Missions & Complexes

My ships

Main:
Dominix Navy issue
Signature Radius: 420
No EWAR. Just Guns, a smartbomb, and a moderate local tank

Alt:
Loki
Signature Radius: 178
Running a shield harmonizing gang link (its all I had laying around)

Mission: Intercept The Saboteurs

Goal: To test ways for a a tank ship with very little DPS to keep aggro.

Trial 1 - Loki warps in first

Loki warps in first grabs aggression and activates his gang link.
Navy Domi warps in, does nothing but align out.

Expected behavior: The room should keep focusing on the Loki since the Dominix has done nothing to generate threat. However since it has been stated by CCP that the AI is bugged when considering NEW targets; a minute or 2 of initial aggression is expected before things swap back to the Loki.

Actual Behavior: All rats including frigates swap to the dominix. At 1/2 armor no rats have reverted to hitting the Loki, attempting to launch drones to kill scrambler frigates results in the frigates volleying one to structure immediately, and after the loss of 1 light and 1 medium I was able to warp out at 10% armor. Heading back in to kill the remaining frigate scrambling my Loki resulted in the loss of another light drone.

Hypothesis: The AI will get stuck on the second target!

Trail 2 - Navy Dominix warps in first.

Navy Domi warps in, aligns to a SS, and activates his local tank. Immediately grabs full room aggression.

Expected behavior: Rats will immediately swap to the Loki on warp in.

Actual Behavior: Rats continued pounding the Dominix after the Loki started shooting several cruisers and activated his gang link. Even though the Dominix has only activated his smartbomb for 3 rounds by now. After 3-5 minutes of this; the room finally swaps back to hitting the Loki, only stopping to fire volleys at the sentry drones and take addition pop shots at the Dominix.

Activating the Railguns on the Dominix for 2 cycles on a cruiser getting glancing blows caused the room to swap back over to the Dominix.

Conclusions: No matter what I did, everything in the room hated my Dominix and drones a whole lot more than it hated my Loki, even when it was the only thing generating threat.

Proposed conclusion based on incomplete testing:

AI targets based on ship type, not "threat generation" (which may not even exist anymore).

Another data point:

Nightmare vs 1x npc battleship + 1x npc bestower with guns

On Noctis jump in without further action NPC Bestower immediately switches target to the new Noctis on field while the NPC battleship stays on the Nightmare.

Suggests: initial aggro is purely on ship type (BS to BS, Indy to Indy)

Edit: I would hypothesize that threat is a secondary selector. Best way to test is to jump in two identical ships and play around.

Npcs ai is just as worthless as it was before, only now its more annoying, because it shoots drones. Rest is same crap as before and every rat will happily get stuck into first object it can find, approach your turret bs with close to 0 angular or keep its nonsensical orbit even your tachs are tearing it apart.

Conclusion - ccp just wants players to launch/scoop drones at least 5 times per mission.

Full room aggro (as well as frequency of npc ewar) is a bug. It was confirmed somewhere in retribution feedback thread. "They are looking into it" so there is chance in few weeks it will be fixed.

Not based on my experience: jump a heavy tanked BS in, primary and EWAR (target paint) BC/BS. Later a 'cane jumps in, no aggro. Cane vaporises a bunch of boats and suddenly everything wants to kill it.

It may be a timer, but I don't think it is.

In the majority of times, this is the case "threat" dictates the target. I've had missions with drones out where no one gave a damn because they weren't close to the levels of damage and e-war I had.

Then once in a while, they'll hit a Drone, or my mate's Noctis who warped in like an idiot early. But these situations are so rare as opposed to shooting another combat ship in the mission when I've taken corp mates in who've struggled due to low SP to mission post patch.


I'd actually appreciate the calculation into how target switching is dictated. Because I refuse to believe I'm on a week long hot streak of barely getting switches.

My experience has been slightly different, but I am using 2 x BS, a rattlesnake and a NM in amarr and a Rattlsesnake and a navy mega in caldari, the later just to try something different. No matter which ship I warp in first, aggro will always switch away from the reattlesnake, which by the way has no guns just cap and either shield or armor RR and drone link aug's. RS drops sentries and sets them to assist the other ship. Vary rarely do the sentry's take damage. I use lights from the DPS BS to take care of the scramming webby frigs and they also very rarely take aggro. None of the ships have EWAR. For guristas missions I do fit ECCM. I will try a tengu and RS and see what happens.

i lol'd.

before retribution, sentries took full aggro and the NPC's would sit and wait like hungry dogs until I popped sentries again

it got to where I shield rep'd the one sentry they were fixated on

good times.



dude I fit my rattlesnakes the same way! http://i.imgur.com/Qo5qe.jpg

sometimes I lolfit the rattlesnake with 80 light drones and just spew them

anyway. that's all I had to say, nothing constructive.

I'm going to keep you in mind when I find that mission, I've never had it issued. but when it is, I will think of you :-)

//what is your fit, and what are your resists and dps?