I actually tried that (mine boosts to 610m/s) and the scouts were still landing shots dead on. They used to miss completely.
Update 15 Thargoid Scout damage.
- Thread starter Paradigm Fusion
- Start date
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Yep - the lowest rung, so less dangerous than the lowest interceptor, which seems to be in doubt above. And personally I think there's overlap, wherein wing assassination missions should be harder than popping scouts. It was in an okay place as it was, although scout tissue sampling, especially in alerts, without infinite spawns (so you can end up just limpet-fondueing one scout), was out of balance, and this may do okay to make that a less trivial task.
Thanks for the advice, I usually roll like a drunken madman with middle ear issues - will try to tone it down a bit. After the paintjob experiment is complete, of course.
Right now, a single one is not, but getting a squad of Scouts on you tail is much more dangerous than a Cyclops at the moment. They don't miss a single shot, and they gang up on you. I wonder if this another moment of, what was it? NPCs with rapid fire plasmas? I don't think this is completely intentional, if more or less nerfs the "Scouts are the entry to AX" into the ground. I don't think a player that has never done AX (and I have been such a player not too long ago) will do well enough against the new Scouts to not get frustrated.
But that's the point, you don't get a single one, it's always a wing. I'm okay with them being buffed tbh, keeps you in your toes and means you can't rest in a Tharg-related situation. And they're still easy to shred, becoming a distinctive challenge in their own right, to keep the kill rate up, like a fast version of a zombie horde or something. But there is a question about consistency in difficulty ramp to Cyclops.
Of course. The "single one" was more hypothetical. What I meant is: Right now, they gank your behind
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I they are able to predict and hit a ship moving at 610 accurately then there is something seriously wrong.
I thought Scouts have differing types and due to combinations can work together though? In these situations Scout groups would be more dangerous than a low end Interceptor.
The do have different types with different agression and damage, but even in a pack they were not that dangerous for a fully kitted out AX ship. My example: My AX Krait has like 4600 or so armor. During the Scout phase of a CZ I might lose two, maybe three percent hull. Five if I am sloppy. Yesterday, the scouts took me down to 70% before the Interceptors arrived.
They used to miss most of their shots if you flew evasive, and the few that hit you you could tank easily. Yesterday, they it every single shot of their salvos with utmost precision. And also they really gang up on you.
As I said before: They practically wiped the NPCs from the solo CZ I was in last night, most times I had like one or two NPC pilots in the CZ, and as there were no NPCs to keep them busy, they ganged up on me. While fighting a Basilisk, at one time I had like eight or ten agressively flashing triangles on my tail, and no NPC to help out.
While being 100% accurate is not good, it also sounds like how they were was also flawed, frankly.
I wonder if it's one of those "oh, that was a load-bearing bug" moments: there was some bug in the Scout firing routines that got noticed and fixed, and it turns out that their damage output had separately been balanced around them missing most shots.
Possibly. But having the Scouts as "easy" targets at a CZ allowed complete newbies like me to ease into AX CZ combat. That ship has sailed now.
If small groups of standard scouts do that then I'd agree its too harsh, but at the same time having groups of mixed Scouts should be on par with a Cyclops at least.
As someone not very proficient with AX combat, I can agree with this. I could do Cyclops and Basilisks in surface site CZ's and have had some fun with that recently.
Yesterday, I wanted to do that again, to try to get the last propulsion elements I was missing. Happened to take on a Cyclops separated from the crowd after barely any scouts first, and it went well and as expected. Well, afterwards I kept getting swarmed by scouts and had a terrible time, rebuy after rebuy and losing hull significantly faster than against Interceptors. It was frustrating and very different to my experiences before the update.
Once I had my Pulse Neutralizer, I also had a pretty bad time getting to my chosen Maelstrom. Since U14, I've been to Maelstroms maybe a dozen times with my Clipper and Chieftain, and always arrived with over 90% hull, often with 97-100%. Not so yesterday. My first attempt I aborted completely, after one interdiction completely wrecked me disabling my thrusters pretty quickly, and causing my FSD to malfunction with one of the many hits that followed. Arrived at the Maelstrom system with less than 50% hull...in a Chieftain with 3.5k hull and over 500m/s boost speed. My second attempt went much better, but even though it was a "normal" run that would have brought me to the Maelstrom with almost full hull pre-U15, I only arrived with around 80%. During both trips, my first module reinforcement literally went down during my first interdiction, both times while FA off boosting away at >500m/s...
For comparison: I was taking damage A LOT slower at the Titan, than I did against a handful of scouts...
They are not on par with a Cyclops, they send them back to school
. Seriously, in a pack, they are more like a Basilisk now.Yeah, sorry. I get my terms mixed up now and then.
Actually there is a way to take a break safely in Control systems, intended or otherwise—drop to normal flight, then start charging a low wake, but remain stationary or slow enough that it does not engage. Leaving the starship in that state, this gave zero Frame Shift Anomalies for a full hour test prior to the update, and still seems to work now having tested 10–15 minutes.
This also prevents system AX forces from arriving in Invasion systems, and it occurs to me that I did not test it in a Maelstrom system. I ought also to test again whether Orbital Cruise still both interrupts¹ and protects against Supercruise interdictions; I will be testing a landfall harvest later today anyway and need to remember to include that check!
1. If interdicted while moments away from approaching a landfall planet, one can throttle up and let it reach the Orbital zone to interrupt the interdiction.
They were always fairly deadly in a large group if you got hit by an interceptor's lightning attack and had your thruster output reduced (because your reduced speed meant more of their shots would hit). Seems like either the accuracy or shot speed has increased (or both).