Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So.....
as far as I'm aware (and yes, I have asked in the main forums), NPC's have a small amount of capacitor, but don't actually use it..... thus providing convenient Nos fodder for someone who needs it.....

this gameplay is unintuitive and makes for a poor transition between PVE and PVP, it might make a considerable difference in incursion fleets and burner missions if you COULD cap the sanshas/burners out.... (though I don't imagine it'd make a huge difference in your average lvl 4)

if nothing else, it'd provide mission runners with another useful utility high.... active rep/resist rat - put a neut on him, and watch him fall......

I haven't made myself clear there.....

tl:dr
make NPC's (particularly burners, sanshas and sleepers) actually use their capacitor, even if they're normally cap stable.....

would it though? if you made it so that they were all by default cap stable (as they are now) there isn't any cap management until a player applies cap pressure.
And you can always start with the hyper intelligent AI like burners/incursion sanshas, so that player pressure is handled better, though tbh, I imagine when players apply pressure, it'll generally be capping outright.

Also, I know this probably doesn't hold any weight with you or game designers, but people using NPC's as a second cap battery is kinda one of the reasons why I want to make this change....

Single shard vs multiple servers?
edit - the word lag was meant to be in there somewhere...

I think ive read somewhere that neuting a rat makes it activate its local repper less often. But actual cap mechanics would be preferred. As would anything that brings NPC behavior closer to that of player ships.

doable then, you think?

EDIT:

and worth doing?

This goes right along with the need to break away from giving NPCs a database table of specific stats (like how much dps they do, what dmg type they do, how fast they go, how far they can shoot etc) and moving them to something like an actual fitting.

Giving them a fitable ship, with actual modules and actual ship stats, would go a looooooong way towards making NPCs half decent. Like they say how the burners are as if you had a full deadspace/faction/officer fit faction frigate, except you wouldn't ever be able to fit all those modules on those ships, let along keep them cap stable.

All they need to do to bring up the level of NPCs is to give them a ship and an appropriate fit that works with those ships, none of these 9 launcher ravens with 2 turrets and a defender missile crap, the ships only have 8 highs, not 12. How can I not mention the 100k+ range with torpedoes. Or the other classic example of doing volley damage of a few hundred and killing battlecruiser NPCs in 1 shot. Worried about them being overpowered? Just give them terrible fits with meta 0 items even. They don't need meta 4 or T2 completely perfect fits, they just need fits that give them the approximate result that is appropriate for their class/type. The fits would step up in goodness the harder the NPC. Maybe even would require fewer NPCs and therefore less tax on the servers, since you would no longer need 20 battlecruisers and 10 battleships worth of NPCs to equal your local tank?

It wouldn't really be much complexity on their AI, just make the fits either passive or cap stable. If they run out of cap due to neuting then they just have a priority list in what they try to activate first. The system already keeps track of many stats about each NPC, this is not really different.

Yes

yes.

For reference, the current functionality of NPCs is that they have a cap pool, but their modules do not consume any cap, so neuting them does nothing. However, it can be NOSed, and can be drained dry if the situation is right to allow it (Blood Raiders ship, Your cap < Their Cap, etc. Standard NOS rules). It has no effect other then on nos mechanics.

Among many, many other things that are stupid and unintuitive about PVE, I support making it work properly.

This needs to happen already.

regarding NPC ammo usage etc for those looking at making NPC's use fits with civ and m0 modules..... civ modules don't comsume cap, and if there's an ammo bunker - they can re-ammo there (whilst alive, it supplies ammo to all nearby NPC's and never runs dry) - which would also make for a bit of interesting side-play (blow up the bunker and try to run the NPC's dry?)

EDIT:
thanks to all who've posted, to make their thoughts known, I appreciate the time you've taken, and thanks for keeping things civil

really? ooops, I had a few minutes (like 30) spare waiting for an exam, and just replied to the majority of threads I was involved in..... wonder how much necro'ing I've done......