Interdiction rate and combat rank?

[peteuplink]

Does your combat rank have any bearing on how often you're interdicted? Or is my lack of interdictions something to do with the servers or my connection?

For some reason I rarely get interdicted unless I'm pledged to a power. If I'm not pledged to a power I can quite literally play for hours without an interdiction no matter what the government type or security rating, or the cargo I'm carrying for the mission. Last night I sailed through several anarchy and low security systems without incident. I sometimes get the "I knew the rumours were right" or "That's a big haul..." messages, but there often isn't anyone around when I get the message and sometime it can take up to 5 minutes before ships start to appear. By which time I'm almost at the station.

So is it my combat rank? I'm back to Mostly Harmless again because I reset my save, but I don't ever recall it being any better on higher levels. Admittedly, though, I've never really gone much higher than Novice.
Is it my connection? I'm running fibre optic at 75mbps.
Or is it the slowness of the servers? I've noticed a lot of things are taking time to load, so perhaps the ships are not appearing because it's taking too long to get the data from the servers?

Any ideas?

How often are you guys interdicted and have you noticed an increase since your combat rating when up?

 

[Codger]

As far as I know, your combat rank only affects the rank of Npcs that attack you randomly. It doesn't affect the rank of Npcs that are tied to missions, the mission rank does. Frequency of interdictions is unaffected by combat rank.

Also, the size of the ship you're flying affects the size of the ship that attacks.

I have days when I get few interdictions, and others when I get more. It's just a random factor.

That is how I believe it works, and it seems to fit with my experience.

 

[D.G.Cerberus]

As far as I know, your combat rank only affects the rank of Npcs that attack you randomly. It doesn't affect the rank of Npcs that are tied to missions, the mission rank does. Frequency of interdictions is unaffected by combat rank.

Also, the size of the ship you're flying affects the size of the ship that attacks.

I have days when I get few interdictions, and others when I get more. It's just a random factor.

That is how I believe it works, and it seems to fit with my experience.

I would agree with all this across my experience.
I would also say I am rarely interdicted certainly compared to some of the posters on this forum!
I often fly parabolas outside the shipping lanes, but I certainly stack missions right up to the limit and don't even think twice about taking Elite ranked missions.

Just lucky I guess.

Oh, always get interdicted when mid-mission they tell you some ships will be after you. And it is an Insta-diction as well (don't appear on scanners first). However since I already know it is going to happen, no problem and the additional bonus is always nice.

 

[NotHere]

I was in the same boat a few weeks ago. I hardly ever got interdicted even when carrying 200+ tons of cargo, and even the power play related interdictions were few and far between. Couldn't comprehend what everyone was on about when complaining about interdiction spam.

Then, once I got my Cutter, I finally started looking into engineers and have been carrying around engineer commodities, and jeez... I get interdicted all the time now. Sometimes I'll fight off one just to get interdicted again immediately after getting back into supercruise.

There seems to be something about engineer commodities that turns all the AI pilots into bloodthirsty pirates. It doesn't seem to be tied to combat rank since I've been stuck at Master this entire time.

 

[D.G.Cerberus]

Strange: I agree that I had a fair amount of interdictions a while back for carrying 4 modular terminals.....but that has dropped off for me too. For a variety of reasons I have been toting around microweave colling hoses, Modular terminals and Magnetic emitter coils for about a week. (Yes, I'm in a modding phase of my gameplay having got the rest of the mats I need for chosen upgrades). Not a single interdiction through this reason.

Doubt it is your Cutter, I'm tooling around modding the 'Vette.

 

[peteuplink]

Well I'm currently flying around in a Cobra Mk 3. I do missions, I trade, I enter USS's to see if there are any bounties to pick up, I visit a wide range of systems and don't generally stick just to one place... I just don't seem to pick up that many interdictions. This has been going on for months now, both before and after I reset my save, and I don't know why.

The only thing I can think of is the fact that, as I said above, it sometimes can take up to 5 minutes before I start seeing NPC's spawning in systems. Maybe I'm not getting interdicted because the ships are taking too long to appear? Are NPC's spawned server side?

 

[Codger]

Nope they are spawned client side, in your current instance. I suppose if you're not seeing anything for 5 minutes, that could be the reason. Slow connection? Slow computer? Good living? Who knows. There's so much randomness it's hard to pinpoint this stuff in every case.

 

[peteuplink]

Well , as I stated above, my internet connection is fibre optic running above 75mbps. As for my PC. It runs the game easily on high settings with a steady 60 fps, so I don't think it's that. There has to be a reason for it.

 

[_trent_]

Purely on personal experience so entirely anecdotal evidence for this answer.

Random interdictions are based on combat rank and the ship you fly. When in my cobra I get smaller, faster ships than when I am in the 'conda.

For missions, the ship I am flying seems to determine the size of the attacker, but the rating is usually tied to the level of the mission.