NPC pilot preferences?

[Stealthie]

I'm thinking about buying an FGS specifically for my SLF pilot to fly in combat.
I'll fly the SLF and she can fly the mothership.

Anybody know anything about what sort of weapons and tactics the NPCs prefer, given a free choice, so I can build a ship to suit their talents?

Is there, for example, any point in fitting turrets to such a ship or do NPCs manage, somehow, to aim weapons even if the target is outside their field of vision?
If the ship was fitted with turrets, would they activate them (or deactivate them if I'd set them to auto-fire)?

Is there any point in fitting more than 2 kinds of weapons?
I get the impression that NPCs are pretty rigid about stuff like not launching missiles until the enemy's shields are down but do they always default to the most powerful weapon or are they clever enough to, for example, use lasers until the capacitor runs dry then swap to MCs and then swap to frag cannons when if a target gets close enough?

What about fire groups?
Do NPCs swap from one fire-group to another or would that restrict me to 2 different weapons?

Any input from people who've played around with this stuff would be appreciated. [up]

 

[IndigoWyrd]

NPC's love missile and torpedoes and will exhaust these as fast as they can.
They also like Rail Guns and Plasma Accelerators.
They have strange notions when it comes to power management as well.

Never noticed them switching fire groups, but I generally have my fire groups laid out in such a way as to minimize switching anyways.

 

[Y nt Zoidberg7]

I wouldn't recommend mines. They will use them, and if a security ship flies into one, they will not like you very much Also, rank them up to Master before you let them take over. They are a bunch of red-shirts until then.

 

[Yank31]

This topic is relevant to my interests.

I've tried to let Blaire control my Corvette recently, and was a bit disappointed. Blaire is, according the Pilots Federation, an Elite pilot. She does pretty damn well on the small fighter, with fixed weapons.

Less so on the Corvette. She doesnt quite seem to understand how gimballed weapons work, and seem to always want to align with her target, "as if" the huge beams were fixed.

I'm not quite sure what she does with the multi-cannons, I doubt she waits untill the shields are down to fire them.

All in all, Blaire seem to have a lot of trouble killing her targets, especially small ones. She also seem to have found, and randomly push, hidden buttons that make the mothership modules malfunction.


So yeah, I was also thinking about changing my setup to make it more "NPC Crewmember friendly", which would, given my limited experience, start by getting fixed weapons.

Curious to hear what other Cmdrs have to say on that topic

 

[CMDR Ofan]

NPC's love missile and torpedoes and will exhaust these as fast as they can.
They also like Rail Guns and Plasma Accelerators.
They have strange notions when it comes to power management as well.

Never noticed them switching fire groups, but I generally have my fire groups laid out in such a way as to minimize switching anyways.

I wanted to mention the power management too. Mine do crazy things, they also much muck about with my module priority -or something else wacky- because I often get power plant malfunction messages when there is patently no issue with it. Still they have a good aim with fixed it you coax them up to elite, Mine flies my vette with fixed far better than I do.

 

[NascentChemist]

I've seen my NPC's be very good with fixed weapons, though they will spam them. I had two small rails on the nose of my 'vette for killing SCB's and my crew always burned through them.

However, if I turn modules OFF, they don't tend to turn them back on.

Oh, and they've got great pip management, especially when it comes to shields. Even master ranked crew can preserve shields better than I can.

 

[_trent_]

I'm sure my old pilot was better in the main ship back in 2.2. She was only dangerous but I could stick her in the 'Vette in a Haz Res with some engineer commodities on board and just watch her rack up kills and credits for fun.

My current pilot is now up to 95% deadly and in the same 'Vette she takes an age to kill ships, seems to switch targets randomly and can get overwhelmed by enemy wings unless I micromanage her. If I keep her focused on the main threats, she's still fairly effective. She does however totally rock in the fighter, particularly with fixed beams.

 

[Demascus]

I make it a rule of thumb never to let the npc fly the mothership for what I can only describe as "brain damage". Their lack of common sense with power management and weapons is laughable. I feel the devs just plugged in the stock ED A.I. meaning no concern for ammo, livelihood and combat sustainability, because the moment the instance closes they cease to exist.

I found trying to build you ship around making the npc crew effective with it generally lowers the overall combat performance. The do seem most effective is anything but the big 3.

 

[Stealthie]

Excellent feedback. Ecatly the sort of thing I'm looking for.

In-game, my SLF Pilot has just hit Elite so this is a celebratory gift.
In more practical terms, I've always been a fan of those games where you get to "program" little fighting robots and let them loose in an arena to see which one will win so I'm interested in this for similar reasons.

I guess the first step will be to buy the FGS, A-rate and engineer all the "airframe" parts but I'll leave the weapons un-modded so I can swap 'em out without any regrets.

Based on the above advice, I'm thinking fixed weapons if they insist on getting aligned with targets anyway.
Perhaps it'd also be wise to go for some kind of "efficient" set-up which is never going to deplete the PDist or overheat if they like to spam weapons?
Similar thing with shields. If their power-management is iffy then perhaps big shields and then I'll pay attention to the shield state so I can jump in and take action if they ever need recharging?

On that note, I know NPC ships use shield boosters but do SLF pilots use them, and do they use them sensibly?

If they only use a couple of different weapons, perhaps I need to figure out what weapons they prefer and then just give the ship a pair of each and then just fill up the remaining hardpoints with efficient laser turrets (again, to avoid depleting the PDist) so the ship, itself, can "lend a hand" as well?

Quite looking forward to this.
It's kind of like in games such as Skyrim, where you have to figure out what weapons and armour a sidekick prefers, and what they're most effective with.

 

[NascentChemist]

I've got an FGS with 3 plasma accelerators on the belly, and the SLF pilot can be brutal with them. However, your ammunition does not last long.

I really wouldn't worry about shields, even on a federal ship with weak ones. The pip management SLF pilots can do is incredible.

I've never seen my SLF pilot turn modules on or off, or even change their priority. My guess is that people are engineering their modules, which resets their priorities to 1. The "mothership power plant malfunctioning" warning can be ignored. It's triggered whenever a module is turned off, ie whenever you deploy weapons.