A6.0 Feedback: AI VESSELS (Planet and Space)

I commented on the release thread, but thought it worth mentioning here.

Firstly, the PV's in the 6.0.0 1077 version are a huge improvement over the earlier iterations, nice job.

However, all the new good stuff aside, I did suffer a slight disappointment once I managed to down one of these. After my bases Rocket Turrets had disabled one, I boarded and took out the core. I then proceeded to loot and reclaim bits for a few minutes, before returning to my Base, which was around 200m away. I offloaded some loot, paused the game to make a Forum post, then unpaused to collect more loot. All in, no more than three minutes had passed since I left the downed PV due to me pausing. However, looking out the window of my base prior to setting off, it'd despawned already! I'd barely looted it.

So, despawn time seems far far too quick for the PV once shot down. This is the opposite of the seemingly infinite despawn time before in earlier 6.0.x Experimental builds.

Two things, can the default despawn time be increased, I think 20 minutes is a good minimum, and could this be a configuration option for despawn timer and respawn of the replacement PV?

Scoob.

 

Might be a good idea regardless to also bring a core with you in the future when you plan to do this, so you can quickly claim the ship as your own. This is probably just purely due to the cleanup protocols so you don't get performance issues, a ship without a core is just "space junk" sadly...

 

That's a good tip, while I cannot fly it, it might halt whatever countdown timer is now in place. I'd simply gotten used to PV's not despawning so quickly, though I'd often eventually pop a Core in to see if there were any hidden devices to reclaim, or loot boxes I'd missed.

I wish there was an option to make it flyable, maybe a console command to test it before allowing as a .yaml / server option.

Scoob.

 

I mentioned it in a general discussion post but I feel the PV's at least on Nigunes where i started need more sound so you can hear it approaching. I also think the red marker should show up on your radar sooner, currently you can see it long before it shows as red.

Otherwise I felt it was fairly balanced my only other suggestion was if its appearance and patrol root could be based on activity/build level of players rather than a straight day timer. Especially on MP server by the time it shows up it is unlikely you have enough resources to build a base no less a base with the multiple guns needed.

Drones feel better than before and tougher, I like there being a base in space that spawns space drones, but I feel there should be more space drones active. Space is very empty right now, I spent an hour or more flying around nigunes looking for asteroids that had neymodium and only ran into a single drone until. It was not until i stumbled on the drone base i found more. I suggest there should be 10-20 drones out all the time spread out around the planet in various locations or around asteroids at least within 5000km of the planet.

 

AI Vessels in 6.0 are a huge and nice improvment. I started a fresh Sp game and it changes a lot the way i have to play : space is now a cold and dangerous place. Today, i lost 2 cv's and sv's after some fights with atmospheric and space ai vessels...That, and all the recent additions, seems to have amazingly increased the general difficuty of the game: but for the best. I'll think about it twice now, before leaving my cv alone in orbit or before going straight to an ennemy cv with my simple canon turrets.

 

I really like the respawning POIs on planets for MP, but it seems like a bunch were missed, on Akau most things respawn but on Akau Moon nothing respawns, not sure what else was missed but the moon was completely unprotected you can core any base there with your own core.

The carrier in space has some problems. I am not sure if it ran out of drones or what but it was not fighting back in any way. In addition you can fly through it with very wierd collision. You also cannot stand on it once disabled or walk through it you hit invisible walls all over the place making it impossible to loot. It also does not regenerate which it should.

Drones both on planets and in space are much tougher which is good, but there should not be a limited number of them, only the first person or so on a planet in MP gets the drones and then no more spawn even with an active drone base, there needs to be an unlimited amount for MP, both in Space and on planet. On some planets you rely on a laser drone in space to get a power coil for higher teir stuff earlier so them running out for other players is bad.

The troop transport, kept spawning ontop of the drone base and going no where, it was stuck, it was not drooping troops or firing at people, it several times got stuck under the floor of the drone base at the bottom level on Akau and Akau moon and we were able to destroy it with hand weapons shooting the nose that was sticking through the floor. The troop transport needs some basic defensive weapons. It also needs better loot than a run of the mill drone.

 

I'm not sure how to reproduce it... but sometimes on single player, and multi-player the AI Vessels are just 'ghosts'. They don't shoot anything, you can't shoot them, and they glitch out a lot.

However, if you save and exit, and come right back in. They are solid again, and you can shoot them down, and they shoot back.

This has happened numerous times, just happens again today on the latest build 1022 I think.

Maybe it's when they pass over the walls blocking the north and south? (They will also fly thru the barriers north/south. They hit it, glitch out a bunch, then pass thru.

 

I've had a problem with the PVs: They keep falling through the terrain. Drones do this a lot, but patrol vessels seem to do it almost every time. Also, blowing up the cores have a nasty habit of not making them stop flying; I typically have to wait til they've exhausted all their belly weapon ammo, then rake the underside with missiles until I've blown up both the generators. First time I did this I went through almost 1100 rockets, but now I've gotten it down to about 500-600.
Unrewarding.

The invisible walls you mentioned- if you take out your multitool, it reveals them to be invisible cargo crates. They can be blown up with SV weapons (hand held "heavy" weapons do little to nothing) but the collateral blast from them invariably destroys anything you'd want to loot and even when cored the Carriers can't be dismantled for spare parts.
Til it's fixed, I'm just farming the plasma drones they launch to make up for the loot it won't give you.

