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[Duality] NPC aggression against drones and Safety persistence changes

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CCP Fozzie
C C P
C C P Alliance
#121 - 2013-01-04 13:02:30 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Fozzie
My perspective is to approach this the same way as pvp ship balancing, looking at each ship relative to each other and making sure their advantages and disadvantages are in the right ranges to make each one a viable option.

The good news is that from a metrics perspective the most recent changes were a very solid step forward. Overall drone use is higher now than before Retri, as is the number of players active in ships like the Domi, Rattlesnake and Ishtar. Overall drone deaths per day is about 15% higher than pre-Rev, well below the huge +100% increase we peaked at before the 1.0.7 changes, and is continuing to drop gradually even as drone activity as a whole continues to inch up.

We're continuing to look into options for further balancing with the eventual goal of having the a large number popular mission shops all competitive with each other, drone ships included.

:Edit: fixed unclear scaling in the way I described the drone deaths

Game Designer | Team Five-0

Twitter: @CCP_Fozzie
Twitch chat: ccp_fozzie
Unforgiven Storm
Eternity INC.
Goonswarm Federation
#122 - 2013-01-04 13:26:09 UTC
Talking about NPC aggression due to new AI, there some pretty nice kills of haulers in 0.0 done by normal NCP rats in the gates, I almost lost one yesterday.

It seems that the rats now lock and start shooting any ship 1 second after it breaks cloak in a gate. If the rats are in high numbers (5+) and since haulers have low tank buffers / resists and take long time to align and gain speed to warp you might loose them.

Some people already lost some.

I had a previous warning about this new AI and what the rats were doing in the gates, so I put kin and termal resists mods (guristas) and all the shield buffer I could fit in the hauler before I did my run, but even so at the moment of the warp they took me 2/3 of my shield down, 3 more seconds aligning and I might have lost it. Now I have perfect skills and t2 mods fitted

I have the isk and im thinking in replacing my hauler for a t2 version to counter this "new feature" but i'm thinking... "poor noobs"

This forum rules dont allow me to post kills, but there out there, just look for them, funny and expensive kills of haulers to normal NCP rats in 0.0 gates. If it was incursion rats its expected, but normal ones?!

Hei CCP Fozzie maybe its time to make that tiercide on haulers and review their buffers a little bit; or maybe review normal npcs AI on the gates to wait a couple of more seconds [lets say 5s is a round number] before they start shooting, since I don't think this was an intended behavior expected by ccp: normal npcs killing haulers at the gates in 0.0?! or it was?

Unforgiven Storm for CSM 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13. (If I don't get in in the next 5 years I will quit trying) :-)
CCP Fozzie
C C P
C C P Alliance
#123 - 2013-01-04 13:33:36 UTC
Unforgiven Storm wrote:
Talking about NPC aggression due to new AI, there some pretty nice kills of haulers in 0.0 done by normal NCP rats in the gates, I almost lost one yesterday.

It seems that the rats now lock and start shooting any ship 1 second after it breaks cloak in a gate. If the rats are in high numbers (5+) and since haulers have low tank buffers / resists and take long time to align and gain speed to warp you might loose them.

Some people already lost some.

I had a previous warning about this new AI and what the rats were doing in the gates, so I put kin and termal resists mods (guristas) and all the shield buffer I could fit in the hauler before I did my run, but even so at the moment of the warp they took me 2/3 of my shield down, 3 more seconds aligning and I might have lost it. Now I have perfect skills and t2 mods fitted

I have the isk and im thinking in replacing my hauler for a t2 version to counter this "new feature" but i'm thinking... "poor noobs"

This forum rules dont allow me to post kills, but there out there, just look for them, funny and expensive kills of haulers to normal NCP rats in 0.0 gates. If it was incursion rats its expected, but normal ones?!

Hei CCP Fozzie maybe its time to make that tiercide on haulers and review their buffers a little bit; or maybe review normal npcs AI on the gates to wait a couple of more seconds [lets say 5s is a round number] before they start shooting, since I don't think this was an intended behavior expected by ccp: normal npcs killing haulers at the gates in 0.0?! or it was?


Thanks for the tip I'll investigate further.

Game Designer | Team Five-0

Twitter: @CCP_Fozzie
Twitch chat: ccp_fozzie
vasuul
BLUE M00N Fetish Group
#124 - 2013-01-04 13:49:37 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
My perspective is to approach this the same way as pvp ship balancing, looking at each ship relative to each other and making sure their advantages and disadvantages are in the right ranges to make each one a viable option.

The good news is that from a metrics perspective the most recent changes were a very solid step forward. Overall drone use is higher now than before Retri, as is the number of players active in ships like the Domi, Rattlesnake and Ishtar. Overall drone deaths per day is about 15% higher than pre-Rev, well below the huge 200% increase we peaked at before the 1.0.7 changes, and is continuing to drop gradually even as drone activity as a whole continues to inch up.

