Yes, it seems interdicting scouts also subtarget FSDs now.Very few scouts (pack of 3-4) shots against my Imperial clipper (600+ boost) while I was boosting away in FAOFF and FSD was at 72% ... well, it is not very nice, it seems like 1-2 MRPs will be "a must have" for now even for science vessel.
Update 15 Thargoid Scout damage.
- Thread starter Paradigm Fusion
- Start date
Yep, me too - out of here.
Toddling around Mat Traders and getting Eng up to date and getting stuff for the new Neutraliser, I just cannot take part in a AXCZ when rebuy is after 2-3 Scouts - complete and utter rubbish.
I enjoyed about 18 weeks either Solo Invasion doing 6-7 Scouts then running and returning to start anew when Interceptors turned up
OR
Supported AXCZ by killing Scouts and maybe helping other Cmdrs in Open with a final shot at Interceptors but keeping the Scouts at bay and avoiding Interceptors.
NOW - NO THANK YOU.
Toddling around Mat Traders and getting Eng up to date and getting stuff for the new Neutraliser, I just cannot take part in a AXCZ when rebuy is after 2-3 Scouts - complete and utter rubbish.
I enjoyed about 18 weeks either Solo Invasion doing 6-7 Scouts then running and returning to start anew when Interceptors turned up
OR
Supported AXCZ by killing Scouts and maybe helping other Cmdrs in Open with a final shot at Interceptors but keeping the Scouts at bay and avoiding Interceptors.
NOW - NO THANK YOU.
Same, after seeing the scout damage I was taking on Maelstrom runs I decided against even attempting combat against them.
The Thargoids can do what they like this week. As far as I'm concerned they can walk into my home, sit on my sofa, rest their dirty feet on the coffee table and drink all the beer from my fridge. And forget to flush.
The Thargoids can do what they like this week. As far as I'm concerned they can walk into my home, sit on my sofa, rest their dirty feet on the coffee table and drink all the beer from my fridge. And forget to flush.
Don't worry, the skinning meta is still going strong. No need for us to fight anything.
I think it's manageable - at least so long as you're starting a fight against no more than about 6 of them. The difficulty is when interceptors are involved as well. Certainly starting a fight against an interceptor on its own and having scouts drop in part way through is wake out time for me.
AX CZ are basically are fine for as long as you're not the only 'green' in there and it's time to get out, but you've got to be more focused on beating back scouts or you just seem to always get swarmed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm good with it being difficult, especially against interceptors. I just don't feel I'm going to have the opportunity to get better at this side of the game as things are.
AX CZ are basically are fine for as long as you're not the only 'green' in there and it's time to get out, but you've got to be more focused on beating back scouts or you just seem to always get swarmed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm good with it being difficult, especially against interceptors. I just don't feel I'm going to have the opportunity to get better at this side of the game as things are.
Did my first full CZ solo since the change. I brought out my Scout/Cyclops killer Chief. The scouts are definitely a serious problem now and seems the buff is overboard In my opinion. The first wave of them were very destructive and I was down to under 50% with malfunctioning thrusters by the time they were cleaned up. Barely enough time to repair and get back out before the next wave hit.
I was able to solo the CZ up to the Hydra because the CZ only generated Cyclops throughout. When scouts built up I would start clearing them out and then return to the interceptors. This seemed to preserve some NPC assistance. The Chief has 2 L EAXMCS, 1 M EAXMC, 3 S EPCs. 2 Module reinforcement, then all hull reinforcements, no shield. I was forced to repair just about every other Cyclops. This ship can do Basi but it takes a beating doing it. Medusa and above are pretty out of reach without assistance.
My initial impression is this is a good thing. The scouts should not just be window dressing coins to jump into and collect. I like that they are more active and tend to be drawn to the fight. Their damage however I think is far overdone. I’m not sure if they are just spawning in buffed already or if their damage and rate of fire were tweaked up but I could not possibly function in a dedicated interceptor ship like my Shard Clipper or Gauss Krait. They re spawn so quickly and gang up so heavy on the player that it is simply not possible to clear them fast enough with specialist weapons. Plasma might work better there.
