PETITION: Nerf NPCs

[Derkylos]

Ok, I would just like to address the statement that NPCs "add to RP", which is just plain wrong. Sure, spawns of uber NPCs at hostile bases may deter base camping, but the same can be achieved by base defences. Now we have pulse turrets on stations and heavy hitting guns, the NPCs are not required to defend bases. Last I saw, Darmstadt could easily de-shield a battleship.

Now, to NPC "RP" (NPCs cannot actually "roleplay", they are an AI, and the concept cannot be applied, they merely do what is programmed).

First off, pirating. We all know that NPC prates demand full cargo from anyone they encounter that is not of their own faction and not hostile, and open fire if said cargo is not relinquished. This means that most NPCs only pirate Junkers and Zoners. Corsairs in Theta actually pirate Zoners right outside of Freeport 9. Similarly, I have witnessed Corsairs pirate Zoners outside of Gran Canaria, Rogues prate Junkers at Rochester, Corsairs pirate Junkers at Trafalgar...Not only do they pirate these neutral factions right outside their home bases, but, should they win the ensuing combat, the pirates will then go on to dock at that exact same base.

Related to the above, Hogosha. If you were to hang around outside the Hogosha base in New Tokyo, you will observe Hogosha NPCs pirating Farmers' Alliance NPCs. You will also witness both Junkers and Hogosha pirating supposedly neutral traders next to police/military bases, one of the most amusing of which is when a group of Junkers attempt to pirate a Libertonian convoy at Planet Houston.

Now, spawns. The general consensus among people here seems to be that lawful forces do not patrol in asteroid fields/nebulas/etc. Well, according to NPC patrol paths, they do. One can find RFP patrols (that's the police, not the military) in all the asteroid fields in New Berlin, wings of KNF dragons flying through the nebula surrounding the research station in Honshu (outside of the mined area mind you, and even spawning in Chugoku, itself. LN patrols roam the scrap fields in New York, flights of Crusaders meander through the Leeds smog clouds. If you intend for one moment to tell me that the locations of any of these patrols is "correct", I am baffled as to how pirate organisations survive.

Furthermore, we have Bounty Hunter patrols. I apologise for using Darmstadt as an example again, but it is my main unlawful character...anyways, while idling outside said base, every 30 seconds to a minute, 2-4 Bounty Hunters will come along and be utterly decimated by the station defences. Now, I know Bounty Hunters have a special role in the tracking down and apprehending of criminals...but to wantonly attack a criminal base with no chance of success? Intelligent use of resources? Similarities can be seen in Leeds and Tau-31, with Chimeras suicidally rushing the Derby, and Templars attacking the battleship at Holman.

And I won't go into what happens when you jump from SIgma-17 to Omicron Theta...suffice to say it involves more Bounty Hunters than can fit on your contact list. Do these guys have nothing better to do than fly circles 'round a jump hole?

Now, you may ask "what does this have to do with the capabilities of NPCs in a fight?" Well. As a pirate/unlawful/revolutionary/whatever the faction prefers to be called, most will have an agenda. Some of the most amusing RP to be had involves discussing this agenda with the opponents, Attempting to convince them that your viewpoint is right. In order to do this, one requires an area free from interruption, somewhere safe. If NPCs have the same capabilities as players, whilst still spawning in ludicrous locations, there is no way for such discourse to occur, and we are left with "/setmsg 1 Hostile sighted, engaging #t."

Not all police-pirate encounters have to end in a firefight (zomgwhat, there is a way to end an encounter that does not involve the destruction of one side or the other?!?!?), but, when you are negotiating a way to leave peacefully, and there are 4-8 NPCs from each side shooting at you, dropping your shields and generally being a threat, it is very hard to come to a peaceful resolution.

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[Unseelie]

In addition to Sov's list: Don't forget Omicron 47, its a warzone and seems just as out of whack as Eta.

Also, can we do anything about the Kusari traders? Everywhere I go, NPC battleships (stationary and not) open up on my Bowex trader because I happen to be hostile to the random Kishiro or Samura NPC...I imagine, with the Rhienland/Liberty war, either side will be getting this problem in the two neutral houses, such as I have since 83..come 85, this is a huge problem, because when a cruiser patrol opens fire on one's train out of the blue...Well. You can imagine.

