"Great combat AI".

[myrr mac]

Decide to go mining. Kit the annaconda out for mining (7A shields, full weapons, Apowerplant, military armor, Athrusters, Adistributor still though)

Head off with empty cargo, its fine. I mine for a bit in a metalic ring, get inspected by police 4 times in 30 mins. Its ok, I get about 50 tons of goodies and head back to the star base to resupply before heading out to a stony ring.

Same system mind you. This is all same system.

On the way to the stone ring, I get interdicted by magic deadly/dangerous pirates twice, get damaged have to head back. On the way back, I get interdicted by magic elite pirate and flee, several times, finally getting back to base, and the suicidal nut gets himself killed by the station. Such smart AI.

Besides the fact that carrying anything valuable means I have to fly a full combat ship worth 500 million, or get gibbed by magic pirates, the combat performance of those 3 encounters leaves a lot to be desired.

The first was a dropship. Deadly. He turned on his beam weapons, and kept them on for the whole fight. During this fight, he ground his ship against The nose of my conda, for over a minute straight. Sparks flying, while firing his beams. And eating fire from a size 4 MC, size 3 MC, and 4 beam turrets. I was flying backwards and he was grinding his ship against me, making no pretense of evasive flight, at all.

The second was an assault ship, Dangerous. He turned on his beam weapons, and kept them on for the whole fight. During this fight, he ground his ship against The nose of my conda, for over a minute straight. Sparks flying, while firing his beams. And eating fire from a size 4 MC, size 3 MC, and 4 beam turrets. I was flying backwards and he was grinding his ship against me, making no pretense of evasive flight, at all.

The third was an elite FDL. He chased me into nofire zone, over multiple SC periods, ignoring a bunch of rules players have to abide by, and got shot up by the station and its guards. Like a champ.

Wow, such great AI, much impressive, very lol.

 

[kofeyh]

Flying backwards is a trick AI have learned means they can press the advantage. So clearly it was working; well enough to make you post a thread, no less.

 

[myrr mac]

Flying backwards is a trick AI have learned means they can press the advantage. So clearly it was working; well enough to make you post a thread, no less.

Yeah, sitting in front of a ship that is, heavier, better armored, and has more guns, while grinding into its tip, in full line of fire, making no attempt at dog fighting, or fleeing when about to die.

Absolutely brilliant AI!. Bravo. Wonderful. Couldnt be more immersive.

 

[scorpyon]

Yeah, sitting in front of a ship that is, heavier, better armored, and has more guns, while grinding into its tip, in full line of fire, making no attempt at dog fighting, or fleeing when about to die.

Absolutely brilliant AI!. Bravo. Wonderful. Couldnt be more immersive.

I can't help but feel you appear to be somewhat disingenuous with your assessment...

 

[kofeyh]

Yeah, sitting in front of a ship that is, heavier, better armored, and has more guns, while grinding into its tip, in full line of fire, making no attempt at dog fighting, or fleeing when about to die.

Absolutely brilliant AI!. Bravo. Wonderful. Couldnt be more immersive.

You admitted to combat by virtue of - flying backwards. It sounds like a competition as to who can be more lazy. The CMDR just shoving the ship into reverse, or the AI chasing. I don't think you can really mock the AI when the human in the equation was simply driving backwards, no offence.

 

[babelfisch]

Yeah, sitting in front of a ship that is, heavier, better armored, and has more guns, while grinding into its tip, in full line of fire, making no attempt at dog fighting, or fleeing when about to die.

Absolutely brilliant AI!. Bravo. Wonderful. Couldnt be more immersive.

They are specifically designed to do this when you are playing the game because they want to annoy you. In other words: Sounds like a bug, because they don't do this when I play the game (or the 500 CMDRs complaining about AI being too hard).

 

[jgm]

I've seen this situation where the AI parks on your nose and unloads. And every time it happens it's a Fed drop/gun/assault ship. One for MoM to look at.

 

[myrr mac]

They are specifically designed to do this when you are playing the game because they want to annoy you. In other words: Sounds like a bug, because they don't do this when I play the game (or the 500 CMDRs complaining about AI being too hard).

sure, it could be a bug. If the AI is buggy, then my mocking it is appropriate no?

and @ that other guy: If I fly badly, the AI should too? Ok, I guess thats reasonable, but then my assessment of it being terribad AI is valid by your own words.

/golfclap all around.

 

[Stahll Amatin]

i am a hard-liner for 'What you see is what you get' and i do have a HUGE problem with AI being able to have their damage, firing angles, etc be different then a player with an equivalent ship. Same applies to NPC agression mehcanics. Anything other then police agresses you first you should be able to retaliate with 100% impunity regardless of factions/standings.