Overall I think the change is a good one and maybe forces people to really engage the scouts but it may be overdone by 1/4 to 1/3. Ease that back a bit. If you are taking up a CZ with a wingman probably best to be sure someone has plasma or EAXMCs to deal with scouts effectively and help keep them off your 6. Also if a normal space CZ is like this it’s probably now close to impossible. Not enough time to repair that much damage using shipboard equipment.
I was able to solo the CZ up to the Hydra because the CZ only generated Cyclops throughout. When scouts built up I would start clearing them out and then return to the interceptors. This seemed to preserve some NPC assistance. The Chief has 2 L EAXMCS, 1 M EAXMC, 3 S EPCs. 2 Module reinforcement, then all hull reinforcements, no shield. I was forced to repair just about every other Cyclops. This ship can do Basi but it takes a beating doing it. Medusa and above are pretty out of reach without assistance.
My initial impression is this is a good thing. The scouts should not just be window dressing coins to jump into and collect. I like that they are more active and tend to be drawn to the fight. Their damage however I think is far overdone. I’m not sure if they are just spawning in buffed already or if their damage and rate of fire were tweaked up but I could not possibly function in a dedicated interceptor ship like my Shard Clipper or Gauss Krait. They re spawn so quickly and gang up so heavy on the player that it is simply not possible to clear them fast enough with specialist weapons. Plasma might work better there.
Overall I think the change is a good one and maybe forces people to really engage the scouts but it may be overdone by 1/4 to 1/3. Ease that back a bit. If you are taking up a CZ with a wingman probably best to be sure someone has plasma or EAXMCs to deal with scouts effectively and help keep them off your 6. Also if a normal space CZ is like this it’s probably now close to impossible. Not enough time to repair that much damage using shipboard equipment.
Don't be mistaken : as of today, even (and mostly) a murder-boat is more helpless than ever against this swarm of small and fast targets. Your best bet is a faster-than-ever-before ship, finding the good compromise between HP, weight, agility and survival tools, damage being secondary. And, oh, you're not anymore supposed to deal with the perma-regen of a Medusa, just leave it alone.
If ever this mess was all intentional and works as intended, the only goal I can see is to force players to wing up : I'm sure that a wing of 2 or 3 can clear the instance without much harm, one cold-orbiting or 6sharding the interceptors while the other(s) care about the scouts the very second they pop in.
But TBH I don't believe it for a minute because it'd mean kicking the 70% ? 90% ? solo players straight out of the war. This would deserve at least vague mentioning in the release notes, like "The Thargoids noted that their lesser kin wasn't effective enough and took action".
Conversely, the way Sally Morgan-Moore (FD staff) puts it in the "Update 15 Recap" :
makes me think maybe some change was intended to let scouts be more than ball trap plates, but not to make them total war winners.
Other observations just don't look "natural" to me : scouts popping in with regen triggered, human NPCs instantly wiped out then scouts efficiently besiegeing the base (which they said wanted to turn down), and so on.
Either there is a bug somewhere, like non-functional conditions on events that are then triggered "always" and/or multiple times, or... whatever. Too often in every company low-level misunderstanding or inattention leads to disasters.
Maybe some busy head publicly brainstormed what could be done for scouts like "I dunno man, be creative, buff their damage, make them leave the base alone, can they target modules ? do they team up or work each on their own ? I dunno", the PMO quickly wrote all this on a Post-it and passed it as-is to the dev.
It's hard to believe that such a big update went public without any kind of "who plays AX here ? let's run it and see how it goes", but I can't imagine how else this is possible. Frameshift Live #27 with Mechan literally introducing the FD guy to AX was sadly memorable to me.
Unfortunately until FD learn what "player testing" and "rollback" mean, this will keep happening and we will have to wait past their "Oh really ?" phase.
Scout damage has been radically boosted it seems - that or the concentrated fire from swarms of them is making base defense almost impossible. Even with an 8100 HP hull and shield - I can spend about 1-2 minutes before I'm down to 30% hull life and have to land for repairs. I can't even target the intecepetors before I'm shredded by the scouts.
