, although Rybka plays the most realistic games.

It's more about power management. Did you ever had the feeling, that NPC's run modules that are way beyond the limits of their powerplant? SCB on an Eagle for example?
This is true! some of the pirate vipers have a Plasma Accelerator but can't use them, until their shields drop and they deactivate them. Than they fight shieldless with PA suddenly just because they didn't had enough power for the PA with shields online.

 

[Certacito]

I will always be sorely tempted to CL on NPCs with their ninja tactics and ultra precision rail gun shots.

Wait...what?! Is this a troll post?

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

The AI and "system" cheat all the time, its just another throw back from lazy programming.

may i ask you what your occupation is?
acusing someone of lazyness in this particular matter sounds rather offensive or ignorant.

AFAIK if any coder out there managed to code an AI for a game, that is not scripted, not overpowered, acting like a human but not making the game boring or to hard for a wide range of player,
while not using 99% of the CPU power the clients PC just for that...
-> i think he would be nominated for the nobel price in whatever category fits.

 

[Pyrobee]

The AI and "system" cheat all the time, its just another throw back from lazy programming.

I'd like if they 'cheated' more, at the minute they are far to easy to kill.

 

[StiTch]

Agreed.

They can turn any ship like it's an A rated Cobra/Courier, have near 100% accuracy with rails, often out to a 30° cone, don't use ammo for anything, don't suffer heat from restores and are immune to silent mode (why does this exist again?)

It's extremely frustrating.

I see this come up time and time again, and always encourage people to give unequivocal proof that the AI is cheating in the way they're suggesting...and secondarily, to justify any advantages they do actually get against the advantages we get. Like, oh I don't know, the ability to use FA Off they conveniently don't have. Or the ability to actually mod ships properly.

Strangely enough the evidence has never appeared.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I see this come up time and time again, and always encourage people to give unequivocal proof that the AI is cheating in the way they're suggesting...and secondarily, to justify any advantages they do actually get against the advantages we get. Like, oh I don't know, the ability to use FA Off they conveniently don't have. Or the ability to actually mod ships properly.

Strangely enough the evidence has never appeared.

This.^^

People also forget that the NPCs don't Min/max their ships like we tend to.
That Anaconda *may* have turned at an unusually high rate. But whats it's mass? Does it have any armour at all? Good shields? Throttle blue zone? Pips? You can't tell most of this from a scan.

My own Anaconda and Python are extremely agile for their size, due not only to engineering, but the fact they don't have any armour, or H/MRPs.
They're not cheat-conda/Python.
They just have good enough shields that armour is a pointless waste of mass and money.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[-Denali-]

Were you in open? Maybe you were snipped by a player with long range weapons.

 

[Tenshi]

*sighs*
But they don't suffer from heat at all, whether in damage or firing terms. They aren't affected by silent running. They have infinite ammo.

That is cheating. No matter how you wish to defend it, it's cheating. Komodo is much better than Stockfish, although Rybka plays the most realistic games.

I know that taking out their Life Support systems causes the AI to panic. I did this once and got the message from the npc "Umm looks like my life support has failed. Need to bail." He didn't last long after that.

 

[CMDR Percivus Keenblade]

Well, AI usually go madproskillz with the Rails, I can't remember how many times my tiny fighters got one shot rekt the instant they (or I) started a combat against one. Maybe it was such a case?

I think how the shields dropping extremely quick in this case can be explained by the pilot having zero pips in the sys at that frame of time. Shields are extremely fragile when you have 0 pips in the sys.

But people claiming the AI never cheats, I actually know one cheat... er, or more likely, a glitch.
Couple days ago I interdicted a trader ship that also had a sidewinder as an escort in the wing with it. So I laid waste to the trader in couple of seconds and I managed to do that before his escort was able to land into the instance. By coincidence, just barely 1 second after the trader exploded that escort sidewinder landed into the instance and he immediately, with zero cooldown, said something like "oops I got no business left here since he died" and started charging his fsd. He should've suffered a couple seconds of FSD cooldown there which would be enough for me to grab my second set of powerplay tickets in one instance, but he managed to run off. The scripted behavior for him to jump out after his escort target dies overcame the rules of the game [big grin]

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I had Novice Shieldless Wanted T6 Interdict me once.

I laughed so hard as I casually submitted in my PvE Python.

When we dropped in to normal space, I casually deployed hardpoints, hit target nearest ship and...


An Elite Anaconda!

Now that's a neat trick.
I still killed it.

I've also witnessed what I thought was the worst cheating possible...

No way can I land like that...!






Or so I thought.

Apparently I can cheat too.


CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[sollisb]

The AI does or rather more correct.. Is coded to cheat.

I've asked many, many times.. How can ships appear in a HazRes site and then disappear again? And when they reappear, they have full shields? How can ships go silent running while firing ?

The bare fact is; the only reason for these ships is so we can earn credits bounty hunting.. Yet.. FD want to make that as hard as possible;

Endless Ammo,
Endless chaff
Ability to boost whenever needed
Engineered weapons
Engineered Shields and Hulls
And then this boost off and wake rubbish.
Ships that take as long to go from 1% to 0% as they did to get from 100% to 1%... All the time they're firing...

The plain truth is, FD have nothing to offer so they make anything you can do, as long winded and time consuming as possible.. While they think of their next thing to implement.. (badly)..


As someone said earlier... Elite Dangerous is a placeholder... for the time being..

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

The AI does or rather more correct.. Is coded to cheat.

I've asked many, many times.. How can ships appear in a HazRes site and then disappear again? And when they reappear, they have full shields? How can ships go silent running while firing ?

