Yeah, it is funny how people don't seem to remember all the changes that have happened, and simply grump over what is wrong, instead of thinking about what DOES work and what is right...but yeah..
Whoaaah!!! Gone for 4 months and ED is a whole new GAME
- Thread starter Werewolf13
- Start date
I had a lucky/challenging instance in a HazRes the other night. It was a juicy res with Pythons, FDLs and Anacondas all causing havoc for the mining T9s and their escorts. It was quite a sight. In addition to that, I found that two of the major AI bugs were not happening this time. NPCs were firing back (PIPs bug) and they were trying to maneuver on me (spinning bug). It had been so long since I'd seen the front end of a Python I'd forgotten they can unload quite a bit of firepower.
This was probably one of the most fun times I've had bounty hunting, yet. Positioning and power management were all important again, it felt good. If they can fix those two combat AI bugs (plus the counter to reverse flying), I think PvE combat will be at a nice solid point.
Back in the Res last night...NPCs are back on the sauce...eh, fun while it lasted
One of the worst things that can happen with the NPCS are if they stop dead in space! or even slow down when you open fire on them. They need to boost away, and try to get behind you, I've seen this a few times and oh boy when that happen you know that this NPC did some serious home work 
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It is very cool, the AI is much improved. Had the same experience after they updated it. Dangerous, Master, and Elite you need to watch out for them. They are deadly in wings now as well!
Had a fight with a elite cobra III, in a cobra IV... was expecting the normal fight, and I was like wow this is a hard fight game is making me work for this one. After destroying them was going to a station to repair being at 25% health was 75% when I got interdicted, had a wing of 3 eagles interdicts me, they had rail gun and in one volley my shields were down. 2nd volley my ship exploded... and I was like what happened? [hotas] had a federal assault ship that was behaving so much like a human player in the dog fight last night, I had to double check they didn't have CMDR in front of their name.
Unlike what some people rage,.. frontier has done a great job with the game, looking forward to the Engineers update
Agreed, the kebab maneuver is the most disturbing AI bug at the moment.
Not all ships suffer from it though.
I have never encountered a FAS doing it and the Anaconda doesn't either.
The Conda suffers from the problem that very often when you attack it, it first needs to point it's nose at you before it will open fire.
This particular bug makes npc Conda's easy prey.
When the Mistress of Minions repairs this the Anaconda should become a lot harder to take on.
The FAS is currently one of the coolest npc opponents.
If FAS move in wings with other biggies (like Pythons or Anacondas) I am very careful, because they are really nasty... as they should be. Love them.
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Flossy
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Welcome back!
Yep that's because if you go over 100 in the No Fire Zone of a station, you are considered to be speeding (confirmed by notification just above the Fuel Gauge) and if you make contact with another ship, regardless of whose 'fault' it is, you will get fined for reckless flying.
It's caught me out a few times. Also some NPCs can be very persistent now (not sure how long that has been going on) and keep interdicting all the way to a station sometimes. At least then the station usually takes them out.
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I totally agree, MoM need to make sure that they open fire with the turrets as soon as you open fire. Slowing down is also not a good option unless they are trying to place themselves behind some obstetrical and you. But yeah, the turrent should be used more on the larger ships. I imagine that in the near future they will also start launching fighters, so that will add to the equation.
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A big thing I noticed since five months ago was that the game has become a lot more seamless - so much of the immersion-breaking continuity-issues when transitioning between instances were fixed. You know how when you'd drop out of supercruise, the big planet that was right in front of you in supercruise would vanish for several seconds during the drop sequence, then re-appear again in sub-space. Most of that kind of weirdness is gone.
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Yes, it's getting better, now we just need the stations and outpost to do the same thing as on the planets. I really dislike that you are exiting SC and then SLAM! space station is right in front of you, not good, not good.
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No that's accurate to how it should be. (If anything I suspect the station could appear quicker). I think you may be underestimating the magnitude of speed and deceleration when you drop out of supercruise. Even though you slowed right down in supercruise to enable a safe drop, you merely slowed to slower than the speed of light, not actually slow; you are still travelling mindbogglingly catastrophically fast when you drop.
In supercruise, even when you are "completely stopped" - travelling as close to zero as it is possible to go - you are still travelling approximately a hundred times the top boost speed your ship can reach. And typically at a station you are coming in a lot hotter than that. The station comes up so fast so quickly because you're moving towards it at seriously that speed, and the ship slows down to regular speeds nearly instantaneously, all handled by flight computers.
Planets are much bigger and much further away than stations, so they take longer to fill your screen at similar speed. Same way it can take hours of cycling towards a mountain before it fills your vision, but cycling the same speed eye-first into a falling leaf, it will BLAT into your face and fill your vision nearly instantly
You raise an interesting question though - does your speed in supercruise when you drop affect the speed at which you see the station approaching at the end of the drop? I suspect the answer is "no", but now I'm going to have to check
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No that's accurate to how it should be. (If anything I suspect the station could appear quicker). I think you may be underestimating the magnitude of speed and deceleration when you drop out of supercruise. Even though you slowed right down in supercruise to enable a safe drop, you merely slowed to slower than the speed of light, not actually slow; you are still travelling mindbogglingly catastrophically fast when you drop.
In supercruise, even when you are "completely stopped" - travelling as close to zero as it is possible to go - you are still travelling approximately a hundred times the top boost speed your ship can reach. And typically at a station you are coming in a lot hotter than that. The station comes up so fast so quickly because you're moving towards it at seriously that speed, and the ship slows down to regular speeds nearly instantaneously, all handled by flight computers.
Planets are much bigger and much further away than stations, so they take longer to fill your screen at similar speed. Same way it can take hours of cycling towards a mountain before it fills your vision, but cycling the same speed eye-first into a falling leaf, it will BLAT into your face and fill your vision nearly instantly
You raise an interesting question though - does your speed in supercruise when you drop affect the speed at which you see the station approaching at the end of the drop? I suspect the answer is "no", but now I'm going to have to check
We need to see the station in SC, how the drop out is handled I will leave to the game designers, but I find it weird that I can't see a huge structure like a station before i drop out. Then they need to make it in two stages like on planets if that helps.
If drawn correctly, a huge structure like a station would never be more than a speck (a few pixels or less) in supercruise - the speeds and distances in SC are so huge that you'll always be too far away to see the structure, and if you weren't too far away to see it, you would have already shot past it in the blink of an eye - even zero-throttle in SC is literally orders of magnitude faster than a bullet.
It seems weird that you can't see the structure because the numbers involved are astronomical and our brains just won't wrap themselves around that, but it makes sense - even a giant structure becomes a speck when you're over a thousand miles away from it. Let alone a hundred-thousand.
If you set the throttle to zero, and traveled extremely precisely to a station at zero (which is still very fast, but as slow as you can go), I think you're right that as you shot past the station it would be possible that you lined it up accurately enough that there would be a brief moment when it was close enough that you should be able to see the structure - but I've played hundreds of hours and I've never done a zero-throttle station flyby (there is no reason to do that) so speaking for myself I'm not all that bothered that the game isn't built for showing that contingency. With normal ship behavior, the station would never be more than a speck until you get computer-dropped out of SC precisely right on its nose.
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