News NPC AI update

[Ian Skippy]

How do you kill this Enemy with 4 Pips on System?
My Shields survive the first Flyby with 4 Pips to System but then i´ve change 4 Pips to Weapons and before my Weapons have recharged iam already been attacked again.
NPC´s have much faster Turnspeed then Humans.
Or is the 4 Pips to Shield the gloryous "Run away from NPC´s" Variation of Zero Fun Gameplay?

1) No, I dont run away. But you ALWAYS need 4 pips in system when under fire (216% extra shields or some such), and 0 pips when not under fire.
2) If you run out of weapon capacitor energy too fast, you need to change your loadout. Some weapons require massive ammounts of cap energy (eg. beam lasers), some hardly any (eg. multi-cannons).

So you need to manage your pips, and when building your ship you need to figure out how much weapon cap your PD can provide, how much time you'll spend shooting (obviously turrets more than fixed, etc), and how much you'll need your caps elsewhere (huge ships are under fire a lot so need more pips to sys on average, some ships are very responsive to pips in engine (eg. FDL) so need more pips there. Oh, NPCs dont have better turnspeed, they are however often better pilots than humans.

 

[777Driver]

How do you kill this Enemy with 4 Pips on System?
My Shields survive the first Flyby with 4 Pips to System but then i´ve change 4 Pips to Weapons and before my Weapons have recharged iam already been attacked again.
NPC´s have much faster Turnspeed then Humans.
Or is the 4 Pips to Shield the gloryous "Run away from NPC´s" Variation of Zero Fun Gameplay?

You use active PIP management, combined with a loadout that is not too heavy on the WEP capacitor. NPC's don't have a faster turn rate than humans, it's just that most Cmdr's don't fly their ships anywhere near it's full maneuvering capability, believe me I often see it when engaging in PvP or viewing youtube videos.

4 PIPS to shields and evade during the cooldown, it is the advice we give to cmdrs that are struggling to survive, it is the basics of Combat and survival, all other skills are built on that foundation.

 

[Aris_]

Pip management can be made easier with macros in a good joystick that can be programed even a cheap keyboard can be programed others use voice commands programs.


Ship load out and the way you fly e.g. turning pitch battle or moving backwards keeping your nose on target using scb’s etc. are factors that guide your pip settings.


Another more advance factor for pip setting is what your opponent does and actively counter its actions use 4p to engine to turn tighter than him, 4p to shields to ram him if he is close, 4p to weapons if you are out of juice but you are behind your enemy or above even if you are under fire by his 2 turrets, is more important to get his power plant or to break his shields.


When a CMDR comes in the forum and does not have an idea on those topics it very difficult to explain that the AI is not the problem.

 

[CMDR Kantos Kan]

Pip management can be made easier with macros in a good joystick that can be programed even a cheap keyboard can be programed others use voice commands programs.


Ship load out and the way you fly e.g. turning pitch battle or moving backwards keeping your nose on target using scb’s etc. are factors that guide your pip settings.


Another more advance factor for pip setting is what your opponent does and actively counter its actions use 4p to engine to turn tighter than him, 4p to shields to ram him if he is close, 4p to weapons if you are out of juice but you are behind your enemy or above even if you are under fire by his 2 turrets, is more important to get his power plant or to break his shields.


When a CMDR comes in the forum and does not have an idea on those topics it very difficult to explain that the AI is not the problem.

Keep in mind that not all the players will know how to setup macros and program them. That's an additional factor here over all the other ones. I'm not speaking for myself, I don't have any problem with PIP management, I rely on VoiceAttack to do it but I'm thinking that not everyone is versed into that kind of things.

 

[manos70131]

You use active PIP management, combined with a loadout that is not too heavy on the WEP capacitor. NPC's don't have a faster turn rate than humans, it's just that most Cmdr's don't fly their ships anywhere near it's full maneuvering capability, believe me I often see it when engaging in PvP or viewing youtube videos.

4 PIPS to shields and evade during the cooldown, it is the advice we give to cmdrs that are struggling to survive, it is the basics of Combat and survival, all other skills are built on that foundation.

