Noticed a "trend" with NPC ships

Red Fox Four

Red Fox Four
Just want to see if I am alone in experiencing this.

Frequently when fighting NPCs you can be hitting them and they hit you... you get a feeling for how much damage they do, your shields stay up at around 60-70%.

You drop the shields of the NPC and get them down towards 50% on hull.

The damage they have been doing to you has been steady and pretty much the same.

Then suddenly, when they are getting low on their hull...

They come at you and do a FK-TON of damage in a single pass... taking down your shields and at least 20% of your armor... then come for another pass and shred your armor.

What is up with that ?

It's like they get some kind of artificial "second wind" and a tremendous burst of damage and completely tear down your shields and armor.

I've noticed quite a bit lately, and in particular when fighting NPCs that you interdict from supercruise (e.g. when doing a "Hunt pirates from X faction in Y system" missions).

Anyone else noticed NPCs getting these sudden bursts of damage when you thought they were about to go down in flames?
 

TheDarkLord

TheDarkLord
No, I haven't noticed it particularly.

Although, I think there are a couple of key differences between NPCs and human ships.

Firstly, NPCs don't care about dying. This means that they will fight with uniform severity from 100% shields to 0% hull. Whereas players who are running out of hull will probably be more concerned with managing the damage to stay alive. This leads to a perception of increased aggression from the NPC, because you're subconsciously expecting their aggression to be tailing off.

Secondly, NPCs do not seem to suffer from module damage in the same way that player ships do. Aside from them going dark when you knock out their power plant, they never seem to lose thrusters or weapons.

Basically, what I'm saying is that they go from performing at 100% to dead. There is no falloff. I think this may be what is causing OP to think that they are abnormally aggressive in their dying breath.
 

Alex Brentnall

Alex Brentnall
I did notice something with a Fed gunship recently. As we know they have a ton of weapons but this one only fired 2 or 3 of them until I took 50% off his hull. I think the AI code may restrict use of some weapons (kinetic weapons when target shield is up etc) and getting them below a certain threshold over-rides this so they are suddenly all weapons free...

Maybe I'm wrong, not sure but that's how it felt.
 
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vrseven

V
TheDarkLord said:
Although, I think there are a couple of key differences between NPCs and human ships.

Firstly, NPCs don't care about dying. This means that they will fight with uniform severity from 100% shields to 0% hull.
Click to expand...

This is not true. Especially for dangerous, deadly, and elite NPCs. They will run and jump even if their shields are not down. NPCS also "panic" when ship destruction is imminent. They will deploy and retract hardpoints repeatedly as they run and pray for mercy.
 
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TERMINATRIXXX

Banned
T
Could be a heat problem which temporarly reduce your shield strength?
Never experienced something like this.
Ofcourse sometimes it feels the NPC's are mad and pi??ed and getting really angry but again, never noticed it.
Record it next time.
 

Deleted member 38366

D
I've noticed some occasional "oddball Superhero NPCs", but they seem very rare.

For a while everything works as usual, but at some point (<50% Hull) they simply nearly stop taking damage. Like they insta-upgraded to a Meta-Armour mid-flight, increasing their hull points manyfold.

My last encounter was with an Anaconda NPC. Until it went down to less than 50% hull, everything was completely normal.
It then decided to make a ram-maneuver at about 40% Hull it had left - despite being more of a scraping, this stripped my Grade 5 modded Shields instantly and dropped me to 63% Hull.

At about 23% Hull of the NPC, I kept hammering it with my Grade 5 Modded High Yield C4 Cannon. Additionally, Authority had showed up and was also hammering the Anaconda NPC now.
To my surprise, the otherwise frighteningly effective Cannon hardly did any Hull Damage anymore.

Still, my concentrated fire combined with the 3 Authority Ships took it down to 6% Hull, at which point I got a little frustrated at that stubborn NPC.
I also checked its SubSystems - and most of them were quite happy and alive... despite eating tons of heavy fire from all vectors.
So I decided to utilize my own modded Heavy Duty Military Bulkheads and give this Conda NPC the rest with a "touch of love".

Said so, done so...
Lost most Systems instantly, Hull went instantly down to a whopping 3% and (due to Sensors being insta-destroyed) became blind.
Notably, that Anaconda was still alive (!)

