Not a bug but a HUGE ANNOYANCE : Endlessly cell-banking enemies

[Anjelen]

IP Protocol
IPv4

Date & Time of Occurrence
All the g time

Frequency
1

VR?
None / N/A

Location
Any combat situation

Ship/SRV?
N/A

Ship Type
Combat

Commander Name
Ember McLaughlin

Description
Having gotten into the habit of flying combat with smaller ships to get more fun out of the game, I'm finding more and more NPCs that completely break every and all combat by simply using their shield-cell banks endlessly, with no evident regard for ammo count, heat management or power genenration. This doesn't exactly bother me when the ships involved are Anaconda's, Clippers or other larger targets with a bigger hitbox and more power generation, but I find it _extremely_ annoying when I'm fighting Eagles, Cobra IIIs or Vipers and their shields simply endlessly replenish, while I am carrying a limited amount of ammunition and it's difficult enough to get a solid hit on the narrow side of a Cobra or otherwise do not have the damage output to break through ENDLESSLY RECHARGING SHIELDS!

Please, for the love of all that is holy and mighty, PLEASE stop NPCs from doing this. It simply doesn't make _sense_ that I'm fully confident in atacking an Elite Anaconda with nothing but my dual-cannon Vulture, but that I will not attack anything small simply because IT WILL ABSORB MORE DAMAGE THAN ANY GODDAMN ANACONDA EVER WILL.

Pardon my language, but this is getting on my for a month or two now and only seems to have gotten more egregious with the new Update.

Steps to Reproduce
- Initiate small-ship to small-ship combat with a limited-ammo or slow-to-fire weapon; Plasma cannons, Cannons, etc.

Additional files?

 

[CMDR K]

Yep sick of this.

Not that I've been able to get 3.3 to work (FDEV are you sure "Server Status:OK" is correct?) but in previous versions the only way to stop the NPC shields recharging was to let if fully recharge. Then you have a limited amount of time to kill the shield before they start doing it again. Amazed these NPC's have enough space in their ships for a shield generator given the number of shield cells they fire off to recharging.

Please fix.

CMDR KiBaL

 

[Gobo]

Yep its completely stupid & makes no sense whatsoever , always having to use beam lasers to fry the never ending shields is getting boring.

 

[TheOriginalB]

We should be able to scan them and see how many different SCBs they have, right? Do we know if they exceed the number of SCBs they actually have on the ship? That is, if they only have one shield cell bank, if we assume it's B-rated, then they should have a fixed number of cells. Have they ever fired more than that?

 

[Chaparral]

Think of it like a dps check. The rate of regeneration has a set value, if your dps exceeds that value you win. You can rail cascade them, but I prefer the option for bigger burst dps.

Break that shield or use up the SCBs.

This is only appropriate for pve of course.

 

[CMDR K]

We should be able to scan them and see how many different SCBs they have, right? Do we know if they exceed the number of SCBs they actually have on the ship? That is, if they only have one shield cell bank, if we assume it's B-rated, then they should have a fixed number of cells. Have they ever fired more than that?

I've witnessed a ship recharge at least 8 times, when I've failed to get it's shields down, this was in a conflict zone. Ships in a CZ usually don't last that long but when it ends up being a 1 on 1 battle it can drag on when they use shield cells.

Another occasion that sticks in the mind was when I went after a wing of 4 NPCs, the lead Anaconda clocked at least 2 solid minutes of constant recharging. I almost had the shield down a dozen times, but when the NPC in question has 3 hard as nails Vultures bearing down on as well it is a little hard to maintain constant fire on the primary target. Weapon charge doesn't last forever sadly. My mistake on that occasion, as I usually take out the wingmen first but decided the Anaconda on it's own would be easier. Either way the shield cell seems like somekind of leg up that the NPC's have.

 

[Gobo]

To be fair an anaconda can hold quite a few decent cell banks.

 

[Anjelen]

We should be able to scan them and see how many different SCBs they have, right? Do we know if they exceed the number of SCBs they actually have on the ship? That is, if they only have one shield cell bank, if we assume it's B-rated, then they should have a fixed number of cells. Have they ever fired more than that?

It is well known that NPCs have zero regard for heat, do not take damage from heat, and have endless supplies of chaff and SCBs.

To be fair an anaconda can hold quite a few decent cell banks.

Yup. But from my Vulture I can hit and kill NPC Anaconda's on my own, without any trouble whatsoever. Same with Clippers, Pythons and Federal drop/gunships. I'll attack them with pleasure and maniacal giggling. I definitely wouldn't mind trying on an NPC Federal Corvette - I haven't yet had the chance to, but I'm willing to make a small wager that I could give it a run for it's money.

And yes, it's harder to hit a smaller ship with my Cannons. That's why the weapons are long-distance engineered; to get some movement speed out of the projectiles. I love that this is the case and would fight eagles, cobras and vipers with pleasure were it not that simply their unlimited amount of shield cell banks combined with their tiny, tiny hitbox makes them all but impossible to hit with any weapon that isn't hitscan and/or gimbaled - and I've built the Vulture precisely so I could _stop_ using those weapons.

Think of it like a dps check. The rate of regeneration has a set value, if your dps exceeds that value you win. You can rail cascade them, but I prefer the option for bigger burst dps.

This is not the case, however, particularly with those smaller ships, because A) their hitboxes are tiny and my cannons aren't hitscan- and B) I am not going to be 100% accurate with my cannons.
I've tried using railguns for a while and frankly I hated them for their firing mechanics.

