News NPC AI Update - 2.1.03 and beyond

[Dragule]

Well I think your doing a terrible job. As a trader do I really need to be interdicted every 5 mins by a Fur de lance or an anaconda? You think I like that? Wrong I hate it and I been playing since launch. I never posted on these forum's once until this Engineer's patch. I didn't have to I loved playing the game. Not anymore instead of the Engineer's you should have called it Attack of the Elite npc's constantly. Its not a game for casual player's anymore certainly not for traders. You could have just made a post before the patch saying traders are no longer welcome find a new game. The Engineer's what a small idea! You couldn't add to the Alliance, or made an alien race, maybe some new ships for people who already have a rank of king or Admiral? instead we get The engineer's and constant interdictions by way over powered ships and die alot and lose more then we make. I hate being on these forums id rather be playing but its not fun anymore.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I respect the fact that many of the casual players were having trouble fighting against the AI, but I personally enjoyed the improvement a lot. I haven't logged in yet to test the difference, but I'm going to assume that because I'm Elite in combat, I'll still face the more difficult AI more often.

Speak for yourself. I'm a casual player (barely more than 12-16 hours per week) & I was *loving* the 2.1 AI, & I am seriously hoping that they haven't hit it with a nerf bat (didn't get a chance to test it yesterday, so not sure yet).

 

[Owl Hoot]

Frankly the NPC's currently in game were not as bad as the initial release with engineers but the skill level and over powered equipment they carried made them way too powerful. I had to upgrade my trade Python to cope but it was not enough. I would not run my combat python anymore because I got tired of getting my ass handed to me. Master level and elite level pythons and anacondas would hunt you down relentlessly until they killed you. I even had ones I killed show back up and kill me before I cold get to a station to repair my damaged ship. Often time when you would escape and do a system jump when they had a 40 second cool down or a 3 system jump to lose them the little creeps showed up again to nail you 8k LS on your way to a mission destination. There is no way they should have been able to do this. I like a challenge but for Pete's sake lets make it reasonable.

Oh and by the way I thank Frontier for reimbursing insurance payments during this time of "challenge" but I have lost more credits from lost bounties, exploration data, fines for missions you cannot complete when you die, and commodities than I have lost from insurance in the last reimbursement and this one as well.

O great the Elite Anaconda I dodged last night 4 times just found me and killed me. Good job on the update Frontier. I am so disappointed.

Oh and the Dirt Bag Anaconda that killed me showed up again to kill me again. Thank you quit the game and not play for awhile .

Got to a base after 4 log outs and sold all the crap I had in my hold and abandoned my missions. Going to see if it makes a difference tomorrow.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

I like this update. Made the game playable and I'm not immediately running every time a ship appears.

great update!

I still saw the bug where bonus mission times appear with almost no time but at least the game is playable now.

thank you for listening to us lesser players. you made thr game fun.

 

[vermu]

This artificial AI nerfing sounds funny. Why take boost away from the 3 lowest rank? Do you have to have over 200 hours of flying time before you know how to press that red button? Boosting is one of the visual and audio aspects of the game. I just don't get why 3 of the lowest rank can't boost. What's the idea behind this? Why nerf the turn rate above the surface. I just recorded really nice dogfight where AI was using tight turns trying to evade me. Why to take those fun aspects out of the game?

 

[CMDR M Kozak]

I had 2 hours of game time last night. Quite a lot for a weekday for me, but I wanted to see what kind of NPC's were out there after this update.

I flew a Cobra MK3 with a crappy setup slammed together with what I could find a the local station.
- Turret pulse lasers on wings
- Gimbal burst laser
- mining laser
- No chaff
- Refinery
- A4 shield
- Cargo racks
- Limpet controller
- Fuelscoop
- Adv. scanner

My combat rank is Dangerous, 70% towards deadly.

I flew to anarchy systems / some low sec systems and ended up moving some 80+ ly out from the bubble looking to find some asteroids.

