News NPC AI Update - 2.1.03 and beyond

I am fine with the low ranked NPC being nerfed its fine.
But should the 3 highest ranks get buffed?

To me, Elite ranked NPCs should be the very best that the game can produce, and quite rare outside of certain missions/system states. Make them fly as efficiently as possible with a highly modded ship. Basically, something to run from for most people. Have it be a badge of honor to be able to say you can destroy Elite enemies.
 
Thanks Devs, I appreciate the good work.

Input: Please do not nerf higher ranking AI. IMO, they were perfect after you fixed the SUPER ENGINEER WEAPONS bug.
Maybe instead of trying to please everyone with one difficulty, you allow player selectable difficulty when players are playing Solo. In Open, difficulty can be an universal constant.
 
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The development team are dedicated to making the NPC AI experience as fun as possible, and the right level of challenging, and will continue to work hard on finding the correct balance.
It is very nice to hear this! Since 2.1 release i have the fear that u could be inteded to punsish the player for playing elite. So i have to check something in the game. But i fear in regard to my trade and fight rank ELITE, i do not see very much changes. For this it would be great if all players can have an second or third save-game-slot, whether to try or whether to fly another pilot, what maybe could reduce the inquires of "Can u change my nick plese" :)
 
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It is also now based on your combat rating

Thank you thank you thank you. That's all I ask for. Oh, and storage.

Thank you! You made a trader/explorer a little bit happier today..

Note to self... DO NOT increase your combat rank whatsoever in so far as it is possible to do so... No Combat CG's, RES, Nav Beacons, etc etc etc

You'll only bring a whole heap of crap down on yourself...

Now where was that game wipe button...
 
Thanks Devs, I appreciate the good work.

Input: Please do not nerf higher ranking AI. IMO, they were perfect after you fixed the SUPER ENGINEER WEAPONS bug.
Maybe instead of trying to please everyone with one difficulty, you allow player selectable difficulty when players are playing Solo. In Open, difficulty can be an universal constant.
wont work because i wont play at all if you do this to solo and then they will get complaints about solo players being able to do powerplay and undermining and community goals 'in complete safety'. we already see enough of this by people frankly. i dont like powerplay and have no interest in it save when it generates a cimmunity goal i can participate in. to do what you want requires solo and EVERY group each to all have their own unique and independent galaxy - or have all community goals, powerplay removed. no more galnet since irrelevant. that is not the answer.

on the other hand while i acknowledge the AI is now generated for interdictions by your actual combat rank, i have seen two things; in the patch notes it mentions the generated rank will be increased by one if a player PF is higher than combat rank. so assuming PF means explorer or trader rank in pilots federation, my first question is why? how does being a better explorer or trader than combateer make me MORE dangerous and thus need OVER my level npcs? this is IRRELEVANT. how many merchant bankers in real life require the SAS to go arrest them because their 'banking' ability is so much higher than their 'fighting' ability? none is the answer; they send in the (non combat) fraud squad to arrest them! adjusting combat rank of npcs based on higher levels of trader/explorer is just nonsensical.

i didnt see in patch notes if the npcs are still generated in combat ships when you are in the NON-combat Asp EXLORER. if the idea is pirates are attacking for cargo, generate them in ships which have space to take such cargo. and give us the ability to tell them when we have no cargo and they have no scanner. unless they are pretty bad low level and desperate pirates i imagine all of them would carry cargo racks and scanner as a matter of course rather than be in pure combat ships.

thirdly, while acknowledging the fact FD is continuing to work on AI, and having no problem with more interesting fights (but NOT the no-win/no-flee ones), from this patch all i can see, while the method of calculating combat rank remains a steady accumulator, that you FD are merely building your dam a bit higher. in a few months or a year you will be back in the position where a large part of the player base is not having fun because they get very little combat and are always running from elite npcs - because eventually every trader bar the ones who NEVER FIGHT will end up over time elite!. i have already suggested that all ranks above competent should be dynamic and decay at different rates which increase the higher the combat rank. i also suggested a player rank cap - call it refusal to accept promotions above a set rank from pilots federation or something, so that players who feel they have reached their level of ability can set that and refuse further promotions to avoid losing any sense of fun in the game. and pilots who aspire to be elite combat rank i still maintain that earning it should indeed be an achievement but you should need to keep earning it or lose it again very, very quickly.
 
I like these changes! Totally took me by surprise with the update being so stuffed with goodies.

For all my talk around the forums of not making the game too hard for most people...I just want to now toss in that I hope that there *will* be a way for a player to make the game more challenging for themselves if they so choose. (Aliens...?)
 
...The NPCs were tied to the highest rank before, that's sensless if you are combat harmless and explorer elite. Now its tied to your combat rank. What's wrong with that?... Elite combat ranks should encouter elite NPC, but not harmless players. Where is the problem? Why should harmless players always encounter elite? Doesn't make sense to me, it would make it unoplayable for beginners.

Agreed and seconded, having the NPC rank aligned with your combat rating makes perfect sense.

It is Elite Dangerous, not Elite Masochism.
 
Agreed and seconded, having the NPC rank aligned with your combat rating makes perfect sense.

It is Elite Dangerous, not Elite Masochism.

Agreed. If someone prefers to spend 99% of their time trading or exploring, they're not going to be equipped to fight an NPC ranked to challenge someone who spends 99% of their time fighting. This is a good change.
 