We're continuing to look into options for further balancing with the eventual goal of having the a large number popular mission shops all competitive with each other, drone ships included.



well i mainly fly autocannon boats so my drones are mainly needed against the frigs that get in so close i cant swat them by other means particularly the ones with web and scram as long as you can make it to where i got a fair shot at using drones to take them out with losing half a bay worth a mission or more every time i would be OK with that
i mean i have all my drone skills to 5 but yet med t2 drones are getting insta popped from rat frigates

someone suggested Ewar in the mix of drone but Ewar drones are useless against rats

i have heard some say sentries fair better and i admit i have not tried them yet I assumed since their range was longer they would be less effective but hey at this point i am willing to throw frozen corpses at em if it gives me half a chance
Mund Richard
#125 - 2013-01-04 14:25:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Mund Richard
vasuul wrote:
as long as you can make it to where i got a fair shot at using drones to take them out with losing half a bay worth a mission or more every time i would be OK with that
i mean i have all my drone skills to 5 but yet med t2 drones are getting insta popped from rat frigates

someone suggested Ewar in the mix of drone but Ewar drones are useless against rats

i have heard some say sentries fair better and i admit i have not tried them yet I assumed since their range was longer they would be less effective but hey at this point i am willing to throw frozen corpses at em if it gives me half a chance
Med T2... Currently there's a hard-coded crutch in the game:
Scout drones are only shot at by elite frigs/cruisers.
CCP Fozzie:
Is that mechanic here to stay for good (since it seems to be the switch that made drones not die horribly all the time), or will it get taken away once something else is made working, such as rat remembering who did how much damage?

EWAR: don't recall hearing ewar drones working well, ewar modules as a way of "taunting" does somewhat work, but don't expect miracles.

Sentries: they are quite horrible once small ships get in orbit (well, triple-omnilinked gardes are still viable for rail destroyers and up), the main point is that they don't physically travel so you can recall them as soon as they take damage, and they can pop frigs as long as those spawn far enough away (obviously not always the case, unless you LMJD to get the range).

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
CCP Fozzie
C C P
C C P Alliance
#126 - 2013-01-04 14:28:38 UTC
Mund Richard wrote:

CCP Fozzie:
Is that mechanic here to stay for good (since it seems to be the switch that made drones not die horribly all the time), or will it get taken away once something else is made working, such as rat remembering who did how much damage?


All options are on the table, but there are not concrete plans to remove the size restriction mechanic at this point.

Game Designer | Team Five-0

Twitter: @CCP_Fozzie
Twitch chat: ccp_fozzie
Jame Jarl Retief
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#127 - 2013-01-04 15:06:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Jame Jarl Retief
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Mund Richard wrote:

CCP Fozzie:
Is that mechanic here to stay for good (since it seems to be the switch that made drones not die horribly all the time), or will it get taken away once something else is made working, such as rat remembering who did how much damage?


All options are on the table, but there are not concrete plans to remove the size restriction mechanic at this point.


If there's no immediate plans to fix the AI, are there at least any plans to improve drone UI, and drones themselves though?

The reason I ask is that Retribution made drones more complicated to play with. And the UI has been unchanged for quite a while. Plus the UI is pretty badly outdated - it doesn't remember the last state it was in, and things like that. For example I gotta click "Drones in Bay" dropdown menu to open it each time I undock. Then when I need to deploy drones, mouse over to the drone group I want, then right-click on it, then left-click on "Launch drones". And lest we forget, there's still no hotkeys to do any of this stuff, so I can't be launching drones AND doing something else with the mouse like I could in a non-drone boat. By the time I do that, all other weapon systems that require a single F1 keypress have already fired their first volley. And drones didn't even start moving yet, it'll take half a second for them to materialize, and another half second at least to react to you spamming the F key to get them moving towards the target.

Not to mention silly drone stats like 100 sig radius of heavies and sentries, when ships carrying 3+ of them have sigs of 120 or so? Or the fact that T2 drones have the exact same resist profile as T1 drones? Or are you guys totally fine with this?
mkint
#128 - 2013-01-04 18:16:06 UTC
Jame Jarl Retief wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Mund Richard wrote:

CCP Fozzie:
Is that mechanic here to stay for good (since it seems to be the switch that made drones not die horribly all the time), or will it get taken away once something else is made working, such as rat remembering who did how much damage?


All options are on the table, but there are not concrete plans to remove the size restriction mechanic at this point.


If there's no immediate plans to fix the AI, are there at least any plans to improve drone UI, and drones themselves though?

