Newcomer / Intro Doubts and perplexities about NPCs ranks

[Dakmor86]

Hi guys, I've just started to play ED some weeks ago and I find this game fantastic to say the least. I totally love it, but after buying my first decent ship, a Krait MKII A fitted (no engineered), in the past days I started to notice some weird things. At the moment I'm playing mostly in solo or in private rooms with my friends. Here the weird things that I've noticed:

OP Pythons: these guys go around with infinite Cell banks or crazy engineered shield apparently. I met one 2 days ago, he was Master rank (at the moment I'm Competent and I'm still a noob ofc but) problem was that his laser damaged my shield (6C Bi-Wave with 4 A0 booster not engineered) pretty fast, in fact I just had time turn and face him a couple of time and I had to flee pretty quickly!! I thought it was just that one and it was just my problem, but then with a friend we met another Python, I think it was Master or maybe just Expert not sure, anyway his shield was like never ending story (ehm) shield. After we were me, my friend and 3 police ships and his shield still barely lost 1 circle, then I had the time to turn around and use more consistently my 3 beams (1 large and 2 mediums gimballed) and finally we were able in 5 to kill his shield. What the??

Instant kill from random crazy OP/buggy NPCs in normal RES: Really??? I mean I did many High Res and some Haz Res, never died once but yesterday in a Normal Res, I attacked a weak (can't remember the rank maybe Expert not sure) Asp or something like that with my A fitted Krait, 3 beams as always completely destroyed his shield in 4 seconds, he wasn't in a wing so I wasn't carefeful of the sorroundings. Anyway I killed his shield (few seconds) in that moment I noticed someone was firing at me, my shield was gone and my hull was already at 70%, tried to flee but my ship was destroyed in 10 seconds!!!! Double "What the??""". My friend was few kilometers away doing other enemies, both me and he couldn't tell who killed me so fast, but in a normal RES?? Come on. Something wrong. About my hull though I have to say was my fault, cause I just came back from some missions and I had Cargo Rack, instead of my Hull Reinforcements, but still I have a Military Grade (not engineered) hull. Still unbelievable how they destroyed my shield in seconds. Never happend in High Res, let alone a normal Res!!! Crazy!! Any ideas?

Deadly Anaconda? No problem: after all this happened, my friend started to think that I was a total noob and said my ship needed some work. Actually he flies from more time than me he has an Alliance Challenger A fitted except multi cannons engineered. Anyway we faced alone this Deadly Anaconda (Deadly as you know should be the 2nd strongest rank). So I was intercepted (voluntarily) and I started boosting around waiting for my friend to arrive. When he arrived he was attacked and he had to flee away immediately, his shield didn't last a chance, at the contrary my shield was ok, I mean I'm starting to know how to move around, I used lateral and vertical thruster, still got hit many times, but my shield had no problems, absorbed every hit. I was able to turn around Anaconda and stay perpendicularly on him, perfect spot! His shield were still strong but I think I was able to handle him, maybe it would have took a long time. Anyway after a while police arrived and we ended the beast.

Point is how does this NPC ranks thing really work?? For me it doesn't work at all! I mean 4 days ago I was intercepted from a Dangerous Anaconda and it was much stronger than this Deadly one, even if it was "just" Dangerous. and what about those Master Pythons that destroyed my shield faster than a a Deadly Anaconda? Even if I tried all the stunts I knew was useless. And their shields was like God Mode! At first my friend didn't believe me but at the end he saw with his own eyes when we met one together, and also in five (3 police + us) shooting at him it still took time to kill his shield, it was like the shield of a Dangerous Anaconda or worse. Probably he had infinite cell banks??

Anyway at the moment from my experience I have to say NPCs around Master ranks seem stronger than Deadly, at least at dropping my shield. The only scary opponents were all Master or Dangerous in fact.

