NPC ships insta-repair and shield gen to full

[Suvi Anwar]

So last night I was cruising through and stopped at a system that had a compromised Nav Beacon, and of course it was full of pirates with bounties. The problem here is that I could not kill a Cobra MK4 with a fully combat equipped Corvette. Every time I just about got the thing destroyed, it would insta-pop full shields and seemingly completely repair itself. After 15 minutes of pounding on this thing I just had to leave because the pirates' wingman in a sidewinder finally broke my shield.

Anyone else run into this? Could it be a bug or is there something in the game that allows NPC ships to just insta-repair/full shield?

 

[sollisb]

So last night I was cruising through and stopped at a system that had a compromised Nav Beacon, and of course it was full of pirates with bounties. The problem here is that I could not kill a Cobra MK4 with a fully combat equipped Corvette. Every time I just about got the thing destroyed, it would insta-pop full shields and seemingly completely repair itself. After 15 minutes of pounding on this thing I just had to leave because the pirates' wingman in a sidewinder finally broke my shield.

Anyone else run into this? Could it be a bug or is there something in the game that allows NPC ships to just insta-repair/full shield?

I've met a few too.. It's the all new FDev way. "We can't code any better so we'll cheat." We'll give NPCs endless ammo, endless chaff, engineered armour engineered shields, and engineered weapons with enhancements. Then what we'll do is add extra weapon slots to the NPC ships and make it so they never miss, and from any distance.

What this does is make it so no matter how good a flyer you are, they'll still damage all your modules. And if you do manage to get the shields down, they fly off and come back with them regen'd to full. Meanwhile, the 'master rated' NPC sidewinders are laying in with endless rockets and enhanced weps. I had a Clipper that was flying away from me and still managing to hit me?

The idea in this craziness, in that it makes it more difficult for you the player to like, have fun, and earn credits without resorting to Quince et'al. That means it takes you ages to actually accomplish anything. So they [fdev] get time to work on something else that no-one will use. It also makes Horizons mandatory for any player wanting to play the combat side. A neat if not cheap, tactic.

They've absolutely ruined any fun in the combat part of this game [sic] Games are meant to be fun.. E.D. is just a toy now for them to see how difficult they can make it for players. It's pathetic.

 

[William H. Bonney]

not experienced this exactly but I've convinced myself of another oddity, when i jump into a RES site or combat zone, etc, i find the NPC's take longer to destroy the longer i'm there. it'll take 10 seconds to blow up the first enemy and if i attack another NPC with the same ship and rank 30 minutes later, it'll take 2-3 minutes. i find this more prominent in combat zones if i've been there for an hour or two.

 

[NecasekO]

It's simple - shield cell banks. There's no cheating going on, just high level NPCs having tanky ships with good shields and SCBs. If the SCB is big enough it will recharge the shield to full in a few seconds, and this can be used several times before it runs out of charges. You will see a blue pulsing glow around the ship when it has a SCB active.

You either need to deal enough damage quickly to break their shield, or keep fighting until they run out of SCB charges. Ramming is another option to break the shield quickly.

 

[Suvi Anwar]

not experienced this exactly but I've convinced myself of another oddity, when i jump into a RES site or combat zone, etc, i find the NPC's take longer to destroy the longer i'm there. it'll take 10 seconds to blow up the first enemy and if i attack another NPC with the same ship and rank 30 minutes later, it'll take 2-3 minutes. i find this more prominent in combat zones if i've been there for an hour or two.

I was in that Nav Beacon instance all of 45 seconds when I started shooting, so while that may be something that may be worthy of some discussion, that's not a symptom to my experience here.

 

[Suvi Anwar]

It's simple - shield cell banks. There's no cheating going on, just high level NPCs having tanky ships with good shields and SCBs. If the SCB is big enough it will recharge the shield to full in a few seconds, and this can be used several times before it runs out of charges. You will see a blue pulsing glow around the ship when it has a SCB active.

You either need to deal enough damage quickly to break their shield, or keep fighting until they run out of SCB charges. Ramming is another option to break the shield quickly.

It was a cobra, I had its shields down 6 or 7 times, there's not enough slots on a Cobra to account for that many inst-regens. Unless NPCs don't have a limit?

