NPC HW in effect combat logging

[Rabid Kiwi]

I know I sux really bad. But here is the thing many times I can almost kill the dirty npc that tried to jack me. Only they escape. Their FSD becomes indestructible, and they just jump out. Ok dems de knocks right? Oh no, then they just interdict you right when you get back in to SC. Only this time they are full shields and weapons. You on the other had have just had the fight of your life, and your victory ripped from you, so you are left with little to no shields and low ammo/armor. Again there needs to be more options for traders/haulers than run away. That is all. We traders like a little pew pew. You all have trade missions that npc's interdict players in. Then why have this nice system only to give traders/haulers one option? It is just a waste. Might as well scrap the add hoc's on trade missions.

Yeah so just make it so that NPC can't jump out if they are losing. Because that is the fastest and cheapest fix.

This is all IMHO, you can disagree that is fine. I respect that. Just keep it civil and don't be rude.

Good Huntin 07

 

[Airtroops83]

I find that really annoying too. I enjoy fighting or doing assasination missions in small ships like the Ieagle and DBS and sometimes you just... dont have the dps (or in the DBS's case) speed, and its the same thing there, if the pirate starts losing they high wake, regain all their health and shields and then interdict you again shortly afterward.

Really takes the fun out of using the smaller ships.

 

[Rabid Kiwi]

I find that really annoying too. I enjoy fighting or doing assasination missions in small ships like the Ieagle and DBS and sometimes you just... dont have the dps (or in the DBS's case) speed, and its the same thing there, if the pirate starts losing they high wake, regain all their health and shields and then interdict you again shortly afterward.

Really takes the fun out of using the smaller ships.

Yeah not as annoying as finding a good mission on the board after a night of crap and it freezes then no more good mission. In fact no more any mission you can run, you now have to wait x min or go to another station. In other words stop playing the game. Just because they wanted to stop board flipping. But now they are just giving credit and rep away like it is candy. But we are still stuck with this horrid mission system.

Sry for the rant, you will never guess what just happened... and the night I have been having lolz. Dem de knocks

 

[Riverside]

The turning to run that NPCs do now is a feature I like. I'll aim to take out their FSD, it usually works but sometimes they manage to jump away before I've got it down to zero. Never noticed an indestructible one, but perhaps it depends on the penetration & angle at which you target the module. From head on with the FSD commonly towards the rear of the ship they can last a while

But two things irritate me.

One is the immediate respawn in supercruise right behind me, fully repaired on the rare occasions they do escape (they should at best respawn at the entry point to the system, but if I low wake away then they should appear behind me, but retaining the damage inflicted, if any).

The other is that NPCs always high-wake. Mass lock therefore isn't a factor in NPC interactions unless they mass-lock you. Interestingly if they high wake & you scan & follow the wake, they do retain damage. I'm not saying get rid of per-ship mass-lock factors but I'd like to see the NPCs low wake occasionally, with believable respawn points & damage retention.

 

[Rabid Kiwi]

Ok just putting this here. The last three fights they bugged out on me. Nothing I could do they just jumped. There is not enough time for when they start charging to when they jump to knock out their drive. Not unless you are 100% a combat build. Then that defeats the interdiction system for traders and a haulers. Because if you can't win at fighting back you really only have one option. Not to fight.

Yes I am mad because I am not a combat person but I made a multi role build that can kill if the NPC stops cheating. I am not trying to yell or sound mean. It is just stuff like this makes me put the game down. It is not fun being forced to play one way. Only use x weapons only fight with x builds. That is boring. I am just trying to let the dev's know that this 100% is not fun. If they interdict you, they 100% should not be able to run. They already have the upper hand because they are fighters made for interdictions, and the player most of the time is a hauler/trucker. So even if any one was dumb enough like me to kit out a space simi with enough firepower to take out a planet, that they can take out the dumb npc that went after them.

All I am asking for here is a fighting chance. That is it. As the system is now if they are allowed to keep jumping out there can never be a fun multirole build. It is just too damn frustrating.

Sorry for the rant. I gots good to haul and I got to limp back to port... with out a bounty to show for it....

Good Hunting? 07

 

[Morbad]

NPCs do retain persistence if you low-wake and they chase, or if you follow their high-wakes with a wake scanner, but beyond that it's essentially a reset.

