What is with Space Combat in this update?

[maestro]

Seriously, they had to have fudged something up with the Omega update, because it wasn't this ridiculous before.

I have the difficulty set on "Normal", and I got attacked by some random pirates.

For some reason, these guys were absolutely ridiculous. If you stopped shooting at them for more than 5 seconds, their shields would go from 0 to 100% in about 3 seconds, which is just unfair, because of the way they zip back and forth and it's almost impossible to actually keep them in your sights for more than a couple seconds at a time.

It was never this bad before, and this is why I fricken hate it when people whine about difficulty, then we get this kind of insane BS going on.

I've been playing this game for years, and I never had this kind of trouble dealing with pirates, even after the update that gave them shields that can recharge. I've NEVER seen this kind of crap going on before, even during the last couple updates.

Something changed in Omega, and it really sucks. For now, I changed the difficulty down to Minimal, because screw this crap.

Oh, and I immediately got another hostile scan 3 seconds later. Killed those 2, and another hostile scan 3 seconds after that. Landed on a planet and dug a hole, screw that.

Tired of fighting nigh-invincible ships. I have 3x S-Class Upgrades on the two weapons that can have upgrades (Rocket Launchers don't have upgrades for some stupid reason).

[Kelzid]

I have noticed dog fighting pirates is easiest in early game with no upgrades and very few ship tech slots. It's like the difficulty scales up as the ship gets upgrades. I find if I keep hitting the enemy ship, the shields won't recharge until it stops taking damage. If one weapon overheats, I switch to another, I generally use photon cannons until shields are down, then fire a rocket and switch back. Some battles I have seen are not winnable and I jump into the anomaly to reset quickly. Not sure why some are really difficult at random.

I don't enter space combat that often, just when I find a mission for salvaged frigate modules are too hard to pass up.

[Voodoojedizin]

You obviously don't know how to fight them, use the right weapons at the right time you can take down their shields and then blow them up quite easy. And there is no scaling in this game they don't get harder as you get more stuff

[maestro]

Originally posted by Voodoojedizin:

You obviously don't know how to fight them, use the right weapons at the right time you can take down their shields and then blow them up quite easy. And there is no scaling in this game they don't get harder as you get more stuff

Did you miss the part where I said I've played for years, and I even played prior to the Omega update and had no problems?

I know how to fight pirates. Most of my saves have the 100 ship destroyed milestones. I would eagerly fight pirates when they attacked me, and I *never* ran into this before.

I know how to take their shields down, and then switch weapons to finish them off. I know all that.

But for some reason, after Omega, their shields recharge ludicrously fast, way faster than before and they seem like they zip around all over the place way more than they did before which makes the problem even worse.

I literally took one of their shields completely down, they flew right past me, and I turned to follow them, and 5 seconds later when I got them in my sights again, their shields were full again. WTF are you supposed to do about that?

I can only imagine they did this, because they gave that stupid auto-follow option that I never liked from second one, and they realized it made combat too easy so they made the enemy ships' shields regenerate at an absolutely ridiculous rate.

Oh, and BTW, before you get the wrong idea, I'm talking about pirates that attack you after a hostile scan. NOT the pirates during freighter battles, as those ships are made out of cardboard, two shots and their shields are down, and one rocket they're dead.

That's not how the scanning pirates work. Rockets only do 60% or some-such of their hull damage, and it takes 3 overheats on a fully upgraded Infa-Knife to take their shields down (and yes, I know the Infra Knife is a hull weapon, but there's not much choice in anti-shield weapons). The Phase Beam doesn't fare much better, but it does make you, yourself, invincible so you're pretty much needing to use that, but even that takes almost 4 bursts, if you can hit them with the full burst, to take the shields down, with 3 S-Class mods for it.

[Idaho]

I use max stats X class photon upgrades with my sentinel ship (all supercharged slots) and pirate battles last seconds.

[Dirak2012]

Use the auto tracking option?

[JimboTCB]

I started a fresh playthrough with the Omega update and I've not noticed any difference. Hostile scans do seem to be more frequent, but I am consciously seeking out pirate systems so that's probably just confirmation bias. Otherwise infraknife still goes brrr and you've just got to hold your fire until you're properly on-target. Yeah, it sucks a bit if you haven't upgraded your manouverability at all, but that's easily remedied by sticking your pulse drive in an overcharged slot with a few upgrades and then you can run rings around pirates with ease.

[Arock]

You literally just hold down a button and fire at them. The game moves your ship for you.

[ignition]

This is what I've noticed: am not an authority by any means. I play survival/pd.

• the pirates scale to your ship's class. using a utopia speeder will spawn tougher pirates than a c-class explorer.
  
  
• phase beam is a must. a single blast will recharge your shields: then you can switch to your primary weapon (positron/infra-knife/photon). I've fought off unlimited waves of 11 interceptors just switching between phase beam and positron on pd mode.
  
  
• infra-knife is OP but only if you can aim properly: i can't so i use positron. photon and phase beam are hit-scan weapons and positron has a wide cone of damage. Infra-knife and cyclotron are lagged - meaning you gotta lead your shots.
  
  
• auto-toggle-ON. with this your ship will track the pirates but NOT be in correct alignment: you still have to (finely) position with your mouse/controller. ship's manoeuvrability has no real effect when using auto-toggle.
  
  
• ship shields needs atleast 1 s class upgrade. with the phase beam recharging your shields you still need atleast 1 30% number.
  
  
• 3rd person is easier for pirate and sentinel mother-ship but 1st person is doable for normal ships.
  
