NPC overall balancing

Suggestions Balance
1

I wanted to do this for a long long while and I would like to turn the devs attention to this topic because I think it’s been taken too lightly for a very long time now.

Personally i have no problems with NPC’s because i figured them out long ago but overall it’s a different story. The whole idea of this change/update revolves around my 2-year+ experience in NPC mechanics and Open Space farming.

The main issue of NPC’s are their damage output and damage tank together with their loot drops.
The effort heavily outweighs the prize.

  • Many of us would go and try to kill a Defiler in Open Space (just for fun or for helping others) if it could drop something worth of a 12 man squad struggle.
    (some Defilers are easy than others so dont mix them up)
  • The Scout ships have more tank than Hunters or some Predators
  • The police ships need their damage output cut literally in half

This intro is just a critique of stuff in a dire need of change so the OS mode gets player-friendly for everybody and not just a seasoned players like me, i would like to play with people every now and then and not just alone.

My Suggestions

I suggest a system for OS that changes the known danger levels from 1, 7 and 10 do a full range of 1 to 15, 15 being Fort Muerto (also since you need rank 6 ship from any faction to unlock Open Space, rank 6 can be the starter danger level and from that it can go to 15).
ALSO, this system would affect the NPC’s as well in terms of tank, damage and dropped loot, the higher the danger the tougher the enemies are and the better loot you get (for example instead of ores, you get full parts like graphite plates or chips)

If this is not good enough for at least a sketch, any idea of scaling the NPC’s characteristics together with the danger level of the sector is as good as any idea because it leads to a more immersive gameplay. This kind of scaling should be used only for common NPC’s and not for something like Defilers or similar, they should have a fixed statistic, different from the usual, because they ARE different.

Introducing the Alien Destroyer and the Cruiser in Open space would deepen the immersive part even further, all of these special NPC’s should have special loots worth of assembling a full team/squad to kill.

CO-OP is okay as it is, the only change i would like to see is the NPC’s missing their target every now and then instead of 99% perfect perma aim.

PVE is a mess of fast swarms of very deadly instakills,  there should be at least a “comfort zone” where you can make one mistake and survive or maybe 2-3 tops.
The mechanics are unfair but not impossible to deal with, with a premade team. Before i say something stupid as a suggestion, i would rather like to say

please re-evaluate NPC’s in PVE missions and OS once more because anything less than a seasoned pro player should not be the borderline between winning and losing, right now PVE seems to me as if im walking a thin rope and im about to fall any second rather than having fun.

I volunteer to provide precise feedback on any and every NPC myself, as long as there is an interest of improving the mechanics in the future development.

2

I’ll aggree.

 

There’s something I hate with fire support is these snipers with perfect aim. If you dare to use mid-close range ships, you get can’t dodge a single shot, and die ridiculously.

3

I totally agree with OP.

Also, loot would have to be expanded and some more precious items would have to be added in that mode as well.

4

+1 even if I don’t think we’ll see a lot of changes in os until this summer :confused:

5

7 hours ago, EndeavSTEEL said:

+1 even if I don’t think we’ll see a lot of changes in os until this summer :confused:

Perfect timing before changes start happening ![:D](<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/006j.png “:D”)

6

I agree with COOP and OS. More things to do in OS in squads could be good. Reescaling the NPCs in OS and improving the rewards according to the difficult should be priority.

However I disagree with PVE. Easy PVE is easy, medium PVE is good and hard PVE IS HARD. I don’t want hard PVE to be able to be completed with only 1 player, but a group of players. Duplicators are cheap, players who don’t respawn can drag the other players to lose. That’s true, but we can’t fight against random players. At least we have tools like the window to search for players for squads, friends list or the chat to find reliable players. However we need in PVE more missions to be completed easily with interceptors. Right now, to complete hard PVE missions most of the time we need frigates.

 

7

I’d like to keep the difficulty level just get rid of the stuff that was made of zero imagination or not much though put into it. I don’t want it to be easy, just designed a bit more complex aka better.

8

I’m sorry. Probably I misunderstood you, ORCA1911.

9

Funny, that you mention snipers, but don’t the turtles.
Sniper can be easily killed by torp/anomaly from afar w/o risking to much.
Turtles itself(on medium) deal ~6k(or was it even 12k before resistance?) of damage. Nothing is close to this anywhere else.

>>- The Scout ships have more tank than Hunters or some Predators
<<

Yeah scouts… those pesky things may or may not be deadlier as a hunter(especially for inty with their zaaaaaaaap), but they take way longer to die…

Predators are annoying due their range, homing and deadly weapon, together with drones and zap. And this hull…

But the most annoying thing is, if this bully call his friends to make party…

And this is something you have to factor in in OS. Not only the enemy itself, but also if they group/are close to other.
I like personally Abandoned Complex. There are so many small groups(allied, smuggler and cyber) that it doesn’t feel negative but immersive.
Compared to the fufu sector Solaris Wasteland… where you can’t fight one enemy w/o alerting other groups…
Especially getting then trash loot of ~5-10k credits from fighting such strong enemies is really a bummer.

>>- The police ships need their damage output cut literally in half <<
I don’t feel so. They use gauss and they don’t hit often. Just the initial hit is strong, but that’s it about those.

10

I forgot to add that turtles need speed reduced, the other aspects are possible to counter just as easy as snipers. It’s just not normal for a sniper to never miss and with such a gun, might as well put tharga there and one shot everything since we’re at it. The guard buff went wrong after npc’s got it too, thats all, now turtles are fast and cant be countered equally in higher numbers.

Scouts are plain unfair to fight against, i dont even have to explain the detail how obvious it is.

Hunters are okay, Predators should tone it down in the never-miss aspect or tone it up in drops.

Solaris wasteland is a nightmare in terms of wrong place, time and NPC programming.

One police ship can be dealt with but once multiple start shooting you are dead, mostly coz the never-miss aspect that keeps appearing all this time im writing this post.