The reason I ask is that Retribution made drones more complicated to play with. And the UI has been unchanged for quite a while. Plus the UI is pretty badly outdated - it doesn't remember the last state it was in, and things like that. For example I gotta click "Drones in Bay" dropdown menu to open it each time I undock. Then when I need to deploy drones, mouse over to the drone group I want, then right-click on it, then left-click on "Launch drones". And lest we forget, there's still no hotkeys to do any of this stuff, so I can't be launching drones AND doing something else with the mouse like I could in a non-drone boat. By the time I do that, all other weapon systems that require a single F1 keypress have already fired their first volley. And drones didn't even start moving yet, it'll take half a second for them to materialize, and another half second at least to react to you spamming the F key to get them moving towards the target.

Not to mention silly drone stats like 100 sig radius of heavies and sentries, when ships carrying 3+ of them have sigs of 120 or so? Or the fact that T2 drones have the exact same resist profile as T1 drones? Or are you guys totally fine with this?

This.

The fact that drone aggro was changed without first making drones not suck is appalling.

Maxim 6. If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
Rengerel en Distel
#129 - 2013-01-05 04:27:11 UTC
It'd be great if elite frigs/cruisers had their own icons, so you can actually tell them apart from normal frigs/cruisers.

Different missions have different drone hate sliders, making some missions a lot harder than previously. You throw high drone hate into the mix along with the NPC AI change, and you just get a horrible experience for a drone boat.

With the increase in shiptoasting, the Report timer needs to be shortened.
Mund Richard
#130 - 2013-01-05 12:22:43 UTC
Rengerel en Distel wrote:
It'd be great if elite frigs/cruisers had their own icons, so you can actually tell them apart from normal frigs/cruisers.

Well, the name is more complicated (which either helps at first glance like with Archi Gistii instead of Gistii or after looking at it closer Corelum Chief Guardian vs Corelum Guardian Chief Guard), but it's annoying, and takes up considerable screen-estate.
Sometimes I play on my laptop, 15,6", 3/4rd of my screen is the overview with names, distances, speed, transversal, ect. Top two rows with targets, bottom with modules, right-hand side with the Drone UI, then Local, and a tiny window for chat. Internet spaceships are somewhere under the windows, I know it, for I know they are pretty, which they cannot be unless they are.

Not seeing the screen itself, different icons would help me shorten the name tab.
Maybe an extra diagonal slash on them?

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
Funky Lazers
Funk Freakers
#131 - 2013-01-07 11:33:44 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Overall drone use is higher now than before Retri, as is the number of players active in ships like the Domi, Rattlesnake and Ishtar. Overall drone deaths per day is about 15% higher than pre-Rev, well below the huge +100% increase we peaked at before the 1.0.7 changes, and is continuing to drop gradually even as drone activity as a whole continues to inch up.


The thing is Drone ships are now very popular because of 2 things:

1. Now you can't do missions when Rats use TDs. It is impossible at some situations to do a mission in a Gun boat. A single TD makes your guns useless and I'm not talking about mutiple TDs yet.
Tracking Computes and Tracking Enhancers don't help at all.
Shouldn't Tracking Computers/Enhancers provide some sort of protection against TDs?! Just like Capacitor Battery reduces Energy Vamp. effect.

2. Drone ships are very easy to overtank.
You can make a very tanky ship and at the same time keep your DPS high.
Moreover there are situations when you can loose your ship because of lost drones. Basically you loose drones, you can't kill scrambling elite frigs.
Drone ships are almost immune to that, if you use the right setup.


Speaking of Tracking comps affecting missiles, are you going to introduce those mods for missiles at the spring with the new patch or we can expect the change sooner?

Whatever.
Mund Richard
#132 - 2013-01-07 11:43:16 UTC
Funky Lazers wrote:
The thing is Drone ships are now very popular because of 2 things:

1. Now you can't do missions when Rats use TDs. It is impossible at some situations to do a mission in a Gun boat. A single TD makes your guns useless and I'm not talking about mutiple TDs yet.
Tracking Computes and Tracking Enhancers don't help at all.
Shouldn't Tracking Computers/Enhancers provide some sort of protection against TDs?! Just like Capacitor Battery reduces Energy Vamp. effect.

2. Drone ships are very easy to overtank.
You can make a very tanky ship and at the same time keep your DPS high.
Moreover there are situations when you can loose your ship because of lost drones. Basically you loose drones, you can't kill scrambling elite frigs.
Drone ships are almost immune to that, if you use the right setup.

3) People are playing around with the new Algos and it's amarr twin, plus the Vexor became the sturdiest cruiser in the Gallente line?