 

My personal weapons like a rocket launcher just flys through the ship with no collision and comes out the other side. My problem was that there were no plasma drones, because apparently there is a limit to how many can spawn and others already had killed enough, so I was trying to destroy the carrier to see if it would respawn like a poi... it doesn't it has been sitting uncored for days now.

I have also had the same experience as Green reported above, even with the PV missing completely and drones missing completely, or them standing still not fighting back, you relog and it is fixed. Kind of game breaking when things don't fight back.

 

I like the general idea of NPC vessels, but they were super bugged on the server I play on. Most of the time they were either hovering over a random place and attacks failed to do any damage, or they were randomly blinking up and down, still unable to attack. The one we found that we could actually attack was very easy to take out, but once we wanted to loot them, there were invisible blocks all over the place, preventing us from entering the ship, nor could we dismantle anything.

Please fix the bugs on these, then we can give proper feedback.

 

I've just tangled with a Drone Carrier in space above Akua in my light SV and taking out its weapons presented a moderate challenge. It got its licks in on me, but didn't take out a critical system. I've taken out its thrusters that propel it forward. I'm trying to dock with it, but my SV just seems to pass through it. I'm not sure what to expect. Should I be able to land on it? Do I need to take out the core first?

If I get out of my SV and jetpack around, I can get close to the Carrier but cannot quite touch it. I can open a door in the hanger bay, but cannot enter it. Its as if there is some kind of invisible barrier.

This game started with the first 6.0 non-experimental release. Current version is 6.1.2 1106.

EDIT: With 6.2.0, the same Carrier is both solid (I can land an SV on it) and approachable (I can board her, look around, and interact with the blocks).

 

Freighter class 1 ship has invisible blocks all over it. Also why is it that the freighter is armed too the teeth but the carrier is not? Carrier is a pushover compared to the freighter class 1 vessel, thing is armed to the teeth.

 

i dont know if any one has seen what i just saw wish i got a screeny but me and my group of friends had just boarded a drone carrier in akua orbit and was looting when all of a sudden all hell broke lose when a unnamed capital vessel came out of nowhere and recked us armed almost exclusivley with more seaker missle launchers then can be counted

 

Interesting. Last night I was looting the Drone Carrier. As I was leaving a freighter was 1.5 km away and marked as hostile. Maybe you were in the shipping lane, so to speak.

 

i dont know but had a net loss of 2 SVs a CV and 2 HV that was docked on the CV

 

Just wanted to add this comment here too, as well as the Experimental 6.2 thread...

Shot-down Patrol Vessels are despawning even more quickly now.

After a fight between my HV and the Skillon PV, I disabled it. I boarded immediately, killed the Core and planted my own.

I was looting the vessel for no more than five minutes, when it vanished from underneath me. This isn't enough time!!

When this happened in my prior game - where it lasted nearer fifteen minutes - it was suggested I plant my own Core to prevent despawn. This evidently doesn't work.

This is a big deal as the PV battle might be someones toughest to date, yet the "rewards" in terms of loot vanish before your very eyes.

Am I missing some config option for this? Perhaps the defaults need changing.

Final thought: I'm sorta bored now, with no incentive to continue this eve...my big challenge, with potentially a decent loot pay-off just vanished.

Scoob.

 

PVs are hit and miss for me. The main issue is that they come at the wrong times, but when they do come at a reasonable point in time they're really fun.

✓ I was chased around by one of these on Ningues before I even had a base or motorbike. I had to dodge the shots and avoid it. This was fine and kind of fun.
✘ That is, it was fun until I started trying to build a base and it turned up again and started shooting before I even had my constructor or generator built. I had to spend ten minutes hiding in a pond then decided to put my base somewhere else because it just wouldn't go away.
✘ My next encounter was I was looting a POI, it silently flew in and destroyed my first and only HV in a few shots. This was so crappy I ended up restoring a backup save.
✓ Later on I tried to attack bases (Including the PV's landing pad!) and sometimes had to back off because it came back to get me, that was cool.
✓ Late game it finally found my base, this was like... 20 hours in, I had an armed SV and base. It was an epic fight, I lost all my crops because they died to cold exposure and several generators and storage tanks, but that's fine because it was late game and possible to recover from. It stuck around for 20 minutes so I could loot it.

Balance suggestions:

- Have a warning the PV is nearby, like you have when drones are coming to attack your base
- In the first few hours, or under level 10, the patrol ship should be staying docked. Send out drones to patrol in it's place instead.
- Instead of the point above, consider having a set patrol route - e.g. over all ore deposits, forcing players to put their bases away from all ore sites but at the same time giving them a way to avoid PVs if they are too weak to handle them.

Edit: After doing some research into the game files, it turns out there is a delay, it's just crazy short. And there is a patrol radius too, it's just impossible for the player to see. New suggestion:

- Make the patrol radius visible from day one on the map with a red circle so players can avoid it

 

Is there a limit on the number of AI ships? I setup a number of them on a test planet and they just blow up on their own bases after a while..

 

Just gonna quote myself from another thread and post it here since I think it belongs here more than in the other thread.

I also quoted Scoob response to my postings above.