Npcs sometimes have builds that you would never consider, like a federal dropship with 4 SCBs or an anaconda with 5 heat sink launchers. It seems like they have infinite because they have more than is rational but if you target a module and break it, they do stop working. Now I'm sure bugs occur but my experience is that the powerplant and other targetable modules do generally work as intended.
NPC power plant bug
- Thread starter Gordon Freeman IV
- Start date
They don't do 'all sorts of things' we cannot.
They do a small handful of things we cannot vs. our having a whole slew of abilities NPCs are categorically incapable of.
NPC advantages over CMDRs:
- Unlimited MC ammo.
- Possibly an immunity to some kinds of malfunctions.
CMDR advantages over NPCs:
- The ability to use FA Off.
- Everything related to intelligence and meaningful decision making.
NPCs don't do this, and do not need to do this.
That's an instancing persistence issue, not so much an NPC capability/behavior issue.
It's also inferior to CMDR options. When a competent CMDR leaves an instance, there is no practical way to follow them; they'll just wake out again before anyone could possibly intercept them (even if it means killing drives or FSD to drop before cooldown) or log off.
That's not an advantage (it makes them entirely predictable and greatly limits the loadouts they can field) and not unique to NPCs.
On the rare occasions I commit to an engagement (organized PvP, for example), my ego doesn't come into play for the duration...I do what I can until my CMDR's vessel goes down. I certainly don't get rattled by malfunctions or power failures.
I suppose that's...something.
Odyssey ground NPCs are a different matter. However, they are even more crippled relative to CMDRs than their ship based counterparts are, due to their completely inept behavior.
thanks for the clarification @galahad2069 , I was today years old when I learned that I've been using coriolis wrong all this time while setting my power priorities.
On a non-engineered ship, lasers indeed are not as strong as on the hull as on shields. But they still do damage. In the described scenario, where the PP is at 0%, any damage tick has a small chance to trigger the explosion. As a beam laser delivera a lot of small damage ticks, it does have many chances to trigger the explosion.
(Also note, when ships are well engineered, they by now have quite high resists to all types of damage. So the damage type of the weapon used is of less consequence, unless we're talking about plasma accelerators, which do a good deal of absolute damage. )
Unlike the things i described, i have no way to reliably test this. I can test and confirm that many of the "NPCs have unlimited ammo" and "NPCs do not suffer from power reduction" is not true, by observing what they can and can not do any more after a while of combat and inflicting enough damage to them.
On what you bring up now, i find a few problems to test:
1. Reactor explosion on damage is a random thing. Merely blowing up one or two dozens of NPCs does not yet yield conclusive results.
2. To get really reliable results, we'd need to do many exactly definied shots and see when the reactor kill happens.
And i mean MANY and EXACTLY defined. We would need defined NPCs with known setup, standing motionless, so we can repeatedly shoot at them at a certain angle and distance. And wait several seconds after each shot, to see if the reactor explosion sequence is being started. And if the chance number is as low as it seems to be, we'd need to hit at least 250 NPCs that way. Then repeat the same with a player ship with same setup, blowing it up for 250 times.
As it is impossible for us to get the described NPC, this testing can not be done. I personally can't compare the two things, as i have given up PvP when engineers were added to the game, but at that time there was no evidence that NPCs would have an advantage on resisting reactor explosions. So all i have here now is anecdotal evidence, where you claim that NPCs take more shots to blow up and often result in hull destruction instead.
There's many possible reasons for that. One reason could be that their engineering is different and their hull is not as durable as of a player. Another that, as the explosion sequence takes some time between starting and the ship actually blowing up, you manage to land several more hits before they blow up, while you have to work harder for those hits against a player. Just to give two possible examples, i think you can easily add half a dozen more.
So in the end, no, we don't have any guarantee that NPCs do not have some hidden modifier to reduce their chance for reactor explosion. But we also have no conclusive evidence that they do have that. And we know that FD tends to go for minimal effort wherever they can. Which tells me that such a modifier most likely does not exist, but your observation is based on other factors.
Might be just me, but i feel that this is not always true...
Wow. I guess that's the most ridiculous complaint I've heard in the entirety of the internet.
I can type while flying ... am I an NPC? 
Well sure. You missed the part where I said I didn't care? Its just a list of things NPCs can do that you can't. I didn't make the original complaint folks.
< delete >
Hmm... for flying in ED, this might be true. But i can tell you, being a healer in a veteran trial and commenting stuff in the guild channel while in a tough boss fight is a great way to make the trial leader panic...
The introduction of Apex shuttles confirmed a couple more for me but they're not terribly relevant to combat.
Mainly NPCs can maneuver in situations where a player would have their controls locked out. I've had an Apex maneuver to avoid collision during the FSD countdown, as well as while in the middle of exploding as the result of belligerent settlement defenses.
Fair enough. Ridiculousness aside, I can type a message while flying using macros....
I just want to comment that this thread and other posts that are consistently like it does raise an issue about the non-intuitive behavior of powerplant module 'destruction'. If it weren't for PvP, I very much doubt it would work the way that it does - 0% would probably actually mean 0%, as in destroyed and gone for good.
About the only real solution I can think of is including an explanation in a tutorial mission about what it actually means when a module reaches 0% in the ship's HUD, especially the powerplant. Otherwise there's really not any way to expect a player to understand that on their own without reading about it outside of the game, which really is not desirable.
About the only real solution I can think of is including an explanation in a tutorial mission about what it actually means when a module reaches 0% in the ship's HUD, especially the powerplant. Otherwise there's really not any way to expect a player to understand that on their own without reading about it outside of the game, which really is not desirable.
Except that 0 integrity modules does not necessarily mean "destroyed" as much as it means it stops functioning and creating effects.
While the PP is an outlier here since is a very special module indeed - it cannot be turned off, it cannot be repaired and at 0% integrity it still produces effects.
I dont disagree here, but there are a lot of things not explained in the tutorial missions nor in the pilots handbook and if inquiring minds want answers they can definitely find them
And if they dont want answers, they wont look after them - not even in the tutorials or the pilots handbook.
From memory, in the original 1.0 release taking either plant or FSD to 0% would cause instant ship destruction for player or NPC.
Once they added reboot/repair that got toned down.
The main reason as i understood it on top of that was that targeting other modules simply made no sense, when pp kills were so easy.
There used to be a time when you could just snipe out sensors, that was the most annoying thing ever (low integrity and what's worse, also external modules, which means virtually no MRP protection, so they were pretty much oneshottable).
Luckily fdev fixed it (made sensors untargettable) around 2019 IIRC.
Can confirm. 2 huge fixed LR/HV beams on my CZ vette. Keep PP targeted and all those pesky Imperial armor ships go pop within 10 seconds. Further away the better. Fixed has a degree of movement wich works like a charm in distance fights. It's almost like cheating
My vette is running 2x Huge fixed long range bursts, not as effective as the beams, but not as demanding with the PD either.
Tbh the PP kill and module damage mechanics can lead to apparently inconsistent and pretty stupid situations because RNG.
One opponent can die on 50% hull, another one (their modules) can suck up ridiculous amount of damage on 1% hull.
All this happened during the same wingfight the other day:
Last edited:
RNG is RNG.
And i think i like it this way better instead of having a guaranteed k-boom after 1, 2, 3 or other exact number of shots.
edit: and it's quite funny when a shot goes through and damages a module instead of the hull
