Npc security not attacking wanted ships

Bryce7954

B
I don't know if this is intentional or what but whenever I'm I'm a res site hunting bounties, I absolutely cannot be the first to attack a wanted ship, if I do not a single other ship will attack it even though there are a dozen plus security ships including a usually a few anaconda's. I have to wait for security to realize they're wanted and start attacking them before I can start attacking them.

I play solo or occasionally with one friend, I'm only in a diamond back explorer and I'm not great at combat manuvering at least not good enough to take on larger ships so I generally NEED help. Making it extremely frustrating that I have to wait for the oblivious NPCs to notice wanted ships before I can start shooting.

An example of how extreme this issue is (if it's not intentional) one time there was a 200k ferdalance I followed it around for 5 minutes, it was literally following two security anaconda's, like LITERALLY following them the whole time, eventually I said screw it I'll just attack, they're right there they'll help right? Nope. I started taking too much damage, scrambling to avoid as much fire as possible, I literally flew a donut around one of the anaconda's, with the Ferd firing at me, in an attempt to get it to crossfire into the anaconda hoping that would trigger it to start helping but yet still they did NOTHING, ended up being able to just barely get out.

Can someone confirm if this is intentional or is it a bug? Because to me it seems absolutely ridiculous that A. It takes security so damn long to notice wanted ships, especially higher bounty ships like ferds and vultures and B. That they refuse to help if I initiate the attack.
 

M00ka

M00ka
I have always assumed that the Security ships attack all wanted ships in order and that order is definitely not by the highest bounty. I think it might be when the wanted ship first came into the instance and sequence tends to follow that. Like the OP I have shadowed a high value wanted NPC who in turn was shadowing the Security wing. Nothing happened to the high value target until either another ship attacks it or it's name comes to the top of the list and they security forces suddenly realise their shadow is a wanted ship.
 

d8veh

d8veh
That's not my experience at all. It's true that the feds will often ignore a high value ship while they cruise around looking for other criminals, but they will turn and shoot it immediately after it lands a shot on you unless they started shooting something else just before the bad guy shoots you, which is often the case.

Often, there is shooting in the distance, which you need good sensors to see, so the feds will cruise to it and help out there. To you, it seems that they just wandered away for a tea-break when you needed them most.

If you have the bigger picture, everything is always logical. The feds follow simple rules. Each group/wing fight the same target. They always help you if they've got nobody else to shoot. If any other innocent ship is being shot, they will go to help it. It's a mystery how they prioritise who to help.

The golden rule for you is that if you need their help to defeat a ship, do not open fire unless you know that there's no chance that the feds will go to help someone else.

I have over 2000 hrs experience of fighting in RESs and I've collected over 4 billion in bounties. It took quite some time for everything to make sense, but maybe I'm a slow learner.
 

Rankaze

Rankaze
d8veh said:
That's not my experience at all. It's true that the feds will often ignore a high value ship while they cruise around looking for other criminals, but they will turn and shoot it immediately after it lands a shot on you unless they started shooting something else just before the bad guy shoots you, which is often the case.

Often, there is shooting in the distance, which you need good sensors to see, so the feds will cruise to it and help out there. To you, it seems that they just wandered away for a tea-break when you needed them most.

If you have the bigger picture, everything is always logical. The feds follow simple rules. Each group/wing fight the same target. They always help you if they've got nobody else to shoot. If any other innocent ship is being shot, they will go to help it. It's a mystery how they prioritise who to help.

The golden rule for you is that if you need their help to defeat a ship, do not open fire unless you know that there's no chance that the feds will go to help someone else.

I have over 2000 hrs experience of fighting in RESs and I've collected over 4 billion in bounties. It took quite some time for everything to make sense, but maybe I'm a slow learner.
Click to expand...

This mirrors my experience pretty much exactly. Once the cops engage a target, they won't break off it unless a player commits a crime (at which point it's "drop everything and kill the player!"), but if they aren't responding to something else they will always assist.
 

Speedcuffs

Speedcuffs
d8veh said:
That's not my experience at all. It's true that the feds will often ignore a high value ship while they cruise around looking for other criminals, but they will turn and shoot it immediately after it lands a shot on you unless they started shooting something else just before the bad guy shoots you, which is often the case.

Often, there is shooting in the distance, which you need good sensors to see, so the feds will cruise to it and help out there. To you, it seems that they just wandered away for a tea-break when you needed them most.

