Phillipus wrote:I found a video by someone (not me) where you can see pretty much what the NPC AI is like now. Somehow the NPCs all manage to stay out of the firing line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvH7vPZULc4
I hadn't played with the beta this week due to RL commitments and my frustrations with the first beta 2.1 where the NPC's ran like hell once you took their shields down. (VERY frustrating!) After seeing this video, I fired up beta 2.1 version 4 and went into a High-RES with the Vette. I only ran in there for about 20-30 minutes, and did not have as hard of a time killing NPC's as the commander in the video. I did have an Eagle take my shields down to one ring since I couldn't get him in my sites, but the other ships I battled with weren't that bad.
Here are some examples:
(if you have audio on you'll know when I go in and out of FA off and switch pips.)
Please.... no laughing at my screw-ups!
Deadly Asp kill:
https://youtu.be/txkvCiSLGE0
Elite Vulture kill: (my shields were low from a previous kill and I used a SCB part way through the video clip)
https://youtu.be/OCDWB5YY0Nw
Dangerous FDL kill:
https://youtu.be/USjFIFbaE9E
Each of these kills took about a minute or so. Not 3 minutes like in the video link that Phillipus shared with us.
Loriath wrote:
We have had it easy. <snipped>
Elite is finally getting Dangerous.
I completely agree with everything that Loriath said. Combat (and surviving trade runs without incident) has been easy in the game, especially for those fortunate enough to have large A rated ships. When I was finishing my Elite combat grind in a CNB, I was killing 20-30-40 Deadly and Elite ships per hour with hardly a scratch. Is that realistic? I say no, but it was fun.
High ranking ships shouldn't be that easy to kill! Someone shouldn't be able to 'grind' in a combat area for 10-12 hours and get finish off 20% of his Deadly rank. It should be more challenging to hit Elite, IMO.My thoughts based on betas 2.1 ver 4.... FD has come a long way since beta 2.1 ver 1. The NPC's are certainly tougher than 1.5/2.0 but a lot more managable now than in prior beta builds. Who knows what the next version will bring. IMO, if you are flying solo and want to work a RES, take a FAS or FDL and run a High RES to get some help from the cops. Large ships (Vette, Conda, Cutter) will perform best in **organized** wings, to keep NPC's off of each other's backs and should do well in a Haz-RES.
I doubt that RES hunting will ever be the cash cow that it was before 2.1. But who knows.... with the right engineering mods and some practice, I could be wrong!
