NPCs kinda suck

[boxcartenant]

A few updates earlier, NPCs were quite OP and people were getting instagibbed by hostile NPCs while trying to RP with other players. So they were made a non-issue.

So, I understand that if the NPCs are so OP that they are wrecking players in game then they should be taken out, but it shouldn't be that the NPCs are just decorations in one sector, and then player-difficulty in another. Correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I'm lead to believe that the Mods have the power to balance NPC loadouts so that they have a range of difficulties.

On my side, I took 300k mission - pressumably the safest with easy difficulty - on a Lynx. I ended up cancelling the mission after 20 minutes on second WP, since I got dry on seven 19lvl Mollys and I had like 2% of hull.

No one warned me about mission NPCs as strong as player characters.

Yeah, mission NPCs can be hella hard. I don't think I could do some of the higher difficulty missions alone in a light fighter, even if I was a very good pilot.

One of the issues with putting all the danger in the missions is that not every faction/base has missions. Another is just that space is not a padded room.

I understand that the moderators want this game experience to have a focus on player interaction, and that's fine and good. However, there should be areas where player interaction is more easy or more difficult, depending on each player's faction relationships. Wouldn't it make sense if it were "unwise" for two civilians to sit and chat in pirate space? Because right now, that's perfectly fine, and the only place where players have to be aware of their surroundings is at the far edge of the galaxy.

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There should be a balance between AI presence and AI difficulty. It is not good to have space be mostly empty if the AIs are too strong, because then as soon as you see an AI you'd be dead. But it is not good to have space be mostly occupied if the AIs are too weak, because then there's no suspense, and "sneaking" through enemy space is as easy as turning on cruise and walking away to fix something to eat.

Just an idea, but perhaps the best thing to do would be to give all NPCs a strong combat AI, and then scale their difficulty as a ratio of their weapon output vs the shield recharge rate (at 100% power) of the starting ship. Then increase difficulty proportionately to distance away from the starting system. Naturally, their weapon strength should be similar to their shield strength; every AI should be able to destroy itself. The Mods should be sure that the weakest AI is, at worst, a match for the starting ship when the ai is in a group of 2 or more.

Then, significantly reduce the frequency of AI encounters. Perhaps limit them entirely to encounters with AI who are flying patrol routs (if they aren't already. If they are already, then reduce AI respawn rate). This would make space feel more real, because, for example, buying an expensive radar would be imperative for smugglers. A person wanting to do an especially dangerous trade rout might even have to learn the AI patrol paths to protect himself (almost as if the player's ship were actually in a hostile part of space).

This may require substantial work for the Mods, such as adding a few new guns/shields (i.e. "AIGun_lvl1", "AIGun_lvl2"... etc), so I don't expect it to happen overnight. Does this seem reasonable to you guys?

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