Npcs against engineering

Why doesnt thermal shock or any heat gained affect npcs? Or even scramble spectrum ? Why would you add an effect for weapons on the game if they arent useful at all against in game enemies ? I mean theres isnt anything that encourages pvp so leave the usefulness in pvp out of the question.. Frontier is so confused with what they want to do with elite. Just erase the game and stop selling this broken/defected product.. even thermal conduit seems as it makes no difference in damage when overheating 1000%..Its just too bad nobody at frontier gives a damn enough to actually fix the game besides adding pointless stories that have nothing to do with anything anyone is actually doing in game.
 
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Scramble spectrum used to be a lot more effective with NPCs. It was a bit cheesy IMO. I used the hell out of it.

Corvette with a small, long range scramble spectrum turret. Once or twice a fight, the NPC would lose drives and go spinning off into the void. I use that time to catch up and then smash them in the face.

I don't know if they just made it stop working or if it's just no longer impacting drives. It's no longer obvious if it has any impact at all. I still have a scramble spectrum turret on my corvette. Maybe I'm making their life support malfunction?

I'd prefer it go back to the way it was. I found it hilarious. But it was quite exploity.
 
These effects work on NPCs essentially same way the work on CMDRs.

Thermal load attacks have been nerfed, directly or indirectly, a half dozen times and scramble spectrum was always mostly a psychological thing, unless you got lucky and knocked out a critical component at just the right moment.

I don't know if they just made it stop working or if it's just no longer impacting drives.

I'm not aware of any change that keeps scramble from affecting drives. However, it cannot cause a malfunction in an external module it doesn't have a line of sight to, and malfunctions haven't been automatic for a very long time...depending on weapon size or damage, it can take several hits to trigger the effect.
 
even thermal conduit seems as it makes no difference in damage when overheating 1000%
The blurb for thermal conduit isn't good (as with a lot of the blurb). The extra damage is a flat buff applied when firing at any value above 100%, but doesn't climb with higher heat. If you fire a set of plasmas at 101% heat you're getting extra damage out of them (+60%), if you fire them at 1001% heat it's the same.

The other stuff was covered already, but it's worth reiterating that a few of these effects are regularly seen as not working on NPCs simply because NPCs don't behave the way humans do. Target Lock Breaker is probably the clearest example - it's pretty infuriating and disruptive for human players, especially if they're not expecting it, and they're forced to move their lumpen human hands to reacquire a target. NPCs don't get frustrated and will immediately reacquire you as a target as if nothing happened, but it does break missile lock.
 
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