i'm getting sick of ships that can't be killed because NPCs get to ignore the limits you put on the player. the tianlong or other similar ships should never have been allowed in the game. they are utterly unkillable. they have so many guns that require no ammo that you get shredded before you can do anything at all to them. this has to stop. the NPCs must be held to the same rules you hold the player to. they need to run out of ammo. they need to be held to the same gun count limits. they need to be held to the same power limits. they need to be held to the same cpu limits. it's just stupid.
Then there wouldn't be any kind of challenge at all. The tianlong can be killed, it was thoroughly tested before being submitted to eleon.
Best bet, though it's probably a lot of work, is to make a custom scenario and remove or downtune all the OP ships, or otherwise force them to conform to the same restrictions that player ships conform to. Definitely would be cool if enemy ships could run out of ammo and then attempt to flee. Would add an interesting new dimension to combat, though I expect larger (military-focused) warships would have an incredible amount of stored ammo anyway, which would likely seem nigh infinite to a player.
So you want NPCs to have 1/6th the fire power of player ships? How is that fair, you'd win every single fight without even having to dodge. You could literally sit there and face tank every fight because the AI would never be able to output nearly enough damage to your ship before you tore them to shreds. It would be very boring if the AI was given the same limits as players.
Surely there must be a middle ground between "no kind of challenge at all / too boring" and "can't be killed / shredded before you can do anything"? Maybe I'm wrong here, but I always kinda get the impression that it should be up to the player to decide how much of a challenge they want to face, rather than creators deciding how high to put the bar. To that end, do the Difficulty settings affect how much damage OPVs put out? Maybe some adjustment there could allow players to play in a style of their own choosing. I do find it rather baffling that players can find something to be too difficult, but those who built it say that they aren't difficult enough. Just because some rando built a boring soulless min-maxed deathcube that is absolutely plastered end-to-end with turrets and not a bare spot of hull to be found, and then complained that AI ships are too easy, doesn't mean every player is going to do that. I guess I do have to wonder what sort of ship the OP was bringing against the end-game AI ships. I also have to wonder if creators expect every player to build a min-maxed deathcube to cheese the end-game ships?
Based on which ships do you make the comparison at 1/6? Which blueprints exactly do you have in mind? If that was possible to do I would recommend NPCs to have double firepower of player ship for those easy to fight, but max 3x players firepower for those hard to fight. On the other hand this proposition does not get into account the shield capabilities of either side. Shield is something the OP did not refer to clearly but we all know also to be implied.
Players already can choose what types of ships they fight. Nobody has to fight the tianlong. That ship is the single hardest ship in the entire game and the OP decided to attack it and lost. There's this very silly idea that all games need to be 100% completable by all players regardless of skill level. The OP attacked the single hardest encounter in the entire game after not playing for an entire year and blames the game instead of taking responsibility for their choice to do the single most difficulty fight the game can throw at you. They lost, as would be expected by anyone coming back to a game after a year break. I don't know why they decided to attack a dreadnought like that and not expect to lose at least the first few times. There is something to be said about having better ship AI so that ships are more fun and challenging to fight without needing to have a hundred turrets, but that AI is not in the game. On the topic of NPC ship design in general: NPC ships are slow and stupid. They can't dodge, they can't keep their turrets pointing at you, they can't protect their vulnerable sides, they can't retreat to recharge their shields and repair damage, they can't use manual weapons, they can't adapt their fighting style to adapt, they can't warp out or fly to a friendly station for shelter. Patrol vessels need advantages over player ships to pose any kind of challenge until or unless their AI gets significant improvements. A player can focus 100% of their turrets on the enemy and use manual weapons. A npc ship might only have a firing angle with 1/4th of their turrets at any one time and can't use manual weapons. This means player ships have about 6 times more damage output than a npc ship with the same number of weapons.
what are you smoking? i literally said i want enemy ships to have the "same" power as player ships. as it is i can't even get this stupid overpowered piece of crap below 80% shield before i'm losing hull plating. it's ludicrous. yeah i'm not as good at the game as you, but that doesn't mean i should have to face completely unbeatable ships.
Out of curiosity, what ship are you using the attack the Tianlong? I'm certainly not going to victim blame, but I am curious as to how outmatched your ship is in this case. Personally, I assumed that due to the overpowered nature of such ships, that they were only intended to be taken on by a group of players, rather than a solo player. As such I never personally attacked such ships -- I assumed it would be an exercise in futility.
not wanting enemy ships to be so powerful that they can't be beaten without cheating is not silly. it's nice to see you have an open mind. also, i didn't chose to attack it. i was minding my own business when it showed up and slaughtered me before i even had a chance to respond.