I encountered only Harmless, Mostly harmless and Novice AI's in Sidewinders and Eagles + 1 expert vulture where the pilot must have been drunk.
At no point was I in danger. At all. No risk.

Granted, there were wings of the Harmless sidewinders, but they are nothing more than cannon fodder.
At some point I had an eagle buzzing around me while mining - he fired a few shots and tried to claim my cargo.
But I waited for the limpet to finish collecting stuff before popping him im 10 seconds.

This update is the worst thing that could possibly have happened to the AI experience of the game.

If the AI is suppose to be matching your combat rank - its horribly broken now.

 

[vermu]

I had 2 hours of game time last night. Quite a lot for a weekday for me, but I wanted to see what kind of NPC's were out there after this update.

I flew a Cobra MK3 with a crappy setup slammed together with what I could find a the local station.
- Turret pulse lasers on wings
- Gimbal burst laser
- mining laser
- No chaff
- Refinery
- A4 shield
- Cargo racks
- Limpet controller
- Fuelscoop
- Adv. scanner

My combat rank is Dangerous, 70% towards deadly.

I flew to anarchy systems / some low sec systems and ended up moving some 80+ ly out from the bubble looking to find some asteroids.

I encountered only Harmless, Mostly harmless and Novice AI's in Sidewinders and Eagles + 1 expert vulture where the pilot must have been drunk.
At no point was I in danger. At all. No risk.

Granted, there were wings of the Harmless sidewinders, but they are nothing more than cannon fodder.
At some point I had an eagle buzzing around me while mining - he fired a few shots and tried to claim my cargo.
But I waited for the limpet to finish collecting stuff before popping him im 10 seconds.

This update is the worst thing that could possibly have happened to the AI experience of the game.

If the AI is suppose to be matching your combat rank - its horribly broken now.

It takes combat rank into consideration only during interdiction. System states and other factors affects to the rest of the npc's. I found yesterday one gunship and eagle from the uss, experts. I had to flee cause the gunship was pounding my cobra really hard. Only got the shields down from the eagle when I had to bug out. My combat rank is mostly harmless.

I guess we have to wait again and see how this goes.

 

[CMDR M Kozak]

It takes combat rank into consideration only during interdiction. System states and other factors affects to the rest of the npc's. I found yesterday one gunship and eagle from the uss, experts. I had to flee cause the gunship was pounding my cobra really hard. Only got the shields down from the eagle when I had to bug out. My combat rank is mostly harmless.

I guess we have to wait again and see how this goes.

The Vulture was an interdicton. He found me while fuel scooping.
I submitted hoping for a tight fight - but there was no real fight - just him spamming the chat while doing weird maneuvers.
I never lost shields. The fight took less than a minute.

 

[vermu]

The Vulture was an interdicton. He found me while fuel scooping.
I submitted hoping for a tight fight - but there was no real fight - just him spamming the chat while doing weird maneuvers.
I never lost shields. The fight took less than a minute.

Well that does not sound too good. Maybe AI is dead again. I guess it's time to take a break again. It's just shame that they make the game so boring you don't actually want to play it anymore.

 

[Noddie]

I found it too easy last night - but it's possible I was just lucky.

The way it ought to work, in my view, is something like this. Firstly, The overall difficulty of an AI ship is a Metric of the combat rank of the AI and the ship itself. Your personal combat rank should not play a part in determining what you see. What should effect NPC Spawning is your behavior, including location (security level of system), which missions you're undertaking and for whom, your reputation with both superpowers and local factions and, powerplay status, the value of any cargo you have.

If you aren't much cop at Combat, fly a freighter or simply don't want to get into scraps you might like to think twice about your actions. Agreeing to ship 10 tonnes of slaves for the mob is very profitable, but you'll get interdicted by authority vessels. When that happens bare in mind that those might be the guys you rely on next week to save your soul from some nasty Pirates. If you killed 2-3 of their buddies last week, don't expect them to risk burning out their warp cores coming to your aid. However, if you brought them medicines during that famine last week anyone who so much as LOOKS at your T6 is going to explain things at length to their Elite Anacondas.