Also no more infinite ammo/capacitor/etc for NPCs. an NPC cobra should have not be able to fire even ONE SECOND longer then a player with identical build. END OF.

Letting NPCs 'cheat' in the name of diffuclty instead of improving thier AI is just cheap and disgusts me. i want to loose because the NPC i was fighting flew beter then me. not because some dev added an extra 0 to his HP or or ammo value.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Besides the fact that carrying anything valuable means I have to fly a full combat ship worth 500 million, or get gibbed by magic pirates,

Or be a better pilot. I'm not entirely sure if a cmdr who needs a 500 million warship to transport 50t on gold is the one who should criticize the skills of others, AI or human. Anyway, good to see you move back into your 'one complain thread a day' routine, after your 'I am back and ED still sucks' topic of yesterday.

 

[myrr mac]

I've seen this situation where the AI parks on your nose and unloads. And every time it happens it's a Fed drop/gun/assault ship. One for MoM to look at.

well yeah, it was a dropship and an assault ship.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Or be a better pilot. I'm not entirely sure if a cmdr who needs a 500 million warship to transport 50t on gold is the one who should criticize the skills of others, AI or human. Anyway, good to see you move back into your 'one complain thread a day' routine, after your 'I am back and ED still sucks' topic of yesterday.

and you are just as much a die-hard fanboy as last time. Yeah, some things dont change. Such is life.

 

[Mazhurg]

Like a champ.

Wow, such great AI, much impressive, very lol.

And, like a champ, I assume you did at least tag this as a possible bug in the issue forums so FD can ascertain whether it is indeed a bug and not a seat to keyboard blown circuit before entertaining us with your backup skills?

 

[babelfisch]

sure, it could be a bug. If the AI is buggy, then my mocking it is appropriate no?

and @ that other guy: If I fly badly, the AI should too? Ok, I guess thats reasonable, but then my assessment of it being terribad AI is valid by your own words.

/golfclap all around.

If it's really a bug you should submit a bug report.

i am a hard-liner for 'What you see is what you get' and i do have a HUGE problem with AI being able to have their damage, firing angles, etc be different then a player with an equivalent ship. Same applies to NPC agression mehcanics. Anything other then police agresses you first you should be able to retaliate with 100% impunity regardless of factions/standings.

Also no more infinite ammo/capacitor/etc for NPCs. an NPC cobra should have not be able to fire even ONE SECOND longer then a player with identical build. END OF.

Letting NPCs 'cheat' in the name of diffuclty instead of improving thier AI is just cheap and disgusts me. i want to loose because the NPC i was fighting flew beter then me. not because some dev added an extra 0 to his HP or or ammo value.

NPCs don't cheat by design (except from MC ammo). In fact I haven't seen them cheating at all. Do you have a video?

 

[SCTrojanbulldog]

You know what's crazy? I find the new large ship AI easier because of the "counter reverse flight" tactics. As I have Never relied on this technique (I fly a Cutter) and have used FA toggling and the natural drift of the ship; when they get close, it's a heavily armored tank taking on a light tank that can't stay out of MY fire arch.

On top of that!!!!! It makes ramming and cannon fire WAY easier!!!!

 

[Droid8Apple]

. During this fight, he ground his ship against The nose of my conda, for over a minute straight. Sparks flying, while firing his beams. And eating fire from a size 4 MC, size 3 MC, and 4 beam turrets. I was flying backwards and he was grinding his ship against me, making no pretense of evasive flight, at all.

I wonder if only Anaconda endure this and is it only from Dropship variants? If so it's a bug. Will edit with my video once it's processed.

VIDEO:
[video=youtube;IoNP_Hg0M2Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoNP_Hg0M2Q&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[Droid8Apple]

i am a hard-liner for 'What you see is what you get' and i do have a HUGE problem with AI being able to have their damage, firing angles, etc be different then a player with an equivalent ship. Same applies to NPC agression mehcanics. Anything other then police agresses you first you should be able to retaliate with 100% impunity regardless of factions/standings.

Also no more infinite ammo/capacitor/etc for NPCs. an NPC cobra should have not be able to fire even ONE SECOND longer then a player with identical build. END OF.

Letting NPCs 'cheat' in the name of diffuclty instead of improving thier AI is just cheap and disgusts me. i want to loose because the NPC i was fighting flew beter then me. not because some dev added an extra 0 to his HP or or ammo value.

^ THIS!!!!

Having anything, even the AI Anaconda, magically be able to stay out of your firing arc in courier, viper, etc, ... for any amount of time... that's the cheat I hate most. They are constantly assessing our control inputs so they can stay completely out of our sights while they pop 8,000 shield cell banks. The whole reason the nerf to SCB's occurred in the first place was to stop such long fights between players and I want to throw up every time I fight a python.