I'm a pc player and I think the AI is about right. The game is called Elite Dangerous not just Elite

For you maybe, trust me you're in a minority. The game has to be fair for the majority

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No skill player wins again.
You could make the game less dangerous by improving your skill rather than us lower our skill.

Not everyone has the time to play the game 24/7, the casual player and players starting out are suffering the most. If as you want the npc's are as strong as they were before, no new players will come to play ED. But never mind you'll be ok playing in a galaxy of one
 
Dear FD, please don't remove boost from lower end AI, please do not remove sub-targeting from high level AI. I think that the most problem is caused by having AI tied to player rank, which does not always reflect the player's skill. AI difficulty/spawns should be tied to system security, and general areas of space which will be safe for lower skilled players to fly/trade/explore in with corresponding profits. Higher skilled players could get their challenge in dangerous areas like conflict zones, haz res sites, or others. You are making half of the players happy with nerfed AI, while making the equal half of players unhappy - which leaves the game in the same state. Just my two cents.
 
As a new player, I wasn't struggling because the AI was too good. I was struggling because they were OP, destroying me:a) for no reason (just out scanning planets, no cargo), and b) taking out my shields in 1 shot, half my hull on shot #2, and then destroying me with a 3rd shot, all in about 10 seconds. But I'm on the XBox, and the NPCs were equipped with OP weapons even after the last patch prior to this one.

There was no chance to learn the game getting destroyed so swiftly. There was no logic behind the attacks (Skynet level of aggressiveness vs a human player). It was "Welcome to the game!" BAM, you're dead!

Hopefully, this change will help. But I don't like the AI not being allowed to target subsystems. If I can, they should. Maybe not all of them, but higher ranked ones, yes. But the NPCs need to be limited to the same weapons and restrictions as a player - not auto-regen of shields and hull if I escape an interdiction; no psychically knowing if I have cargo; no fighting to the death over a few thousand credits worth of cargo, or no cargo at all. You know, NPCs that make sense and aren't psycho killers.
 
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No offense Brett, but tying up NPC ranks and combat capabilities to player's combat rank sounds like yet another... questionable design desicion. High combat rank in ED doesn't mean much besides the fact that the player has had patience and endurance to kill enough NPCs. In some cases players were even actively avoiding leveling up of their combat ranks, but this is still going to happen in certain gameplay scenarios.

Regarding the ranks of NPC spawns, emphasize should be put on location (system security and status, RES, CZ, Nav beacons...) and situation (is the player wanted, what sort of cargo he is hauling, what kind of mission he is running etc), rather than the player's combat rank.
 
"we fixed a bug where AI were using too tight a turning circle at low levels"

It's really disappointing to hear that the NPCs have arbritary numbers nerfing their ship handling.
It's like when MMORPGs have arbitary levels dictating health, damage etc. — level one enemy has 100HP!...level 50 enemy has 100,000,000HP!

If I'm flying an unmodified Python and the NPC is flying an unmodified Python, we should have the same turn-rates, health etc.
The "skill level" level of NPCs should be in how they fly, and how they aim.
 
Agreed and seconded, having the NPC rank aligned with your combat rating makes perfect sense.

It is Elite Dangerous, not Elite Masochism.
I would argue that the BGS and the BGS alone should spawn NPCs...

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No offense Brett, but tying up NPC ranks and combat capabilities to player's combat rank sounds like yet another... questionable design desicion. High combat rank in ED doesn't mean much besides the fact that the player has had patience and endurance to kill enough NPCs. In some cases players were even actively avoiding leveling up of their combat ranks, but this is still going to happen in certain gameplay scenarios.

Regarding the ranks of NPC spawns, emphasize should be put on location (system security and status, RES, CZ, Nav beacons...) and situation (is the player wanted, what sort of cargo he is hauling, what kind of mission he is running etc), rather than the player's combat rank.
I agree.
We were promised a dynamic world , were the BGS was the center of it all.

Now its transforming into some artificial early 2000s game logic.
Maybe this is just a temp solution
 
NPC interdiction level is meant to be up to only Player combat rank (+1 if high trade/xplora rank)? Or have they kept the rank +/- 2 from player as well. I still get interdicted by Deadly NPCs with my combat rank at Expert (+1). So should I see Master or Dangerous?
 
NPC interdiction level is meant to be up to only Player combat rank (+1 if high trade/xplora rank)? Or have they kept the rank +/- 2 from player as well. I still get interdicted by Deadly NPCs with my combat rank at Expert (+1). So should I see Master or Dangerous?
Spawns of all ranks still happen , its just that high ranks are very rare now.

Interdictions have been removed but are not tied to rank (as far as I can see) only spawning of ships is tied to rank (but even then it favors low ranks more than high)

I dont want the world full of high ranks , nor low ranks... I just wish they went for the original plan of every spawn is done via the BGS
 
Hi everyone,

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We have a lot of AI changes planned for upcoming updates too, such as stopping the bottom three levels of AI from boosting (which was an unintended bug), we are looking at stopping AI from targeting sub-modules
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The development team are dedicated to making the NPC AI experience as fun as possible, and the right level of challenging, and will continue to work hard on finding the correct balance.
Why would anyone at any level of experience not use boost? So why would an AI NPC not use boost?
Same for targeting sub-modules.
'More human than human' : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAYKnnWCzto
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Balance is not a constant it is a dynamic.
 
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