Halp Halp! It's Happening! Beta 2.2 Inbound

[Xebeth]

There goes winging tonight....Fooking Friday as well.....

Dear (F)ecking (D)ickheads.....

Why don't you create your own private group and get the others to join? Would cover you until Mobius reappears.

[Loriath]

There goes winging tonight....Fooking Friday as well.....

Dear (F)ecking (D)ickheads.....

Why don't you create your own private group and get the others to join? Would cover you until Mobius reappears.

Well there is the TOR group, the Loriath group, the Dawg Group. Kharma, do you have a group? Doesn't matter, I wouldn't join your group even if you paid me

[Cmdr Kharma]

Yes I do....

And Bollocks to ya......

Fecking Swiss/Canadian bellend......

[BiggBno]

Yes I do....

And Bollocks to ya......

Fecking Swiss/Canadian bellend......

Someone have forgot to take his meds..

[Dudley]

Yes I do....

And Bollocks to ya......

Fecking Swiss/Canadian bellend......

Someone have forgot to take his meds..

Too early in the day... need more beer..!!!

[Loriath]

Yes I do....

And Bollocks to ya......

Fecking Swiss/Canadian bellend......

Someone have forgot to take his meds..

Too early in the day... need more beer..!!!

Belch on Discord. My Pizza is in the oven so I can crunch and chew in a few minutes.
See you there.

[Cmdr Kharma]

Will do after I complete this 15 jump marathon......From Palin to Qwent....

[Dudley]

I fell over again... sigh

[Dudley]

..
NPC Fighter crews - Bless 'em..!!

Source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthrea ... er_support
Agony_Aunt [FD Forums]
Credit to /u/The_Rathour on reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous ... hters_and/

So! After having spent most of my time in the beta testing out the NPC crew and how well they perform and their general behavior I've noticed a lot of things. My test ship is my main-game Corvette, with the loadout as follows:

2x Huge Gimballed Multicannons (Overcharged 5, Incendiary)

1x Large Gimballed Beam Laser (Long Range 2, Concordent Sequence)

2x Pack-Hound Missile Launchers (High Capacity Magazine 4, 1x Drag Munitions 1x Emissive Munitions)

2x Small Turreted Multicannons (High Capacity Magazine 5, 1x Corrosive, 1x Thermal Shock)

The two fighters I used were an Imperial Fighter with Plasma Repeaters and Chaff (which has since been switched to a Condor with Multicannons and Chaff) and a Taipan with the same loadout.

I picked up my crew member at the beginning of beta. Her name is Danika Trujillo and she sounds like the female police dispatcher in Battlefield:Hardline. She also has a mis-recorded voice line: The text says upon giving the "Focus Target" order will sometimes say "Point me at them, commander. I'll do the rest." while she says "Point them at me commander, I'll do the rest". Since the crew leveling was fixed (it was bugged until Beta 3 or Beta 4) I've spent a few hours in different Combat Zone romps and leveled her from Expert (where I hired her) to Master. A majority of the time I was in the fighter while Danika was in my Corvette, but there were times where we attracted a bit of heat and I had to take over the mothership while she took the fighter.

So here are my observations in no particular order:

NPC crew does not respect your firegroups

My firegroups were simple, really. Firegroup 1 had the huge MCs on one side and the turreted ones on the other, while firegroup 2 was the Pack Hounds on one side and the beam laser on the other. Yet Danika would consistently fire both the huge MC and the large beam laser simultaneously, as well as only use one Pack Hound launcher at a time. This resulted, when I re-entered my ship for any reason, at one missile launcher being significantly lower on ammo than the other, and one MC consistently being slightly lower ammo.

Whichever ship your crew is piloting has reduced damage

I don't know the exact decrease, but it's apparent. Things are still killed quickly enough with the right ship, but the reduced damage is there.

NPC crew cannot fire turrets set to "target only"

This large and rather obvious shortcoming really bugs me. This also ties into the last issue: Turrets cannot fire if not set to a firegroup or are not on the "fire at will" setting. Because I've established that NPCs don't respect the player's firegroups, the NPCs cannot manually trigger the turrets to fire, nor toggle them on or off. My small multicannons were never used unless I was in the mothership to fire them.

NPC crew (at Expert and below) does not engage in power distribution

2/2/2 pips diverted at all times. They won't divert pips when taking fire nor when they boost. Luckily my set up works well on 2 pips into WEP, and this may be resolved at higher levels of NPC flight (Master+?)

