NPC combat in 3.23

[Aramsolari]

Is it me or are NPC enemies a lot tougher in 3.23? Took my shiny F7A II for a spin and holy cow....barely took down a Reliant Tana and Cutlass before I had to get out of there. Same thing with the Corsair I took out after for an MRT. Not even VHRTs. The AI is no joke this patch.

 

[Talonsbane]

It's not just you, I've had a couple difficult situations with NPCs as well since 3.23 landed.

 

[Ayeteeone]

Is it me or are NPC enemies a lot tougher in 3.23? Took my shiny F7A II for a spin and holy cow....barely took down a Reliant Tana and Cutlass before I had to get out of there. Same thing with the Corsair I took out after for an MRT. Not even VHRTs. The AI is no joke this patch.

You are correct sir.. The AI is better. ALSO, when flying at SCM speeds it is much harder to avoid incoming fire. The 'speed/agility tanking' that used to be the meta caught a shotgun blast to the face with the existing ship tuning in MM.

I was able to finish Pirate Swarm in a stock F8C, with extensive use of capacitor re-allocation and a fair bit of NAV mode disengagement. Having 8 weapons to work with and 2 size 2 shields helped a f*ton too.

 

[Cugino83]

As far as I know from some weekly report Ai team as manage to implement some data from actual PvP player into the AI.
add the fact that server don't look so fucked up as usually do (or maybe is my impression...) and that produce result in a better AI.. or an actual one since so far it was brain dead

 

[Aramsolari]

Damn I wonder what this means? Have the AI been bad all this while or have I just been a horribad combat pilot?

 

[Ayeteeone]

Damn I wonder what this means? Have the AI been bad all this while or have I just been a horribad combat pilot?

I would NEVER deign to judge the glorious flying and fighting skills of a TEST pilot. But you gotta admit our skill bar is very low. Probably so we can reach it after falling down.

Legitimately though, the main reasons have been covered. Server performance is better, there's been quite a lot of optimization to other systems like networking, the combat AI was seriously upgraded, and ship flight profiles are drastically different. Time for @marcsand2 to run some TopGun classes!!