okay, I'm getting fairly fed up with the attackrate of the defenders.

Its not that defenders are hideously difficult or ahrd to get away from, they aren't. However, they are hideously annoying and frustrating. Especially when they always seem to attack in squads of 4, following you slowly and firing, they make missions take far too long time in comparsion to how it should be.

They remove the fast paced action of fighting off a few assaults into a long hide-and-seek run-away-turn-shootabit game.

Not because they act in a group, but because you can't conceivably fight them in a group, and their movement pattern is the same everywhere.

They can shoot forever, they keep long enough distance to eachother so you cant just pace them, they take more hits than an asteroid should, and by the time you've killed two the first one will have found its way back to the squad.

Its meaningless to fight them, and they only bother the rest of the combat, could they please be dropped down a bit in hostility?

Not that this game is EvE... but the NPC police would kill you pretty much instantly if you did something to piss them off. The point of the NPCDEF is to create a zone where non-combat pilots are safe... and you couldn't do that if the NPCDEF were easily defeatable.

Again, this game isn't EvE and maybe the devs are looking to make newb sector invasions/holocausts possible. The current annoyingness of the NPCDEF suggests otherwise.

ummmm....

I'm almost positive that Spider is referring to the "Defender" bots, not the "Nation Defense" bots.

True, defenders have an insanely high amount of hits, but they are also freaking huge bots that present a nice big target. Turn your autoaim off (I have a toggle autoaim alias bound to my joystick) and you should have no problems nailing them with almost 100% accuracy using gauss or tachs. Keep a consistent stream of tachs on them and you will see their health go down pretty fast.

As far as gameplay, I think it's a good thing that we have a different kind of bot than the "fast paced action" of assaults. There are many different kinds of ships in this game and many different kinds of tactics. Having a variety of bots forces players to use a variety of tactics. What about having one player in a vulture keep the defenders busy while his wingman sneaks up in a ragnarok and unleashes a locust swarm on the defenders, or a salvo of rockets?

Not objecting to the fact that the defenders are big. clumsy, easy to hit and will not even hit you a single time if you keep strafing a bit.

What I'm objecting at here is that they are so predictable. Either none of them attack until you sneak up on them and blast them, or they will all attack, every. single. one. in the sector will immediately follow and be a very boring wall of blue stuff.

What I object at, is the boring repeatedness of their behaviour. The "all or nothing" attack, and how sectors where tehy are "all" on you, become incredibly dull for any kind of botting (Unless your idea of fun is to run 1.5km, turn, kill an assault, run 1.5 km , turn... oh it is? Great. )

@ Phaserlight: You have clearly not even tried to sustain such a tactic in economical values. Also, I seriously doubt you've done any real level of botting recently, have you? Try gaining another level of combat in say.. Nyrius.

The problem is they do more offending than defending. Their attack radius can be reduced so they only defend themselves or bots around them.

Another thing I'd like to note is how Geminis have nearly no effect on pushing them around. How was this done? Can the same thing be done for heavy ships like the Ragnarok, Prometheus, Centaur, etc.? Because it would help A LOT in preventing these heavy ships from spinning out of control to certain death if a fighter were to attack it with a barrage of guided missiles.

The kickback feature is excellent for throwing a fighter's aim off. But for a bomber or transport it's absolutely devestating. It doesn't make sense to have both ship classes to have the same kickback when they vary in mass. The Defenders don't seem to have this problem when compared to Assault class bots.

I find nothing wrong with the current bots as long as they add some more AI that have player ships and a tad smarter perhaps.

These bots are supposed to be mining drones and other things gone crazy, I think they fit that role well enough. We just need a few more bots that do trade convoys and other various things.

@Spider: actually, I was killing defender bots left and right in a group with Agonizer in Itani space just the other day :). Try my suggestion, it helps.

edit: okay, just to make sure I went out and tested this. I botted in a vulture mkIV using tachs mkII in Nyrius I2. I killed 3 defenders before having to go repair, then I went out again and killed 2 defenders and an assault I. The whole process took 20 minutes. I never got attacked by 4 defenders at once, but they went 2 on 1 against me pretty consistently. The assault I's also got in the way quite often which was annoying. On the whole, however, they weren't overly difficult, just a little tougher than average.

Durgia, where does it say that they're mining drones gone crazy? Just curious. I was always under the impression that that they were intentionally produced for training purposes only. Notice how a lot of them are composed of similar parts, perhaps recycled and rebuilt by their friends when they die each time.

Arolte, do you read the interviews? :P Incarnate -very- clearly gives lots of backstory in the most recent one (MMORPG.com I think, but I might be wrong).

Bah. How do mining bots just go crazy? The company that makes 'em must be in deep shit, 'cause that's a hell of a lot of bots!

=)

actually i think the concept is that a mining frigate somewhere with a powerful AI and production facilities went crazy and started making modified subships.

And then the subships made subships and so on and so forth, spawning an entire race of machines....

heyyyy, wait a minute, this sounds familiar.....

oops :P

I believe in one of the interviews Incarnate says they are self replicating mining drones that went nuts.

I think the nation defense bots should be killable and not uber.

ammo weapons are virtually useless against them. uploading all your ammo hardly makes a dent in a defender -_~

Let me clarify this then, Tilt. you don't seem to read the whole thread. Theese are Not the Nation Defense Bots. Theese are the Defender bots. Big hauling things that can take ~50k damage and have a lot of AGT goodness to give.

@phaser: I never said anything about taking them with tachs (I prefer a single grav though ) but against this "tactic"

<quote>. What about having one player in a vulture keep the defenders busy while his wingman sneaks up in a ragnarok and unleashes a locust swarm on the defenders, or a salvo of rockets?</quote>

The problem is that ammo weapons aren't economically viable anymore.

As for when they come in small bursts of 1 or 2, no biggie. However, most of the sectors I play in they don't come in small groups, but all or nothing. Either they only come if you get within 2-300 meters, or they will all come, and be hostile full out.

I don't mind either, sparingly, however I think that a balance of in-between behaviours would be necessary for gameplay to be any fun.

I hope I've made my point a tad clearer.

For the most part I think their physical properties fit their role very well. They're meant to defend, right? Well, at least that's what the name suggests. Anyway, it's assumed that anything that defends is usually built with heavy armor and a crapload of firepower. Both of these apply to the Defender. In fact, as an added bonus they're slightly sluggish when you're right up next to 'em at point blank range.

However, what's also assumed is that defenders are supposed to defend a certain area or someone else, meaning not wander off and pick off targets offensively. Right now the defenders are doing more of the former than the latter, which is certainly causing some problems. I repeat, their target engagement radius simply needs to be reduced. Besides that I don't think anything else needs to be changed majorly.

Targetting range, perhaps cut a few m/s off their speed, And a small logic check that makes them less persistant.

Preferrably also a variable to control how many of them will volountarily get on your tail ;)