Patch When? #8 - Dev Diary - PvE Encounters

[Titan*]

Art by @Kauket

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New Encounters

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Short Overview

You got bored? You want to earn cash by killing NPCs, but missions are boring and too basic for you? You want to fight NPCs that aren't dumb? You don't want to sit in a battlezone and wait for NPC spawns? You hate trading? You want to fly around, explore and find yourself in dangerous situation? Well, you're in the right place, my friend! We've solved all these issues and more.

There are multiple new types of mission-like encounters coming in the new patch. These encounters are challenging; they require some knowledge and multiple people to clear. Hold up, you wanna be a one man army? Don't worry bud, we've got you covered; we will have challenging encounters for solo players too! However, these may not come immediately; their addition is pending review on the test server.

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Encounters

As a trial, we have added these types of brand-new encounters:

• Magellan
  - Location: "E-2" - Liberty Rogues Encounter 1
  - Location: "F/G-2" - Liberty Rogues Encounter 2
  
• Cortez
  - Location: "F/G-6/7"- Liberty Navy Encounter
  
• Omicron Theta
  - Location: "G-7" - Corsair Encounter
  - Location: "F-2" - Outcast Encounter
  
• Manhattan Atmosphere
  - Location: C-5, on same plane with "Back To Space" - LPI Encounter
  
• Tau-23
  - Location: "E-7" - Outcast Encounter
  - Location: "B-6/5" - Gallic Navy Encounter
  - Location: "G-5" - Kusari Naval Forces Encounter
  
• Sigma-15
  - Location: "H-7" - Rheinland Military Encounter
  - Location: "A/B-5" - Corsair Encounter
  
• Omega-3
  - Location: "C-7" - Bretonia Armed Forces Encounter
  - Location: "E/F-7" - Red Hessian Army Encounter
  
• Omega-5
  - Location: "B-2" - Corsair Encounter
  
• Dresden
  - Location: "E/F-1/2" - Red Hessian Army Encounter
  
• Hokkaido
  - Location: "E-2" - Blood Dragons Encounter
  
• Tohoku
  - Location: "D-7" - Kusari Naval Forces Encounter
  

There is also another way to find them in game by using POLITICAL MAP.:

Select Hostile option on political map and it will show you where the zone is.


Encounters are found in places people don't generally visit, even for extended RP purposes. We've got a lot of empty spaces in Discovery, so we're trying out adding interesting PvE stuff to some of these Locations to encourage and reward exploration.

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Encounter AI

Let's talk about new AI. Freelancer is a pretty old game with very limited AI so I tried my best improving the AI for encounters. These NPCs are much more smarter than what we had before, and each class has its own sort of AI controller. However, their main strength still comes from specialized loadouts.

• Fighter AI: Improved AI meant to dogfight players. These have the best accuracy NPCs can have, and force you to pay attention. I've also made new Fighter AI which forces you to chase the NPCs, but it's not currently implemented -- if players express an interest in it, that might change.
  
• Bomber AI: It was tricky to make, however no matter what I do there's just no way to make them dodge versus player capital ships. Freelancer's AI is not designed to fight players in capital ships. As such, Bomber AI just plays little bit safer than Fighter AI.
  
• Gunboat AI: After I saw how bad the old Gunboat AI was, I made them dodge more and actually sit at certain distances to orbit PCs or do hit-and-runs instead of just ramming the player.
  
• Cruiser Brawler AI: This one fights at closer distances but they can kite the player if getting chased.
  
• Cruiser Artillery AI: Classic Artillery AI, sits at longer distances and fires long range weapons at the player.
  
• Cruiser Standoff AI: Acts similar to Artillery AI but better at using weapons; created for Battlecruiser NPCs.
  
• Battleship Standard AI: Battleship AI is pretty similar to Cruiser Artillery.
  
• Battleship Brawler AI: Close range Battleship AI, counterpart to Cruiser Brawlers but with some tweaks.
  

Don't forget, they are not flawless, They can make mistakes or can act weird, so I hope to get reports if they act strange or glitch out so I can do my best to fix them.

We also managed to find a way to make npcs force attack certain ship classes. Currently we got 2 job for AI.

• Anti-Capital Job: Forces AI to attack Capital Ships, Cruisers, Gunboats; they do not engage Fighters until they come within 1000m, and Freighters within 1500m.
  
• Anti-Fighter Job: This is the values we already had, so this forces AI to engage any ship class at any range.
  
  
  
  

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  Difficulty, NPC Loadout and Equipments

To make things easier to understand I've made difficulty tiers for Encounters.

