Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi there,

Some month ago I wrote a post about the size of missiles and missile launchers compared to many ships hulls. That the launchers as well as the missiles are too big for many smaller ship hulls. Also the amount of missile you can put into your cargo hold is too high compared with the size. Furthermore some ships look ridiculous with bigger launchers.

While doing missions I saw things, which top all other mentioned in the previous post:

A Gallente Navy Tristan with heavy missile launchers.
A Thukker fighter with 3 missile launcher on the hull.
A Caldari Navy Caracal fitted with railguns or a Amarr Augoror with heavy missiles.

It seems CCP breaks rules of the game mechanics to fit NPC ships, while we player are restricted to them.

I do not want to fit a heavy missile launcher to a frigate. This is ridiculous. What I want is tidy fitted NPC ship with credible weapons and fittings like the NPC navy ships. If it is not CCPs priority to make the turret and launcher size more realistic compared to ships hulls, okay. But they should not break rules of the game mechanic to fit the NPC ships. Give them a reasonable fitting with more than one weapon and if they become too strong in the mass than lower the number of ships. Most level 1 to level 3 mission NPC ships are nothing more than targeting practice anyway. I cannot speak for level 4 and 5 missions.

Instead of a mass of poor fitted ships, I would like to see some smaller groups with 2, 3 or 4 good fitted (they use all slots including rigs) NPC ships, as example. The kind of the fitting (combination of modules, Meta Level, Tech-2), the number, type and combination of ships in one group and the number of the groups spread over the mission site would depends on the mission level and the mission content.

I want credible and challenging (depending on the mission level) NPC opponents with credible fittings. No more mass of poor fitted ships stupid flying around and waiting for someone passing by and shoot them. ‘Oh please, shoot me. I have nothing else to do as to orbit this wreckage.’ Something heard of patrol routes? If it is possible I would also like to see some tactical behavior.

The missions are boring and repetitive enough. And mostly you are bored by the stupid NPC-fair game.

Best regards.


P.S.: It would be very nice if you CCP could finally devote to such things and not introducing every expansion new content and shiny new things. First redo the outdated things. Otherwise the cart will rust away under your butt while you install tinted windows.

As soon as players do this I think CCP will follow suit.

The last 2 launcher images featured a raven useing lazers on a planet and now a nemisis featured as an explorer ship.

With the Tristan-- you know, I've wondered about that. Some of the 'elite' Navy NPCs use the heavier frigate hulls, but seem to act like cruisers in terms of sig radius, EHP, and so on. I suspect a dev without player experience grabbed the wrong art, unknowingly.

The game used to be quite different in the early days. For example, you could fit and run multiple prop mods at the same time. EWAR used to have much more range and be much more powerful. The game was significantly less regulated than it is now.

The NPCs haven't been updated in so long that they still follow the old rules, in addition to cheating by e.g. having infinite capacitors and >200km targeting ranges.

Re: missiles, those used to cause a heavy server load, which might be why NPCs only ever fire one. They might have made them oversized to bring the DPS somewhat in line with multiple, smaller launchers.

Basically, NPCs are a hot mess. :-)

CCP have spoken of wanting to do just that, redo all the NPC's all over the place. However it is more than just going through and slapping 'correct' fittings on them. They have to re-evaluate every single mission that that NPC appears in for balance, make sure it's not too powerful or too weak, and rebalance bounties along with it. And it's not a change that they can do one ship at a time, or all of a sudden you will have those Caracals firing 6 or so Heavy Missiles along side other Caracals firing only one.

At this point, I don't believe the server is the problem. The single-missile-firing NPCs are just a holdover from the time when it was.

It wouldn't surprise me if they slipped it into a release as a minor fix.