PETITION: Nerf NPCs

[mjolnir]

So it's alright if I park my BH GS squadron at Ouray, then? Seeing as GSes are the largest ship type that are operated by Hunters in house space and BH NPCs constantly attack pirate bases. Oh, and all those Rogues/Hackers attacking Manhattan orbit are perfectly in RP, seeing as the NPCs do. And when a Bretonian fleet camps Holman outpost, no one is gonna accuse them of bad RP? Right...

You said there are Navy patrol paths inside nebulas/asteroid fields. Which I agreed with, said they are made by vanilla developers and that they don't go to bases.

So you come with BH GS squadrons? and fleets? Right

Small NPCs attack around enemy bases cause their number/size is too small to provoke any significant reaction. (as in bringing a few bs/gbs++). The Rogue/Hackers attacking Manhattan either run or get blasted really fast, main reason for them in vanilla was to make the space not completely boring. Something you obviously would like to do. You know how it feels to fly around with all NPCs turned off? Completely empty.

Get rid of Regular NPCs usage Train CDs and I think everyone would be alot happier.
I'm all in for that option.

Everyone or just capship/transport pilots? For a fighter it make no difference if they mount Hornet or Train CD, train cd actually hits worse close up now. Again the only "regular" NPCs that use them are in Gamma/Kappa/Delta/Eta/Alpha + lvl 19 NPCs that fly with capship patrols.

and NPCs in gallia - which are open for debate.

I take an Outcast Dreadnought into Eta and shoot up an Osiris. I have it dead in ten seconds, but while it's busy dieing (which takes longer than it took to kill it) its pulse guns have dropped my shield and are dealing me hull damage, which is expensive and can massively interfere with fleet combat (which is my biggest concern. Whoever's NPCs spawn first wins)

It's an NPC a quarter of my size.

"Size" issues again?

I take a nice 400K mission off of Malta in that same Outcast Dreadnought. I am steamrolled by four BHG Destroyers. I kill them all, but they do more hull damage to me than the mission was worth. And what happens when you get one of these in a Destroyer (answer: They have Train CDs and Razors and an infinite powerplant, so you're screwed. Personal experience) or

You get steamrolled but you kill them all? uhh

Dunno how you calculate things lately but even if you do the mission alone their loot is worth much more than the damage you might take.

a fighter? You want to FLY better? Repping just got a hundred times more painful. THAT is a problem.

Did it really? Taking down NPC fighters is now much easier than before.... I can take missions in a Gladiator with mini and without any other hull busting thing and have them done in half the time it took with Titan in 4.84.
Yes watch out which missions you take (and where) if you don't want caps when "repping" but it's not harder than before.

And I don't know about you guys, but the first time I brought a flier out of Penny...well...what weapons platforms? I was dead before I hit realspace the first time. The second time I knew to dodge, but I still got hit, and had a rather harrowing experience that a newbie shouldn't suffer (unless, of course, he's a capwhore).

Similar experience undocking from Hamilton Station in Ontario. Rogues annihilated my flea like three times in a row right next to an Ageira base and a Police JG. >.<

I took a new starflea back and fort 10 times from Pennsylvania to WP (with 70 people on). About 2 times out of that there were some Rogue NPCs at the gate. And once they started firing just as I undocked... one hit on the thruster and I was fine, not even loosing shield.

What I really didn't get answer to is when you get killed in a starflier between Pennsylvania JG and WP by lvl 3 Rogue NPCs how in the hell are you supposed to survive anywhere else in Sirius? If you really can't do that... then yes "waste" the 24k to buy new Defender in Pennsylvania.

Increase the drop value of bigger ships to make the mission worthwhile.

NPC BS drop 1.5 mil worh of loot. NPC dessies some 600k. GBs some 150-200k. So doing anti-cap missions from Crete with 3 people in group (1 GB, 1 Bomber, 1 Titan) gives you some 6-10 mil/hour per member.

What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be possible, because these things wouldn't have infinite powerplants. If they can only get off realistic numbers of Razor shots my shield wouldn't even drop, and my Mortar can have them dead in no time at all, but if they can just keep shooting their pulse cannons indefinitely I'm doomed, flagship or not. ,,,,,,,,,, Also, since the Dessies have Razors, sending bombers up against them would be very unintelligent...

Again I can only tell you to sit there and do the count. They fire much less shots than a player ship would in the same time and as you said they are dead in no time. And yes your BS/Cruiser shield SHOULD drop.