The "difficulty level" (as least as regards combat) setting is in the game. It just isn't a control in the options menu. An "Elite" NPC should be very, very difficult to beat. But you would only come to their attention if you were taking on missions or behaving in such a way as to attract their attention.

 

[Chancer]

AI is too easy now. I can stomp through wings without trying in an FAS, and my Asp E can fly circles around DEADLY rank pythons. Without engineers mods. Before, my Asp could hardly get a bead on FDLs fighting me. Now I haven't seen a single one. But I bet they'll be about as easy to hit as vultures, because it's like the button was pressed for AI to fly 3X slower, meaning it's easier to track (But they still seem to use the SAME flight AI, with just severely dampened speeds). Because of that, they're easier to tail where their AI gets borked (also present prior to nerf) so they stay in your gunsights for 3X longer.

Honestly if you're trying to take on wings in a Cobra, all I can say is that you're doing it terribly wrong. Taking on wings in a small ship without the burst DPS (even with large ships) is a good way to get to the insurance screen. But CMDR_SALTED_JERKY, how did you survive in 2.1? Why that's simple; NEVER FIGHT WINGS UNLESS YOU WANT TO WASTE SCBS WHICH SHOULD BE YOUR EMERGENCY RESERVE ANYWAYS. YOU CAN OUTFLY ONE SHIP. YOU CAN'T OUTFLY TWO BECAUSE THAT ONE CAN JUST SIT STILL and you're more or less a free target to them. Having any other ship aggressive to you is basically a full load of additional DPS you cannot mitigate.

Buff the AI to 2.1 levels again, remove scaling and set those hard AI to lower security systems then call me back. FDev, I loved 2.1's update, and I know the community whines and cries about it, but the HARD AI was a STEP in the RIGHT DIRECTION. So please, I'm begging you, please bring them back in some form so I can have a challenge instead of dealing with enemies with turrets.

 

[Nitek [pl]]

Congratulations. I already started one topic. Now you made the Ai mindless again. Ok let's recap what you did for players that are actually good at this game and MAKE A LOT OF EFFORT in this direction.
You dumbed npc's again. You allow combat logging and cheating [ reporting goes to dev null], you allow "graceful" exit, you allow solo, private. So basically you are killing off a huge portion of playerbase. Nice... really nice.
GIVE US SOMETHING. ANYTHING. At least react to kill process combat logs. A N Y T H I N G

 

[Viking84]

Rush to Elite combat rating against pre 2.1 NPC's eh?

My Combat rating is Competent, because I don't really do much combat. Have taken out a few pre-nerf Elite FDL's and Condas though, so I was actually fine with the difficulty level before this change. That being said I still think it is a much better idea to let players choose their own difficulty level by in game methods such as sticking to safer systems, and only taking lower level missions. An Elite mission should be dangerous, and a low-sec system should be a place you only go if you are ready to fight.

The problem now is that FDev can only really choose one difficulty level for any given player as it is tied to their combat rank. Regardless of what they do most people will be unhappy as it is either too hard or too easy, and they have no way of affecting it themselves.

 

[Ziljan]

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 and we’re considering further reductions on the interdiction rank ranges detailed above.

So you don't want me to buy season 3 then? Ok thanks for the heads up. Saved me 60 CR.

 

[Riverside]

So you don't want me to buy season 3 then? Ok thanks for the heads up. Saved me 60 CR.

Hey you could buy another tonne of Hydrogen with the 60Cr you'll save

I think if you're not happy with the game holding back your hard cash is probably the best way to vote with your feet. Personally I have a lifetime pass so all I could do was stop buying paintjobs.

Hope you find your level Ziljan, you have been an asset to this forum (sometimes )

 

[bullsi]

Elite fail

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to share a quick update with you as we go live with the 2.1.03 update. You can see the full list of changes on the forum post here, but we wanted to point out a few tweaks and updates that we made in order to further improve your experience with the NPC AI. We also wanted to share a few AI changes that we have planned for a future update, too.