Can you give me some advice on how to deal with them? Is about what weapons they use? Though I still can't believe my ship exploded in 10 seconds with low rank NPCs in a normal RES and then could stand a Deadly Anaconda no problem. I know about the pips and I'm always careful to have at least 3 on my shield, so I don't think that's the problem honestly.

Is there a way to stop those NPCs spamming cell banks? I've read only railguns engineered can stop cell banks from working, unfortunately I'm still not that good to use fix weapons, so I think I have to find a way to deal with them with my 3 beam lasers (1 large + 2 medium) and 2 large multicannons. Probably it could help if I engineer my 3 beams to be efficient, or maybe I should switch to pulse or burst. I totally love my 3 beam and Krait 7A powerplant can make them fire enough in most situations, but if I'm not careful with pips they don't reload fast and they can overheat easily.

But right now I would like to learn how to deal with NPCs that for some unknown reasons make much more damage to my shield. Could I try using cell banks too? If I use a 4 or 5 should be enough to recharge my 6C bi wave and not overheat too much (while I'm not firing or boosting). I would rather keep my 4 0A booster, instead of replace one with an heatsink launcher.

Of course I know you will tell me to engineer my ship, but honestly right now I don't have money problems (I mean I can die and lose those 7 milions no problem for rebuy) and I would like to learn how to pilot and combat in the hard way. I think it's too easy to engineer stuff, it's like change from Hard (A fitted) to Easy (engineered) in a single player game. For example the most experienced guy in our group, he has a FDL with crazy high shield, he told me he has 10k shield (maybe I heard it wrong), anyway I checked and in fact FDL, after the big three is the ship with the highest shield and if you engineer it and put a Prismatic, well it's clearly OP, I wonder why they don't nerf FDL a little, I mean come it's OP, even a noob like me with crazy strong shield like that could take a coffee and watch movie while fighting many enemies with that crazy OP shield. Except the FDL unfortunately doesn't have the coffee machine inside (what a pity!!).
Anyway my point is ok I will engineer my ship, even if right now I'm having more fun trading around the galaxy, but I would like to deal with enemy using strategy, learning tricks, not engineering everything G5 and then yawning around.

Another thing I want to ask you is how to get rid of an enemy on my 6. I've noticed that if they intercept me they are on my 6 and that's fair, I mean THEY intercepted me. But also if I intercept them, enemy is always on my 6. What the??? That's not fair at all. Anyway if they are not that strong I can face them easily, but if I find some OP Pythons, I always end up turn and facing them in a straight line, but they always damage my shield more and then restore theirs with power banks. So is there some trick I can use to to move around them? I guess they probably have engineered thruster, so maybe if I engineer my thrust it could help. At the moment I boost turn off FA Off and turn around, but I wish you could teach me something more cool.

Thank you guys in advance for your time.

 

[B.Roberts]

NPC enemies progressing in proportion to your combat rating. As your combat rank increases NPCs attacking you also getting better. Once you high enough you will start seeing NPCs on engineered ships. I believe somewhere around "Dangerous" or so you going to see NPCs coming at you on Cutters and Corvettes. With that being said, most of the times you can still win the fight with them without any engineering. The only issue here is that you not doing yourself any favor as far as learning goes. For example your Krait Mk2 will fly and fight very different from what you used to when engineered. Besides, engineering has a learning curve of its own and it will take you some time to fine tune that ship of your choice to be exactly what you want it to be and then to learn to use it the right way. It is not just about piling up some SCBs there's much more to it.

 

[Dommarraa]

It is true that often a lower ranked NPC can be more dangerous than a higher rank, but it's due to their loadout. A higher ranked ship really will have higher grade modules and fight better, but if it doesn't have chaff and SCB, you will cream it pretty easily.
You won't be experiencing engineered NPC yet. That's deadly and elite ranked, with special ops wings in cz being real nasty, and rapid response being almost cheat like.

 

[aRJay]

Random NPCs should be based on your combat rank give or take a rank or two, especially if one of your other ranks is much higher.
If you do any kind of mission the NPCs that are part of the mission will have ranks based on the rank of the mission not on your rank.

