Every cycle Itani players spend millions of credits on ships and avalons and equipment to win deneb battles only to lose due to Serco forces being OP. Just click back through the last few cycles and its pretty obvious with blue double or even tripling the player assisted wins and kills of red only to tie or lose or squeek by with a win. Serco NPC's winning 4/5 battles without players present isn't really a good balance and its not fair to those of us spending millions of credits in Deneb only to have to spend more to pop the Serco blockade when it pops up.

I don't see the suggestion here but +1 to Deneb being decided only by players and not NPC battles.

-1
Serco is losing deneb
It IS balanced. With both sides having the same amount of ships and same movements.
The serco who usually go to deneb are skilled pilots.

Jesus do you even read the post IL?

It's not balanced for both sides, none of their victories should be determined by NPC battles.

IronLord loves to spam -1 on all suggestions.

Unless you know how to skillfully solo HACs and connies medium and up are usually over a hour long. NPCs gradually decrease the battles length because not everyone has avs and capships. I did read this. And I just gave a little feedback and a -1 because there's been enough bad ideas and this is amongst the worst. Not every one will spend a large skirms life span worth of casualties to win it. It gives just the same amount of victory squares as the rest. You seem to forget this is a sandbox and that NPCs like serco and itan are nations in their own right. At the moment NPCs are a easy way to lower a skirms casualties and make it end already. And no. No one should be spending "millions on ships and equipment" because I spent 80k and ended a lot of skirmish, racked up thousands of itan npc kills with one ship. Not skilled enough? Hop inside a capital ship and farm the ragnorok kills which spawn after each rags death. This suggestion would turn a week long skirm into month long skirms at best.

Like I said this is just generally a horrible suggestion in my opinion because how inconvenient it would make deneb. As a blockade has to be sent every week and each sector in Deneb has to be coloured.
P.S I usually pop both sides blockades, and the itani have TWO stations in deneb. The itani have a larger advantage as players then the serco do bud.

This reply of mine is somewhat offtopic, and i will make a thread expanding on this issue.

I think the term skillfully is somewhat disingenuousness. If i am not mistaken, you primary play on a UIT character. UIT characters who are not aligned with a side, and are neutral are able to stack on capital ships in deneb without getting shot at by either side (not being in the mission has an affect on this as well). AND Hacs in large/border battles stand still for the most part. In medium battles, the connie stand still(i belive). This is something that needs to be fixed, but I'm not too sure hot to deal with it. I'll think about this, and make a thread later.

You again failed to understand the scenario and the suggestion @IL.

The suggestion isn't about removing NPCs completely from Deneb, that would obviously be ridiculous.

It's about background NPC fights that take place when there are no active participants in a skirmish. Those are completely AI v AI, and actually make skirmishes last for a lot more time than they are supposed to. A huge number of total Deneb battles comprise of these type of battles, hence the result of the Deneb war is mostly decided by the AI. The only way either side actually wins is if it's AI managed a huge lead early on. This is the part which is imbalanced and NOT THE PRESENCE OF NPCs.

@WAF yes UIT should not be allowed to participate in the Deneb war from either side without facing repercussions. +1 to that.

this isn't a sandbox, you really need to drop that line of reasoning as it clearly states it is a MMORPG on the front page, this isn't garys mod. People want - and are encouraged - to roleplay, its no fun to roleplay as a nationalist if your side is always on the losing end. I agree with chubee, if no players show up to a skirmish it should have a 50/50 chance of going either way.

This might only require changing some of the NPC behavior both the valk and IBG have less armor then their comparative serco ships and with the current NPC behavior of "fly at eastother and just spam fire until one dies" the more heavily amored ship is going to win out the majority of the time.

VO is a sandbox MMORPG

And no. Itani win more the serco usually

Imo the skirmish should just completely halt. That probably isn't realistic I guess but I think that's how it was intended to be.

I don't see how changing ship stats resolves the issue in anyway. It's not just about Itani losing. This happens for both sides. It's entirely affected by NPC capital ships.

I feel like SCPs with Gats plus Rags are more effective at deshielding capships then valks and rags.

I also feel the pilot AI lends itself better to SCPs then Valks, giving Serco an advantage.

IL we get it you're the best pilot ever and we are all idiots and suck and all our ideas and concerns are stupid and suck thanks for your input pal.

I didnt say anything about removing NPCs from Deneb, I said rebalance it a touch. Maybe downgrade the ships used to lesser variants or change up the weapons they are equipped with.

What does having 2 stations in Deneb have to do with anything?

Again, if you read my post IL, you'd see I'm talking about player assisted wins vs non player assisted wins. Not about how skilled serco pilots are vs itani pilots. If Deneb has been a 16 year stalemate, Its safe to assume the NON PLAYER ASSISTED WINS should be roughly 50-50.

Itani win more then Serco yes, because I spend hella time ensuring my one wormhole to greyspace is open. Hence why blue has 5-10 people fighting in Deneb each cycle, while serco sends 0 pilots and yet still wins just under half the player assisted battles and more then 50% of the non player assisted battles.

Incarnate had said in an interview a while ago that the NPCs should be evenly matched, and players were usually who helped tip the scales - but I don't see that very much. I wonder if at some point the NPC's AI was changed to ramp up defense on whatever side was losing to resume the status quo, even when no pilots were in the current fight.

I don't do deneb [because I suck against NPCs more than living pilots T.T], so I'm not very sure what the proper response would be. ~maybe~ the NPCs should only ramp up their difficulty per match instead of per monthly score? Or maybe I am merely imagining things as far as deneb is concerned.

