NPC Balance

[Envomni]

I see the pinned topic at the top seems to be strictly about ship balance.. sheilds, hull, agility etc, so I think this is the right approach to start a new topic on this specific balance issue.

In a few other posts, such as in the "Discovery Freelancer RP 24/7 Server ", there are people posting to explain that they are tired of doing the NPC missions, to find that they go on, and on, and on from NPC's that seem able to regen forever. Two posts even came as someone stating that they intended to leave the server because they were fed up with it. One of those posts is..

http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10242

The problem stems from chasing down enemy NPC's in a mission, and getting them right down to the last barely visible bar of life, and then seeing that regardless of what you smash them with.. nothing is now happening. The hits show, you hear the NPC screaming that they're hit or life support is out.. but still it doesn't kill them off. Next, they make some wild impossible shifts and turns you could never do, and 8 seconds later, they have 60% of their hull and 20 to 25% of their sheild back.. though youve' scanned them to see that they had no bots left.

Making the missions more challenging - absolutely. Its important that the game is not too easy, because you'll get bored and leave quick. But the same is true of this kind of over-invincibility stuff. If your level 9 and 10 weapons do no damage hit after hit, when they should be wiping these guys out, that too utterly ruins the sense of being here. Why play? You put all that effort into getting yourself the ship and weapons you want.. but you can't do anything with them, because the game has pre-defined when it will let you kill the enemy.

I hope the admins can make some adjustments here. It would be a shame to see more good RP players state their intention to leave because of this frustration, and it would be just as bad if it lead to players deciding to ignore PvP rules to make the profit they want because they're fed up with the NPC invincibles.

Thank you to the mod makers for your hard work into this game, even though Microsoft has done nothing to support it and help it grow. As a programmer, I do understand the time this takes out of your life to tweak and adjust, the late nights, the occaisional spousal "fights" over the time your putting on the machine, etc. Your players do appreciate your committment to make a damn good game.

[Grail Quest]

I feel that a lot of mod-makers out there do not understand what nanos and shield batteries are really for.
For convenience, let's call them (healing) potions.

If, as a matter of course, player characters are meant to carry them -- if a game starts and they are assigned a handful of them as default gear -- then the message being conveyed by the game designers is: This is not meant to be a realistic game. You will face what would normally be impossible odds, and as part of the "excitement" and "heroism" factor of the game, can expect to pull through.
Look at the SP campaign, mission 4. Just you and Juni, and a swarm of heavy fighters, plus capital ships. Incidentally, notice that the capital ship guns were carefully designed to not obliterate you with a single hit. Again, the framework of Freelancer is you playing a character doing heroic things. Things you see on TV and movies. Challenging things, but elevated to a romanticized, heroic, level.

So where do potions come in? Well, they let the character have the same gear as the NPCs, and yet survive those heroic scenarios. They necessarily have a game presence so that the player can buy them for their PCs, but otherwise, they really "do not exist". And certainly, within the game, they illogically should not exist in the potion form. I mean, if you can pop a shield battery to restore your shields, why not just design a better engine, or one with a bigger fuel reservoir, to power your shield? And why can batteries instantly restore your shields while your engine can't?
Potions are an explicit cheat, for the PC "only", and recognized as that type of artifact in game design everywhere.

Another use of potions is to extend the useful mission duration. Instead of running back to base for repairs every ten real-time minutes of gameplay, you can use (and collect) potions in the field. This allows useful, non-tedious, gameplay to continue and alleviates a lot of logistics for players.
Again, potions are an explicit cheat to allow this.

Because potions are a cheat for PCs, you will very rarely see NPCs in any game using them. Or if they do, the will do so very sparingly, even if their resources would allow them to have more. This, I believe, is because game designers understand that keeping the game action flowing is part of the game experience. Therefore, unimportant encounters will not be life-or-death situations, but just popcorn to keep things lively.

*

In Discovery (and other mods), giving too much of anything to the NPCs is a horrible mistake. For example, in the TNG mod, Xenos have mines. A *lot* of mines. And they drop them like pepper from a shaker. And he mod makes mines much more effective. As a result, even on a difficulty 1 mission, you can spend a half hour getting knocked about by mines and be able to do nothing about it, nor make any headway in the mission. It's ridiculous.

Similarly, in Discovery, giving NPCs a lot of potions simply extends combat to tedious levels. It makes combat "challenging" by virtue of prolonging it. As a side effect, it wastes my time. If I want a combat-intensive game, I can just attack wings flying about or take more missions and more difficult missions. I do not want to spend a half hour crawling through one small mission.

