Actually, they have medium engines and the fast-recharge batteries. They should be no different than any other Centurion.

The bots in 3.2.1 are just too much. Just now I was trading, passing through sector 8 in a Centaur. I had a bounty of 55. Three bots flew all the way across the sector, and in less than 3 seconds to firing downed me from 100%. Mind you I was also going at full boost when this happened. That is less time than it takes for me to turn around and fire! In sector 5, a roving bot managed to kill my valkerie before I could even return fire. The only killable bots are in sector 4, and even then the medium-level ones run away all the time unless you manage to hit them. Here's my ideas for suggestions-

1) Tone down the weapons. Please. A lot. 3 seconds to kill a Centaur is too fast.
2) Make the bots travel less. The ones in 5 and 11 especially spend the whole time boosting around. Make them mill around more and boost randomly less.
3) Make the sector 8 bots less likely to chase people with low bounty. It was nice in pre-3.2 where the bots only chased people with a high bounty. Please reinstate that for the "chaser" bots.
4) Make at least one sector with all medium bots and no hard bots/easy bots.
5) Try to clear out at least one trade route. As it is, no profitable trading can be done without having a pack of 6 or 7 bots chase you from the station to the gate.
6) Create a trading vessel. As of now, all of the ships have less cargo capacity than the pre-3.2 ships except the Maurauder. Make at least one multi-national ship with ~40000hp, 50 cargo slots, 2 heavy gun slots and one light gun slot.

Thanks if anyone read this...

I find those bots to be a bit too powerful for my own liking. The 75 bounty ones are fine. The 150 bounty ones (if you catch up to them) are fine. The 250 bounty ones really tick me off. They gang up on you (I was chasing one at one time, then five quickly turned on me), are far too accurate when you're turboing away from them and did I say they gang up?

I suggest just making them less accurate and less prone to ganging up. I was surprised by it the first time, exploited it the second (firing quad rockets into a group chasing someone else) and just got ticked off enough to stop botting them after the tenth.

Errr... hmmm.

I haven't faced the new bots yet, but might I suggest that going up against 5 pirates by yourself ought to be suicidal?

If you are going to bot against the high value bots, you should do so in teams.

If fighting bots as a team works it would really encourage team cooperation in fighting... even teach tactics. That's a nice thought, isn't it.

I have a new tactic. I nuke them. Repeatedly.

I must say that fighting the bots in Sector 14 was some of the most fun I've ever had in this game. To whoever wrote their AI: You rock.

I just want to know, what engine and batteries do the bots have? I noticed some shooting while boosting at the same time. Do NPCs have the same limitations as players?

The bots have bottomless batteries. I have, using a medium engine and a heavy battery, boosted across sector 8 from a full charge (550e). Three bots behind me boosted the same distance as me while continually shooting blue ions. As you remember, blue ions used up even a heavy battery fairly quickly. Not only that, but when my battery was exhausted, two things had happened. 1) The bots had caught up to me. While I boosted, they actually gained on me. Therefore, they had faster engines. 2) The bots kept boosting with no recharge time. Therefore, I draw the conclusion that the bots have bottomless batteries and medium or heavy engines.

The problem may be that the Bots are very good at toggling the boost when their batteries are low. That is something that AI tends to have an absolute advantage on over human players.

If they got on the turbo earlier than you did, then they will gain on you. Even if their engine is slower than yours. That's how you win auto races, you know. Get on the gas earlier and point the wheel straighter than your competitors.

They aren't any smarter about low-charge turboing than most people. They have a hysteresis effect where they let it charge to 50% and drain to 10% or something. It was very ad-hoc when I implemented it.

They don't continually shoot blue ions while turboing.. I don't think they're able to do that. Once you slow down though, expect a full column of ions headed your way.

I think the intention in 8 (and 13 and 14 and a bunch of other places) is to hunt as a group, because they are _mean_.

Last night I did a balancing act, mostly trying to reduce the CPU usage of robots. Keeping them from fighting one another made a very, very significant impact. Unfortunately, doing so makes them gang up on the first non-bot they see. So I turned down their sight range to 1000m. Keep this in mind; they won't approach you until you approach them within 1000m.

Bot-on-bot fighting wasn't so bad in previous versions, but now I made them smart enough to dodge one another's fire, so now they just endlessly fire and strafe without ever hitting one another.

Down the line I'll probably implement some kind of chain-of-command AI where a leader assigns single fighters to single targets so the "gang up" effect isn't so bad. Or I could make the "gang up" effect much, much worse if you happen to have an insane bounty. Or you happen to attack the leader. Or the mining operation he is protecting.

By the way, Rogue, pre-3.2 bots never looked at bounties. They were just more likely to come after you the longer you were in the sector due to the way they picked targets.

/me loves the bots
They make trading more challenging, but they still cant hit me :P

Ooo... How about a sector with a really nice station, but TONS of uber-hard bots that gang up on you... A true test of piloting ability...

Time to snipe bots with nukes. Never thought i'd say snipe with nukes in one sentence

lol

PS: The bots still shoot the sector defense ships.

Yeah, cool, isn't it? That reminds me, the defense turrets don't work. They were working briefly during testing. HMmmmm.