we're not even going to discuss how the avoidance buff to bots has rendered mines useless...i'll save that for another thread...

bots are too deft, too slick, and dodge just about anything at any range, regardless of the velocity or direction of approach. sure you can make a defense that "bots are bots" and can concievably detect potential threats from multiple assailants, but watching a supposed NPC pilot _blindly_dodge neuts and posi form behind while evading shots from three other NPC attackers is beyond the pale and needs to be balanced.

avoidance has little to do with it, they shoot the mines anyway, its their ability to target and fire on the mines that makes mines useless.

before the avoidance they were too easy.. for example, the unrat fleets at wormholes.. you could jump in an atlas, toggle turbo, jump into your turret and just gun them down one by one without even seeing a shot fired against you.

farming bots with a capship was and is currently still a joke, i understand that doesnt apply to everyone.. but its definitely a consideration in the matter.

the one thing i agree on is that mobile controls make some of the tecniques used to easily kill bots significantly harder to pull off.. but.

It certainly needs more tuning

I recall before the Uber-bots and debris were added as a test in Latos, we vets wee all complaining bots were too easy, and we wanted a better challenge.

Well, we got that, and now peeps are wanting a nerf? Sorry, it's a no from me.

-1

Obviuosly, i wasn't being specifically direct about what i might consider a reasonable solution to this, and, subsequently, the waters have been muddied...let me see if i can clarify things a bit more and address some of the tangential points that were raised:

1) Mines are not the subject at hand...sorry i mentioned it...let's talk about that on another thread because it does deserve discussion.

2) Yes, Phaserlight, trying to kill arklans with an HV gat and a toddler cheering-section can be a bit of a challenge :p (btw, my 5-yr-old calls it "pooming the bad guys" when she watches me play ;) ) ...but i've given the caveat for bots being acceptably superior to their biological opponents already.

3) Capship hunting of bots was not mentioned in the first place and i don't think it is relevant to my intended specificity, but i will get to that in a moment.

4) Faille, the mere idea that a small population of highly experienced and skilled players can "complain" about an aspect of the game, and have the resultant "fix" broadly affect the ability of lesser pilots to accomplish any semblance of achievement, seems unbalanced to begin with. If you feel that the game does not match your skills at your level of play, then the devs need to address _that_ level of play, rather than make a generalized adjustment that affects the experience of the new/average players, just to satisfy your "complaints".

5) "...watching a supposed NPC pilot _blindly_dodge neuts and posi form behind while evading shots from three other NPC attackers is beyond the pale and needs to be balanced"...this is the crux of my issue here: the NPC ships (not hive) should not be able to wickedly dodge shots in their blindspot..this is simply unrealistic. Do the NPC pilots in Deneb have six eyes on the back of their head? If it's face-to-face, fine, let 'em strafe around...but if i come up on their six and they are already dodging shots from two other assailants, i should at least get to land one shot on them to get them to engage me directly. Watching pseudo-pilots adroitly skirt several, carefully executed, close-range shots, is far outside of what might be considered reasonable gameplay.

I'm not asking for a "nerf", or for bots/NPCs to be reverted to their previous state but, as Greenwall mentioned, they need to be "tuned".

Let's put it this way, for the sake of simplicity:

The bots/NPCs used to be at a "5" or a "6", and the devs turned them up to "11"...i just want them turned down to "9".

I don't think that's unreasonable.

As this mostly applies to newbs leveling up, why don't we hear from them instead of vets who rarely need to kill bots now?

Not a newb but bots do have some insane(relatively) dodging, their aggression is fine but them insta dodging blasters when they aren't facing you is weird, and might be tough to fight against.

Since we are concerned about newbs, how about decreasing this behaviour on low level bots such as tycorp assaults, and keeping it for bots such as arklans and dynamic hive bots.

4) Faille, the mere idea that a small population of highly experienced and skilled players can "complain" about an aspect of the game, and have the resultant "fix" broadly affect the ability of lesser pilots to accomplish any semblance of achievement, seems unbalanced to begin with. If you feel that the game does not match your skills at your level of play, then the devs need to address _that_ level of play, rather than make a generalized adjustment that affects the experience of the new/average players, just to satisfy your "complaints".

Dude, what she was talking about was/is in greyspace. Greyspace is supposed to be hard . But the tradeoff, is chance to explore hidden wonders of the galaxy and make lots of credits. What was changed, was something that was too easy. Nothing in the suggestions was unbalanced.

I'm not a fan of them dodging shots they should not be able to see. I'm not sure that is something easily fixable though. I'd really like to hear from Inc on that. My guess is figuring out if the bot should be able to see the shot, and then either ignoring it or trying to evade would place a huge load on the servers.

Like green wall said though, they could use some tuning.

Personally I find most bots individually trivial to kill. I've put a good amount of work into observing what they do in particular situations, and tuning my actions to suit that. That being said, when there are enough of them, quantity has a quality all its own. Mind you I am NOT calling for them to be buffed, a bot doesn't have to be better then even the average human to be an economically viable replacement. They only have to get the job done cheaper on average.

Same here I really have zero issues with killing bots and the vets that know me they know all I use is gauss for YEARS. I will say that NPC WTD's are NASTY to fight.

Takes practice the right gear/ship and killing hive is a trivial thing. In deneb there are no more npc flare valks so its pretty much all neutrons.

Hive aren't hard to kill. The deneb npcs are slightly harder due to the type of ships there. The Unrats are pretty much the hardest bot you can fight right now.

We don't need to go back to the old bot's Fallie is right I remember when we wanted harder bots.

Clearly i'm Biased here I have killed bots for years in VO If you take the time to practice killing bots on PC. (VO is free on PC. like most FPS and most people have a PC to play on) If you take the time and initiative to get the right gear and optimal ship killing bots won't be hard. I feel like we are making a issue out of a super trivial thing. I will side with Fallie we wanted harder bots back then now we want slightly easier ones? Take the time to learn how to fight bots with the ship + gear and simply skill gained over time in playing VO.

While on the bot agro topic Thanks Incarnate for making furies defend them selves

Surely in a futuristic universe where machine intelligence has surpassed human intelligence, bots would be impossible to kill by a human especially working alone. Surely the bot intelligence would have thought to put sensors behind them aswell as forward (unlike us humans) so from a storyline point of view it makes perfect sense. From a gameplay point of view, it's going to be really tough for newcomers and lower skilled players. Maybe reserve the buff for certain classes of elite bot which everybody would fear equally.

Also capships should be vulnerable, surely the bot army would just call in more and more firepower until the capship was overwhelmed. That would stop capship farming in this scenario, you literally only had a few minutes before the hordes arrived and then you're toast !

We could go on an on about NPC's being tactical. It would be an entirely different lore argument that we have this stalemate war in deneb for years. No technology advances and stuff no tactical moves by any side. and I can go on and on. But Yah I do agree. In a futuristic universe the Hive should have technically destroyed everyone with their AI and algorithms predicting shots far better then any Nation NPC would. Oh don't forget their endless ships they produce across the entire VO galaxy.

To your capship farming point Queens now do attack capships with all their escorts im pretty happy about that.

Lore wise right now all we can predict outside of our known systems it's literally ENDLESS hordes of bots. (aka the unexplored system). Scary thoughts. But I go off topic with lore.