Do as you say and try to send bombers against them, 1 bomber with Nova+SN can do such mission without loosing bots. 2 Bombers have almost a walk in the park. So it actually promotes fighting caps with bombers? :shok:

Missions were originally meant for solo players, and unless the Gods of Repping make an insta-rep tool (which would take a lot of the experience out of it, I think) it ought to stay that way.

Yes, pick a mission area/difficulty according to what you can take and what ship you fly. There are mission ranging from doable in a transport to missions that need 2 bombers. You pick.

Don't bother, it would appear that the people who can fix these things aren't going to no matter what we say.
Yes, Mjolnir, I'm aware that 50-odd people think that nerfing the NPCs is the wrong answer. I'm also aware that about three people in this entire thread have said that NPCs are not badly in need of fixing (not necessarily nerfing, which the poll was about), as opposed to the fifty-odd who posted full complaints with examples.

Yes the few that whine and scream are always heard the most. You are saying that I should ignore the poll because 4 people keep screaming... and because some 40 others post "signed" which doesn't explain anything at all. I'd say that those who post "signed" without any explanation are the "odd" people.

but as of yet I have never gotten a flea out of Pennsylvania on my first try. Ever. Even when the server's busy, it's about 50/50. Screw the numbers, something is wrong, if the NPCs shouldn't be capable of that kind of destruction then find out what's causing it. There IS a problem there whether your or not you'll admit it, I believe that the posters in this thread have established that. You seem to be the only one who cares that it "should" work find yet doesn't.

To find your "problem" I flew back and forth there 10 times as I said. And simply couldn't get the "problem". If you are telling me that it's harder to get from Pennsylvania than to fly past Unioners in Bering/Hamburg... then there's some problem between the chair and the keyboard.... or maybe a bit higher.

If you really think it's that insane, waste the 24k to buy the defender.

Also, the EK trick doesn't exactly fly in a transport. Half of the time, they CD you anyway, and the other half of the time they follow you at full speed anyway.

I have numerous contradicting reports and experiences. When you fly on e-kill the NPCs don't ever CD you (ID doesn't allow them). So as you fly backwards on e-kill and start to fire on them they always go to "evasive" mode and drop off. Ask Jinx how to do it properly as I'm getting tired to explaining it over and over.

If an NPC patrol shows up and attacks your transport, your profits basically just got halved, since even if the EK trick *does* work, you're still only going at 130 m/s as opposed to 350 m/s. No, you can't just wait a few seconds and startup cruise, that doesn't work when the enemy is within 3k and I'm in a fighter with full CMs and it's certainly not going to be any better when the NPCs impulse as fast as I thrust (and the NPCs do move faster than us, hell, I remember some catching up to my ship on cruise when they were quite obviously on impulse...).

"Attacks your transport" ..but "you'r in a fighter with full CMs?" :wacko:

Yes if NPCs attack your transport in Omegas/Omicrons your profit will get lower. These are dangerous areas.
NPCs catching to your cruising ship on impulse is simply your imagination.

And as for the specific examples that somehow disprove the trend, like the Legionnaire... you haven't, by chance, ever actually tried to kill an NPC Legionnaire, have you? I spent five minutes killing just one of them in one of my Eagles. I consider a reduced agility on it a piece of mercy rather than balance...

Yes I have "by chance" killed dozens of them. If the server/my connection doesn't lag they are rather easy kills.

So... any more things you'd like to say the playerbase is wrong about? Maybe say that we should all do high-level missions in our fighters (and yes, I've been sent up against a set of Osirises in a mission that went for 120k, you *cannot* predict which will give you fighters and which caps in locations where both are offered)? Perhaps you'll next suggest that we fly nothing but LFs, KU DDs, and things that fly like those ships- but no, the Whale must be surely as combat capable as those ships! Or howabout say that our facts are all wrong and that all these things we're complaining about never happened and are actually cardamine-induced hallucinations! That's definitely more likely than the playerbase being right about anything.

Player base as of now thinks NPCs don't need nerfing....

As to which mission gives you caps or not. The easiest way is to change the base you take them from.

Sorry for the tone here, but I'm getting a bit fed up with being told "you're wrong, shut up" or "then you must just suck" when it seems like everyone else has the same issue. I can understand it when all the posts are "/signed" but when they're "/signed because of A, B, and C" you might want to consider listening. Fancy that, listening to people. Sadly, it seems to be about as common as avoiding NPC CDs.

I am trying to listen to people and then filter their complains. Then try to put those that are justified to the test. It shows most aren't.

