Where have the hostile ships gone?

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I suppose you can ask QA to check specific cases when you feel NPCs should be spawned and they didn't?

My general observation is that high and medium sec systems see very few, in any pirates - except if you haul some engineer sweets. Low and anarchies spawn quite a few interdiction happy mates.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I have also noticed a drop in NPC pirates and NPC BH coming after me. I have a few bounties outstanding from the last CG so my Gal wide bounty is 15k (ish). I used to get chased by NPC BH for that amount but have not seen one actually have a go at me, plenty of warning TxT messages but from ships not even in the same system as me.

FD, why not make a few level of missions.

Level low.... Low payout and Might get the odd interdiction but probably not.

Level medium.... Much higher mission reward, but Highly likely to get at least one interdiction of a NPC level to your rank or one below.

Level High...... High rewards from the mission, but you gonna get a Elite conda plus 1 other coming at you.

Level Ultimate......Huge mission payout with Material bonus but this is like consta interdiction's, all elite and multiple NPC's at each interdiction.


Then it's up to you what missions you take fully knowing the consequences, so no Rage quitting posts on here!!

It should just be rank based. Higher the rank, the more difficult the mission. The more likely you are to also get wrinkles and follow ons IMHO.

I suppose you can ask QA to check specific cases when you feel NPCs should be spawned and they didn't?

My general observation is that high and medium sec systems see very few, in any pirates - except if you haul some engineer sweets. Low and anarchies spawn quite a few interdiction happy mates.

Pirates are one thing, but these are the mission specific enemies for when you take on high rank missions.

 

[Lightspeed]

Oh, but the irony. Just a couple of hours after making this complaint, what happens? First up, I get chased down by 2 hostile ships in the one mission.....& one was very competent. Had local security not dropped in to lend a hand, I might well have been toast .

Then I took an assassination mission, expecting another "by the number" affairs......even though I was offered the "Clean Kill" wrinkle. Boy did I get a rude shock. A Competent FdL pilot who *really* lived up to his name.......took my shields down quick smart, & got me down to 5% hull before I was finally able to flee. I low waked it to a nearby station, but when I dropped out of Super-Cruise he appeared nearly on top of me.

Now I am just waiting for my own FdL to arrive so that I can try Round 2.

You do realize MoM reads these posts ? [where is it]

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Pirates are one thing, but these are the mission specific enemies for when you take on high rank missions.

Ahh I see. My guess is it is not bad idea to throw ticket for QA to check - give them time, station, mission types, etc. so they can check upon this. If it persists in longer run of course.

Also consider NPCs are 'wired' to avoid buffy ships. Might be that mission tries to spawn NPC and NPC is having none of that

Just to reiterate point above - there have been constant complains about Sidewinders interdicting Cutters But I suspect that's different issue

 

[Marc_Hicks]

You do realize MoM reads these posts ? [where is it]

Yes, but not even she could get these changes implemented in a few short hours .

 

[Dirtbird]

A good match I’ve had in the past during a mission (I forget which type) is when I had to destroy some Elite NPC in a Corvette and he had a Deadly friend in an Anaconda. I was in my multi role fitted Vulture at the time, which has about 600 shields and 600 hull, and good resistances on the shields. Trouble is that against any one of them, they would have been toast. However against both of them simultaneously, it was difficult. The Vulture had enough firepower to strip the shields of either ship (only one though) and do a few percent of hull damage before having to disengage before its shields were brought down. In the end, I managed to separate the two with a bit of clever supercruise flying and that was the end of them. Against them individually, it was quite straightforward. No damage taken during that run, just a lot of time spent

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Oh well, the second encounter with my assassination target was an anti-climax. The only damage I copped was from my weapons overheating, 'cause he didn't shoot back at me once. I do wish that the NPC's were more CONSISTENT!!!!