• Difficulty 1.0: This is your main solo-able encounter that can be found anywhere in Sirius. It will have standard NPCs but there can be stronger ones; these shouldn't be a problem for solo players, but they'll require you to know what to target first.
  
• Difficulty 2.0: These encounters are only found in places that will make people interact with each other. These are high risk and high reward; NPCs in this encounter are stronger, they are specialized, and they require a robust knowledgebase. Difficulty 2.0 encounters are designed for two or more people.
  

Note: all the new encounters coming with the new patch will be Difficulty 2.0!

NPC Loadout is the most important thing: you need to know which NPCs are the highest priority. They are now more specialized. There are close range damage dealers, artillery, defence, high survivability/tank ships...
NPC Equipment has been improved to make them challenging, don't forget they can have stronger weapons than player weapons but they are not super intelligent so they have a hard time using this equipment intelligently. However, if ignored, then they become a big issue. Check which NPC has the most troublesome loadout, because taking out important NPCs plays a big role in encounters. Check their weapons by checking wireframe/turrets; scanning cargo doesn't reveal most of their weaponary.
Fighter and Bomber NPCs get a new type of shields. They have increased resistance against capital weapons but are weaker against gunboat and fighter weapons.

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How To Beat Encounters?

This is the part where I'll just say "skill issue" if you fail the encounter.
Now, I don't like to give spoilers, and I want to you to figure out how to beat them and share the info with others, but for now I'll give a bit of info about one of the encounters found in Magellan.

Spoiler

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Difficulty Rating: 2.0

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Requires: at least 2 people
Best Ship Class for Completion: Fighter/Bomber - Gunboat - Cruiser

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The "Fortified Port" encounter is probably one of my best and most fun to complete; it is currently inside an asteroid field so you have to bring smaller ships to beat it.

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Mechanics

Mechanics is the hardest part to understand.
NPC Mechanics
Mechanics have been changed to make encounters better. We increased NPCs' persist ranges from 2500m to 4000m; this will help us to create larger NPC encounters (big thanks to @Haste ). We also made AI target certain player ship classes; vanilla freelancer is not built for capital ships so NPCs weres acting weird if players flew capital ships or gunboats. This should no longer be an issue (thanks to @Aingar).

Encounter Spawn Mechanics
We decided to put a 30 minute cooldown timer to encounters after an encounter is destroyed. The main reason is that this will prevent another encounter spawning instantly, which can kill players with already-damaged ships quickly. Of course, encounter timers only work if the player or players are still in the area: docking/undocking/relogging/changing systems resets the timer so this means you can have another encounter without waiting half an hour.
Encounters respawn every 2 minute, 4 minute for LPI Encounter in Manhattan Atmosphere, Outcast&GN in Tau-23

Encounter Rewards
Encounter rewards are done via bounty plugin income + military salvage drops.

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Future Plans

If everything works as intended, I plan to expand encounters even more. This is where I need your help! To make this more exciting, fun, and challenging, I need your ideas/suggestions. Difficulties can be increased, more interesting NPCs can be added, and rewards can be spicier (within reason of course). Stay tuned for more news!

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[tommygun209]

That's cool. The game is now even more like EvE Online, but with RP and without permadeath

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HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, AND LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN

[Nepotu]

Awesome stuff <3

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[Tenshi]

As someone who has been blessed with getting to test some of these, I can say they're pretty damn fun and @Titan*'s doing the entire community a favor by working on the PVE aspect of the game to make it both engaging and rewarding enough.

I hope that the rewards these zones will yield compared to the time it takes to beat them will be enough to at the very least come equal or close to equal with the rewards you'd get over the same time via trading. It will be very nice to finally have a good alternative to trading that doesn't involve around logging a battleship and AFK right clicking NPCs in some battle-zone until you're bored.

Good work Team.

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[Fab]

I got kited by a cruiser. stuff of nightmares.

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[Leo]

What is Mil Salvage used for? I saw a bit of a hint somewhere related to it but was hoping to get more info here. Will this info come in another Dev Diary? A later patch? Or will we have to find out on release?

All in all, pretty cool stuff.

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[Lusitano]

before i come to this mod i was on another that had some systems with something like that, some strong enemies, in a very specific part of the map far away from any base or route, that were hostile to all and they drop some stuff that could not be bought. that looks good .

[Serpentis]

This sounds great! As a person that severely lacks PvP skills, I look forward to trying this out!

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[Redcroft]

Is there gonna be some nomad random spawns in house space also?

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[BobMacaroni]

awesome, between this and the new hazards being implemented, it's nice to see PVE encounters being fleshed out a lot more. as someone who cant get on as much during peak hours, this is definitely a welcome change, to be able to have more solo activities