It seems that NPC convoys aren't dropping goods when being shot down from a cap ship. I'm guessing this is a bug, not a feature.

No, it is intentional. People have been recently using the new "ActivateTurrets" feature, in an automated fashion, to basically exploit large quantities of drops from certain NPCs.

We needed to halt this activity, while we investigate further. So, I had the NPC/drop system quickly changed, instead of just turning off the "ActivateTurret" feature entirely.

so now we cant use the turrets to manually shoot bots either

turrets are now an offence weapon or defense weapon against other players only

fingers crossed a fix can be found or ActivateTurrets removed altogether

The best update now the most useless thanks inc, what you didn't think we would farm using turrets? So what now I have to farm using a tungsten agrsso after I've just built my Goliath thanks for nothing best update now worst so Nerf turrets, great smart move inc you really solved a problem not like it was actually abuse of something. Really smart. Oh look the player are using there turrets for farming better fix that. Come on.

Tbh reduce drop rates from turrets kills for these 'certain npcs' and alls good people will still use the turrets with or without drops as for ppl farmin rn feels bad for ya. Just glad i got both cappies done and dont need to farm.

yep.. not being able to use our turrets in a usual fashion is a drag for sure.. its no surprise that we use what are effectively automatic turrets in an automatic fashion. did anyone not see that coming? pretty sure its the first thing everyone ran out and did with them..

many of us would be much better off without activateturrets at this point. we can still farm massive amounts of sss or any other item with turrets by hand, business as usual and at least only a handful of us capable of prolonged gaming would be doing it. its in those farmers best interests to eliminate the sudden spike in competition, so that works for me personally. lol

solutions?

having turrets use energy has other negative effects.. if we try to use our turrets defensively it will (and currently does) drain our cell.. so we cant jump. many of us use our turrets to put distance between us and our attackers to get an undetected jump, turrets simply dont hit targets well enough to be energy efficient. trying to get a turret kill from a distance is almost impossible with moving ships, pretty much have to hold it down and pray.

i went from running with rails exclusively to not using them at all because four shots and i have zero energy. they are the new Lmine.

i cant see lowering drop rates being a good thing either, farming is very time consuming as it is.. if anything its just going to increase session time. we will just farm longer, or at least, i will farm longer.. i dont see how thats any better. ill get those drops whether it takes six hours or twelve hours.

I'm sorry, but this is a ham-fisted and hasty solution to a foreseeable issue, and it now affects those of us that do NOT choose to exploit the new turret command.

I'd rather that the auto-turret command be removed than suffer through some arbitrary consequence that i did nothing to deserve.

Can't we simply take the bad apples out of the barrel instead of just kicking it over the cliff?

i dont know about calling us bad apples.. we are given a feature on the game.. on a client that is programmable.. then basically told not to use them..

"here's some matches, dont light fires".. calling it an exploit is a far reach in my opinon.

bad apples as in autoturrets not individuals is how i read that !

I also noticed that kills from the capital ship large port also result in a no drop situation.

Instead of decreasing the drop rate or disabling drops just increase the cu of the item. It still has to be moved. That will keep things grindy.

[EDIT]: As a note, the change to NPC drops does not impact destroying other capships. So, for instance, attacking an Unaligned Pirate Capship is not affected by this change, and never was.

This is not a response to any specific person, but rather in-general:

This is the Bugs forum. Not the "I have an opinion" forum.

That would be Suggestions.

I received player reports of a serious exploit, and I took action. I don't know what the situation is yet, we haven't had time to do more than a really basic investigation.

(Frankly, we're still trying to finish important tasks from last week, when we had to halt due to an exploit)

But, to be clear, this is what I have to do, when this happens.

There is "farming" and there is "FARMING". Lightning mines don't work so well against Guardians anymore, because it was hurting the server. Things change.

No matter what I foresee, there's always some variability to what actually results.

But, in general, if there's a change that alters some gameplay or extraction system by a large degree (particularly "multiples"), then you should probably report that, instead of abusing it. Seriously, did anyone read the Newspost from last week?

I did my best to come up with a rapid hotfix that was "minimally invasive" (relatively speaking), to give us time to look into the issue and understand what was happening.

Locking, because: Not a bug. This is the Bugs forum.

In case anyone missed it, the formal announcement thread has been posted to General.

So, redirect your discussion there.