If you have the bigger picture, everything is always logical. The feds follow simple rules. Each group/wing fight the same target. They always help you if they've got nobody else to shoot. If any other innocent ship is being shot, they will go to help it. It's a mystery how they prioritise who to help.

The golden rule for you is that if you need their help to defeat a ship, do not open fire unless you know that there's no chance that the feds will go to help someone else.

I have over 2000 hrs experience of fighting in RESs and I've collected over 4 billion in bounties. It took quite some time for everything to make sense, but maybe I'm a slow learner.
Click to expand...

I have A rated fully engineered long range sensors on my Corvette.
Since I fitted them, well I can definitely see the 'bigger picture' now.
Lots of action kms away occupying the cops, without the heavyweight sensors I'd just be scratching my head wondering why they're ignoring the bad guys.[yesnod]
 

Bryce7954

B
Yes I do, accidentally targeted a security ship yesterday and fired once before realizing I targeted the wrong guy, quickly put my guns away and sped the hell out of there.
 

Bryce7954

B
I don't have 2000 hours but res site bounty hunting has been where the majority of my time is spent and for the first time in all my time playing ED I finally saw security ships attack ships that I attacked first yesterday, though only twice and on really small ships that didn't need help with. I have adapted and unless it's a ship I know I don't need help with, which aren't many, I won't attack and will wait as long as it takes for security to start attacking them. It's not game breaking but it is time consuming and slightly frustrating. Can't wait till games really have intelligent AI, I don't remember a game where I haven't at some point thought, man this AI is stupid.
 

Bryce7954

B
Ok so the kill "order", what ever it may be, makes no difference. Started attacking a wanted ship while within 3km of half dozen security ships, flew around them for 5 minutes while helping them destroy at least 6 other wanted ships all while this first wanted ship is shooting me, thankfully it's only adder as I'm trying to test this, and yet still they refuse to acknowledge this other ship. I at one point flew so close to the annaconda that I was literally stuck to it for a few seconds, still with the adder shooting me and though I cannot 100% say that it hit the anaconda I'm fairly certain at that proximity if it was shooting me it was hitting the conda with at least a few lasers.
I cannot find any explanation as to why they will absolutely not attack anything I engage first.
 
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Bryce7954

B
Obviously that's what I do, my point is why is that necessary, it's a wanted ship, it makes no sense that just because I engaged before them, they all of sudden act like he isn't there.

If I start attacking a WANTED ship and they have no other targets they SHOULD come and start helping because it's a WANTED ship but they don't, that ship becomes invisible to them.
 

Bryce7954

B
Honestly if they just made the security ships attack the closest wanted ship it would fix everything, instead of whatever targeting/order mechanic they have them doing now. But like I said earlier, it's not game breaking, just time consuming and frustrating.

Also annoying to my logical brain that sees absolutely no logic in having them not attack wanted ships I attack
 

Cmdr Nemo LXXI

Cmdr Nemo LXXI
I've had issues in which I've opened fire on a wanted ship and even though the cops were assiting, and on occasion if I was assiting them; Would break off and thus I was left trying to finish the job. It wasn't until after I had engineered my semsors did I realize that the cops stopped and took off to either help someone else or found someone else that was wanted. We don't have access to their communications. Thus I've come to the conlusion that at some point, they figure I got this, and simply turn their attention to something else that requires their attention. Which makes me really reluctent to assit when they are attacking a conda or something. But again, it wasn't until I engineered my sensors, that I could see where or understood why to some degree they would bail out of one fight and enter another.
 

Krash

Krash
My experience is the cops wait for me to open up on a target and then will join in as if they are waiting on me to light it up. It gives me the false impression like I'm the leader. If this doesn't happen for you when you hit a "wanted" target something is wrong. Did you confirm this system is not anarchy?
 

Vardaugas

Vardaugas
Bryce7954 said:
You saying that makes me really confused because that's literally the opposite of what happens for me
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They are probably using threat levels, too to pick targets. So an Adder having a fit will not register when there are bigger targets to shoot or something is shooting them. I think it's the same function that makes them not suddenly target you from everywhere when you happen to shoot at a clean ship and get an assault bounty. At least not when you're not jumping to the top of their priority list.
 

Bryce7954

B
The problem with that theory is that as I said I had the ship following and shooting me while I was following a squad of 6 security vessels who went and destroyed 6-8 other ships, all while the wanted adder was shooting me in extremely close proximity to the security ships, at some points there were no other ships and still they wouldn't attack him, and this is not an isolated incident, the same thing has happened to me with Python and fer-de-lances.
 
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