 

[sollisb]

It's simple - shield cell banks. There's no cheating going on, just high level NPCs having tanky ships with good shields and SCBs. If the SCB is big enough it will recharge the shield to full in a few seconds, and this can be used several times before it runs out of charges. You will see a blue pulsing glow around the ship when it has a SCB active.

You either need to deal enough damage quickly to break their shield, or keep fighting until they run out of SCB charges. Ramming is another option to break the shield quickly.

*if* the NPCs had SCBs.. I've seen them without and still able to insta heal shieldss and do their disssappearing act..

 

[Jukelo]

*if* the NPCs had SCBs.. I've seen them without and still able to insta heal shieldss and do their disssappearing act..

I don't suppose you have that on video?

 

[sollisb]

I don't suppose you have that on video?

Nope, but I have a screen shot of a Cobra with 7 weapons and a Viper with 5! Must try find them among the thousands I have. Also seen ships firing and being untargetable...

The thing I cannot understand is *why* they make it like this... I'm Elite combat so for me it's meant to be fun. I don't care about the credits can them other ways.

 

[amysteriousstranger]

Nope, but I have a screen shot of a Cobra with 7 weapons and a Viper with 5! Must try find them among the thousands I have. Also seen ships firing and being untargetable...

The thing I cannot understand is *why* they make it like this... I'm Elite combat so for me it's meant to be fun. I don't care about the credits can them other ways.

Dont know about the rest but ships being untargatable works on both NPCs and players, normally when a ship fired it becomes visible but if it's heat reaches absolute zero(I think) from a heat sink it will not appear as a valid target for a few seconds even if firing

Also your sensor range and emissions range is a factor, some ships may be out of range of your sensors

 

[NascentChemist]

Nope, but I have a screen shot of a Cobra with 7 weapons and a Viper with 5! Must try find them among the thousands I have. Also seen ships firing and being untargetable...

The thing I cannot understand is *why* they make it like this... I'm Elite combat so for me it's meant to be fun. I don't care about the credits can them other ways.

Great, post it! Would love to see this, and I'm sure the bug reporting section would as well.

Oh, and the developers have stated that while NPCs do have unlimited weapon ammunition, they don't have unlimited utility ammunition. I imagine that if you asked more nicely, and on a week day, the Mistress of Minions would answer some of your questions.

 

[sollisb]

Great, post it! Would love to see this, and I'm sure the bug reporting section would as well.

Oh, and the developers have stated that while NPCs do have unlimited weapon ammunition, they don't have unlimited utility ammunition. I imagine that if you asked more nicely, and on a week day, the Mistress of Minions would answer some of your questions.

I'll hunt the screen shot out or if not, I'll grab some tomorrow night. NPCs have unlimited chaff. I also tested that. over the course of a maybe 3 minute fight, a gunship used chaff endlessly. Also; If you T-bone a conda it can still hit you with it's forward facing guns, even tho, the guns are not facing at you. Proven that too. And also; lately ships are taking ages to get to 0%.. (thats fine 1v1, but when you need to know the conda is dead before moving to next target, it's a real pain in the bottom) I live in my local HazRez and tested all of these things more to prove I wasn't imagining things. And finally, why are we seeing 'novice' NPCs in HazRez sites? (albeit sporting amazing ships)

 

[NascentChemist]

I'll hunt the screen shot out or if not, I'll grab some tomorrow night. NPCs have unlimited chaff. I also tested that. over the course of a maybe 3 minute fight, a gunship used chaff endlessly. Also; If you T-bone a conda it can still hit you with it's forward facing guns, even tho, the guns are not facing at you. Proven that too. And also; lately ships are taking ages to get to 0%.. (thats fine 1v1, but when you need to know the conda is dead before moving to next target, it's a real pain in the bottom) I live in my local HazRez and tested all of these things more to prove I wasn't imagining things. And finally, why are we seeing 'novice' NPCs in HazRez sites? (albeit sporting amazing ships)

Thanks for looking for those screenshots. Anacondas typically run a lot of turrets, so they should be able to hit you when t-boned.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Funny how always those stories about AI cheating always turns out without evidence, proof and mostly are down of misunderstanding configuration of NPC ships and potential bugs.

You can have multiple chaff launchers. Lot of NPC ships have them. They looooove to chaff. Does not mean it is unlimited. Hard to run out of them if your build is constructed towards that.

