Player Features and Ideas Discussion

As part of the upcoming PvE changes , the procedurally generated NPCs are gaining better AI logic, dedicate EWAR and logistics pilots, and the ability to use real modules.

I'd like to suggest (If CCP hasn't already thought of it) that the new NPCs be able to use command bursts, and have fits specialized in them. I feel that fleet booster ships are a role complementary to the DPS, EWAR, and logistics ships which CCP has explicitly announced are coming, and are equally important to creating a convincing NPC fleet that can cause players to panic, rather than just farm harder.

Disclaimer: This post is totally in my selfish interest of one day getting faction command burst modules and charges, because I love my command burst bling-ships.

Here's the problem with this, AOE like that is actually really expensive on the server. Probably more-so for NPCs since they don't have fleets to limit the size of the set that needs to be iterated over.

On top of that the NPCs are kinda bad at staying in range of stuff like that.

Overall it's just easier for them to be a sort of weird hybrid of new and old bursts where they basically just bonus everything on-grid. For a medium or even decently large group of NPCs nothing much changes, and for a very very large group the increase in fight performance probably outweighs the potential gameplay advantages.

Fair enough. I thought O(n) for n NPC ships would be acceptable considering most NPC fleets won't be have more than 40 units on grid. I take your point, though.. O(n) across several hundred NPC fleets in the cluster, the complexity starts to add up.

As you state, applying blanket effects across the entire grid is an excellent hack to save server time. During the Fanfest talk, the developers stated that the planned move from 'classic' NPCs to module equipped NPCs is a response to increased computing power on Tranquility negating the need for current 'tricks.' Decisions on how far to take the new approach (Modules? Remote repair? Boosts? Cluster wide cyno networks?) must come down to exactly how much margin is available for the new toys to work with.

There's a picture of one of the new Blood Raider Shipyards with something like 1500 ships on grid at one time.

And yup, as TQ frees up more processing power and devs find clever ways to multi-thread things without breaking the server then things like this can be added but that's priority based and if I was CCP I'd start doing more interesting things with the individual NPCs before adding in something like this with a pretty marginal benefit to gameplay.

Like, I'd rather seen NPC bombers, or more rats with realistic module effects, than one rat that takes up a ton of compute on its own.

The site escalates based on what you bring, but the Sotiyo is still a fully fitted Citadel. You aren't going to solo that site in anything short of a Dread, and that'll get mauled.

Also the EC itself neuts like all @%#@#

I do have you covered on hilarious Blood Raider images though!

Original one is here from this reddit thread

There are also some others people have captured:

• A few ships.
• This seems to show the formation they described at Fanfest... or it's just groups warping around grid.
• Holy grid batman!

So, um, yeah they're still working on the escalation mechanics... lol.