This illustrates a problem with the game as a whole, not just with NPCs. A high wake, for anyone, means almost certain escape. Without well timed and aimed FSD or ion disruptors against a ship with minimal countermeasures, or overwhelming firepower directed at FSD/thrusters, anyone NPC or CMDR can just vanish. I cannot think of a single time that my CMDR has been shot down after high-waking. He's been followed a small fraction of times, but the only reliable way to encounter someone who high-wakes with the intent of not being followed is to have someone already waiting for them in the system they jump to.

It's harder to run from NPCs, because they'll respawn fresh to pursue after a high-wake, but it's easier to follow them than CMDRs.

Anyway, I don't think NPCs should follow their own set of rules, the same mechanisms should apply and they should use believable tactics. If this makes thinks a pain, good. It reveals issues with the whole underlying system.

That said, it's not hard to build a multi-role ship that still has the firepower to disable an NPC and prevent it from jumping...my exploration/mission runner DBX regularly knocks out NPC thrusters with it's large dumbfire rack.

 

[Rabid Kiwi]

NPCs do retain persistence if you low-wake and they chase, or if you follow their high-wakes with a wake scanner, but beyond that it's essentially a reset.

This illustrates a problem with the game as a whole, not just with NPCs. A high wake, for anyone, means almost certain escape. Without well timed and aimed FSD or ion disruptors against a ship with minimal countermeasures, or overwhelming firepower directed at FSD/thrusters, anyone NPC or CMDR can just vanish. I cannot think of a single time that my CMDR has been shot down after high-waking. He's been followed a small fraction of times, but the only reliable way to encounter someone who high-wakes with the intent of not being followed is to have someone already waiting for them in the system they jump to.

It's harder to run from NPCs, because they'll respawn fresh to pursue after a high-wake, but it's easier to follow them than CMDRs.

Anyway, I don't think NPCs should follow their own set of rules, the same mechanisms should apply and they should use believable tactics. If this makes thinks a pain, good. It reveals issues with the whole underlying system.

That said, it's not hard to build a multi-role ship that still has the firepower to disable an NPC and prevent it from jumping...my exploration/mission runner DBX regularly knocks out NPC thrusters with it's large dumbfire rack.

But here is the problem. The save state issue with the npc's will never be fixed in this game. They would have to redo the whole spawning system, or overhaul it. It is an simple array to cache system, with the removal on change of inst. All the wake scanner does is create a instance for the player that has the ship with its state in it. That is what my testing has lead me to understand. This tells me that in place of saved state spawns for npc's they chose created instances transfers. So they must of had a problem with making the array create altered states. In other words they would of had to program a read writer to alter the data and that could be buggy, or code in every state that the array could build for every ship. ( Most places that do this stick to set values like 5% or 10% up to 25%. Meaning once you reach that threshold that it will spawn the 10% less one exc. )

So knowing all that and the life span that this game has been through, I highly doubt they are going to do a hard pass on their core spawning system. Not for something this small. So if we want to see a better play experience, the only option left to us that is reasonable is to put restrictions on npcs. NPCs already have special conditions like: no mass inf for jumping/jump wind ups; No restrictions on pip transfer speed. Meaning it can and does change pips right before and after impacts and turning, at the nansec lvl.; Reset states and no FSD cool down or forced instance change when interdicting. You can not really HW in and out to shake a NPC once they are on you they are omnipresent until completion of mission. You get the idea.

So all I am really asking for is a evening of the fields. I ask for this by restricting that NPC's cant jump out if they are going to lose only if they interdicted the player. Not to make it easier to win. But to avoid bad experience of trying to make it to port if you had the NPC run away. If you expended all you had in a fair fight and was just about to squeak a win and the NPC jumps out, they are still going to interdict you all the way back to the station. You will not be able to reengage. Lord help you if it is over 1000ls. At this point in time the NPC becomes much like a griefer. They hound you in any system you go to. They are there regardless of how you log in. They will always have full health, full ammo full shields. Until you turn in that mission, fail it, or just never boot up the game again. If we do not allow people to do this in the game, then NPCs should not be allowed to do it as well.