As it has been shown numerous of times people will scream about anything and come with craziest made-up stories. So no there won't be any rapid changes to "FIX IT NOW IT SO ****ED" style of arguing.
*points at Igiss's quote in his signature*

Just flew my BH dessie from Delta to O-56 (scrapping it and getting a Manta, I'm fed up of it sitting around, eating all my cash and not doing anything...), and, as soon as I jumped from 41 to 15, I had about 8 Corsairs of varying types on me. I couldn't cruise, as they simply CDed me each time (that's a destroyer we're talking, here), and, due to my primarily anti-cap setup, I was unable to kill them quickly. They, in return, proceeded to drop my shield to about 1-2 bars as I tried in vain to do the e-kill+turn thing (what a surprise, doesn't work in big ships). When I eventually managed to get around and bring my guns to bear, I was able to slowly pick them off one by one (pulses do not great antifighter weapons make).

Interestingly, passing through the system, I later encountered 4 Hessians, which were unable to even make my shield wobble...

So you took BHG Dessie without anti-fighter defenses trough hostile territory and had trouble? Great.

As to the e-kill+turn refer to JInx's page long explanation again.

And what if a trader is dropped out of a lane by a player pirate and immediately encounters a couple of wings of hostile NPCs dropping his shield? Trader is not gonna be fleeing from them, as the player pirate wishes to conduct his RP session, pirating the trader. The trader is also not gonna be killing them, as that indicates hostile intent to the pirate. Way to kill pirating RP to "2mordai" "Ok".

Only NPCs flying along TLs that are capable of dropping transport shield at any reasonable rate are in Gallia. But there are also weapon platforms that fire at them.

This is true, only the dev team can make the decision on if this is worth it, but I think we should be proposing the changes that we feel would be best, not the ones that are easiest for them, so they can make an informed decision. If any developer disagrees or would like to comment on how feasible (or infeasible) this would be please feel free to do so.

Propose changes then, instead of saying "nerf NPCs", "nerf them all, everywhere".

One thing which is not feasible right now is separating anti-cap mission in an easier way. It's either they way it is now - needing you to think which one to take and in worst case just take mission from different base. Or removing all "Free-flying" NPC caps completely.

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.

[Benjamin]

Only NPCs flying along TLs that are capable of dropping transport shield at any reasonable rate are in Gallia. But there are also weapon platforms that fire at them.

That's a tautology, pretty meaningless unless you define 'reasonable rate'. I've been pirating people in Stuttgart who've been pumping bats or taking hull damage from the NPCs. So what does this mean? That the trader and I were doing too much RP? An 'unreasonable' amount?

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Join Cryer Pharmaceuticals

[darthbeck]

NPC BS drop 1.5 mil worh of loot. NPC dessies some 600k. GBs some 150-200k. So doing anti-cap missions from Crete with 3 people in group (1 GB, 1 Bomber, 1 Titan) gives you some 6-10 mil/hour per member.
Again I can only tell you to sit there and do the count. They fire much less shots than a player ship would in the same time and as you said they are dead in no time. And yes your BS/Cruiser shield SHOULD drop.

gunboats never drop anything good for me. really.

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<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>

[mjolnir]

gunboats never drop anything good for me. really.

If you mean rogue/molly gbs they don't now. Which is an oversight and it is already fixed for next update.

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.

[Athenian]

Having seen what the BHG npc patrols in Minor just did to Harvester 21.....I can see how they might be considered tough.

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Former member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"
Discovery Community Forum Rules

[darthbeck]

If you mean rogue/molly gbs they don't now. Which is an oversight and it is already fixed for next update.

ok. thats good. it really sucks when you spend 5-10 minutes on a GB, then only get about 10k worth of stuff

If you mean rogue/molly gbs they don't now. Which is an oversight and it is already fixed for next update.

ok. thats good. it really sucks when you spend 5-10 minutes on a GB, then only get about 10k worth of stuff

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<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>

[Screenlag]

well, you could nerf them a bit, but I think there should be npcs from the system's controller. Like, liberty militray/police in the Liberty space, corsairs in corsairs space. You should be ganked when you treespass into hostile territory.

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[Fozzie]

One thing to add , I agree the NPCs should definitely lose their train Cds. NPCs have gone from being a minor annoyance to a MAJOR pain in the ass which doesn't make much sense on a RP server imho.

[Unseelie]

I Agree with Benjamin. 3 or 4 titans in 47/49 can drop my Adv Transport shield in under 30 seconds...

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[mjolnir]

One thing to add , I agree the NPCs should definitely lose their train Cds. NPCs have gone from being a minor annoyance to a MAJOR pain in the ass which doesn't make much sense on a RP server imho.

Again it makes one ask what ship you are flying.... for a fighter/bomber it's just the same to try to evade from hornets as from train cds.

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.