Dangerous NPCs are nearly as skilled and well equipped as Elite and can be a problem no matter what they are flying.

The best tactic against NPC Pythons I have is to not start to shoot at them until you are right behind them and almost touching, when you open fire then they tend to just try and escape rather than fight back and it is possible to hurt them before they do start fighting and things get interesting.

 

[Dakmor86]

Hi guys thank you so much for your replies. Maybe I wasn't very clear, but actually the Pythons (Master) intercepted me and they always started to fire at me immediately, of course I could evade the interception easily, but I wanted to practice some 1 vs 1 combat to improve my skill, I also disabled the option to report crimes against me, this way the police will never come.

Anyway the whole point is that it's not a RES. RES are super easy you have lot of time to engage your target and you shoot first when you are on their back, they are dead meat. Problem is during interceptions and honestly I don't understand why a Master Python in an anarchic system can be stronger than a Deadly Anaconda and lower my shield so fast. Of course my Krait is faster so I could escape and then find a way to circle around him and hit him from behind. Any good tactics?

As I said RES are super easy, never died once in my Krait and usually I go in High o Haz ones. Don't know what happened yesterday when I was killed in 10 seconds in a normal RES, I guess will never know, only Frontier Devs know I guess. Honestly you can say enemies become stronger (ooook!) but right now I'm only Competent and in a normal RES nothing so small should blow up a A fitted Krait, not even in a high res against Wings this happened to me.

After all if I can deal with a Deadly Anaconda, something went wrong, maybe some bug I don't know. About interceptions from Python of course I have to get better and improve my combat skills, though I find silly that Master and Dangerous NPCs are much stronger of Deadly ones.

I think the whole thing about NPCs is pretty random, maybe depending from their loadout as Dommarraa mentioned.

 

[Ashnak]

Pythons can be nasty - worse than Anacondas. Sure, Anacondas can carry heavier weapons - but (in NPCs) that doesn't help them much if they turn like the proverbial flying brick. Pythons still have some agility, and with their five front facing hardpoints can really dish it out if you get in front of them.

How about you copy (or recreate) your loadout e.g. on Coriolis so we can take a look at it?
Another tip would be to sign up with a friendly player group who does combat training (on your platform). They can see and actually tell you what you're doing wrong while you get (almost - usually) blown to bits .

 

[Dakmor86]

Hi Ashnak good tips thank you for your answer. Actually the problem is that my friends are very nice and we often play together, but they usually prefer to makes kills that staring at what I'm doing. They simply suggested me to buy a Vulture instead and to use it to learn to fly. Apparently they all used it for a long time before switching to other ships, I guess they think I was too hasty moving from a Cobra MKIII directly to a Krait MKII. But what can I say? I love trading, I didn't do it for farming money, just the whole game reminds me a lot of Freelancer (not sure if some of you guys played it back in 2000), so I ended up buying T9 Heavy (for my trading missions) and then Krait MKII in a few weeks maybe less. Anyway I think it's not easy to find someone nice enough to spend time looking at me all the time. By the way I don't get blown to bits often fortunately. haha As I said I'm trying to put myself in stressing combat situation to improve my skills, also deactivating the reporting crimes function, to be alone with my opponents, at the cost of losing 7 million every time I blow up.

Of course I can share my build, pretty standard I would say. Here it is:

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

The empty slots in the "optional internal" usually I put other Hull Reinforcements or more Cargo, depending what I'm doing. I can also switch the 6 cargo rack with the fighter hangar (still didnt' try it though) or something else, so the optional internal can change from time to time.

Thanks a lot Ashnak.

 

[metatheurgist]

Unengineered shields are weak against thermal attacks. Depending on NPC loadout, you can find your shields stripped quickly or not.

 

[Dakmor86]

Yeah that's what I thought metatheurgist. In fact it will be probably one of the first things I'm going to engineer, because I think the Krait mkII is not tanky enough, its hull is pretty fragile (well for now I have the Military one) should try to buy the Reactive Surface, but it needs engineering too, otherwise it's -40% on thermal...and I guess it's not a good thing.

