Ticondrius
ANZAC ALLIANCE
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Posted - 2008.11.07 15:33:00 -
[1]
Ideas? Hmm...let's see.
First, If I recall correctly, in the beginning there were only frigs and cruisers tooling around in belts, even in deep 0.0. Then came the OMFGWTFBBQ super battleship NPCs that were the bane of 0.0 mining ops everywhere.
That was a scary time...5+ BS mining Bistot, and you KNEW the second a spawn happened at least one BS was going down.
That got fixed a bit... :P
In Exodus, the elite and officer spawns were added, but had to be tweaked a few times after launch because at first they were so incredibly rare no one ever saw any.
Then in RMR or thereabouts, NPCs got expanded to be frigs, destroyers, cruiser and battleships. I thought there were supposed to be BCs too, but I haven't seen any yet. Also, ECM works on NPCs at last, and NPCs use some ECM as well.
So, there's the outline of NPC improvements over the years as I've seen it.
So, what's still wrong?
First, bugs.
Mezzing STILL works. I've reported it. Many people have reported it. Every patch we expect it to be fixed, but no, it's STILL possible to FORCE the NPCs in a belt to have a reaction in such a way that once 'mezzed', they will sit in a belt and do NOTHING until downtime. 0m/s speed, no targeting, nothing. You can shoot them and they snap out of it, but locking them do nothing, bumping them, also nothing.
Ok, bugs done. Now for general mental deficiencies.
Rock Crawling. It stands to reason that if a big ass roid is between you and your target that you try to go around it instead of hitting it and creeping around it while scraping your hull over it. NPCs seem to think traveling at 5m/sec is fun.
Tunnel Vision. I shoot you. You shoot me back, then Mr. Huge ship comes in and starts pounding the life out of you. Who do you target? Me. Wtf. NPCs NEED some sort of threat assessment. They need to be able to decide that ok, I'm a frig, he's a destroyer, I'm dead, so I'll do the best I can so my buddy NPCs can kill him. Or; Oh ****, 3 BS! Run away! Seriously, in low-sec space, not 0.0, if I'm an NPC pilot in a group of 2-3 cruisers and some frigs and a BS or two drop in I'm not hanging around.
MWDs. NPCs use MWDs as a means to get in range faster. It also means they die a hell of a lot faster too. Once in orbit around you, they don't MWD again. This also means they die faster.
I think the biggest problem with NPCs comes from the infinite capacitor issue. They need to function just like player ships, with fittings, skills and so forth. I can see how it could be templated. Fitting NOS was always worthless vs NPCs. They don't use modules based on cap efficiency either, but rather on cooldowns, making them far less effective than they could be.
Positioning. Ok, we have belt rats, gate rats. What about station rats? Sure, they might nail the occasional unsuspecting noob while undocking, but if they take as long to 'notice' you as the gate rats do, that's not much of an issue. It also makes station camping a bit more difficult to pull off if the campers have to worry about NPC spawns every so often.
Drones. Where are the NPC drones? If I'm fighting a Dominix based NPC, I expect to see drones. There are a number of droneships out there in all races...so, where are the drones?
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