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[mjolnir]

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.

a) I can sit both in front of Crete or Malta, tabbed, with plenty of time to come back in if there happens to come so many BHG NPCs that they won't get blasted by the defenses within 20 seconds as they normally do.

b) BHG NPCs were there ever since vanilla... getting blasted.

[*]Random NPCs should have less CDs.

Random is a very wide definition.

(look in FLStat, NPC VHFs make LFs look like bricks)

This actually depends a lot, for example those BHG hammerheads turn exactly as fast as player ships, Legionaries turn even slower :shok:

they move randomly

That's lag, either yours or servers, server turns NPCs off if it starts to lag too much.

(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).

You think, they armor actually got reduced more than 6 times.

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.

Killing whom isn't an option now? It takes about 3 passes to kill 5 starfliers.

So, what about running? THAT doesn't work either because each of them has 5 CDs, which are virtually immune to CMs

Most NPCs which have CDs do have wasp cruise disruptor.

If you don't know it yet there is a tactic how to evade just about any NPCs without killing them or using CMs.

[*]Make them stop "pirating" the stuff I just bought from their base...

Problem is that the same no matter what id/side you'r on. Yes it could be somehow linked to ID. For know as you for sure know they scan you less if you have better reputation with them, with full green they almost never scan you.

[*]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.

There are 4 navy weapon platforms at the JG to Pennsylvania which blast the Lvl 3 Rogue NPCs just fine. If you get disrupted in the TL further on.. you also get intercepted by lvl 3 rogue NPCs. Now if your RM can't survive those in a starflea how does he intend to fly past lvl 8-10++NPC in Bering and Hamburg?

When you'r setting a new character it usually costs you at least around 17 million (armor + ship). If you really can't get past lvl 3 NPC in your Starflea then yes use 26k to buy a defender.. or any of the other choices there. If you spend the whole 174k to buy a Hawk there, you can fly pretty much anywhere.

I do remember that for setting up Corsair characters it was normal to fly in a Starflea from NY trough Alaska to Gamma... with Nomad BS patrols spawning anywhere. Yet just about everyone in the offical corsair factions did it.
So no I do not see the "INSANE" thing here.

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.

Somehow there are now other 50 people who don't see your problem. The "NPC thread" show above all one thing. It's always the "screamers" that get heard the most. Followin the previous threads one would thing that the vote results here would be some 90vs10 in favor of nerf... yet they aren't.

Anyway yes there are for sure some local problems. Which is why "Should NPCs be nerfed?" doesn't help anything. Listing things does yes. But you just as a few other people start to generalize and throw around half-true "facts" that you didn't even check to say "this is so broken, fix everything up, latest by yesterday".



Too many quotes mess things up... so have to split in 2

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

[mjolnir]

[*]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.

This is much more a system feedback thing, so post it in there so that the system designer who did them can change it.

[*]NPC capital ships spamming Razors like there's no tomorrow. And considering their powerplant, there really isn't.

Get admin shield park one patrol and do the count. You will be rather surprised how seldom they fire guns. If you do the math and count it out, they do about the same damage as player capship. Except that they hold formation/distance. So they are easy to evade if you choose to.

All patrols have "weak" points in their loadouts, with exploiting them properly it's quite easy to kill them, unless off course you try it in a lone GB. A lone bomber with SN + nova can kill cruiser patrols without ever loosing shield for example. Getting some 800k in a few mins.

[*]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.

I said that Corsair vs Outcast "standard" group is balanced. How and where they spawn is a matter of system design. The people you mentioned were talking about places where they spawn not about how "powerful" they are. Again this is a matter of system design and feedback should be dericted that way - which all those 4 you mentioned have tons of room for and they also had the opportunity to express it since august.
The problem I can see there is that NPCs sometimes "overfill" the available slots. How it works - same OC vs Corsair groups fight... then during the fight one side gets "reinforcement".. which makes it win. So lets say there are now 6 Corsair NPCs. Now if the new single OC patrol comes, it will probably get killed. If a single Corsair patrol comes...it will reinforce the "overkilling" NPC side. This goes on until all NPC slots (say 12) are "filled" only by one side.
As I said I'm no system designer but maybe this can be countered by selecting some maximum number for each side independently.