For 2.1.03 we fixed a bug where AI were using too tight a turning circle at low levels, we reduced ranks of Powerplay interdictors, lowering the chance of powerplay ships choosing to interdict you by 25%. The interdiction rank range has been reduced by one both above and below the player. It is also now based on your combat rating. We’ve made a change that ensures there will be a pause before AI attacks you after you’ve been interdicted… previously some Commanders would be immediately bombarded as soon as they’re pulled from supercruise.

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 and we’re considering further reductions on the interdiction rank ranges detailed above.

In a previous update we fixed the AI bug that would create super modules, we stopped the bug that allowed AI aligned powers from attacking you, we reduced the ranks of AI spawning based on accepted missions, and we reduced the ranks of AI in ambient traffic.

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.

This is my second post because I really have little time in my busy real life, first post was giving my first impressions.

Having loved playing this game for a while now, what I love to do is explore. Always wanted to from the start, but had to trade my way upto enough in game cash to afford my now basic equipped Asp Explorer for exploring in Horizons. I have spent a long time and great deal of effort to get this far and have no desire to engage in any combat whatsoever. If I see a ship, I run. Full stop.

What concerns me greatly now is when I eventually return to populated space with all my exploration data, some dirty cheating AI ship is going to interdict and take me out, thus loosing all that data and severely damaging my enjoyment of this game. My ship is not equipped for combat. If I am forced to do combat I will leave the game altogether.

Now a few questions;
1. Why decide to base diff on individual player rank? Makes ni sense.

2. Please confirm if AI is modelled on rules us player have to abide by, or are they bending rules (cheating)?

3. Please roll-back the changes. If a system suffers this bad from a release, the standard change release process is usually to roll it back.

 

[V'larr]

Frontier, you magic makers!
Props to the QA team, too.
For recognizing the issue with Engineer reputation update delay & fixing it this rapidly - thank you. Just made my whole day/night.

And then I discovered that *all* bounties available in Wolf 397 qualify for Engineer reputation with Todd! [praise]

Maybe two seemingly trivial items, but they made me awfully happy, just want to let you know.

 

[HBK]

Didn't fly enough to get a full grasp on the newest goodies (I now have infinite MC ammo!) but AI seems to be greatly improved. Turreted enemies are still dangerous or at least a pain in the butt when you're out of Chaff and a Conda unleashing its firepower at you definitely causes a world of hurt. But now the AI ships' agility seem to be much more in line with what you'd expect. No more Clipper (or Cobra) constantly circling around you while still facing you no matter how you fly.

It can also be seen when observing the cops fight big baddies. Before you'd see Vipers circling around Condas like some form of a weird space ballet as the Conda would maneuver like a D-rated Sidey. Now they simply follow the Conda while (mostly) keeping their ship in his six, like it should be.

 

[Noddie]

Why? Targeting sub-systems is a completely legitimate combat option. Players complain about NPC "pirates" never really pirating. Isn't preventing AI from targeting sub-systems just turning them all into murderers?

I think that's something that ought to scale with AI combat rank - the higher the rank the more likely they are to do this. The higher the rank the more likely they are to do so tactically.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

If the AI is suppose to be matching your combat rank - its horribly broken now.

well since I'm new to the game, I found that it matched my combat rank just fine

I hate to say it, but this is the kind of thing that's going to make this game sticky with new players. Definitely worked for me! Will I be disappointed when I get to higher levels? I don't know. At this point I'm just happy to be able to play without constantly being worried about getting killed by what should be low level NPC's.

I started right before the 2.1 update. I liked it so much I bought the Horizons expansions a couple of days later. Then the 2.1 update came out and I thought I made a big mistake. Had I started a couple of days later, after the 2.1 update that would have never happened. I would have written the whole thing off as impossible to play for beginners who don't want to (or can't) put in countless hours into a game to "git gud".