Now that patrol vessels are actually separated by tier, this could be possible. In Reforged Eden I made it so stars (and the planetary orbits/various sectors) are split up into 4 different levels: Habitable, Cold, Hot, and Exotic. However the patrol vessels themselves would also need to be split up and new orbit playfields made for vanilla. This would allow for the most powerful ships to only show up in the "harder" systems. But this is also probably more of an overhaul than they would want to do for vanilla. But it's also the only feasible way to do it for any non-faction territory ships such as all the Warlord ones.
Indeed it is, and I accept that it meant being vulnerable. BUT... I checked the CV detector before getting out and nothing was on the scope in range. So it felt like an acceptable risk to exit for a short time to loot the ship I had just defeated before it despawned (a whole other debate really). The Tianlong didn't make itself known until it was too late, and there was literally no chance to try and do something about it. Which I think is where the discussion of it being somewhat unfair is coming from. Cause rather than making me think "hey, get gud, make better ships" I instead decided "looting these things isn't worth it at all and have since stopped bothering. Which IMO is kind of sad because it removed an entire portion of the gameplay due to the unacceptable risk factor and almost zero reward. Maybe if I had been quantum hunting in RE or something, but as I said, I was in vanilla, where experience has taught me not to waste time on ship to ship combat at all unless it's absolutely necessary. As far as I can tell the name of the ship is never mentioned and all that "announces" it is a picture at the top of the first page with no context. I mean, it looks cool, looks mean, and if I had seen that coming at me even in the ship I was flying I'd be out of there in a hot second. My point is that I never had that chance because it wasn't on scope when I exited to loot and I wasn't out very long before it just rocked up and erased my ship. I ain't ashamed to admit that I cheated my butt off to just nope out of the playfield and god spawn a replacement for it either. Cause I did not consider the encounter even remotely fair. I didn't rage quit the game either, but as I said above, it taught me to stop wasting time on space combat because the risk-reward balance is tilted too far in the direction of the risk.
Time for some maths: (All values taken from 100% vanilla game, in the default SpaceOrbit playfield around a planet. Other scenarios or playfields within vanilla can have different values) Maximum speed of a Tianlong: 50m/s. (20m/s to 50m/s, average is 35m/s) Maximum detection range of CV detector in space: 24000 meters. Render distance in space: 3000 meters. Maximum weapon range in space: 1500 meters (it's actually less). Given these values, it would take a Tianlong 420 seconds to travel from the edge of detector range to render range, or 7 minutes. When a patrol vessel is first rendered, it immediately stops and remains stationary for a number of seconds before it begins to move again. This is a bug, but adds an additional buffer in the player's benefit. Once in render range, excluding the time the patrol vessel is stopped due to the above, it would take an additional 30 seconds for the ship to enter weapon range. This is assuming a worst case scenario: The Tianlong is spawned with the maximum speed possible. The Tianlong flies straight towards the player. The Tianlong is not under "alert" which automatically reveals and tracks it on the HUD even without using a detector. The Tianlong does not get stuck on any nearby asteroid or POI after entering render range. The Tianlong does not change course at any time. The player will still have 7 minutes of time during which the Tianlong will show up on a CV detector scan, while not being in render range. NOTE: patrol vessels are subject to frequent bugs and desyncs, especially on servers, where one of the following can happen: The patrol vessels are completely desynced, and their position seen by the player is different than their actual position. This can lead to invisible patrol vessels attacking you. This is a bug on servers. The patrol vessels do not show on the detector at all, even if they are within render range and you activate your detector. This is a bug. Obviously these game bugs should be fixed, but they have been around for several years and have yet to be fixed. While the bugs are the cause of many people's untimely deaths and frustration around patrol vessels, the game should not be balanced around bugs. Instead, the bugs should be reproduced in 100% vanilla save games or servers and then reported so they can be properly investigated and fixed. I believe that many cases of "I pinged the detector and a few minutes later a patrol vessel blew me up" are simply cases where people were not paying attention, but some of them will be from one of these bugs.