The bare fact is; the only reason for these ships is so we can earn credits bounty hunting.. Yet.. FD want to make that as hard as possible;

Endless Ammo,
Endless chaff
Ability to boost whenever needed
Engineered weapons
Engineered Shields and Hulls
And then this boost off and wake rubbish.
Ships that take as long to go from 1% to 0% as they did to get from 100% to 1%... All the time they're firing...

The plain truth is, FD have nothing to offer so they make anything you can do, as long winded and time consuming as possible.. While they think of their next thing to implement.. (badly)..


As someone said earlier... Elite Dangerous is a placeholder... for the time being..

Would you like fries with that salt?

You're mostly incorrect BTW.
They don't boost whenever, they don't have infinite chaff, nor infinite ammo (except MCs), nor do they have engineered shields and hulls...

Boost off and wake? I can't count how many times I've high waked out of danger.

If you want completely brain dead AI, go back in time to 1.4, where they literally rolled over and died for you. The current AI acts far more believably than the old one, it's still far too easy IMHO, but it's still a huge improvement.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[IndigoWyrd]

If it wasn't colourful, it was a cannon. Those hurt if you lose shields.

If it was colourful, it was a PA. Those just hurt.
Although, 3 shots wouldn't kill you from either.

Never say never...

[video=youtube;Eb7dYMY96gw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb7dYMY96gw[/video]

Ok, so I'm not an NPC, but plasma is certainly not to be under estimated.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Never say never...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb7dYMY96gw

Ok, so I'm not an NPC, but plasma is certainly not to be under estimated.

Technically that was 5 shots, against an unshielded Cobra.

Still looked fun though.

 

[the100thmonkey]

NPCs just don't suddenly become murder machines when you take them down to 2%.

Actually, they do - I've seen plenty of NPCs fly like cabbages until they reach a certain threshold, whereupon they suddenly "switch on."

With that said, it's usually deadly or elite NPCs and the trigger seems to be about 50% hull.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

AI do odd things, but generally cheating isn't one of them.

Well... Technically... They've proven to cheat left & right since a long time

But they just need those "flexibilities" in order to present the desired Threat level.
One of their biggest "advantages" is that they almost don't suffer from Inertia and have drastically different acceleration/deceleration profiles than Player Ships. Basically they use their own Flight Model.

And that Flight Model is best described as upto 8 Pips ENG and all their Ships are about 25% of their actual weight, compared to Player Ships, including limited Afterburning ability.
That resuls in i.e. their forward Thrusters being more potent than even a Player Ship's main Thrusters, allowing even large NPC to "Turret" a Player nearly effortless.

(and over a dozen other tweaks and things a Player could never do... my personal favorite being the ability to make entirely unaligned Hyperjumps while even Mass-locked in a RES Belt xD )

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The AI does or rather more correct.. Is coded to cheat.

I've asked many, many times.. How can ships appear in a HazRes site and then disappear again? And when they reappear, they have full shields? How can ships go silent running while firing ?

The bare fact is; the only reason for these ships is so we can earn credits bounty hunting.. Yet.. FD want to make that as hard as possible;

Endless Ammo,
Endless chaff
Ability to boost whenever needed
Engineered weapons
Engineered Shields and Hulls
And then this boost off and wake rubbish.
Ships that take as long to go from 1% to 0% as they did to get from 100% to 1%... All the time they're firing...

The plain truth is, FD have nothing to offer so they make anything you can do, as long winded and time consuming as possible.. While they think of their next thing to implement.. (badly)..


As someone said earlier... Elite Dangerous is a placeholder... for the time being..

Sorry, but this is not correct

Endless Ammo - Only for multicannons
Endless chaff - They don't have endless chaff, they run out like we do
Ability to boost whenever needed - They have the same limitations as we do.
Engineered weapons - They don't have any.
Engineered Shields and Hulls - They don't have any.
And then this boost off and wake rubbish. - Not sure what this means to be honest.
Ships that take as long to go from 1% to 0% as they did to get from 100% to 1%... All the time they're firing... - Never happened to me.

 

[MottiKhan]

Sorry, but this is not correct

Endless Ammo - Only for multicannons
Endless chaff - They don't have endless chaff, they run out like we do
Ability to boost whenever needed - They have the same limitations as we do.
Engineered weapons - They don't have any.
Engineered Shields and Hulls - They don't have any.
And then this boost off and wake rubbish. - Not sure what this means to be honest.
Ships that take as long to go from 1% to 0% as they did to get from 100% to 1%... All the time they're firing... - Never happened to me.

NPCs do use engineered equipment.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ssues-Result?p=5220036&viewfull=1#post5220036

 

[Farwon]

I just got into a fight with a competent AI Viper. I'm in a Cobra MK III and I encountered the Viper at a wreck site. He scanned me looking to see if I had any cargo, then set about attacking me. So I deployed hardpoints and started shooting back.

I managed to strip his shields pretty quickly and got his hull down to 2%... This is when he suddenly hit me with a weapon that stripped my shields with one shot, knocked out my weapons with another and destroyed me with the third...

This sounds like you came close to a ground installation with some heavy skimmers. They carry some nasty missiles that will easily rip a cobra up in three shots.

 

[StiTch]

NPCs do use engineered equipment.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ssues-Result?p=5220036&viewfull=1#post5220036

NPCs do have access to a small quantity of engineered modules each if higher ranked. However these are not orchestrated that I am aware of, meaning mods can be as much a curse to them as a boon, and they categorically do not get experimental effects.