Anyway I have to say Krait has a really good Power Distributor e Power Plant that can work with demanding weapons, but at the same time it looks like its shield is much lower than FDL. Not sure about the Hull, but as I said it doesn't appear to be a tanky ship at all.

 

[d8veh]

Ships that interdict you are always optimised for combat and fight harder than those in a RES. In the RES, there are several variables in the way the NPCs fight. Rank has some affect, but it isn't the whole story. The NPC's ship load-out probably is the most important, but they also seem to have variable behaviours.

An NPC can't stay behind you if you fly backwards and keep pitching towards it, but that will bring you into a face-tanking fight. Only do that if you know you have a stronger ship or stronger weapons.

To defeat SCBs, You wait until they get down to one ring of shields, then ram them as hard as you can and immediately give them everything you've got with your weapons to knock their shields out. Their hull soon goes down after that. It's imperative to finish them off before the shields come back. Ram them again to knock their hull down more quickly if it looks like their shields are about to come back. I had one down to about 3% hull when its shields came back, and I was unable to give enough damage to knock them back down, so I had to go through another two shield recharges before I could kill it.

If you have a Krait, you should have an SLF. If you set the SLF to attack and wait for it to shoot the NPC and the NPC turns to it before you open fire, the NPC will continue to chase down the SLF, while you blast it without danger. Often, if you target their power plant, you can blow them up without them ever landing a shot on you.

 

[Dakmor86]

Thank you d8veh your tips were really precious to say the least! I will follow them and try to improve my tactics. You're right about SLF I should use them, but you know, maybe because I'm a little too proud and I like to improve my skills in the hard way, I decided to not use them for now, though against some strong opponents there is nothing bad about it I guess.

 

[d8veh]

You're right about SLF I should use them, but you know, maybe because I'm a little too proud and I like to improve my skills in the hard way, I decided to not use them for now, though against some strong opponents there is nothing bad about it I guess.

There's nothing wrong with that. Rapid pip management , FA off turns and good thruster control will make you a better pilot. They're essential skills for PvP. Unfortunately, it's not enough to beat engineered ships if yours is unengineered. To make it a fair fight, you have to get your own ship engineered. Anecdotally, the NPCs do seem to change their behaviour as your rank increases, and the ships that interdict you also scale with your rank, so you'll need to improve your ship if you want to continue winning.

 

[Ashnak]

Looks like you haven't done much (any?) Engineering, Guardian or Powerplay modules (yet?).

Just as a comparison, this is (one possible) a loadout of my general purpose Krait Mk.II. Pretty much like you, I tend to swap out the modules - right now, for in-bubble missions, I'm running a cargo bay instead of the fuel scoop and a fighter hangar instead of the large FSD booster, but also swapped the AFMU for a smaller FSD booster. Can't remember what happened to the SRV, but there's also an interdictor in there somewhere (I was doing powerplay to obtain some Cytoscramblers).
So, instead of (or in addition to - I don't know how much time you spend in the game) combat training, I'd suggest you go, unlock and upgrade the Engineers (you'll need all of them for that loadout, maybe half of them to go to level 3 on all modules, which is quite a bit more than half as good) and a few Guardian modules (Shield boosters, maybe hull reinforcements, FSD booster is also nice for other combat ships, Guardian fighters will require a trained pilot but are nice to look at).
As you can see, Engineering gets my speed (and agility) up, gives me better shields and the Guardian shield booster is also very nice. And of course there are the Pacifiers - they simply do what it says on the box.

 

[Krieger]

Random NPCs ranked Master and Dangerous can have engineered modules. Random NPCs ranked Deadly and Elite always have at least one engineered module. However, the modification they have usually are moderate and they never have special effects on their weapons.

NPCs in CZs and signal sources with a high threat level (> 4) can have high engineering levels and also special effects. The exact configuration is randomly chosen by the game. It's quite rare to encounter an NPC with almost maximum engineering but not impossible.

