Little secret: You can take down a Nomad battleship group in a VHF. Again, no shields... use the "shoot 'n scoot" method to take down the fighters followed by the gunboats (aiming for turrets first). Then finally the big fella.... and believe it or not the BS is the easiest of them all. Just takes a looooooong time. There's a trick to it...
Yeah, that's a sensible strategy. My real point here though is that going against 4 battleships at once is a lot tougher than 4 Hammerheads, yet both missions have the same difficulty level (39, in this case). At least if the mission said "fly to sector 4E and destroy the Bounty Hunter battleship there" you could choose to avoid the mission, rather than abort.
I've found bribing Zoners gets Freelancers happy..
Also, about the toughness.. *Looks into his hold. Spends a few minutes counting BHG pilots..* If you can't kill them, I can lend you some BHG pilots..
*BHG aren't that tough, I can take them down pretty easily in an Eagle. I took missions in an unarmored Eagle for a bit, had to down 4 BHG Dests. It was hard, but its possible. Since missions in 4.84 are likely to make nearly as much money as trading, NPCs will be alot more tough, and this is how it should be.
' Wrote:Since missions in 4.84 are likely to make nearly as much money as trading, NPCs will be alot more tough, and this is how it should be.
Didn't Igiss say that he can't increase mission payouts very much, because it encourages more people to cycle through missions, which lags the server to no end?
This whole issue seems to have been started by NPC toughness issues.
As for the bounty hunters, there are several levels of difficulty.
Basic: Hammerhead with standard guns and armor and shields. Goes down easily.
Advanced: Hammerhead with increased armor, weapon damage and shields.
Meat Shield: Hammerhead with standard guns, and lots of hit points. Takes a while to down.
Ripper: Lots of damage, but goes down easily.
Elite: Very high armor, damage and shields. You find these guys in groups of two or four on 400 or 500 thousand credit missions. These are the best loot droppers.
If you fight these guys long enough, you can tell them apart.
There are also several encounters.
Easy 1 man: 1 basic.
Easy 2 man: 2 basic
Theta Freeport encounter: 2 basic, 2 advanced, and 1 Elite,
and so on.
A freelancer I recorded at over 100,000 hit points with an increase of damage, maybe 200% normal damage.
You will also find capship encounters with more hit points than you would guess.
A rouge gunboat encounter is actually tougher to take down than a Bounty Hunter Cruiser encounter.
Aye Freelancers are very tough, don't let the fact they're only in a Stiletto fool ya. And they have the hide to call themselves Zoners. I just let 'em by...
I'm glad they have made pirate gunboats tougher, it is embarrassing taking down Molly GBs in a Crusader. Almost felt sorry for them... almost...
@Bacchanalia, I hear you mate.... the number of times what shoulda been a 15 minute mission turns into an hour, and for the same money. I wish the job board would specify as you said.
About the mission lag issue, there are measures being taken (already happening, and its why we can run 128 players) to reduce lag from NPCs. Heck, we'd have MORE than 128 player limit on server if hardcode didn't prohibit it.
When I played with some in Omicron Delta, they were simply invincible. I took down the shield fast of one of them with no problems, but when i got to the hull..
I have 3 codenames and a no cannon. I shot him for nearly 20 minutes, the HP bar seemed to stop at 90% and wouldn't budge.
So, what choice did I have?
I shot him with novas. He received 3 clear shots....
The HP bar did not move. at all. if novas do more than 20 000k damage to hull, the Freelancer Eagles must have the armor of a battleship.
What the hell?
I must add, some of the Eagles I encounter are reasonable, i.e. hard to kill, but killable. But some of them are just... weird.
Was this intended?
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it seems that those freelancers have a hitbox of there own... i have it sometimes when shooting titans, i hit 1 spot several times without getting any HP down.. but if i switch my aim a little to the left, right, up or down, they will get shot... this goes for Freelancers too, at least that my experience:)
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