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So you want to discuss facts?

Ok so you run missions in an Ishtar. You tested the new A.I. in an Ishtar. (Fact) This is probably the worst possible ship to test the new A.I. with. Not because it is a bad ship to run Level 4 missions in, on the contrary it is one of the best LVL 4 mission ships. If you have the skills for it which most newer players do not. It is also probably the least affected ship by this A.I. change. If your preferred ship is an Ishtar than I assume you have really good drone skills. Add the ship bonus of 10% to drone hit points and it is easy to see why YOUR drones do not get insta popped when targeted. In what way does this prove there is no issue with less elite drone boats? Or non drone boats that rely on small drones to kill ships that get under their guns? or that the new A.I. has a negligible impact on LVL 4's?

On top of this the Ishtar is a T2 HAC, a cruiser size ship, what does this mean?
(more facts)
#1 - A T2 ship automatically has higher threat than a T1 ship.
#2 - It is cruiser size, so has a much easier time pulling agro off drones than a battleship size ship does.

So your testing in an Ishtar does nothing to reveal the problems with this change. The fact that an Ishtar is relatively unaffected does nothing to demonstrate the impact this change does have on T1 BS's that use light drones.

In fact I would assume that any HAC or T3 for that matter would have very little trouble keeping agro off the drones. Even without the drone HP buff your ship has. Again irrelevant as the issue is with T1 BS's.

The purpose of testing is to look for issues, not find the best way to circumvent them. If you actually want to help with the testing rather than being a troll, fly a few missions with the ships that ARE affected by this A.I. update. Namely a T1 battleship. Any of them will have the same problem. A T1 battleship has a much harder time holding agro of small ships than an Ishtar. A drone boat Domi with loads of e-war may be relatively unaffected. The AFK Domi fit that is all Drone DPS but has shield transfers in the highs targeting the drone should still generate enough threat to AFK missions even with the new A.I. changes. So AFK missions will most likely still be possible.

The issues with this new A.I. is mostly with T1 battleships using light drones. (fact)A battleship hull is so much bigger than the drones that it is near impossible to keep agro off them without massively gimping your fit. No amount of testing with any HAC or T3 will give any insight into this issue. If this change is implemented as it sits now new players will not be able to run level 4 missions in a T1 BS even with decent skills. I have not tested how the new A.I. reacts to a T2 BS mission boat, But even though it should in theory be easier to hold agro as it is a T2 ship, this would again not be testing the actual issue.

this goes the same for the comments FOX FOUR made about a T3 pilot bringing along a noob in a frigate. this is a pointless discussion. Why?
#1 - a T3 does not benefit from having a frig join them for missions near as much as a mission runner in a BS.
#2 - A T3 is again a cruiser size ship, much closer to the size of a frigate than a BS, so it takes less threat to pull agro.
3# - A BS mission runner can really be helped by the noob in a frigate taking care of the frigate size ships. A T3 does not need help with them as it can insta pop them.

If having a noob join a veteran in level 4 missions is even going to be looked at, it needs to be with the veteran in a T1 BS, as this is where the problem really manifests and is the more common scenario compared to the Veteran being in a T3.

Do you see now why your posts are viewed as trolling? You are not addressing the actual issues, but only pushing the most obvious work around. I do not want to fly a HAC in order to work around the new A.I. I prefer to fly a BS. That is my choice and my play style. My play style is one of the ones that will be massively nerfed by this new A.I. Your play style being relatively unaffected is irrelevant as this change is not an issue for you. That does not mean others are unaffected. The problem is the play styles this change does affect.

As far as this A.I. not being new. OK I will agree that it is just a paired down version of the A.I. used for Sleepers and Incursions.This is a fact. But this change will put this A.I. Into the game for ALL other NPC's. For anyone who does not run incursions, or live in a wormhole, it is for all intents and purposes NEW,Also a fact. As they have never experienced it before.

I have tried to come up with a fit in EFT to test this weekend based on your recommendations. For the most part it will not work. The best I can do for a raven is upgrade to CN shield hardeners which frees up a lot of CPU to fit a NOS or two in the utility high slots. I am not confident a NOS or 2 will be near enough threat. Since ogre II's are still supposedly left alone I also plan on testing a fit with them and 200mm auto cannons in the 2 extra high slots to see if they will work against the elite frigs.