 

[Dirtbird]

Oh well, the second encounter with my assassination target was an anti-climax. The only damage I copped was from my weapons overheating, 'cause he didn't shoot back at me once. I do wish that the NPC's were more CONSISTENT!!!!

I’ve had several of them - they keep circling around as if they want to shoot me, after I’ve engaged them. Shortly before they explode due to excessive consumption of multicannon rounds. Perhaps this is a bug?

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

9/10 of my missions go without a hitch, or even a hint of one.

The last time I was actually surprised by a mission was when I took on an Elite Assassination mission, in my PvE Python. 3x pulse, 2x Packhounds, good shields +1 SCB, crap armour, loads of cargo space)
It didn't pay much, but I wanted the rep.

So after a short time circling the target planet, I dropped in to the mission USS.

Low and behold, my mission had bugged out, and spawned 2 hostile Elite Corvettes!

But alas, I killed them with no hull damage, and I only used 1 SCB. Lol
Security never showed up.

But I also come across the odd pacifist NPC, which has guns, but won't use them.
Doesn't make for very fun battles. Lol

 

[Marc_Hicks]

9/10 of my missions go without a hitch, or even a hint of one.

The last time I was actually surprised by a mission was when I took on an Elite Assassination mission, in my PvE Python. 3x pulse, 2x Packhounds, good shields +1 SCB, crap armour, loads of cargo space)
It didn't pay much, but I wanted the rep.

So after a short time circling the target planet, I dropped in to the mission USS.

Low and behold, my mission had bugged out, and spawned 2 hostile Elite Corvettes!

But alas, I killed them with no hull damage, and I only used 1 SCB. Lol
Security never showed up.

But I also come across the odd pacifist NPC, which has guns, but won't use them.
Doesn't make for very fun battles. Lol

What amazes me most is the complete difference in the same NPC.....almost like the guy was a Manic Depressive. When I first entered the system, he interdicted me & tore strips off of me......& I barely got away alive......& then the cheeky followed me to the nearest station.

Then the second time I meet him, at the Mission Specific USS, he has become totally passive. So sad, really.

 

[Riverside]

Played a bit today, mostly scanning unexplored systems while running a few delivery missions so maximum likelihood of being interdicted by a mission specific, custom or background NPC.

As usual I'm tooling around in my Vette, and I was interdicted by a dangerous Courier pirate My ship is geared up to make Elite Anacondas go away very quickly and I have a fair amount of jitter on some of my guns. Took a while to get the shields down, and needless to say I was under no significant threat at any point, but the variety was nice, and simply because I'm not carrying a fixed weapon it was quite a different challenge, one I haven't seen for a long time.

On initially dropping into the instance I switched to FA-off but accidentally boosted (I usually start the scenario 402 on the distributor, fa-off & zero throttle to maintain a small velocity from the drop in, as the NPC always spawns behind me & I need to turn & have room to scan them). The NPC said 'running away eh?' which I thought was cool adaptive behaviour.

I was quite impressed by the attention to detail here, even though it really boiled down to a hard to kill NPC rather than a threatening situation.

One of the other things I did earlier was drop into a High-RES with a bunch of cargo, hoping to attract some bigger prey but instead had a couple of Vipers distract me while a Hauler with limpets nicked my stuff :O Again I was impressed by the attention to detail. My two point defence made short work of most of the limpets but it only needed one to get through.

 

[Riverside]

I'm currently parked on a planet surface, between two untouched POIs. Both have a System Authority ship next to them (it's a populated system so I'm not going to antagonise them). Really I just parked here for a comfort break.

Occasionally NPC ships fly overhead, a Hauler, an Orca & A T-9. They enter the instance, follow a simple scenario (in this case just fly slowly past then pull up & jump away), and I've got a pirate too, who scanned my parked ship (I'm currently empty), but is now waiting nearby with a pair of wingmates. There is apparently no end to this scenario.

