Enemy ship instantly regenerates hull and interdicts me again - bug?

[Viking84]

Greetings commanders,

I took a mission just now, where a ship was sent after me. On station approach I get interdicted, and proceed to engage this ship (Python, Master, no worries). Bring his hull down to under 40% and he starts charging his FSD, and ends up low waking out.

So, I continue my journey to the station and get interdicted again within about 30 seconds, same guy, now with full shields and full hull. I'm guessing this is a bug?

 

[Achibot]

More of a known limitation. NPC ship status is non-persistent, in effect they spawn a brand new ship each time they enter an instance with a player.

 

[MickyG1982]

It's no bug (as such) but it is a quirk with the way the game works.

What you have to understand is that the NPC that interdicts you again is not the same as the one you almost destroyed. It is a completely new spawn in all but name, the chances are that it'll even have a completely different loadout to the first one too.

I've seen, whilst playing an NPC chase me with shields and missiles when I submitted to him the first time change to one with an armoured hull & multicannons the next time I saw him after escaping. Same name, same ship, completely different loadout.

 

[Flimley]

This has been the case for some time now. From what I understand persistence is difficult to achieve from a programming perspective in this case. I'm sure I recall Sandro talking about this problem.
If we're super lucky he may answer.....

Flimley

 

[Starbreaker]

Been that way as long as I can remember, I don't believe the game keeps track of the status of ships sent after you other than if it is destroyed by the player or not. One time I had a guy get destroyed by a station only for him to spawn again when I jumped out.

 

[Crank Larson]

Sometimes the NPC miraculously turns up in a new ship on the second encounter... I've had an Anaconda suddenly turn into an Eagle, and the other way round.

 

[Viking84]

Fair enough, no point with a bug report then. A bit frustrating being chain interdicted by a regenerating Python though I guess that will teach me to be lazy and expect the turrets to finish him off!

 

[UmbraRex]

Been that way as long as I can remember, I don't believe the game keeps track of the status of ships sent after you other than if it is destroyed by the player or not. One time I had a guy get destroyed by a station only for him to spawn again when I jumped out.

Rebuy!

 

[Micha]

This has been the case for some time now. From what I understand persistence is difficult to achieve from a programming perspective in this case. I'm sure I recall Sandro talking about this problem.
If we're super lucky he may answer.....

Flimley

Persistence, yes, but at least assuring the same loadout is dead-easy. Simply have the mission-specific ship spawner generate the ship based on a seed value which is generated from the mission itself.

So yes, the NPC will auto-heal for every encounter (ie, it's still spawning a brand-new ship), but at least the loadout will be identical between spawns. The current ranndom-spawn in all but name is rather immersion-breaking, IMHO.

In general I fail to understand why the game doesn't make more use of deterministic generation; there's far too much RNG everywhere for things which -should- be more persistent from a game-experience perspective.

 

[Drelthar]

Odd thing with this is, I just read a story about someone being in a fight with pirates, who stole his cargo.

He then wake scanned them, followed them to an entirely new system, dropped out on their low wake, and retrieved his cargo from them.

If that isn't a level of persistance, then I'm not sure what is.

And if that can happen, why doesn't it always happen.

And how hard can it be to store a few variables keyed to the name or unique tag of the NPC once it's in your instance, so that if you meet it again, it;s got the same stuff... seems bizarre this is hard.

 

[Crank Larson]

Persistence should be easily possible, even with instancing. If one player has a particular mission but joins someone else's instance, the client should (and presumably does) feed the mission information into the instance (hosted by someone else). I presume that data such as ship type and status wasn't considered important.

 

[Dbrn47]

More of a known limitation. NPC ship status is non-persistent, in effect they spawn a brand new ship each time they enter an instance with a player.

Yet, if a ship you are destroying jumps away and you follow their wake, they don't exhibit this behavior. Interesting.

 

[Dbrn47]

Greetings commanders,

I took a mission just now, where a ship was sent after me. On station approach I get interdicted, and proceed to engage this ship (Python, Master, no worries). Bring his hull down to under 40% and he starts charging his FSD, and ends up low waking out.

So, I continue my journey to the station and get interdicted again within about 30 seconds, same guy, now with full shields and full hull. I'm guessing this is a bug?

What I'm going to guess is the ship actually high waked out (as they do in an emergency situation like this, I've never seen one low wake out) and upon you low waking to continue to the station, you created another instance which triggered a new spawn of this NPC since it was no longer nearby. Basically it wasn't the same NPC, it was a newly generated version of that NPC as if you never engaged it in the first place. Meanwhile, the NPC you actually had damaged was waiting for you in a nearby system until the wake and that NPC despawned.

 

[Dirtbird]

I had an encounter yesterday doing a mission where the NPC I was fighting was persistent between chases in SC. I managed to take their hull down to 92% before I vacated the scene via low wake. They followed and interdicted me, same ship and damage. Twice over before I got around to destroying them.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

I'm sure they once upon a time kept persistent as long as the npc did not leave the system. I can remember the time the npcs liked to flee when shields are down, funny FDLs keep interdicting me so I kick there then they boost away to recharge shields. Which takes forever and my ship could not keep up with the speed so I go back to SC where he immediatly interdicts me again. I submit to fight but his shields are still down so he boost out of my range again.

Rinse and repeat. Those guys where really annoying ^^