If a player acted like the NPC's and gamed the system to do interdictions like the NPC's do it they would be banned. Then why do we allow NPCs to do it? There is a simple cheap ( relatively speaking ) way to fix this. Just add one simple rule. I can understand some one entertaining the idea of the domino effect. But just like history taught America, you can not let the may happen ruin your happening.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Morbad]

But here is the problem. The save state issue with the npc's will never be fixed in this game. They would have to redo the whole spawning system, or overhaul it. It is an simple array to cache system, with the removal on change of inst. All the wake scanner does is create a instance for the player that has the ship with its state in it. That is what my testing has lead me to understand. This tells me that in place of saved state spawns for npc's they chose created instances transfers. So they must of had a problem with making the array create altered states. In other words they would of had to program a read writer to alter the data and that could be buggy, or code in every state that the array could build for every ship. ( Most places that do this stick to set values like 5% or 10% up to 25%. Meaning once you reach that threshold that it will spawn the 10% less one exc. )

Persistence is not so clear cut.

From another thread:

I just recorded what I think are two examples. The first one is not entirely clear, but the second one is.

I was in my 224 ton cargo trade/smuggler Krait Mk II with two hostile NPCs pursuing me:

- First NPC, an Expert FDL, interdicts and I submit. I blow my whole load of torpedoes on him, knocking out all his externals except his drives, then de-drive him with a combination of seeker and pulse laser fire. I then float around with him for a bit to see if he leaves or can reboot. He does not. So, I leave him at 10% hull and reenter SC. I loiter in SC for a bit to see if he follows, he does not reappear. But I am soon faced with NPC #2.

- Second NPC, a Deadly Anaconda interdicts me. I submit, and slowly cut through it's SCB backed shielding with my single fixed focused medium emissive pulse laser. It clearly takes heat damage from it's banking and eventually runs out of SCBs. I try to knock out it's PP for a bit with my pulse laser, but since my ship is rather fragile and this NPC rather durable, I decide to disengage after it's shields come back up. Again, I wait for a moment to see if it follows, and it does...same NPC, with the same damage I left it at. It's internals were melty from the SCBs it had used earlier, and it's PP was at the same ~65% I left it at.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d286irXwmX8


You can skip ahead about two-thirds of the way through to see the relevant encounter with the second NPC I mentioned.

No restrictions on pip transfer speed. Meaning it can and does change pips right before and after impacts and turning, at the nansec lvl

SJA has said that appropriate delays are programmed into pip changes, and it's possible to observe how little pip management lower rank NPCs engage in.

So all I am really asking for is a evening of the fields.

Evening of the fields would be buffing the snot out of most aspect of NPCs, not making them more suicidal.

 

[Cmdr Nemo]

I don't mind that NPC's can be Elite's and fly engineered crafts of all sorts. But when a Sidewinder or any other craft not capable of holding even half of what I can in my Corvette, never runs out of shield cell banks, flak, heat sinks or ammunition of any kind; That really blows! Then ya add the fact that they more often than not will run rather than die, and then a minute or two later, re-spawn at 100 percent. Not to mention how they can manage to disregard physics when it comes to doing their fancy maneuvers. In what universe is it possible to run away from someone and then without stopping do a 180 and head straight back at ya. Or as I've seen from time to time, right angles turns using only yaw at full or close to full speed.

 

[Rabid Kiwi]

Evening of the fields would be buffing the snot out of most aspect of NPCs, not making them more suicidal.

This only balances them for fighters. Again doing this limits how haulers, and the like play.

As for your video. you were very close to the station this allowed you to avoid the 2nd interdiction. If you were in a less nimbal ship you may not have been so lucky. The 'conda and you never loaded another instance for you to get updated data on it. Just just read the old data that it kept when you bugged out. Had you let them interdict you again you would of seen that the ship would be at 100%

I understand you wanted to debunk me the pip things I have to go with what I see and observe. Considering it took them a month after horizions dropped for them to admit that the npcs were buggy. Now I am not hating on them or being mean, but the npc's have not been the same sense. For better or worse I will agree to disagree with you. I think we both have stated our sides adequately enough, and this is an opinion thing not a right or wrong thing. Of course I understand you want to dispute any new claims made in this post as is your right to do so.

Good Hunting 07