 

[Strangepork]

IP Protocol
IPv4

Date & Time of Occurrence
All the g time

Frequency
1

VR?
None / N/A

Location
Any combat situation

Ship/SRV?
N/A

Ship Type
Combat

Commander Name
Ember McLaughlin

Description
Having gotten into the habit of flying combat with smaller ships to get more fun out of the game, I'm finding more and more NPCs that completely break every and all combat by simply using their shield-cell banks endlessly, with no evident regard for ammo count, heat management or power genenration. This doesn't exactly bother me when the ships involved are Anaconda's, Clippers or other larger targets with a bigger hitbox and more power generation, but I find it _extremely_ annoying when I'm fighting Eagles, Cobra IIIs or Vipers and their shields simply endlessly replenish, while I am carrying a limited amount of ammunition and it's difficult enough to get a solid hit on the narrow side of a Cobra or otherwise do not have the damage output to break through ENDLESSLY RECHARGING SHIELDS!

Please, for the love of all that is holy and mighty, PLEASE stop NPCs from doing this. It simply doesn't make _sense_ that I'm fully confident in atacking an Elite Anaconda with nothing but my dual-cannon Vulture, but that I will not attack anything small simply because IT WILL ABSORB MORE DAMAGE THAN ANY GODDAMN ANACONDA EVER WILL.

Pardon my language, but this is getting on my for a month or two now and only seems to have gotten more egregious with the new Update.

Steps to Reproduce
- Initiate small-ship to small-ship combat with a limited-ammo or slow-to-fire weapon; Plasma cannons, Cannons, etc.

Additional files?

Use the rail gun engineering mod which absorbs scb effectiveness.

 

[Anjelen]

Use the rail gun engineering mod which absorbs scb effectiveness.

No. As I've said I've tried rail guns, I dislike using rail guns. I built this Vulture to have fun and get more proficient at using fixed weapons, not to get frustrated at a [censored]-up firing mechanic.

 

[Hal 9000 and Dave]

On top of the endless SCB, i hit an engineered NPC conda in a threat 7 pirate zone last night with 5 reverb torps. nothing happened, i was even 1.5-2k out from him. I went back to station, refit with 7 reverb torps and went to another threat 7, same thing happened. I know they hit, the shield took damage, however the cascade effect obviously didn't.

Forgot to add, they work on haz res condas though. dont know if that helps

 

[metatheurgist]

If this is happening all the time, grab a video and submit it. If they are in fact banking more than is possible for their module allotment then it should be obvious.

 

[Morbad]

NPCs follow the same rules we do with regard to SCBs. They can melt themselves, they will run out of ammo, and if you destroy their PP, they won't be able too use their banks any more if their shields come back up, because they will turn them off to power the rest of the ship.

If SCBs are proving problematic, you need to change your tactics, your loadout, or pick different opponents. NPCs don't need to be nerfed further into irrelevance so you can go on killing them by the RES full in a cannon vulture.

On top of the endless SCB, i hit an engineered NPC conda in a threat 7 pirate zone last night with 5 reverb torps. nothing happened, i was even 1.5-2k out from him. I went back to station, refit with 7 reverb torps and went to another threat 7, same thing happened. I know they hit, the shield took damage, however the cascade effect obviously didn't.

Did you look at the NPC module pane?

Higher rank threat 7 NPCs are generally heavily engineered. A thermal resistance A7 shield gen can eat 5-6 reverb torpedoes without failing and if they've been built around integrity, even more.

If even two of your torps didn't hit the second time, it shouldn't have lost shields and your first attack likely wouldn't have worked even if they all landed.

 

[Bigmaec]

NPCs follow the same rules we do with regard to SCBs. They can melt themselves, they will run out of ammo, and if you destroy their PP, they won't be able too use their banks any more if their shields come back up, because they will turn them off to power the rest of the ship.

If SCBs are proving problematic, you need to change your tactics, your loadout, or pick different opponents. NPCs don't need to be nerfed further into irrelevance so you can go on killing them by the RES full in a cannon vulture.

Did you look at the NPC module pane?

Higher rank threat 7 NPCs are generally heavily engineered. A thermal resistance A7 shield gen can eat 5-6 reverb torpedoes without failing and if they've been built around integrity, even more.

If even two of your torps didn't hit the second time, it shouldn't have lost shields and your first attack likely wouldn't have worked even if they all landed.

Quoted for truth.

 

[Anjelen]

NPCs follow the same rules we do with regard to SCBs. They can melt themselves, they will run out of ammo, and if you destroy their PP, they won't be able too use their banks any more if their shields come back up, because they will turn them off to power the rest of the ship.

If SCBs are proving problematic, you need to change your tactics, your loadout, or pick different opponents. NPCs don't need to be nerfed further into irrelevance so you can go on killing them by the RES full in a cannon vulture.



Did you look at the NPC module pane?

Higher rank threat 7 NPCs are generally heavily engineered. A thermal resistance A7 shield gen can eat 5-6 reverb torpedoes without failing and if they've been built around integrity, even more.

If even two of your torps didn't hit the second time, it shouldn't have lost shields and your first attack likely wouldn't have worked even if they all landed.

This was a common HazRez, not a threat-level anything. I was going up against the commonest of common NPCs. Which were shield banking for minutes at a time, not occasionally popping a bank but over the course of ten minutes kept their shields at a near-constant maximum.