I don't think that survival is the right goal to set when playing a game. Survival should be trivial and the difficulty should scale depending on the missions you take up or events you participate. If you cannot survive, you won't play. That's a fact no matter if you are bad or worse than bad, no matter if you have a video to prove how good or bad you are. You should not need a fancy joystick, programmable keyboard or voice commands to play. This game has become a survival game for some and that is the problem. If people find it hard to survive then the game is only for those that can afford the hardware and the time to get good enough to play. In my book this is a weakness.

And another thing. I see that there is a lot of disapprovement for the complaints that are written to this thread. Why? Because people care enough to complain? If people didn't see the so many good elements of this game they would just abandon it. How many games have we all abandoned because we thought they did not deserve our time? People still think that the game IS worth their time and they are trying to suggest improvement. This is a good thing and discouraging people from complaining can lead to nothing good.

 

[777Driver]

I don't think that survival is the right goal to set when playing a game. Survival should be trivial and the difficulty should scale depending on the missions you take up or events you participate. If you cannot survive, you won't play. That's a fact no matter if you are bad or worse than bad, no matter if you have a video to prove how good or bad you are. You should not need a fancy joystick, programmable keyboard or voice commands to play. This game has become a survival game for some and that is the problem. If people find it hard to survive then the game is only for those that can afford the hardware and the time to get good enough to play. In my book this is a weakness.

Difficulty is already scaled to the missions you take, a mostly harmless ranked cmdr has the choice to take an Elite ranked mission or dive into a Haz RES or Compromised Beacon.

The core of ED is about Survival, this isn't Euro truck Simulator, the game has always been about survival since Alpha. A HOTAS/Programmable keyboard/Voice attack or massive amounts of training isn't required for basic survival in ED (for peaceful haulers/or Explorers)

Pressing the left arrow key 4 times and configuring a decent shield loadout in outfighting is not a monumental task, it is the most basic of things a Cmdr can do to stay alive.

 

[Riverside]

The core of ED is about Survival, this isn't Euro truck Simulator, the game has always been about survival since Alpha.

The game isn't about survival any more than RL is for anyone with a comfortable enough life to be able to play this game. It's about living out a life, of which survival is only the most basic part.

Plenty of us were pretty happy with the old AI, we just wanted the bugs fixed & maybe some new gameplay elements. Now we have space invaders.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Then why are all the ED novels about surviving the harshness of space and the dystopian worlds? I havent seen a single piece of lore about how many million cr/hr one can make...

 

[777Driver]

The game isn't about survival any more than RL is for anyone with a comfortable enough life to be able to play this game. It's about living out a life, of which survival is only the most basic part.

Plenty of us were pretty happy with the old AI, we just wanted the bugs fixed & maybe some new gameplay elements. Now we have space invaders.

Sorry, I can't take you seriously after your last post on the main forum asking for AI to removed from open.. If you want to truck back and forth risk free you can do interplanetary runs to multiple surface ports on a high SEC planet, pretty much zero interdiction risk. The moment you head into space you are at risk from NPC & human pilots.

The game has always been about surviving. The only difference now is Cmdrs have to actually think about their loadouts and methods, pretty much gone are days of solo players not understanding what those PIPS settings do whilst flying paper thin builds to max credit per ton.

 

[manos70131]

I'm glad to read different opinions. Driver777, when fighting, pressing 4 times the appropriate arrow button is just one of the things you must do. Assuming that you know where the button is without looking at the keyboard (something that is not a given for some) you still have to maneuver, shoot with the appropriate gun, adjust speed, possibly release chaffs and more depending on the situation you are in. You are apparently good enough to do all of these mechanically. Some will never be as good. As I understand it, that's what some people are trying to say. Some may find that this is too much if they are all needed to just survive. The original Elite was a much simpler game to play but it still managed to blow our minds. Not our our ships.

 

[Tom Melegaris]

I'm glad to read different opinions. ... The original Elite was a much simpler game to play but it still managed to blow our minds. Not our our ships.