Now admittedly I'm going to be able to just leave, they have no reason to attack. But presumably if I leave it long enough another random pirate will appear, until the instance is full of them, or they are preventing any further scenarios from being created. Surely they should move on & complete their scenario?

I wonder if similar unending scenarios like this are the reason why stations get clogged up with Belugas if a player goes AFK for a while? IMO each scenario should have an end, with the NPC leaving. There is no advantage to these pirates hanging around forever. I assume they are waiting for me to snatch some POI cargo but there are two Police ships nearby (parked). I've sat here for half an hour now, vaguely intrigued to see if they run out of fuel or something

 

[GG7]

I think you're right as the same thing has been happening to me the last couple of days. I had just refitted a new weapon rig out on my FDL, took a few data missions and set of got several updates saying watch my back etc etc but the only thing I saw was a pop up saying the eagle is in my sights bla bla bla, I even scanned him which is usually a guarantee that they will interdict but no, nada, zilch I wasn't interdicted once. For testing out stuff I prefer mission type combat but if it happens again tonight I will end up in a combat zone of one or other type.

They are still quite active as far as "Pirate Lord Assassination Missions" are concerned. In fact, I frequently end up with one of these other bad guys dropping into the same instance with the main target, which can get interesting if both of them are Elite piloted Corvettes or Anacondas!

 

[ebbrell]

Normal super cruse is quiet. Npcs don't seem to interdict as much. it's as though fdev expecting us to have ax weapons, so npcs have been set to easy mode

 

[Riverside]

They are still quite active as far as "Pirate Lord Assassination Missions" are concerned. In fact, I frequently end up with one of these other bad guys dropping into the same instance with the main target, which can get interesting if both of them are Elite piloted Corvettes or Anacondas!

Yeah I had a similar thing with a mission specific FDL and a custom bespoke Elite Conda. I quite like the idea that if you're wily you wait for the sidekicks to find you & take them out one by one, or go full fat & just deal with them all in one go. Wily tactics vs brute force, I like that choice.

My pirate buddies are still with me btw, I used my srv to scan them & they are all clean. No other ships have shown up though, so at least that loop is closed.

 

[Urbanski101]

I have also noticed a drop in NPC pirates and NPC BH coming after me. I have a few bounties outstanding from the last CG so my Gal wide bounty is 15k (ish). I used to get chased by NPC BH for that amount but have not seen one actually have a go at me, plenty of warning TxT messages but from ships not even in the same system as me.

FD, why not make a few level of missions.

Level low.... Low payout and Might get the odd interdiction but probably not.

Level medium.... Much higher mission reward, but Highly likely to get at least one interdiction of a NPC level to your rank or one below.

Level High...... High rewards from the mission, but you gonna get a Elite conda plus 1 other coming at you.

Level Ultimate......Huge mission payout with Material bonus but this is like consta interdiction's, all elite and multiple NPC's at each interdiction.


Then it's up to you what missions you take fully knowing the consequences, so no Rage quitting posts on here!!

Maybe a better implementation of this would be for the security status of systems to actually mean something i.e. Low sec Anarchy/feudal systems would be dangerous and high sec systems would be safe.

Then taking a mission to an anarchy run system would be the level ultimate you refer to and taking a mission to a high sec system would be the level low you refer to. All other system security levels would be shades of difficulty in between the two extremes.

That one change would transform the game and I can't work out why it hasn't been done already.

 

[Wasp0]

Maybe a better implementation of this would be for the security status of systems to actually mean something i.e. Low sec Anarchy/feudal systems would be dangerous and high sec systems would be safe.

Then taking a mission to an anarchy run system would be the level ultimate you refer to and taking a mission to a high sec system would be the level low you refer to. All other system security levels would be shades of difficulty in between the two extremes.

That one change would transform the game and I can't work out why it hasn't been done already.

Yes i think your suggestion and my suggestion could work very well together to make just a little bit more FUN and more of a Challenge for those who want it, and for those that don't they have a good alternative as well.