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
Funky Lazers
Funk Freakers
#133 - 2013-01-07 13:00:50 UTC
Mund Richard wrote:
Funky Lazers wrote:
The thing is Drone ships are now very popular because of 2 things:

1. Now you can't do missions when Rats use TDs. It is impossible at some situations to do a mission in a Gun boat. A single TD makes your guns useless and I'm not talking about mutiple TDs yet.
Tracking Computes and Tracking Enhancers don't help at all.
Shouldn't Tracking Computers/Enhancers provide some sort of protection against TDs?! Just like Capacitor Battery reduces Energy Vamp. effect.

2. Drone ships are very easy to overtank.
You can make a very tanky ship and at the same time keep your DPS high.
Moreover there are situations when you can loose your ship because of lost drones. Basically you loose drones, you can't kill scrambling elite frigs.
Drone ships are almost immune to that, if you use the right setup.

3) People are playing around with the new Algos and it's amarr twin, plus the Vexor became the sturdiest cruiser in the Gallente line?



Fozzie specificly said, didn't he?

CCP Fozzie wrote:
as is the number of players active in ships like the Domi, Rattlesnake and Ishtar

Whatever.
Mund Richard
#134 - 2013-01-07 16:00:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Mund Richard
Is a Vexor not like an Ishtar or Domi?
Nevermind, different valid(?) interpretation of the same sentence, only OP knows how he meant it.

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
CCP Fozzie
C C P
C C P Alliance
#135 - 2013-01-07 16:18:36 UTC
Mund Richard wrote:
Is a Vexor not like an Ishtar or Domi?
Nevermind, different valid(?) interpretation of the same sentence, only OP knows how he meant it.


The ship activity numbers I was gathering were for ships that are very commonly used for mission running and other PVE. Vexor also counts but since it has a higher PVP popularity I skipped it in that set.

Game Designer | Team Five-0

Twitter: @CCP_Fozzie
Twitch chat: ccp_fozzie
Funky Lazers
Funk Freakers
#136 - 2013-01-07 16:30:11 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Mund Richard wrote:
Is a Vexor not like an Ishtar or Domi?
Nevermind, different valid(?) interpretation of the same sentence, only OP knows how he meant it.


The ship activity numbers I was gathering were for ships that are very commonly used for mission running and other PVE. Vexor also counts but since it has a higher PVP popularity I skipped it in that set.


I wish you could answer about TC/TEs since they will affect pve too.

Whatever.
CCP Fozzie
C C P
C C P Alliance
#137 - 2013-01-07 16:50:08 UTC
Funky Lazers wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Mund Richard wrote:
Is a Vexor not like an Ishtar or Domi?
Nevermind, different valid(?) interpretation of the same sentence, only OP knows how he meant it.


The ship activity numbers I was gathering were for ships that are very commonly used for mission running and other PVE. Vexor also counts but since it has a higher PVP popularity I skipped it in that set.


I wish you could answer about TC/TEs since they will affect pve too.


We don't have a set date for that yet, it will be evaluated as we go forward.

Game Designer | Team Five-0

Twitter: @CCP_Fozzie
Twitch chat: ccp_fozzie
Funky Lazers
Funk Freakers
#138 - 2013-01-07 16:58:03 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Funky Lazers wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Mund Richard wrote:
Is a Vexor not like an Ishtar or Domi?
Nevermind, different valid(?) interpretation of the same sentence, only OP knows how he meant it.


The ship activity numbers I was gathering were for ships that are very commonly used for mission running and other PVE. Vexor also counts but since it has a higher PVP popularity I skipped it in that set.


I wish you could answer about TC/TEs since they will affect pve too.


We don't have a set date for that yet, it will be evaluated as we go forward.


<3 At least you answered.

Just wish it was before the next expansion.

Whatever.
Hakan MacTrew
Konrakas Forged
Solyaris Chtonium
#139 - 2013-01-07 17:11:08 UTC
Funky Lazers wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Funky Lazers wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Mund Richard wrote:
Is a Vexor not like an Ishtar or Domi?
Nevermind, different valid(?) interpretation of the same sentence, only OP knows how he meant it.


The ship activity numbers I was gathering were for ships that are very commonly used for mission running and other PVE. Vexor also counts but since it has a higher PVP popularity I skipped it in that set.


I wish you could answer about TC/TEs since they will affect pve too.


We don't have a set date for that yet, it will be evaluated as we go forward.


<3 At least you answered.

Just wish it was before the next expansion.

He didn't say it isn't. We can but hope...

Who am I kidding, I don't want my missiles affected by TDs...

Although it seems fair that they should be...

Friends
Mund Richard
#140 - 2013-01-07 18:06:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Mund Richard
Hakan MacTrew wrote:
Who am I kidding, I don't want my missiles affected by TDs...
Although it seems fair that they should be...

On the other hand, if they will be affected by TC/TE...
I wonder how those numbers would look.
Having options on rigs won't be bad.
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Vexor also counts but since it has a higher PVP popularity I skipped it in that set.

Wow, intriguing result then.

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.