Oh I mean to differ, the original blew my ships away just as readily as the current build. The original, as I recall, was even tougher and less forgiving. Forget to save to disk at a station before jumping into an anarchy system in the original and risk losing hours of game progress was required. And there were ZERO third party tools to assist with tracking trade route profits. I kept mine on legal pads, reams of legal pads.

I paid good cash to play an updated Elite: Dangerous, not Space Farmville clones.

*disappears to wear a funny hat and like it...

 

[SystemShift]

Oh I mean to differ, the original blew my ships away just as readily as the current build. The original, as I recall, was even tougher and less forgiving. Forget to save to disk at a station before jumping into an anarchy system in the original and risk losing hours of game progress was required. And there were ZERO third party tools to assist with tracking trade route profits. I kept mine on legal pads, reams of legal pads.

I paid good cash to play an updated Elite: Dangerous, not Space Farmville clones.

*disappears to wear a funny hat and like it...

Is this not what is happening now, (risk losing hours of game progress) I don't see an option to save to disk as you put it.

 

[manos70131]

Oh I mean to differ, the original blew my ships away just as readily as the current build. The original, as I recall, was even tougher and less forgiving. Forget to save to disk at a station before jumping into an anarchy system in the original and risk losing hours of game progress was required. And there were ZERO third party tools to assist with tracking trade route profits. I kept mine on legal pads, reams of legal pads.

I paid good cash to play an updated Elite: Dangerous, not Space Farmville clones.

*disappears to wear a funny hat and like it...

No need to get upset with others that have a different view. The point of my comment was not that the old Elite was easier. The point was that it was simpler to play but it was still fun. I don't recall saying that it was better than ED.

You paid for the expansion and you certainly deserve to have fun playing it. Your money however have the same value as the money of the other players that also paid for this game and are no longer having fun.

 

[Riverside]

Sorry, I can't take you seriously after your last post on the main forum asking for AI to removed from open.

Take a step back & think about that buddy. This is a forum, you are not the only reader, your is not the only opinion, and others' opinions & issues are not as black & white, as simple as you apparently interpret them.

I want the AI put back to 2.0 with the bugs fixed, and without being interdicted only by Elite Condas & FDLs if I carry a tonne of cargo where there are none if I am empty.

I have posted a great deal since the 2.1 release, responding to posters such as yourself that occasionally appear to blindly dismiss anything other than the current game situation, describing nearly every problem I see you reply to with how easy it is for you, and how dumb the poster with the problem must be. It's getting boring frankly.

Please, at least try to understand that yours is not the only way to play, and that there are degrees of risk and difficulty. If a player is able to do something that does not mean it is easy, or that they can do it perfectly every time. I can kill an Elite FDL without using any consumables, but if I have to kill 6 on an 18 jump trip from a mission payout to an Engineer (as I did on Monday), carrying only the mission reward cargo, sometimes I will make a mistake and need to fire off an SCB or two, some heatsinks to match, maybe some chaff. I can't restock from materials, I can't risk continuing the journey in case I need those consumables to be fully stocked for the next inevitable Elite FDL/Conda. After every fight I need to dock, re-arm (and cash in the bounty at a system I'm just passing through).

It's impossible to mitigate the risk atm, all I can do is shield tank because if my shields go down once, they will again & again until I'm dead or I dock for repairs & resupply.

So I would like the 2.1 interdictions to go away, to return to the more random & believable rules the 2.0 AI played to. I generally play in open, and much of my gameplay revolves around staying out of trouble, and I'm good at it. I assess risks, sight out destinations I want to take a vulnerable or expensive ship to, I create endless paranoid strategies on how to achieve my objective by visiting at a quiet time, or hide in the traffic. It's how I play the game, and the 2.1 rank based regular interdictions wreck all of that subtlety & just force me to play space invaders.

Now I totally appreciate that you want to play space invaders, and that you are so good you can do it in a massive, A-rated ship. Well done, the stuff that 2.1 ruined didn't affect you. But it affected me, and it affected others in different ways.