My second most hated... the ramming. They can hit you 95% of the time but you better believe they'll dodge your ram by a hair even when they cannot possibly see you coming. Cheating. Flat out.

It is not harder when you know you're extremely disadvantaged. And I'm having so much trouble understanding why people think they act more human when they're clearly doing things like that. In addition to the comment I quoted and what I added, they still can land fixed shots in scenarios I've never seen another human do and they can dodge shots that no other human could do- every tactic used is just there to prolong the fight. One missed class 4 plasma (that would have finished off a ship before) now allows them to have their shields come back online and pop a shield cell.

I understand that more difficulty would translate to a longer fight- but the focus here is simply making a longer fight by cheating.

 

[Stahll Amatin]

If it's really a bug you should submit a bug report.



NPCs don't cheat by design (except from MC ammo). In fact I haven't seen them cheating at all. Do you have a video?

Sadly my ram is the huge weakpiont in my system atm.. recording while playing any even remotely modern game is out of the question. There are plenty of demonstration out there tho of NPCs sitting on constant fire for periods well beyond what would cap out that ship of you flew it.. i remember most vividly one video where a guy in a python was fired on bey an eagle with beams CONTINUOUSLY for over a minutue. the beams never let up or flickered. thats not OK.

someone here on the forums also did a video at one point demonstrating that NPC's weapons seem to have wider fields of fire then the player versions (getting hit by turret weapons that would have had to shot thru or clip thru the NPC ship, or fixed weapons like rail/plasma that seem to not be truly fixed in the case of NPCs) the obvious issue with this is you can't tell with certainty that the ship infront of him is the ONLY potential hostile in the instance. As much as i tend towards believeing there is atleast some shenanigans in play, i cant help but wonder if maybe *some* of the frustration might just be that in a busy instance full of NPCs maybe you got hit by something outside of your field of view..

Also in some cases (may have been fixed by now) you can be attacked by a minor faction NPC, and get WANTED for shooting back even tho you've already taken damage for the offending NPC. again thats not OK by any stretch of the imagination.

I'd actually like to put more of these assumptions to emprical testing but given ED's RNG instancing its somewhat hard (unlike a game like WoW or EVE where you can take a mission/quest/etc. and be guaranteed a certain NPC with certain stats. very easy to get a specific NPC to mess with when ever you want in those). Unfortunately here, its quite hard to 'test' in any sort of controlled circumstances

PS. i also think they may be cheating with regards to heat generation. again would be really hard to test/prove.. but come on, Rails and SCB without seing ant heat sinks getting launched!?

 

[Ian Skippy]

and you are just as much a die-hard fanboy as last time. Yeah, some things dont change. Such is life.

So, are you actually going to respond or not? You claim that the AI is so hard that you need a 500 million credit warship to transport a small ammount of cargo (really?), surely that is more a criticism of your own skills than the AI? I doubt you have to be a 'die-hard fanboy' and making sarcastic whiny posts about how its the AIs fault you failed an easy task is... weak. Adding to your post the notion that its the AI that's weak is just weird. Anyway, don't worry. SJA is still working on the AI so further improvements will come and you will get the challenge you apparantly want.

Looking forward to your 'I need a billion credit warship in a wing to transport ten tons of biowaste, AI so stupid lol!' topic.

 

[lysan]

They are specifically designed to do this when you are playing the game because they want to annoy you. In other words: Sounds like a bug, because they don't do this when I play the game (or the 500 CMDRs complaining about AI being too hard).

Too hard is a myth, maybe written on the back on one of those stone tablets we move around in PP.

 

[myrr mac]

^ THIS!!!!

Lots of great words.

As I m a bit of a noob now, despite being stuck with a dangerous combat rank, I dont have much say in anything (According to many posters here), but a lot of that rings true with my experience in the past. I was hoping it had changed since october.

I too, used to get a very strong impression of "them" ignoring rules we all have to abide by. Besides the more obvious stuff like magic-teleporting in SC, flawless tracking and complete disregard for FSD range. I coulda sworn they can sense when you press fire on a railgun and take evasive actions before it fires, but friends have told me I m just paranoid. They do seem VERY good at ramming though, I remember that much.

I dont do the FA-toggle thing. I dont do competitive PVP, I do like fighting npcs sometimes, I also like mining, I like trading (within reason), and missions. I m not a god at this game, but I do feel passionatly about the game. Its why I get angry. Am I not entitled to an opinion, is there no place in this game for me? Should I just buzz off and be mediocre somewhere else, just because I dont like being harrassed at every turn by dangerous-elite npcs that I cant shake, just because my hold isnt empty?