So I have not been in this thred in a while but I am not seeing an answer to the biggest question I have. Has anyone tryed to run missions and DED plexes with Citidel Torps. This is still going to be basically a game breaking issue in the 10 of 10s and lvl five missions that have enough ewar to insta pop most ships. I dont care to go into these things and loose 4 Bil isk T3s cuz no body payed attention? Can we get an answer on that or are we just up a creek?

What an ill-formed, and invalid conclusion.

An ishtar was a perfectly viable test. First and foremost the testing is of the new AI, how it changes its aggro etc. As far as I know, the aggro can be triggered by sig size, but nothing was said about T1 vs T2. So a test with an ishtar should give an indication of aggro mechanics of a cruiser class ship (which would also be similar to say, a noob vexor)

Bottom line is that ALL ship sizes need to be tested thoroughly to get any type of accurate indication of what is going to happen when this goes live.

For one, I'm glad I gave the mission life behind.

Remove warpscramblers and warpdisruptors from NPC agrotable.
They should have no relevance to the NPC threat perception of their potential targets.

Some very valid points. I apologize if you were offended by the apparent anger in my post. It was not directed at you but at Tippia.

She keeps referring to her testing in an Ishtar to prove the new A.I. has had minimal impact.

My point was that testing the new A.I. in an Ishtar or other cruiser size ship in no way validates or disproves the impact this A.I. change has on T1 battleships.

As much as HAC's, Command ships, T3's, and other higher tech level cruiser size ships make good mission runners, most mission runners, especially newer players, run missions in T1 or faction battleships. The Raven, CNR, Domi, Mach, Nightmare, and Rattlesnake are all very popular mission running boats, and are all impacted by this change much more than any cruiser size ships.

Tested a level 2 in a rattler to get a giant sig difference, and with a TP and NOS, I could not get aggro back from my drones. Recall/release and never lost aggro again. I let the TP/NOS combo go for 2 or 3 minutes before recalling the drones, so if they were going to switch back to me, they would have.

The trick is to launch the drones, do not send them out, wait for the NPCs to switch, recall drones, wait for NPCs to switch back to you, then relaunch and start using them. The NPCs only evaluate threat and decide to switch every couple of minutes, so now you got time to do some killing.

Also, shoot stuff with the snake, look dangerous to the NPCs will stay on you.

I can't find the post now, its getting to be a long thread, but wasn't the one claiming the ogre II's were not touched flying a HAC not a BS? It would make sense as the HAC's seem to have no trouble controlling agro. I assume because the cruiser is so much smaller than a BS, the size difference is much less compared to the drones. It takes less hate to over come the size preference of the NPC's with a cruiser size ship than it does with a BS size ship.

This would indicate to me that the code is working properly. The issue is A battleship is far more reliant on drones than a cruiser. Just as a capital ship needs sub caps for protection against smaller ships a battleship needs drones for protection against smaller ships. We need something added to battleships to offset this huge gap.

Perhaps drastically increasing the threat generated by large guns and launchers while slightly reducing the threat generated by e-war and remote reps would work. This way active mission runners will have a much better chance of pulling argo off drones, while AFK drone boats (namely the Domi) will have their drones wiped out very quickly due to no threat generated by large weapons. Allowing E-war to generate so much threat that a Domi can still be fit to AFK missions seems to defeat the purpose. Provided one of the driving factors for the new A.I. was to combat AFK mission running, which I was under the impression it was.

This would at the same time fix the issue with logistics, giving battleship pilots better tools to protect their logistics cruisers. The NPC's hate of logistics will be even harder on the new support ships. If a T2 logistics has trouble handling the threat generated by their remote reps, a less experienced T1 pilot filling the same role will be hit even harder.

I assume most veterans will adapt to this new A.I. without to much difficulty. But newer players already have difficulties running level 4 missions due to low skills. This new A.I. will make new players who can barely run level 4 missions now, completely unable to run them at all under the new A.I. If CCP is trying to ease the entry level of new players into EVE, than this is a step in the wrong direction. Unless the issue of Battleships not being able to protect their drones is resolved. One of the first things I learned running level 4 missions in a T1 BS was the importance of drones. Now if I as an experienced mission runner had some difficulties, where does that leave the inexperienced players?

enter conspiracy theorists


nice thread, curious to see how the galaxy adapts to dynamic aggression

Crap, it was supposed to be 5. Wow that post was full of a bit of fail. Updated. :(