Newcomer / Intro Overall questions

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Good day Ladies and Gentlemen,

I've got two questions, if you would be so kind, that have been on my mind lately and its rather hard to pinpoint exact facts/numbers.

1. What are the benefits for NPC Crew members/Hired Crew members to increase their combat ranks? I.e. What benefit is there to leveling up a Harmless crew member to Elite?
For the most part they are used for Ship Launched fighters, but those fighters do not have customizable internals, so what do they gain when increasing their ranks? They are just "less dumb"?

2. Is there an established % based damage reduction for distance fall-off? For example, Pulse lasers start losing damage output after 500m, beam laser start losing damage after 600m. But how much exactly? is it 5% damage reduction every 100m? 10% damage reduction / 100m?..etc. What are the exact statistics for damage loss. Engineer modification exist for shorter or longer range, but it doesn't explain how much damage is lost per Meter. Having exact number, you could easily create a graph. In the end I'm trying to determined whether long range weapons would out-weight using overcharged/oversized components instead, obviously depending on range. But for that I need stats. I had planned on using a second account and trying to test out damage vs shield at different ranges with different weapons but if there already established data, that would save me the trouble.

Thank you very much for any information and have a wonderful day,
 

SlickPBW

S
For #1. Elite crew members are significantly better fighter pilots than the best you can hire off the shelf, which is expert level. If you want an elite crew with minimal cost, you need to “grow” one from Harmless rank. That way you will pay about 10% less for their salary compared to growing one hired as expert.

For me, I just use and abuse them. I hire experts for 150k, use them then fire them before handing in bounties.

note that I have previously twice grown elite crew members from scratch. I just didn’t like e them taking a cut of all profits, so now for me they are disposable.
 
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Ashnak

Ashnak
1. They just become less dumb - or better at evading enemy fire and hitting with their own weapons, similar to other NPCs. Which means you can wean them off the gimballed pulses and let them loose with a Guardian Shard Launcher.

2. According to this old thread, the falloff seems to be linear https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/damage-falloff-mechanics.321868/ (what's the name of that usenet law that providing a wrong answer will immediately have somebody popping up, proving you wrong and providing the real answer?)
 

d8veh

d8veh
1.Get a nice looking harmless crew then rank them up to elite for the lowest cost. money is now so easy to make that the cost of the crew is insignificant. An elite one definitely survives much better than a harmless one.

2. You can see all the weapon fall-off rates in Coriolis. Half way down the page are 4 tabs. The second one is "profiles". Click that then look at the bottom of the page for the fall-off charts.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io coriolis.io
 

Chrystoph

Chrystoph
I would throw a random comment in here that long-range is not often that beneficial. The NPCs like to get into close range and joust, so long range tends to function as a first-strike but not as an ongoing strike unless you can reopen the range or stay behind them.

Edit: As several people have pointed out, this statement should be aimed less capable ships. If your ride can go faster backwards than they can forwards, long range will allow you to stay out of their range while you pound them.
 
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Good day,

Thank you very much for all the information!

Greatly appreciated, I did not know Coriolis could function that way for range effectiveness.

As for pilots, ill just take that they simply just get "better" although I'm surprised to find that there isn't any other benefit to it. Since its not like they can increase they own equipment.

Have a wonderful day!
 

Chris Simon

Chris Simon
Chrystoph said:
I would throw a random comment in here that long-range is not often that beneficial. The NPCs like to get into close range and joust, so long range tends to function as a first-strike but not as an ongoing strike unless you can reopen the range or stay behind them.
Click to expand...
Well, jousting needs two to agree on having a fight that way. But in fact generally it's very hard in Elite to force your opponent into a disadvantage and NPCs are no better at that than players. In aerial dogfight (here on Earth), a pilot can gain an undisputable and very hard to counter advantage by being higher or being faster than the opponent (i.e. have more kinetic or potential energy to spare)
In space, when an opponent is "higher", you just roll your ship 180° and you're the "higher one" :D