MCRN-258 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2550737996 i hadn't really had time to make any customization to it other than to tack on a pair of artillery cannons. i lasted maybe 8 seconds before my ship was inoperable from the time i realized i was being shot at to the time i was dead. i didn't have time to get up the elevator to the pilot chair to even try to respond.
Neat, looks like a cool ship! I can't help but notice that it doesn't have any laser turrets. That's definitely going to make for a tough slog against any shielded enemy ship, I imagine. And moreso against what is apparently the toughest enemy ship in the game. I also notice that it is listed as having a T2 shield but no shield boosters. That's gonna count against it in a lot of battles. (Are boosters RE only? Also, are you playing RE? I assume so, since pretty much everyone is) What I would do, personally, is to add some shield boosters to get up to at least 40k shield as a starter. Anything below that is gonna be cut through like wet paper. Really, for tackling end-game ships, you want 80k - 120k. But for surviving a brief encounter with one (long enough to escape), I would say 40k is a good place to start. Should give you a bit of time to realize that you're under attack, and hopefully time to get to the nearest command station and full throttle it on an escape trajectory away from the interloper. Also noticed this on the workshop page: "carbon substrate interior" which is going to be a problem if/when the enemy cuts through the outer layers. Carbon substrate is crazy lightweight but also crazy brittle, and gets wrecked very quickly. There is a replaceblocks console command, personally I would go into creative, replaceblocks all the carbon for steel, save it as a new blueprint, then use that going forward. IT will undoubtedly be slower, but should be waaay more survivable. Not sure what to suggest to avoid get snuck up on other than pinging the radar constantly. Which, if you're doing something else, can be a bit of a hassle. Personally, if I see even a hint of a battleship or dreadnought in the zone I'm in, I'll warp away to somewhere quieter and do whatever I need to do there. I typically spend a few minutes just cruising and pinging in a new system before I stop to do anything or leave the pilots seat, just to make sure no sneaky Zirax appear while I'm distracted with other tasks, as they are wont to do. If these ideas don't help out in future, then we can always brainstorm other tactics to keep those sneaky Zirax from wrecking our ships too quickly. Hopefully this post was more helpful than blameful. No sense victim blaming someone when you can offer constructive advice instead, right?
Not to mention got extremely unlucky in coming across it in the first place. I've watched a fair few players on twitch trying to find one for hours and failing to do so
Alternatively, understanding that battlefield logistical support is critical, the Zirax have actively use teleporter technology to support combat fleet logistical operations for centuries ... the reason they don't run out of bullets is the same reason the ammo boxes in the supply depots are always approaching empty; just in time manufacturing and distribution driven by pencil pushing bureaucrats back at home world sending out bullets, fuel cells, and air in small quantities to minimize losses, reduce costs, prevent coups, and keep the commanders in line. House Abyssal won the post-alliance supply chain RFP over 700 years ago ... if they figure out walking around to make repairs in a moving ship they would be unstoppable.
I'm the person who did the conversion for vanilla (which is where it originated) and it was tested by myself and one other person, we both went up against it solo. So yes the intent was that it could be done solo but it would be a challenge. That doesn't mean to say it can't be done with a group of players because it can be. The thing is, talk to some people and they'll say they can take it out in a short space of time, so the challenge of it is very subjective indeed. To someone who is not either not prepared for it, relatively new or rusty due to time away from the game and sure it might seem difficult but to others.... One of these instances that neither is wrong and neither is right. NPC ships by their very nature will always need to have an advantage over the players because they cannot change during the course of your game run, but player's ships can and no doubt will depending on the task at hand.
Interesting! May I ask what sort of ships you and other person tested against the Tianlong? Quite curious to see what sort of 'expected' armament one should have when going up against an end-game ship. Could be insightful information for quite a few people, I imagine.
Mine was the Eternal Torment (the one on my workshop which is the player variant) and the other was built by the other player. Torment was not using block limits, other player was using block limits. What you have to understand is the person who made a POI or OPV will have a definite advantage over everyone else. This is why I asked the other person to have a go and I made the decision on how to balance it or even submit it based entirely on the feedback of this individual, that way I could make sure I wasn't submitting something to Eleon that was just literally impossible.
Thanks! Will check it out. "Torment was not using block limits" I find that a bit disconcerting, but oh well. Are there any statistics on what difficulty options players use most often? Maybe I'm among the few weirdos that actually follows block limits and that's been hampering my ability to take on end-game opponents. I had assumed that the 'intended' (aka, balanced for) game mode was with all options ON, but perhaps that's incorrect.
Which is one of the reasons why I asked the other person to test it because I knew he always played with block limits on. It wouldn't have made much difference anyway, I knew where all the weak spots were. The person who tested it for me didn't even know I was working on it until I said I had a challenge for him if he fancied it So for him it was a completely fresh brand new never seen before encounter.
