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NPCs unaffected by chaff

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2015 11:29 am
by Gorf
Has anyone noticed that chaff only affects players - so if you're taking fire, your chaff spoils your agressor's aim. If you're giving out fire, the NPC's chaff spoils your aim.

However, when an NPC drops chaff, other NPCs' fire seems unaffected. At first I thought it might just be that they were using fixed weps, but last night's ultimately disastrous blast around an RES showed NPC beam turrets landing perfect shots on my target while my gimballed pulses were dancing.

Re: NPCs unaffected by chaff

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2015 12:00 pm
by Colin The Grey
Not noticed it myself, but when in a RES in my vulture - I fought at close range - the NPC could pop chaff, and as I was so close it had little effect.

Re: NPCs unaffected by chaff

Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 10:35 am
by BarkingMad
I've wondered about the effectiveness of chaff as well. When I was using it I seemed to get hit from distance much more often than I was able to hit anyone else. Could be worth a ticket.

Re: NPCs unaffected by chaff

Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:51 pm
by Loriath
The way I understand it, Your Chaff only affects the your current NPC target. Other NPC's would be unaffected. I could be wrong, but this is what I understand. There is a thread on the main forums that I remember reading about it. I will search for it later and see what I find.

Also, I wonder if NPC's use a mix of Fixed and Gimbaled?

Re: NPCs unaffected by chaff

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 4:47 pm
by Black Puddin
Gorf wrote:Has anyone noticed that chaff only affects players - so if you're taking fire, your chaff spoils your agressor's aim. If you're giving out fire, the NPC's chaff spoils your aim.

However, when an NPC drops chaff, other NPCs' fire seems unaffected. At first I thought it might just be that they were using fixed weps, but last night's ultimately disastrous blast around an RES showed NPC beam turrets landing perfect shots on my target while my gimballed pulses were dancing.

Chaff doesn't affect turrets as far as I'm aware.

Re: NPCs unaffected by chaff

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 6:15 pm
by Nanosmo
Chaff by definition should scatter all gimballed and turret weapons. Its effectively throwing out shinny confetti that confuses targeting sensors. Since both Gimballed and Turrets use targeting sensors(how else would they target something?) no matter who is targeting the ship, it should affect all participants who are using such weapons.

Re: NPCs unaffected by chaff

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 7:02 pm
by Gorf
And really, it should turn the chaffer into a spurious contact in the scanner (but it doesn't).