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The general consensus among people here seems to be that lawful forces do not patrol in asteroid fields/nebulas/etc. Well, according to NPC patrol paths, they do. One can find RFP patrols (that's the police, not the military) in all the asteroid fields in New Berlin, wings of KNF dragons flying through the nebula surrounding the research station in Honshu (outside of the mined area mind you, and even spawning in Chugoku, itself. LN patrols roam the scrap fields in New York, flights of Crusaders meander through the Leeds smog clouds. If you intend for one moment to tell me that the locations of any of these patrols is "correct", I am baffled as to how pirate organisations survive.

Check the patrol paths a bit more carefully, yes they are inside nebulas and asteroid fields, but they don't head to enemy bases.. except for BHG.

Now the patrols paths were made by vanilla freelancer developers. :shok: So yes I do intend forever to tell you that they are "correct" according to vanilla freelancer developers. The same developers that btw made it rather very hard for someone hostile to OCs survive in Alpha in vanilla.


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In addition to Sov's list: Don't forget Omicron 47, its a warzone and seems just as out of whack as Eta.

What exactly is out of whack there?
From what I saw Corsair npcs win close to Fes.. while hessian ones win close to Casablanca.

Also, can we do anything about the Kusari traders? Everywhere I go, NPC battleships (stationary and not) open up on my Bowex trader because I happen to be hostile to the random Kishiro or Samura NPC...I imagine, with the Rhienland/Liberty war, either side will be getting this problem in the two neutral houses, such as I have since 83..come 85, this is a huge problem, because when a cruiser patrol opens fire on one's train out of the blue...Well. You can imagine.

The way I understand that (and the way it works for my KNF ships/traders) if you are hostile to say Bowex NPCs in Liberty and Green to Liberty lawful bases, they won't turn hostile. But neutral bases will turn hostile and can in turn influence the green ones.
There's no really easy fix against this unless messing with a ton of things. So maybe don't be hostile to them on your Bowex? Yes you should be hostile to KNF/KSP, but there's nothing forcing you to be hostile to trading companies afaik.

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

[Derkylos]

Check the patrol paths a bit more carefully, yes they are inside nebulas and asteroid fields, but they don't head to enemy bases.. except for BHG.

Now the patrols paths were made by vanilla freelancer developers. :shok: So yes I do intend forever to tell you that they are "correct" according to vanilla freelancer developers. The same developers that btw made it rather very hard for someone hostile to OCs survive in Alpha in vanilla.

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...

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[Elsdragon]

I have to say BULL, the starflyers get raped the minute they leave, and no amount of weapons platfroms stopps it. I can see strong NPCs everywhere within 5k of a major base, but the constant Death by random BS with fighters with trains is to much*signs petion*

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No longer a slave to the man!

[darthbeck]

/signed
/signed
/signed

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

[ugliestmoose]

Personally I'm fine with NPC strength right now, it's their showing up every 30 seconds by the half-dozen (if not more) that drives me bonkers. Just the other day I was engaging in a pvp in Stokes Asteroid Field in my Molly, when about 10-12 piranhas or barracudas or something or other show up - they weren't hurting me per se, but they were ramming me like little kamikazes and making it, well, a bit annoying to say the least.

Unless server's almost full, the sheer number of NPC's is just ridiculous. Ideally I would like to see the time between respawns doubled or so.

[atm999]

The way I understand that (and the way it works for my KNF ships/traders) if you are hostile to say Bowex NPCs in Liberty and Green to Liberty lawful bases, they won't turn hostile. But neutral bases will turn hostile and can in turn influence the green ones.

I disagree here. One of my character is green with GMG but hostile with Kusari corps. In Sigma 13, sitting right next to the GMG base (forgot the name) it goes instantly from green to red as soon as an NPC from Sumara, Kishiro, etc passes. One way to fix this is by changing the reputation of NPC factions to each other, but then they would no longer come to each other's aide when attacked. I'll leave it up to the devs (or the community if there's a strong bias) to choose which one they think is the lesser of two evils.

There's no really easy fix against this unless messing with a ton of things. So maybe don't be hostile to them on your Bowex? Yes you should be hostile to KNF/KSP, but there's nothing forcing you to be hostile to trading companies afaik.

I'm not sure if you're right, but even if you are, not everyone can become neutral like that. For example, the BD like the GMG, but don't like the GMG's allies.

[Rocket.Mouse]

/signed

I often cannot type while a hoard of NPCs come running in, also do not enjoy being CDed so often by them while trying to get to a pre-planned fight.

I don't think this may change much, if anything, but I do agree, they are not real players and should be far less than real players.