There is literally NOTHING WRONG WITH DENEB there is NO npc rag that can deshield a capship. Deneb is a skirm between the two nations. And so? Player assisted wins are expected to be the way they are.
Because no two pilots are the same.
If you think there is something horrible wrong in deneb check the stats. Oh? What's this? You haven't checks the stats? Oh well itani are winning by a 10 win margin and have more player assisted wins then servo by far. As I said. There is NOTHING wrong with deneb. You just have serious lack of sight.

Also, we all float, I am serco KoS. So for me that doesn't apply to me. But I see your point

*Sigh* Clearly you did not actually read my first post, or any replies, and it is YOU who has "a serious lack of sight". So let me make this very very very very clear for you.

===============================================================
" If you think there is something horrible wrong in deneb check the stats. Oh? What's this? You haven't checks the stats? Oh well itani are winning by a 10 win margin and have more player assisted wins then servo by far. As I said. There is NOTHING wrong with deneb. You just have serious lack of sight. "
===============================================================

My post is about NPC vs NPC Deneb. Not players in Deneb. Not how I suck at Deneb. Not that Serco has better pilots. Not that Itani are winning Deneb more often then Serco is winning Deneb. I do look at the stats. A lot. The Deneb stat page is a button on my phone home screen thats how often I check the stats. I am aware that Itani are winning by 10 - DUE TO PLAYER ASSISTED WINS WHICH HAS A B S O L U T E L Y NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SUBJECT OF THIS POST.

The point:

NPC SERCO ARE STRONGER AND BETTER THEN NPC ITANI DUE TO THE WAY THE AI FLYS A SHIP AND THE STATS - INCLUDING DPS - OF THE SHIPS AND LOADOUTS.

I repeat:

NON PLAYER CHARACTER PROMS WITH GATS DEFEAT NON PLAYER CHARACTER ITANI VALKS AT AN UNBALANCED RATE, YET KILLS ARE COUNTED EQUALLY. THIS IS BY DEFINITION UNBALANCED.

NPC SERCO PROMS ARE ALSO MORE EFFECTIVE AT DE-SHIELDING CAP SHIPS THAN NPC ITANI VALKS ARE.

========================
"Because no two pilots are the same."
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In the case of NON PLAYER CHARACTER PILOTS THEY ARE ACTUALLY ALL E X A C T L Y THE SAME. Unless Inc and Ray programmed personality an styles for every single named NPC in the game in which case, please delete this entire post.

Like previously stated the name of the game in Deneb is get the cap ship shields down. Whats more useful against cap ships - A massively armored gat blasting Prom or a paper armored energy Valk?

The fact that you yourself Iron Lord made a post stating that Deneb NPC behavior needs to be reworked IN THIS SAME FORUM 10 fucking hours after you posted your last reply here is insane. (not to mention that switching up the loadouts of the NON PLAYER CHARACTER ships in Deneb is a MASSIVELY easier adjustment to make than totally reworking the NPC AI would be.

SO AGAIN:

I. AM. NOT. TALKING. ABOUT. THE. OVERALL. SCORE. OF. DENEB.

Itani should be winning every cycle. Serco has less 5 pilots with less then 10 kills combined every cycle while Itani has 10+ human pilots with dozens if not HUNDREDS of kills each.

What I believe to be unbalanced, is NON PLAYER ASSISTED WINS. Meaning if no human players participate in a battle, SERCO IS MORE LIKELY TO WIN. IF NO H U M A N PLAYERS PARTICIPATED IN A DENEB CYCLE, SERCO HAS AROUND AN 73% CHANCE OF WINNING THE CYCLE. If you check the stats like you claim you do and count, you will see that Serco wins battles in which human players either do not participate, or participate but record less then 5 kills, more often then they lose battles in which human players do not participate.

Take away the player assisted wins on both sides and itani are still winning dude. Proms, valks, it honestly doesn't matter. Because in mediums and larges they can't take down each others Hac, or connie unless they throw themselves at the other teams capship cluster. I obviously check it enough to make sure who's winning what atm. Even in a small the proms and valks target each other or the vultures and rags and players if there are any. There is hardly a time that there Isnt npca flooding into the sector from bwith sides. I think this suggestion needs to be deleted/ediited until the argument is valid. Because itani have won deneb a lot more often then the serco. And honestly the stars don't count the fact that there are players who deshield the HAC and connie and let the other faction get the kill. Which will only come up as a "player assisted kill" or doesent show up at all because the player didn't sign up for either side and just blows one up for no reason or to help their side without directly losing rep with the other nation. NPC vs NPC? The prom is of course the better ship. It's a tank dude. Serco are a military nation as to the scientist/culturally advanced civilization that the itani are. The fighters literally have no real affect on anything but small skirms. Go to deneb, watch a large skirm. It comes down to the capital ships and they usually throw themselves at each other while the proms/valks die and explode. The only thing they do is make sure that the skirm isn't 100% a capital fight and slowly lower each others side to 0 at some point. Deneb is pretty balanced because of the fact the skirms rely on a capital ship in them. You can choose to end it in under a hour by destroying the capital ship in a small skirm or getting down and killing each and every itani fighter that enters sector. Or, even better, hop in the turret of a capship and use that. In my own personal experience from when I first went to deneb turrets are great to help your team if you don't believe your skilled enough for it. Your entire argument is that serco NPCs win most of the time, but there have been more serco wh blockades then there have been on the itani side.

Again. There are Itani blockades due to human players actions, nothing to do with NPCs. What Im talking abo...

Forget it. I give up.