End of story :
1x alive Anaconda NPC
1 "slightly worn" Mil-Grade and Grade 5-modded Cutter
ELITE-3pcCutter.jpg

(Yup... that was one hell of a tough Anaconda NPC)
 
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Windscreen Smudge

W
Can't say I've noticed this. Been doing a lot of killing NPC's in the last few days and their behavior is steady from beginning to end.

Braindead.

The only amusing part has been giving Anacondas the Hug-O'-Death in my gunship. The AI just doesn't know how to react to being touched inappropriately.
 

goemon

goemon
Alex Brentnall said:
I did notice something with a Fed gunship recently. As we know they have a ton of weapons but this one only fired 2 or 3 of them until I took 50% off his hull. I think the AI code may restrict use of some weapons (kinetic weapons when target shield is up etc) and getting them below a certain threshold over-rides this so they are suddenly all weapons free...

Maybe I'm wrong, not sure but that's how it felt.
Click to expand...

very much my impression.

looks to me as if AI has weapons to use if shields are down (for exampel: missiles), but if they are going below a certain hulldamage threshold, they switch sometimes to an all-out strategy.

I'm doing the same with a certain shield-damage threshold :)
 

Trafalgar Law

Trafalgar Law
I have experienced this on several occasions, although it does seem to be pretty rare.

In fact only yesterday in my Courier vs a FGS with a modular terminal fetish. Took down his shields, everything going well, he had lots of turrets so I was taking fairly steady amounts of damage to my shields, chewed up his hull until below 50% when he was able to rapidly bring down my shields, ok I thought, must have made a mistake and retreated to let my shields regenerate, returned to the engagement and took down his shields again whereupon he rapidly stripped my shields and left me running with just 23% hull and him still on 36%. The speed at which he took down my shields in both cases was remarkable (they were probably at ~50%) in comparison to the fairly minor damage he was doing in the early part of the engagement.
 

Momoka Azuka

Momoka Azuka
I've noticed it as well now that I've switched over to my second account. Fighting in the smaller ships you tend to pay way more attention to the npcs flight patterns. There's defiantly a spike in there aggressiveness after they drop under about 40 percent hull. I wouldn't call it a "flaw" per se but more of the AI switching to a last ditch effort mode. Which is fine if I couldn't actually notice it but I've noticed.

Now to be fair, I play so many fighting games that I started reading frame data so it's very hard for someone like me not to notice clear changes in AI behavior so I try not to focus on it until absolutely necessary.
 

Red Fox Four

Red Fox Four
TheDarkLord said:
No, I haven't noticed it particularly.

Although, I think there are a couple of key differences between NPCs and human ships.

Firstly, NPCs don't care about dying. This means that they will fight with uniform severity from 100% shields to 0% hull. Whereas players who are running out of hull will probably be more concerned with managing the damage to stay alive. This leads to a perception of increased aggression from the NPC, because you're subconsciously expecting their aggression to be tailing off.

Secondly, NPCs do not seem to suffer from module damage in the same way that player ships do. Aside from them going dark when you knock out their power plant, they never seem to lose thrusters or weapons.

Basically, what I'm saying is that they go from performing at 100% to dead. There is no falloff. I think this may be what is causing OP to think that they are abnormally aggressive in their dying breath.
Click to expand...

I understand what you mean about the psychological fact... but they do a steady amount of damage throughout the whole fight, not even being able to break my shields.

Then as their armor gets under 50% they suddenly hit you so hard in a single pass or two that your entire shield is stripped off and they bite into your armor. That's not psychological. If they were doing the same damage from start to death the shields should still be intact and that is also my expectation... instead they sometimes nearly kill you in the last few passes where they hit you extremely hard, moreso than they did previously.
 

CMDR Dumbfries

C
You've done a pretty good job explaining something I couldn't quite put my finger on. This happens quite a bit. I'll have the upper hand in a fight until the NPC reaches a certain hull threshold then they get some kind of boost. It reminds me of the automatic catch-up in racing games like the need for speed. If this can be proven, it needs to be done away with.
 

Frenotx

Frenotx
CMDR_Cosmicspacehead said:
Ermmm, nope.

I just get the flames. Lol

I tend to feel the FAS' armour gets tougher the more you shoot it though. Lol
Click to expand...

That's because the more damaged its armour gets, the more likely your shots are to penetrate it. When that happens, you do ~80% of your damage to whatever module took the hit, and only about 20% to the actual hull. Since frontier saw fit to make almost every weapon decent at penetrating the hull, this leads to the last bit of your enemy's armour taking a bit longer to kill.
 
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