Something I learned the hard way: do NOT leave your ship to loot. Stand near your pilots seat and use your drone to do the looting. You may need to make a drone hatch (door or two) right from the cockpit area to the outside. Saves you the risk of being shot while on EVA, and if an OPV shows up, you can immediately disconnect the drone, hop in the seat, and fly away. If a part of the loot ship is too far for the drone to reach, then reposition your ship and try again.
I have one, but the drone's distance is too short for this to be a convenient method of doing much with. Maybe if it were able to operate whenever it's within wi-fi range of your ship it would be different. I'd totally use it for looting then.
I agree, it would be awesome if wi-fi extenders also extended drone range. Would make salvaging and looting soo much easier. Being a "wireless connector", and assuming that our drones use some form of wireless communication, it would make sense for the two to work together. I'm not too familiar with the ship you used, but is the cockpit area near the outside of the ship, or is it one of those where the cockpit is buried deep inside the bowels of the ship? Often I nose my cockpit as close as possible to the intended looting area so the drone has the best chance of picking up everything I need. Works really well on smaller OPVs (Bandits and up to Frigate-size ships), at least. I understand if that's a bit more difficult in the ship you chose, though.
It's an upper level bridge area with a direct access drone hatch out the top. I haven't uploaded the ship to the Workshop yet.
It would be nice if more people would just help with strategy instead of peacock strutting pompously stroking their own egos. Attacking those frustrated is childish.
Sweet, excellent. But... I'm having a hard time finding your post in this thread helping with strategy. What's up with that?
There's definitely a strange and, at times, hostile culture surrounding this game. I've noticed it on here and on the steam community hub discussions thing. Not sure if that extends to the discord, as I don't spend much time there. I still don't entirely understand it. I don't think it was like this when I first joined the project so many years ago (nearly 8 years ago! Wowza!), but maybe that's the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. But as they say: be the change you want to see in the world. Be the one who offers advice and solutions when no one else will. Be the one to inspire excitement and joy for the game in others. Be the ray of light when all else is dark. Anyway... What I do is try to nose the cockpit like, inside the enemy ship as much as possible to give your drone the best possible range. For looting bigger ships, you will need to move your ship a few times to make sure you can reach everything. Yes, it's slower than looting in person in EVA. But, it also means you won't be anywhere near as likely to get shredded by an approaching OPV with no chance to escape. And if one does pop up unexpectedly, you can easily disconnect from the drone, hop in the pilots seat and gtfo as needed. It's worked for me at least. I have had a few hostile OPVs pop up while I've been looting; but none have defeated me that way. Always keep you head on a swivel! The galaxy is a dangerous place
Responses to threads like this are tricky. I do think many people enjoy the random high-threat encounters and see losses like this as a rite of passage. Others I think see it as a lack of proper game design and progression. Both sides have fair points. Responding with suggestions of how to avoid situations like this in the future are simultaneously helpful and insulting: here's what you should have done had you known all the things the game doesn't teach you! It seems like the only reasonable response is: we've all been there, it sucks, scream at the sky. But know that if you accept your loss and rebuild there is satisfaction in that, and you won't make the same mistake next time. And hopefully if enough feedback is provided in channels like this -- as you are doing -- then positive steps can be made to make the game more approachable for future players.
I have experienced the same problem like OP playing with a far less powerful starter CV which had only a few laser turrets and projectile ones, of course not a match against such vessels and you should take your distance, BUT: Problem is there is no warning of any sort like for base POIs, there is no thing like Lev3_... in their name to give you any clue of what you are up against, THAT'S THE PROBLEM. Once you are close which is not always easy to avoid because of the random distribution of a space playifeld, then it's actually too late for you. That's not fair and not fun. And about the Tianlong being tested: It has a lot of T2 RCS units that amount for over 40 millions in CPU points, way over the 10 millions for T4, which means the player cannot even core and run it to get gravity. So NO, it was not that thoroughly tested, that would have been a major flaw to notice for those who play with CPU... Maybe Eleon should make it so that gravity generators use their own energy reserve for a certain time, so to have gravity when boarding these ships after killing their generators (that's necessary in order to avoid enemy shields reloading.)