They don't have unlimited of anything, last time I checked. Only 'cheat' they do is that they can do high wake without being blocked by your proximity.

 

[disorganise]

I'm rubbish at combat...just putting it out there upfront...
Been hanging in a low intensity CZ a few days and also seen this instant shield repair. I've also seen ship's hit 0% hull, get their shields back and carry on dishing out the pain until I take down their shields again and they finally pop.

 

[Jazzy]

Seeing the instant shield to 100% often in the current Community Goal Combat Zones,so many now have instantly regen'd shields. Not that it helps them only delays the inevitable for them, but still happens a lot atm.

 

[Y nt Zoidberg7]

So last night I was cruising through and stopped at a system that had a compromised Nav Beacon, and of course it was full of pirates with bounties. The problem here is that I could not kill a Cobra MK4 with a fully combat equipped Corvette. Every time I just about got the thing destroyed, it would insta-pop full shields and seemingly completely repair itself. After 15 minutes of pounding on this thing I just had to leave because the pirates' wingman in a sidewinder finally broke my shield.

Anyone else run into this? Could it be a bug or is there something in the game that allows NPC ships to just insta-repair/full shield?

I would report it as a bug. I haven't seen anything like what you are describing happen at the latest CG/CZ's. I have seen an NPC use reboot/repair when their Power Plant was disabled, and they gained 50% of their shield back once complete.

As for everything else-

NPC's have unlimited weapon ammo, that's it. They have limited chaff, heatsinks, SCB's etc..
If you think you have run into a NPC which has unlimited whatnot, I would take a video and submit it as a bug report, otherwise no one will believe you. The same would go for an NPC with extra weapons (that one is at least a new complaint I haven't heard of yet ).

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

NPC's have unlimited weapon ammo, that's it...

I may be wrong but I think I recall MoM confirming at some point that only NPC multicannons have unlimited ammunition, with all other NPC guns being limited, even rails.

 

[Valethar]

The AI has cheats built in. It's supposed to help give them an edge, since the AI is nowhere near as smart as most commanders are supposed to be.

A current loadout on the Vette would help folks determine if you need to swap out, tweak or add some modules. Personally, I'd have taken the sidewinder out, rather than let it nibble at my shields for that long. One or two good volleys should have popped that thing like a balloon.

 

[Stealthie]

I made a thread about this a couple of weeks ago.

In a nutshell, I got interdicted by an Anaconda which I flat-out couldn't damage with my Cutter.
My Cutter's got a C4 beam laser and a pair of C3 beam lasers and an attack run against this Anaconda would take a ring off it's shields and then, in the time it takes me to turn around for another attack, it would regenerate the shields to full.
Which happened about a dozen times.

I realised this could be down to SCBs, assuming the Anaconda was fitted with a whole heap of them, and decided to go "all in" with my kinetic weapons too.
I managed to strip his shields (briefly causing me to celebrate) but, once again, in the time it took me to get back on-target, they were back on line again and back up to full strength.

I'm pretty sure I've seen similar behaviour from smaller ships too, although I've been able to destroy them in my Corvette.
To put this in perspective, my 'vette can take out an Elite NPC Anaconda in about 30 seconds - strip shields with initial attack, switch to kinetics, manoeuvre around target, finish off by applying frag-cannons to soft, chewy centre and boom.

At the Lambrayeque HazRes, during the recent CG, I encountered a variety of NPC ships like AspXs, Cobras and Adders which took much longer than expected to go boom.
I'd be sitting there, unloading my C4 beams on them and they'd just soak it up for about a minute before finally losing shields and then being destroyed.
And, if they could get out of my line of fire, they'd immediately be back to full shields.

On one notable occasion, I found another Anaconda which seemed to have this ability but it decided to flee rather than fight.
So, I'm trundling along behind it, unloading my C4 lasers into it until, eventually it's shields go down, I'd then switch to kinetics and do a bit of hull damage but then I'd drop out of range.
At that point, I'd have to transfer power to thrusters, boost to get back in range and then it's shields would be back up to full and I'd have to start again.
In the end, I pursued it around 200km (which, at an average speed of around 170m/s gives you an idea of how long this went on for) before I managed to destroy it.

Overall, I kind of like that this happens because it forces the player to make more diverse choices and reduces complacency, especially when one of these ships is part of a wing, but it definitely seems like there are some NPC ships out there with extraordinary shields.