What is the design goal that resulted in giving NPCs potions? Is it to prolong combat? If so, yes, but the original goal is flawed, IMO. Is it to make combat more exciting? You can instead reduce the number of potions that PCs can carry, thus heightening the risks involved in getting into combat, without unnecessarily extending the actual duration of combat.
At that same time, recognize also that by reducing the potion allowance (or giving potions to random encounters), you are also reducing useful flight time. How does that enhance gameplay? Or are players running to the nearest friendly dock for repairs all the time?

[mwerte]

my opinion ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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[Eppy]

Honestly, I agree with the Easier NPCs party...I know we aren't ALL as bad pilots as Eppy, but come on, it's gotten ridiculous, especially since missiles aren't worth crap anymore.

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Quick comment - we thought that Panzer was the Leader, Swift. -Agmen

Which Dreadnought was that?

One of your nine.

[Horon]

Ive been hearing about it taking 45 minutes to take down a lvl 19 NPC fighter, and thats never happened to me. Maybe its the fact that if a fight takes too damn long, I say screw this and haul ass, or the fact that most of my NPC fighter battles take place with me in my gunship. Either way, this is getting ri-damn-diculous.

Pardon my anger.

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While being quite funny, your sig was the biggest one i've ever seen so far. No more than 700x250 please. ~utrack
http://pastebin.com/SYQXBufs

[ghostcat]

Meh, I rarely have trouble with fighter missions, but the cap-ships can be crazy. However, I already posted my opinion about the armour, so I'll stop while I'm ahead:P.

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........Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;..........But when the blast of war blows in our ears,.....
........Or close the wall up with our English dead...........................Then imitate the action of the tiger;.................
........In peace there's nothing so becomes a man........................Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,.........
........As modest stillness and humility:........................................Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage!....

Dasher

"Another popup faction. Great. What's wrong with my popup blocker?" - Denelo
"Oh come on, slow and steady doesn't win any races, fast and steady does."

Back, if I can get this thing working!

[StrangeCase]

In short:
-NPCs are unfair, cheap, and overly powerful. It's totally bogus.
-This issues ranges from a minor annoyance to a major grievance in multiplayer games.
-This also single-handedly ruins the single-player experience. Which is extremely sad, because 4.83 was really cool.
SO...
Either bill Disco is a multiplayer only mod, and focus on development with issues like capship balance, trade routes, and so on... or revamp the single-player experience. I would even argue for a SP-version of the mod. All it would do is remove NPC healing and slash prices. That's it. Save individual ship-to-ship, weapon-to-weapon, shield-to-shield tweaking for multiplayer.
Make us single-players overpowered again. Let us effortlessly wade through entire house fleets. Let us come home from school and work and blow up some space pirate bases, even though realistically we wouldn't be able to do so. Let us have all sorts of advantages that make no sense, like having the only rechargeable shields, batteries, and nanobots in the entire goddamn universe. Let us single-players have our fun back. I miss it.

Please?

[Tic]

The thing that bugs me mostly 'bout them is that they have Wasp CDs and are able to stop gunboats and Cruisers.

When i have Wasp i cant even stop a light fighter...

There is also a part where 4 NPC attack and in one moment they just multiply to 8 or 12, but not like they come from 2k, they just appear in 500m radius...

And also like u pointed out, their hull regenerates even if they dont have bots.

[shadowjman]

i think that they should weaken the npc's armor by alot because i hit a wild full on with a mortar and it still had 1/4 of its armor left. now i think that is a bit messed up considering any player piloted fighter would get wiped off the face of the galaxy if it got a direct hit from one of those. and they should have a limit on how many CDs they can use because it makes it impossible to get away ina starflier when you start a new character because they seem to have godly aim with those things i think you should ban em for aim botting :D

-shadowjman

[underd0g]

I'd like to see even harder NPC battles at higher levels - but coupled with higher rewards. Perhaps it can tug down on the concentration of PvP battles if you have to bring your friends with you taking on a difficult NPC encounter.

And can someone answer me this: why no shields on NPC capital ships ? Imagine going out on a possible NPC Battleship encounter, mission in it self wort roughly what the common pirate taxes in a couple of hours (I don't know, 4 million ?). Going out alone, even in a gunboat/cruiser would be suicidal if you're up against 4 NPC BS with shields and backup fighters.

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My characters on Disco:
[LN]-Andy.Doggett, The.Flying.Betty, Russ.Dalton, Harald.Treutiger

Stories:
The Shellback Identity
Trader Blues