You bought into a game hoping it would change, and now it has & you are happy. I bought a game I was happy I could spend the next several years playing, and 18mths later a step change has been introduced that wrecks my gameplay style.

So I think it's a shame that you can't take my posts seriously because you are too blind to see anything outside your own experience, I really am.

For clarity, my only issues with the game are:

The 2.1 AI (interdiction frequency or difficulty, attacking ship randomness)
The paint wear on ships being toned back, I want grotty ships.
Not being able to land on any planet, subject to believeability.

Everything else is excellent. I'm not going to stop playing the game, If I rage quit I don't tell everyone, and I'm not going to tell anyone else they are playing the game wrong, or that they suck at learning. I might tell people what I do, and I might even encourage them to try it if I think they might enjoy it too and are lacking motivation.

I just want my game back, or something like it because it was good, and right now it's significantly less good (but still pretty good). I would rather have no interdictions at all than what we currently have, but I would much rather it just go back to the well balanced core gameplay we had before the 2.1 AI spoiled it.

It didn't need to be made harder, it didn't need to change at all. It's too easy at the bottom end now, and too hard at the top end. It could have been improved with more persistence, more logical loadouts & ships for NPCs (shieldless sidewinder is as clearly wrong as 2.1, but at least you could easily get rid of them).
I can ignore every AI that isn't an Elite Conda or FDL now, I know they won't interdict me. Boring, boring, boring. Can't feed my paranoia on that

 

[shadowwar]

Zac, from my perspective I have the following observations:

NPC; in small ships like Eagle and Viper can match the jump range of my modded Asp(41 LY) and arrive in the next system at the same time as me and the usual correspondence happens....I been waiting for you, blah blah...
NPC; don't suffer from FSD cooldown after interdicting me and after I have submitted and waited for my FSD to cooldown to run and low or high wake away. However if I interdict an NPC my cooldown takes AGES to happen!
NPC; how in His name can an NPC appear in front of me and as soon as he gets past me I am interdicted by him when if I want to interdict an NPC I need to be BEHIND him and within a certain distance for the lock to happen.
NPC; how again in His name can an NPC keep lasing me and suffer from ZERO Heat build up or damage? When my WEP capacitor drains and takes time to build up? For this reason I have fitted to MC as my wep of choice.
NOC; Are a total JOKE! They defy all sorts of physical laws and have God like powers of divination.

This all sums up to total BULL mess. It ruins all sense of immersion for me!

 

[777Driver]

So I think it's a shame that you can't take my posts seriously because you are too blind to see anything outside your own experience, I really am.

I can't take your post seriously because what you suggested was a rediculous idea, I was not the only person to come to that conclusion. You know full well they won't remove AI interdictions from open, it was a silly suggestion and the topic died. End of story.

This has all been discussed over and over again since the Gamma day's. Make the AI challenging, don't dumb it down for players with the lowest skill levels. Simply add some method to the madness.

High security should mean high security, virtually no interdictions in High security space, even medium security should be relatively safe for players going about their business (unless they have committed a crime and bounty hunters are looking for them, or a mission involves assassins hunting them)

If I get pulled out of warp in High sec it should be the police checking my cargo or running a check on my criminal record. Not some tooled up Anaconda looking for tasty cargo..

Anarchy regions, systems suffering from outbreaks/Famine/Civil war/all out war - These are the places we should be seeing high levels of interdictions and crimes. Cmdrs with low skill levels or those that like to avoid trouble will be able to make better choices about where they go.

I don't think anyone should be interdicted for carrying 5 tonnes of cargo that can be easily bought from any station for a few thousand credits.

The issue is the interdiction rates in high security systems is way too high, it has always been like that, we have been discussing this for as long as I remember.

The only difference now is the AI can just about put up a fight, end result is low skill level cmdrs are ignoring survival advice and getting ripped to shreds..