..okay that was a terrible analogy and oversimplification, of course, but - your jousting example? I would say long range weapons are EXACTLY the right thing if you don't like jousting combat. Well, long range weapon AND engineered thrusters.
When the opponent starts to force you into "boom and zoom" endless loop, simply reverse. If you are in a decent combat ship, I bet you can reverse faster than the NPC can fly forward (F/A off helps a lot). Then just snipe him from out of his range for quick buck. :LOL:
 

CMDR Saigon

CMDR Saigon
In my experience, the biggest benefit of NPC Crew (mine grown from harmless to elite) is they are really efficient at distracting bandit NPCs in high threat level missions, CZs etc. whilst you go in for kill.
 

d8veh

d8veh
If you do bounty farming, you set the fighter on the ships before you open fire, then the NPCs prioritise the fighter, so you can shoot at them as much as you like, and they don't shoot back, neither will they chaff. Most of the time, they're sideways on to you, so you can get their power plants too. those two things reduce the time for each battle massively, and is much more relaxing than those stupid jousting fights that you get without the fighter. That's where the longer lasting elite crew are a big advantage. As soon as the fighter pops, the NPC bad guy will start shooting at you, but sometimes the fighter will last for hours.
 

d8veh

d8veh
Chrystoph said:
I would throw a random comment in here that long-range is not often that beneficial. The NPCs like to get into close range and joust, so long range tends to function as a first-strike but not as an ongoing strike unless you can reopen the range or stay behind them.
Click to expand...
I would put that the other way round and say that they're often beneficial and less often not. For a fast manoevrable ship, like a Vulture or FDL, you can keep close enough not to need them, but in a slower ship, like an Anaconda or FDL, long range lasers are very effective.

Long range weapons are very useful when you're farming materials in a RES because you need to stay stationary while you hoover up the materials. With long-range, you can stay there at zero throttle just rotating to face ships while you deal with wing-men or your next kill. In maybe 50% of cases when dealing with something like a big ship with two smaller wing men, the 2nd wing-man will do a runner while you're stuck collecting the materials from the big ship. they run when they get down to about 20% hull. With long-range lasers, you can often get them to pop just before they reach 6km. You can often tag ships in far off battles and get bounties for nothing while you're stuck collecting the materials.

In a high RES, you also need at least one long-range laser to be able to land a shot before the police finish off the bad guys, when you wouldn't get close enough to land a shot without long-range weapons.

The main problem with long-range lasers is the power demand, so a mix of efficient and long range is best - all with flow control if you have access to engineers.

Finally, on a Corvette or Anaconda battleship, two small long-range beam lasers with thermal vent, keeps your ship cool and saves you from having to use heatsinks with your SCBs
 
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Frags

F
Hire Harmless one, take hired one to compromised nav beacon and train to Deadly/Elite shooting pirates. NPCs progress much faster.
Use SLF with gimbled lasers until NPC reaches at least competent rank, then switch to fixed beams.
Elite crew member is a significant boost to your main ship DPS.
 

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Good evening,

Thank you very much for the information, it was not my intention to cause a misunderstanding, I have been away from the Galaxy for quite a while!

I just wanted to verify if there was any common/confirmed information concerning the previous topics.

I will simply accept that hired pilots "get better" but that there isn't a numerical value associated to their increased competence.

and Inara is quite the tool for any ship related information,

Again thank you for the information,

Have a wonderful day!

V/R

Lumiria
 

d8veh

d8veh
_______ said:
Good evening,

Thank you very much for the information, it was not my intention to cause a misunderstanding, I have been away from the Galaxy for quite a while!

I just wanted to verify if there was any common/confirmed information concerning the previous topics.

I will simply accept that hired pilots "get better" but that there isn't a numerical value associated to their increased competence.

and Inara is quite the tool for any ship related information,

Again thank you for the information,

Have a wonderful day!

V/R

Lumiria
Click to expand...
The NPCs behave according to their combat rank. There must be some factor/s in the AI algorithms that steps up with each rank.
 

Frags

F
d8veh said:
The NPCs behave according to their combat rank. There must be some factor/s in the AI algorithms that steps up with each rank.
Click to expand...
Yes, this is the factors affect combat rank progress for the player and crew members ED Wiki
To progress faster the NPC should successfully hit the target as much as possible.
It doesn't matter who actually killed the target you or NPC.
 
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