 

[Ashnak]

Ok, I had to do it: I pitched your build against mine in Coriolis

You in the offense:

• weapons cap drained in 0:05
• will remove shields in 2:08
• will remove armour in 3:02

You in the defense:

• shields will hold for 0:04
• armour will hold for 0:04

(a little bit longer in practice, since I'd have to wait almost a second for the Pacs to reload after each burst - say 8 seconds for each)

And I still don't stand a bit of a chance against a PvP pirate corvette.

 

[Dakmor86]

Ok thank you so much guys for all the useful info. You are amazing!

@Ashnak: of course I don't stand a chance against your Krait engineered no doubt about it. haha And those pacifiers (I know them) look scary! Actually I love frag cannon, so I could think to obtain them, but I think the normal Frag Cannons are already pretty cool.
But how do you manage to get rid of enemies' shield? I mean I don't see any incendiary MC. Corrosive also debuff shields?

@Krieger: Thank you! Very well explained. At this explain a lot! Still we don't know who blew up my ship in a "stupid" normal RES though. I guess will never know what really happened. Not even OP Pythons or Dangerous/Deadly Anaconda were able to destroy my krait in seconds...

@d8veh: I already use FA off and switch back on, but I still can improve in that and in the PIP management. Thanks a lot for the tips.

 

[Ashnak]

Kinetic weapons also work against shields. Not as well as thermal weapons - Coriolis has them as 40% against shields, 120% against hulls, while thermal gets 64% and 57% respectively.
On the other hand, piling on 40% of 120 sustained DPS (times 3) still gets you 3x48 DPS against shields. Just about the same as engineered beam lasers - although those are easier to aim.

 

[Cmdr Nemo]

I've found that in general regardless of one's personal rank, npc's can with stand a considerable more amount of damage than a human can. Waiting in the weeds until the cops have got a ship down to one or less shields before I get involved; I've seen at times where a NPC elite pilot in a Sidewinder being attacked by three cops all Elites in Pythons with beam laser's more than two minutes before shields dropped to zero. And he the managed to escape, come back in less than 30 seconds with full shields and though I'm in a Python, take my shields down in a heart beat. Even though they are fully engineered to the nines. Something is amiss with the algorithm when it comes to NPC's. But then again, it's a game and things don't have to be logical, reckon.

 

[Krieger]

... Not even OP Pythons or Dangerous/Deadly Anaconda were able to destroy my krait in seconds...

Other options I can think of are 1) you collided with an asteroid or other ship at the moment you were attacked (happened to me a few times) or 2) the attacker was a player with an engineered ship. Since you play in solo or private group option 2 can be ruled out.

 

[wetwire]

Just running a test of your Krait MKII, vs a Python.
The Python i used in the test
Stock with modifications: increases shields (6A), 2 shield boosters (0A), 3 large beam weapons w/ G3 Efficient, 1 Shield Cell (5A) , 7C Power plant, 6C Thrusters, 7A Power Distributor w/ G3 charge enhanced.
As we have no idea what NPC ship stats look like, we make allot of guesses. I focused on combat related equipment in this build.
But using the above.

Spoiler: Krait MKII Dakmor's

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

Krait MK II
PIPs Sys: 2.5/Eng: 1/Wep: 2.5
Only using beams
Pythons defense report shields holding for 3:16 including shield cell's.

Spoiler: Test Python

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

Reverse
Test Python
PIPs Sys: 1/Eng 1/Wep: 4
Only using beams
Krait defense report shields holding for 0:15

3 large hardpoints being use for energy weapons can do some serious damage to shields with minimal upgrades. Could the NPC be using engineering? maybe.
But if you wanted a comparison without engineering , using the same build w/out engineering the python reports being able to break the Krait's shields in 0:43
Keep in mind a Python can out pitch an andaconda and the Krait , keeping her weapons trained on the target for longer in a dog fight.