I never seem to die anymore against NPCs!
- Thread starter flynnmichael81
- Start date
There is also the option of downgrading your ship. Go back to a Sidewinder and try different loadouts to see how far you can push it. It's great fun! Obviously you can't attack Elite NPC Anaconda's but anything up to and including Cobras are doable. You will get blown up sometimes but a new one is very cheap at the insurance office. Prices start at 1650cr or so.
I think people are confusing 'challenging combat' with 'risky combat'. They are not the same thing, per se.
Let me use the 3 Anaconda Strong Signal Source as an example. I got one of these the other day, 1x Elite, 2x Deadly Condas. I was flying a Python with dual SCB and Pulse loadout at the time. I spent about 20minutes poking at them, trying to take down one before they got through my shields. The combat was challenging, I had to maneuver like crazy, make full use of pips and time my shield cells well. However there was almost no risk at all. Any time where I was worried they were about to break through my shield I boosted away to get a breather. There was absolutely no chance of me losing my ship. That is trivialised combat.
Let me use the 3 Anaconda Strong Signal Source as an example. I got one of these the other day, 1x Elite, 2x Deadly Condas. I was flying a Python with dual SCB and Pulse loadout at the time. I spent about 20minutes poking at them, trying to take down one before they got through my shields. The combat was challenging, I had to maneuver like crazy, make full use of pips and time my shield cells well. However there was almost no risk at all. Any time where I was worried they were about to break through my shield I boosted away to get a breather. There was absolutely no chance of me losing my ship. That is trivialised combat.
I kind of lumped them together but you make a fair observation. The best fights are when the shields go down. Wish it wasn't such a big deal when they did though. I'd love to be able to make an armor tank that worked in PvP.
okay i do see what you're saying there, but i'm thinking about the dynamic involved in the encounter.
for example, you say that its too easy to disengage from conflict,
but what would be the reason for conflict in the first place?
if you're after bounties and you disengage, then you dont get the bounty.
if you're in a smaller ship and you're being attacked by a bigger ship then retreat is often wise!.
but if you go out in a cobra with the intention of collecting bounties and you go up against larger ships
and consequently have to fly like you've never flown before...
at the end of the session you will feel like you've earned every penny.
or you impose restrictions on yourself.
thou shalt not use FSD to escape conflict
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And there's your 'problem'. Ditch it.
Whilst there's a lot of room for improvement, and plenty of that to come, would you say you've never had to jump away once? And is this true for conflict zones?
There's always an upper cap on difficulty when it comes to ai and I hit that cap a while ago. Yet occasionally, I get surprised and lose shields in conflict zones. Probably one time a night.
And I kept fighting until the last moment. Usually until I'd beaten the target.
For me, that's fun. If I was dying regularly, I wouldn't find it nearly as fun. I actually like the way the ED galaxy can be survived by experienced and careful pilots. I've not died since the first month, either. And I'm proud of that.
Because it's very easy to die if you're not careful or skilled.
So I agree ai should improve and I can't wait to get more challenging content (1.3 promises this). But I don't think the game needs to arbitrarily kill you frequently to make it more fun.
Sure, I'm not saying that challenging combat isn't rewarding in and of itself. I enjoyed my tussle with the Anacondas. Thing is, if we have to impose restrictions on ourselves to add risk to the game it's obviously indicative of the fact that that risk simply is not there in the game mechanics. I'll admit that I don't have a handy solution, I'm against the concept of people being trapped in combat with zero possibility to escape since that simply isn't fun. Anybody who has played EVE knows how one sided a fight can be when an opponent is webbed and warp scrambled, it's an execution not a fight.
Currently the only 'high risk' situation I can think of is being mass locked in the middle of a belt/asteroid field in a slow ship and accidentally hitting a friendly, turning everything in the site hostile.
I think you are overlookign something in your equation.
I am not familiar with DCS, but if it is anything like other flight sims, there is a big difference compared to Elite:
Getting downed in a flight sims does not invalidate potential hours of playtime. If you get shot down in a flight sim, all you "lose" is the current game, with zero repercussions.
In Elite, the loss of a ship means the invalidation of a potential 3-4 hours of play. And I don't see how increasing the difficulty of getting out of the potential RNG event of an enemy wing jumping in on you in a CZ/RES/whatever and opening fire without the player having the chance to avoid them in advance will be beneficial to the game with its current cost of ship loss.
And in any case, while I do agree that a lot of mechanics and maneuvers in Elite should be harder/more reliant on skill, I don't see how this should be acomplished with the mechanics that Elite currently offers.