NPC crew has no volume control

They are loud, loud, loud and there's no option to quiet them down. The "Non-player communication" slider that affects the flight controllers at stations doesn't seem to apply to them, and they're just constantly yelling in my ear.

NPC crew has no sense of self preservation - For the fighter or the mothership

"Help me commander, my hull is taking damage!" "Hull at 50% commander, request immediate assistance"

These were the two lines I heard before I switched into the fighter myself, seeing that her shields were still online. This poor little Imperial Fighter was at 187% heat. Danika was firing the Plasma Repeaters full blast on no WEP capacitor, absolutely destroying any semblance of heat regulation. This extends to your mothership, so be very careful if you run distributor intensive or high-heat weaponry.

NPC crew does not hold ammo, but they aren't 100% dumb with it

Goes a bit in line with "no self preservation." They will use anything and everything at their disposal.

Do you have a Feedback Cascade Railgun that you only use to break SCBs? Be prepared to watch it used to try to snipe modules and deal extra damage to shields on rapid fire. Usually save your missiles against bigger ships to use them on the nimble stuff? Be ready to hear those explosives impacts on your target Conda's hull. Do you use a Plasma Accelerator at key moments for extra oopmh? Watch as those purple balls of doom sail by at incredible speeds, with some hitting and some not.

They will also fire as soon as they're in range. If you usually wait for a close engagement distance before firing on something, the NPC will not unless you tell it to hold fire and then tell them to fire after they get closer. With missiles this is especially apparent: Seeker Missiles do not have an inherent maximum range (they can lock on as long as you have a target selected) so they will fire them from several km outside of their effective range, meaning many will miss.

They don't hold on to things. They will use everything you have (except turrets lol) without a single qualm. However, they are smart-ish, sometimes. They will hold missiles until a target's shield is down, for instance. They will use chaff when fired upon and they feel in danger. In what is seemingly a beta-wide change NPCs actually use heat sinks as well. However, your NPC crew will not hold fire if an opponent uses chaff, so plan accordingly.

NPC crew has the aim that you think they do

They're really good with Railguns. Just as good as those stupid CZ Rail Eagles. They're decent with PAs against the bigger ships as well.

NPC crew (at Expert and below) rarely use evasive flight

This may be an issue with Danika only having been an Expert, but I noticed once she started taking a little bit of damage in the fighter the fighter would instantly pop about with about a 90% success rate. On the other hand, so long as I didn't die instantly from a Railgun shot or a PA round, I could bob and weave and avoid being destroyed until my shields came back up. So it's a decision for the pilot: Keep your NPC in the safe(er) mothership and have them deal reduced but reliable damage and take the high DPS fighter for yourself, or throw the NPC to the dogs in the fighter and hope they survive but keep all of your damage.

NPC crew have no damage tolerance on requesting help (or it's the same for fighters/mothership)

This is more of an annoyance than anything. "The enemy is bearing down on me commander, need assistance immediately! Girl you got hit by a single class 2 PA shot and you have 1500MJ of shields total, meaning you have ~1480MJ of shields remaining. 7 seconds later: "Enemy has me in their sights, I'm hit!" by a few pulse lasers from that Python, meaning you're now at ~1450MJ.

I get that they need a low tolerance for damage to report taking fire while in a fighter, but the constant reporting of damage in a combat zone does get a tad tedious.

Concordent and Regeneration Sequence do not work on the fighters

They aren't considered your "wingmates" so the laser will damage them instead of heal them. Normally this isn't an issue because the fighter shield regenerate at an insane pace, but if you cross into the line of your own ship's fire you might get toasted by the lasers that are supposed to heal you. This seems backwards to me, and these lasers should work to repair a friendly fighter imo.

Lore fact: Not all (possibly not any) NPC crew are part of the Plot's Federation

I cannot find the screenshot, but there is a pre-generated line for the NPC crew descriptions that says: "I wasn't good enough for the Pilot's Federation, so I joined a crew instead." This confirms my fan-theory that most NPCs aren't actually members of the Pilot's Federation and are actually losing their ships or possibly even their lives when we destroy them, as they aren't automatically covered by insurance.

And that's everything.

I really like the NPC crew. It's actually really awesome giving orders to them and having them respond in kind, and it's awesome to actually see my ship maneuvering around and firing in third person for once. Fighters are great fun and effective at that. I just wish the few glaring issues were solved, mainly the turret issue and the firegroup issue (they're on separate groups for a reason).
END

[Xebeth]

...<snip>

Great write up Dawg