One is called Player-Minor-Faction, another one is called Powerplay, another one has something to do with Raxxla
Why I and many others will rarely play open
- Thread starter vanishboy
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One is called Player-Minor-Faction, another one is called Powerplay, another one has something to do with Raxxla
That is about how my combat rank has risen. Not that it will be Elite anytime soon, but well if I continue playing game long enough, it will be there.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
The first two are PvE activities with optional PvP. The last, well, some say that a CMDR has already visited the system where it is....One is called Player-Minor-Faction, another one is called Powerplay, another one has something to do with Raxxla
True to an extent, but you get to a level where pilot skill matters more. I've seen really good PvP CMDRs in small, "weak" ships fly circles around unexperienced gankers in Anacondas. There's a recent thread where a CMDR in a hauler beat a CMDR in a Conda. And the level of engineering that goes into a hauler is nowhere near a Conda.
Also, if I'm using gimbals against someone with fixed/chaff and they know what they're doing, I'm not having a good day. Engineering makes a difference but in a fight like this the skill gap and experience matters just as much, if not more.
I always laugh when I see one of these "nerf spec ops" or "wing assassinations are too hard" and "I went into a threat 7 signal source and it was threatening" threads. The first is the most common, but it's like....
Spec ops don't show up in low intensity zones so you can avoid ever encountering them (and if nothing else you should expect conflict in a conflict zone of all places)
Wing assassinations - yes, people do do them solo, but the clue's in the name (and the sources are threat 6!)
Threat 7 pirate activity - duh. The highest other source that spawns normally outside a mission is, what, 5?
But at the same time they are shooting and doing combat- if they don't learn by then (which is a fair amount of time and much longer than the other two) its down to their own ineptitude.
And yet for a feature like Powerplay that cries out for better NPCs, you say keep it the same?
In both these cases you can easily grade NPCs to players and establish an actual link between risk and reward for activity.
Nothing new for me. I have also heard from someone who was sitting in an engineered T-9 and interdicted by a corvette. Two minutes later the corvette was destroyed by only this T-9. The T-9 was engineered, the corvette... well, the pilot said probably not
Mostly I take hits and brute force enemies to destruction. Hit taking is handled by brutally strong shields. And brute forcing by persistence and occasional ramming. Would not work against humans.
In ED it should be that if you keep your nose clean and keep to yourself NPCs won't gun for you, but the minute you opt into Powerplay (which is sanctioned conflict) or any POI with a >1 danger rating etc you get better NPCs.
Deleted member 182079
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Are the 'enforcers' that come after you when you defect still as toothless? IIRC I don't think they even interdict you (bug presumably) I wonder if that's been fixed.
My response was regards scaling difficulty based on the Elite combat rank and not other players (who are light years beyond the AI).
Plus, if a player has highly engineered ships the AI should really stop throwing peas at you and use something that can actually worry you.
Never said they had to, but you also can not condemn people for thier play style within the constraints of the game mechanics.
I rarely take part in PVP but if somebody wants to pull me from witch space and test their pilot skills, then depending on what am flying will define if am going to run or make them earn their engineering. But thats the beautiful aspect of Elite! Nothing is one sided. Only pilot experience and knowledge defines it. Elite is not a pickup and dakka dakka with the best of them. You need to earn your pilot skills.
Example: watching Kraits and Cutters get murdered by a Thargoid, then you watch a pilot in an unengineered sidewinder slowly take one apart. Yes the game can be frustrating but with time you earn your wings!
Last time I checked they were without interdictors and flew balsa wood gliders- about as menacing as a used teabag.
My reason for engineering mainly was to get rid of getting sent to rebuy screen by NPC's. As that happened before getting engineered ships.
Deleted member 182079
D
Even just this would probably motivate me to give PP another chance - game tells me I'm "HOSTILE" in red letters, but when I go out and about in enemy territory I'm being left alone completely. Edit - I think the only place you might run into trouble is if PP enforcers scan you at RES sites and the like, right?
Ironically having a better NPC setup would make Open only proposals less necessary for PP. The tenet 'Either NPCs act like players, or players become NPCs' still holds true.
I think (but I'm not positive) that Hostile means players from other powers can shoot at you with no repercussions from system authorities or stations.
Last time I ran into some they had interdictors, but that was a while ago.
They were tenacious enough to track my exploration-fit DBX all the way out to KN Muscae though, which I liked. Sadly, at the end of the day they were still unengineered vipers and flying unarmed ships is against my religion, so they were dispatched in fairly short order.
It's a start though. I honestly want that kind of tenacity from all NPCs, and not just from powerplay. Since swapping ships is all it takes to get rid of bountyhunters (no chance of them coming after your taxi ship for crimes you committed in your murderboat) it's like there's zero consequence to upsetting powerful people in this game.
Some of the NPC dialogue for "incoming enemy" targets reads like it was supposed to be used for assassins to come after you if you abandon missions - what happened to that, that would have been awesome.
Deleted member 182079
D
Yes that's true - was at the receiving end of this ages ago when I didn't know this, and another player just opened up on me in a RES without showing up as 'wanted' on my screen. I asked him after he blew me up, which is how I learned that particular lesson
Thats the sad part about ED- if NPC scaling did not suddenly plateau at such a low level things might be different and modes seen differently. If NPC scaling was done right solo would be sometimes harder than PG or Open I imagine.