PETITION: Nerf NPCs

[Xing]

NPC are -wrongly- balanced. For instance. Gallian NPC are overpowered, but New York NPC are extremely weak. The whole thing is still made so that New York be a newbie start up place, which is ridiculous. NPC shouldn't be flying older model of Defender and Patriot, but Guardians and Liberator, and bomber patrol should be included to make them fly upholders.

Same goes for every house capital system; why are they using their VHF only in guard systems?

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[Unseelie]

And when you fly on a corsair and jump to Theta or Eta you "always" get BHG or Outcast NPCs...

ohh wait, maybe it's because you don't notice your own ones when they are there?

What, not notice the green dots that would let me cruise out? I'd notice. I'm paying very careful attention to the fact that I get constant shots for 20k, and never any fights. NPC balance is wrong, as mwerte has said, they might be getting shredded. I hve noticed the difference between npc swns...strong ones farther from the safe points...so near bases, enemy NPCs seem to pwn the locals....

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[tazuras]

NPC are -wrongly- balanced. For instance. Gallian NPC are overpowered, but New York NPC are extremely weak. The whole thing is still made so that New York be a newbie start up place, which is ridiculous. NPC shouldn't be flying older model of Defender and Patriot, but Guardians and Liberator, and bomber patrol should be included to make them fly upholders.

Same goes for every house capital system; why are they using their VHF only in guard systems?

Have to say I mostly agree with this. However I think newbie's need more than one system that they can do missions and survive in outside of missions, so if the VHF and heavy NPC patrols are added to all Capital systems then more systems designed specifically for newb's may need to be added.

Edit: Or perhaps just paths around/through this capital systems that they can utilize if need be.

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[mjolnir]

Well I'm not the one who's setting NPC spawn points, that's the system modelers. I'm just setting loadouts.

In eta Corsair NPCs spawn in groups of 4 with I think 3 of them lvl 17 and 1 lvl 18. OC NPCs come in groups of 3 with 2 x lvl 18 and 1 lvl19.

Due to their loadouts fights against them are actually always very close. When it comes to hitting player ships it's kinda questionable.

Corsair ones have some lvl 8 and lvl 9 guns and 1 shieldbuster each. OC ones have full lvl 9s, Firestalker and the lvl 19 has inferno.

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

[Knuthetal]

I didn't vote, since so far I don't have an opinion. Also - I'm sure eventually I'll look back at this and laugh, but I *hate* fighting anything bigger than a light fighter in a Dagger, especially the LPI VHFs on missions. It's probably just my inner horrible horrible pilot speaking up, though.

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[Navycross28]

If we had more than a 200 player limit on Disco, then we can depend on people to take the over the roles that the computer does now.

Until the we can mandate a galaxy full of players, npcs, no matter how crazy they are a necessary evil.

Trust me, I hate having my junker being stopped every minute by *cough* friendly *cough* pirate npcs distrupting the trade lane.

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[Death.RunningVerminator]

If we had more than a 200 player limit on Disco, then we can depend on people to take the over the roles that the computer does now.

Agreed
If we had more players for each faction then they could replace the roles of your average NPC. Then we would have less use for them and only keep the more important NPCs.
But either way we still need NPCs. The Sirus Sector would be disaster without them.
Just leave the NPCs alone please. We don't need them to change at all.

[David Petraeus]

Actually I would like to see a change in Lawful Patrols near Bases...

Switch the Patriot and Defender's out with Libbies and Guardians near Manhattan and etc...

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If Pershings can be pro Marine, so can I.

[guitarguy]

Usually, the player count is so hight there aren't many NPCs. I don't have a problem with huge capship patrols around planets, but that's the only place they should be. As for fighters, I think the upper level ones need some nerfing, otherwise they can ruin fights and RP situations. Finally, I think the mission description should tell you if you're expected to destroy a capship or not. Although, I honestly would like some NPCs having the capability to kill base campers.

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[sovereign]

NPC are -wrongly- balanced. For instance. Gallian NPC are overpowered, but New York NPC are extremely weak. The whole thing is still made so that New York be a newbie start up place, which is ridiculous. NPC shouldn't be flying older model of Defender and Patriot, but Guardians and Liberator, and bomber patrol should be included to make them fly upholders.

Same goes for every house capital system; why are they using their VHF only in guard systems?

While it's a bit difficult to get a place like New York to be balanced, I would agree that NPCs need some serious work.

As has been brought up before, you should be in no danger of getting nuked right outside your home base by a set of NPCs with infinite powerplants, CDs, and very painful ordinance.

My suggestion is this:

• Either reduce/eliminate enemy NPCs attacking bases (at the very least there should never be caps/bombers attacking those, you should be able to be safe somewhere for crying out loud), or put serious friendly patrols there. I believe that most Corsair and Outcast players will agree with me that the number of BHG attacking Malta/Crete is bordering ridiculous.
  