The correct use of the energy distro system in combat is currently the most "difficult" thing to master, apart from FA off maneuvers. And both offer (in their current iteration) little space to make escaping from combat more challenging. There is no potential stall, g limit, potential use of ground clutter for "stealth" or chance of blackout/redout in Elite (yes, I know the cute red/black animation in fast turning ships, but that is just a visual effect with 0 impact on gameplay).
Edit: I also disagree with your term of losing: I don't see the need to see your ship explode. Having to run from a fight means to me that you have lost, as your enemy has pushed you from the CZ/RES/whatever and you might have to pay for repairs as well.
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nearly everything in life is hard until you work out how to do it. then its easy.
you have the best combat ship in the game and you know how the game works.....
dont forget that you didnt start off in that position!.
if this were any other game i would probaly say
'okay you've done your training, now its time to take what you've learned into PVP'
cause really, thats all thats left for you.
if the devs rescale the enemies to be harder, then it will make the game too hard for people still learning the ropes.
i dont know what the PVP will be like in this game. the word arena has been mentioned,
but i'd prefer some objective based PVP. maybe 4 teams of four having to attack each others capital ships/stations
last team standing wins. stick a nebula or two and a load of asteroids in there.......
otherwise, the only thing that you ARE left with is self imposed limitation.
its one of the joys of reaching the end of the line!
While this might hold some water to the current ED, there have been proposals to alleviate this.
Populating low security systems with harder enemies is one of them. This would give newbies space and time in high sec systems to learn the ropes, while providing better challenges to experienced players if they wander into lawless space.
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fair enough.
but still, i think the game needs a nice dedicated PVP element. there would be no upper skill limit. many are called few are chosen kinda thing
I didn't actually define 'losing', I said that there was no chance of losing my ship which is different. I lost the fight against the Anacondas, but suffered no consequence other than my dented pride
I don't see an issue with the potential for players to lose assets or wealth, without that potential much of what we do lacks meaning or any level of real excitement. Credits simply become something which accumulate over time with no significant risk of any setback. It's notable that the only major setbacks players suffer in this game, as demonstrated by multiple posts on this forum, is when they decide to place all their assets into one ship/cargo load, fly without insurance and then somehow die. Player stupidity is the greatest danger in this game. I think that's a shame. I have not lost a ship in months, and the only ships I have lost since beta have been a) being rammed unexpectedly by an npc or b) when I've overreached myself in pvp and not bailed when I should have. Repair costs have also been trivialised because so many people were moaning about them and FD over balanced. I agree that it's difficult within the current framework to make it riskier without making it too harsh, I haven't spent a lot of energy trying to come up with solutions since I see it as somewhat pointless to expend that energy only to post on a forum and have it sink into obscurity. The devs will do what they will, if they ask for ideas then maybe it would be worthwhile.
This isn't strictly true. There are many activities and skills which remain challenging and even dangerous even with a high level of skill. You also kind of make my point for me. Once a player works out certain mechanics risk drops to near zero and player error/stupidity becomes the primary cause of ship loss. Even having something as simple as a reverse of the interdiction 'mini game' in order to escape back into SC or hyperspace when in combat would be something. I've also seen it suggested that FSD charge time could be extended if taking fire. There are ways to add challenge and risk that wouldn't be overly punishing to new players.
The only AI in this game that are hard is when they make USS with 20 v 1 and they have aimbot turrets.
Other than that, it's a joke really. That's why people complain there is nothing to do because people cant be bothered grinding another 500 npcs at x,y,z combat zone or RES for no reason.
Whoops, it seems I misread then, sorry about that.
You raise a few points that come up regularly, but never click for me. So, allow me to poke a bit:
What I always fail to understand is the "meaning/exitement is bound to amount of potential loss" argument that I see thrown around in these forums quite regularly.
Going by this rule, shouldn't games like flight sims, SMB or Darksouls be completely devoid of meaning even though they are difficult? Why do we still enjoy them, even though our failure in them is almost inconsequential? And what makes ED different, so the amount of potential loss suddenly equals excitement?
Concerning repair cost: If they were overbalanced depends, IMHO, on what kind of game you want to see. If you want a game were getting shot up carries a lot of consequences then sure, they might be too low now. But if you want to punish players more for incured damage, will you not see people bailing out even sooner, bring only the cheap ships to a fight and, in general, disincentivize risky play (e.g. staying in combat with shields down). I would think that makes for a distinctively more boring game.
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