 

[John Mac]

Hello there Commanders, just joined the Forum and thought that I'd pop in to share my perspective on the AI update and the 'Super Duper Green Goo' weapons. Been playing ED since January and at the time of the update I was - a Combat Novice - an Entrepreneur - and a Trailblazer, so I wasn't no spring chicken, and I'd never been killed in combat.

At the time of the update I was doing Data runs in my AspX to get my faction rep' up.... got interdicted.... submitted, as you do.... went "oh crap , why did my FSD just go bang for no reason".... boosted away as usual, at around 365kph.... all of a sudden (well, within 10 seconds) shields gone :O and "OMG :S (in another 10 seconds)what's happening to my ships hull". Finally jumped in hysterics [haha] with around 4 percent hull left. "Git Gud"? I was already good!
(luckily my combat Python was parked up - the buy-back cost on that slow boat would of been around 7 million[cry])

That happened three times to me (in the space of an hour and a half) before I thought "something's wrong here [weird] ", so I went online and figured out what was happening (the amount of banter between the 'dummy throwers' and the 'Git Guders' was very entertaining, although at times it was very crude and very rude with little understanding of what actually was happening). I then sat out for two weeks until the Devs fixed the rogue weapon merging.

Came back and explored at first, then I broke out my new Vulture and visited some haz-res and other combat zones - I found that I had no problem with the updated AI - the AI tends to ram you a lot more and fly in circles a lot more, but it was like that in the original 1984 Elite anyways (I was always getting dizzy from looping for 20 minutes trying to nail that goddam wire-frame Python with my mining laser). I have learned not to attack wings - far too dangerous now. Where as before I used to go gung-ho on them... erm [blah] at substantial (repair bill) cost. I haven't come across any Superweapons since the devs fixed them.

I suspect some of the complaining about the AI npcs is due to the fact that people are getting their shiny boats shot out from under them with no easy way (Robigo) of continually buying new ones anymore.

I still ain't been killed in combat. Cheers - John

 

[M_Biscotti]

I sometimes dream about the Utopian day when we can choose between actual server and another one with 2.1 debugged AI with another combat rank computation system ^^

 

[Riverside]

I can't take your post seriously because what you suggested was a rediculous idea, I was not the only person to come to that conclusion. You know full well they won't remove AI from open, it was a silly suggestion and the topic died. End of story.

You thought it was silly, I thought it was a step in the right direction. Both opinions, both valid. I'm not in favour of changing rules between Open/group/solo any more than you are, but FDev opened Pandoras box with the new AI, and the two alternatives are to change the rest of the game to make it fit the new AI rules with even more drastic changes like that one, or to KISS & just put the AI back to where it was before. I would much prefer the latter, because less dev time is devoted to needlessly fixing problems created by questionable design choices, and therefore I get to land on atmospheric planets sooner.

We don't need cargo storage or to re-work other bits of the game that already worked before 2.1. Sometimes the best way forward is to go back & take a different path.

You want AI that can put up a fight, I want a game where I can largely put combat aside & pursue other interests. We can both have the game we want, but not without a considerable amount of work on FDevs part if they continue with the AI as-is.

As far as 'ignoring advice' goes, how did you learn? Same way I did I'd expect, by playing the game. Plenty of people want to learn for themselves too. Personally I'm avoiding reading any Engineers tips, because I want to discover it for myself.

 

[777Driver]

As far as 'ignoring advice' goes, how did you learn? Same way I did I'd expect, by playing the game. Plenty of people want to learn for themselves too. Personally I'm avoiding reading any Engineers tips, because I want to discover it for myself.

I learnt through experience and most importantly listening to good combat advice on the forum. As far as combat and survival goes, cmdrs are free to ignore help from experienced cmdrs and learn purely from trial & error, just don't complain about getting killed constantly and not understanding tactics, the majority have taken on advice or learnt to adapt.

Elite rank and hours played means little in this game if a cmdr is set in his ways and continues making the same mistakes whilst refusing outside help. Just look at how many NPC death posts started with 'I am elite rank and not a newbie' It means nothing in this game, just an indication of how many fish they managed to shoot in a barrel.