With my weak piloting skills and very basic evasive flying in science clipper (which isn't small target) I got 3 from 4 scouts during random interdiction on my way to maelstrom and then I bailed out quickly when they called for support and some other flowers joined. Armor 2.3k (2.6 caustic) went down to 55% in this fight and FSD was at 88%. Advanced gimballed AX cannons worked quite well against those scouts mk2. They definitelly cannot be ignored now. Imo mix of intended and some uninteded side effects of other changes. Personally I'm curious whether and if so how it will be adressed.
So the thargoids are learning ? Or do we expect them to carry on with tactics and ships that are proven to be ineffective whilst the hairless apes get new stuff ...
Also, not even having to look at next target by @Aleks Zuno for last 2 days, is a real shame, as it was AND IS a lot of work (by all those AXI, etc. teams) put in, that is now, meaningless.
This is due to my return to my hoped for Invasion defense systems and getting absolutely SHREDDED (in same build as previous 17 weeks BTW).
Also I think less immediately interested in war zones as the new Maelstrom and modules are diverting attention.
I thought the same.Reminds me of when the NPCs originally got engineering and ended up with bugged weapons like rail guns firing at pulse laser rates
Followed by thinking that if this is a mistake and they fix the damage part (not the intentional part). People will still complain for years that players cried too much and they nerfed them back down. In the case of the NPCs they just stopped them from having impossible weapons. Just like all we are asking about scouts i s they not be perma berzerk.
Haven't looked at "next target" since the meta became sampling.
Of course, but the forum is also partly a madhouse..
It's a bug, surely!...
Which would be fine in any other MMORPG, where it is easy to group up with other players and share the rewards. Even in a wing in ED, if you don't tag the kill, you don't get your cut. Payout for Scouts is laughable, but you now need a dedicated scout shop to handle them, and those ships almost always cannot handle anything above a Cyclops.
It's just yet more poorly thought through and executed 'gameplay' from FD.
If the patch notes said something like this:
- Increased Thargoid scout damage output
Then I'd be inclined to agree that we can start trying to explain why to each other, rather than consider this a bug or unintended change.
Why ? As we get better modules so should the other side ? Technology and tactics shouldn't stand still in a war ? It probably is a bug , but we shouldn't have to rely on fdev to fix the numbers so we can win ??
Yeah, I already was aware of the fact from running into Scout interdictions, but now I experienced them in the CZ. It seems the Scout power increase is manifold. They fire longer bursts, 5 instead of 3. They have less cooldown between the bursts. They seem to snap to target very fast without much hesistation. Also, it feels like even their caustic cloud is nastier, but that might be my imagination.
I definitely feel like I rather get interdicted by an interceptors than scouts. I'm not so sure that it's all that bad in CZ, tho. Sweeping scouts before they multiply was always important, now its more so. However, maybe the NPC AX pilots should focus on scouts when players are clearly fighting the interceptors. They might be more useful that way.
I definitely feel like I rather get interdicted by an interceptors than scouts. I'm not so sure that it's all that bad in CZ, tho. Sweeping scouts before they multiply was always important, now its more so. However, maybe the NPC AX pilots should focus on scouts when players are clearly fighting the interceptors. They might be more useful that way.
I am amid a landfall harvest at the moment with time aplenty to observe what the Scouts are doing. I think I can see the problem—and it is indeed an obvious-looking problem now that I see it.
It looks to me that the Scouts have been given a new four-shot primary weapon with a faster shot speed, which could well be intended, however they also have their previous weapon in addition to the new one. I can see those three smaller, slower shots in between the new weapon, on a different reload rate and firing in and out of phase with it. I could try to capture a video when I get an appropriate moment, if anyone is interested.
It looks to me that the Scouts have been given a new four-shot primary weapon with a faster shot speed, which could well be intended, however they also have their previous weapon in addition to the new one. I can see those three smaller, slower shots in between the new weapon, on a different reload rate and firing in and out of phase with it. I could try to capture a video when I get an appropriate moment, if anyone is interested.