I don't know what the cause is. My friend tells me it's lag, but I have a perfectly normal internet connection - so either the mod is buggy, or the server is laggy (or my internet connection isn't up to snuff) but every NPC fighter I come across flies against the laws of physics by darting from one point to the next and then making straight angle turns!
This wouldn't be that big of a problem except for the fact that I have trouble killing NPCs that are easily killable otherwise. I was playing on the Kansas server (which is running 4.82) - no problem. Can anyone help me?
Your friend could definitely be right. You don't have to have the yellow and red icons on your screen for their to be lag. Simply a strong, but slow, connection would result in erratic NPC movement as well. Try another server. If its still happening, its your connection. If its not, its the server's connection, or maybe both connections not working well together.
A lot of this so-called "gazelling" has to do with the latency between the server and your PC. This is reflected in your ping time... I get 250 - 300, meaning (at best) NPC ships are getting updated 4 times per second. And it'll spike to alot more on occasion. If an NPC changes direction (as they tend to do) in between updates, you'll see it jerk from one point to another.
Oh BTW for the same reason missiles hardly ever hit. I don't even think about using missiles, I might as well fling pea-shooters for all the good it does, or just drop my money in space.
Some ships are worse than others. Big heavy VHF's aren't as prone as smaller ships (obviously).... but the worst of the lot are Legionaires and Daggers. Probably coz their NPC pilots tend to be more uber. In fact I'd much rather face a Stiletto or Centurion any day than those mosquitos.
As Dab says their does not have to be any flashing yellow/red icon to have this happen. Coz there may be no lag in the server at all, just the latency of the internet between the server and your PC.
I've seen players refuse to PvP because the ping time climbs to 300 (poor babies!!)
Playing on a server with a much smaller ping time, such as on a LAN, helps enormously.
I have that problem to as I play via wifi so the cnc is a little dodgy. To compensate just try and estimate where you thing they are going to go.
The best thing i've found is getting some distance, cutting your engines, spin round and fire at them to get them to back off a little more, then slowly start towards them.
When this happens you have a clear run at them, and all you need to do is fire in a straight line and tear them down. it works wonders.
NPCs all following some kind of radius of behaviour, if your say 0-300 metres away itl try and shake you, if your 300-600 it will try and get on your tail and lay into you. 900+ it will take that run up ive poorly described above.
My excuse is ive a cold and im not feeling oh so hot but yeah thats the gist of it
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LAN cable always works better than wi-fi this is because the game was made for LAN cable and NOT wi-fi. anyways that's just my random input good luck fixing it.