• Random NPCs should have less CDs. A single low level fighter patrol wouldn't be a problem (as it shouldn't be, read "low-level"...) except that you can't kill them in realistic timespan in any shipclass because their cruise engines take half a second to activate, they have far better turning than they should (look in FLStat, NPC VHFs make LFs look like bricks), and they move randomly (not to mention how they seem to have way too much health- Freelancer NPCs with LFs in 4.84 were surviving Supernovas and Mortars, and I don't think they got nerfed nearly as much as they should have been). So, killing them isn't an option, that takes about 5 minutes for 5 Starfliers, during which time you can be reasonably certain that more NPCs will have shown up. So, what about running? THAT doesn't work either because each of them has 5 CDs, which are virtually immune to CMs (I usually drop 4 Enh CMs to be on the safe side of a single NPC CD and still get disrupted half the time), and they fire them one at a time in perfect coordination to bypass whatever dodging or CMs you use. Now, let's do some quick math. Assume there's only 2 NPCs, that's 10 CDs. Now, it takes 5 seconds to get into cruise, after which you are very shortly disrupted, and can't engage cruise for another 5 seconds. Multiplying for each CD, that's 100 seconds. 2 NPCs, regardless of level, are going to burn over a minute and a half of your life being frustrated at them. If they're high level, you might die to them too. Not to mention that if you burned out enough CMs to successfully fight off these two NPCs, you still probably had to wade through 4 CDs, which requires roughly a third of your CM capacity. THANKS, GUYS. For Enh CMs, that's 8k credits blown on a pair of faceless NPCs. For Heavy CMs, that's 100k credits blown on a pair of faceless NPCs that should cower in terror at your very mention and offer sacrifices to your glory (seriously, that's the reaction I would expect a Starflier to give a Battleship). Rant over, let's get back to our NPC-ridden lives...
  
• Make them stop "pirating" the stuff I just bought from their base... if I pick up a load of Artifacts on Crete, I should be able to undock without a 50/50 chance of getting CD'd for the next ten minutes... I mean, really... it's especially angering when I have a Corsair tag and they "pirate" me for artifacts. SERIOUSLY, GUYS? Not to mention the fact that they're pirating some 4000-odd artifacts which are somehow going to fit in their four Light Fighters... (and they do...)
  
• The Pennsylvania thing is just insane. For people starting their first character and building their way out it's all well and good, but when you're trying to fly your starflier out to New Berlin to make your new RM, getting almost to the TL out of the Badlands and dying in the 2 seconds you can't dodge (god help you if you ran out of thrusters before that) is rather humiliating after the fourth time. "Spend an hour farming the money you need to fight your way out of there" is frankly not good enough, nor is the need to get a /givecash so your RM can buy a Defender to get past the Level 3 Liberty Rogue NPCs! It's really easy to fix, just put an exclusion zone on the NPC spawns in that one little area... I know how to do it myself, if manpower is the problem.
  

I'm going to stop listing things before I get too angry to have fun today. YES, THERE IS A PROBLEM, I understand that you're not the one making the problem, Mjolnir, but you are denying the existence of such a problem. No matter how good it looks on paper or how perfectly the numbers "should" work out, the fact that so many people are getting worked up about it means that there is a problem.

First step is to identify where exactly the problem is, and to do it respectfully without pretending that the whole of the server is full of blind idiots who are making things up because they like controversy... a couple of problem spots have been identified, namely:

• The Rogues at the Pennsylvania gate at Ithaca.
  
• The BHG at Crete, Malta, Toledo, _insert_unlawful_base_here_, etc...
  
• The GRN at... literally everywhere. Specifically, the GRN beating the crap out of unlawful bases. These guys are like the BHG, but with bombers that have infinite powerplants.
  
• NPC capital ships spamming Razors like there's no tomorrow. And considering their powerplant, there really isn't.
  
• Omicron Eta. I'm aware you think it's balanced, but seriously, nobody cares about the numbers on paper if they don't work out ingame. I'm well aware of the huge amount of very deadly Titans when I'm in there on my Outcast or my Corsair. Eppy's right, we did have this discussion last version and except for you, I believe it was unanimously agreed in every thread that the Corsair NPCs needed a serious nerf, especially the ones right outside the Alpha JH and Palermo, which are practically suicide for anything bigger than a VHF. You know something is serious when Dab, Eppy, Joe and McNeo all have the same opinion.
  

That's for starters. All of these have pretty easy fixes... exclusion zones, for instance, or altered refires on the NPC Razors. It won't be perfect, but it sure as hell would be better than what we have now. After clearing up the major problems, we can get to the longer task of fixing them properly.

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