  
• your piramry weapon (positoron/photon/infra) need as many if not all upgrades[/i]. a stock interceptor's sentinel cannon is NOT fast enough to destroy and the enemy shields will recharge very quickly. you need upgrades weapons.
  
  
• for me: phase beam + the anomaly upgrade for it and positron and anomaly upgrade for it + 3 s class upgrades with 2 in sc slots makes life easier.

[maestro]

Originally posted by Dirak2012:

Use the auto tracking option?

Originally posted by Arock:

You literally just hold down a button and fire at them. The game moves your ship for you.

I hate the auto-tracking. I'd like to play the game myself, and not have the game do it for me.

I suspect they made ship combat worse *because* of auto-tracking, which makes me hate it even more.

[Nettle]

Originally posted by vxz:

photon and phase beam are hit-scan weapons

Technically they just have better target leading; even light takes time to get from A to B.

In general terms "hit-scan" means each hit is coterminous with a trigger pull. Beam barely qualifies because we can't outmanoeuvre something moving that fast at point-blank range.

Particularly when the emission point is tracking as though on gimbals.

[maestro]

Originally posted by Unarmed Bandit:

Originally posted by vxz:

photon and phase beam are hit-scan weapons

Technically they just have better target leading; even light takes time to get from A to B.

In general terms "hit-scan" means each hit is coterminous with a trigger pull. Beam barely qualifies because we can't outmanoeuvre something moving that fast at point-blank range.

Particularly when the emission point is tracking as though on gimbals.

"Hit Scan" is a term used to describe how a game processes long-range attacks.

Early games, most weapons were hitscan, IE, the game scans where your crosshairs were pointing at the moment of fire to determine what you hit or didn't hit, rather than calculating the path of a projectile. This was done, because it was infinitely easier to code and it was infinitely easier for the computer to calculate, back when we had computers barely able to run the games we were playing.

Sometimes, hitscan is still used on weapons that are incredibly fast, usually super-sonic like most non-sniper rifles in games where you're shooting bullets or beams.

And indeed, in NMS, the Phase Beam is the very definition of hitscan -- when you click, you hit where the crosshair is pointing, always and every time. I highly disagree with the Photon Cannon being hitscan, it very much isn't. The projectiles have travel time, and you don't get instant hits as soon as you pull the trigger.

[Nettle]

Originally posted by maestro:

"Hit Scan" is a term used to describe how a game processes long-range attacks.

Early games, most weapons were hitscan, IE, the game scans where your crosshairs were pointing at the moment of fire to determine what you hit or didn't hit, rather than calculating the path of a projectile.

Would Duck Hunt on the NES be a good example then?

Originally posted by maestro:

I highly disagree with the Photon Cannon being hitscan, it very much isn't.

I suspect the confusion there stems from its name. Photons are fast.

[Sera]

Only 2 major changes I've noticed.

Enemies Shield come back insanely faster. (this was a thing with Sentinels update)
But its almost instant at times after Omega.

Now Any decent upgrades to tech solve the issue. But early on... you can spend a huge chunk of fight breaking there shields 3 or 4 times before clearing out health.

Specially..

2nd part... which drags out the above, is enemies can now fly circles around you. No matter ship type, even Hauler. They can just fly always out of sight, You basically can get stuck in a loop chasing them. (I got nothing better to do.... and sat there in a backloop chasing one for a good 2mins waiting for AI to break off..LOL)

Only way out of it is to stop chasing, or boost or change direction. Which in turn allow them to 180 and phase beam you instantly.
At start of game... it gives them a really nasty advantage.

Later game... you just tank it and melt them with Infra.

When Infra wont 100% lock on, I switch to Photon and finish them off. (photon rarely misses)

I guess the 3rd issue in Space Combat is Sentinel Capital Ship. Spawning in lower atmosphere. (lower then before) So if you pass its engines, it goes "poof"
It can still shoot you... but you can't hit it..
Worse is when it does pop in... you can be stuck inside spending 5-10mins trying glitch back out. T_T

[maestro]

Originally posted by Sera:

Only 2 major changes I've noticed.

Enemies Shield come back insanely faster. (this was a thing with Sentinels update)
But its almost instant at times after Omega.

So I'm *NOT* imagining it, they did screw with this.

Why they think this is a good idea, is beyond me. It takes your shields 5 minutes to start regenerating without the Phase Beam, but they get their shields back to 100% in less than 10 seconds, which is just stupid, especially after...

2nd part... which drags out the above, is enemies can now fly circles around you. No matter ship type, even Hauler. They can just fly always out of sight, You basically can get stuck in a loop chasing them. (I got nothing better to do.... and sat there in a backloop chasing one for a good 2mins waiting for AI to break off..LOL)

Ships flying around you was annoying before, it's even moreso now. The enemies need to not have such godlike maneuverability on all their ships. It's like every few seconds, they fly straight at you, shoot at you, turn around, fly back out, then turn around, and fly back at you before you can even get your sights on them again, and they do this over and over and over and over again and there's no fricken way, not even with the Starborn Runner, that you can be THAT agile.

This is why I suspect that they did this because of people making combat trivial with the auto lock-on, which I never used because I prefer to fly the ship myself instead of just holding down a button.

But I suppose, they gave us this ridiculous lockon ability and now they feel they have to balance the game around it, which makes it almost impossible for people manually flying to ever hit anything, because the enemies zip around so much.

Space combat is simply just not fun anymore, and I don't want to just hold a button down to keep locked on. I want to fly the ship myself, that's one of the things I loved most about NMS, is the fact that *YOU* fly the ship and it's not just some cutscened quick travel thing like in Starfaild.

But if you force us to use lock-on, then that part of the game is suddenly gone. Don't get to be the ship pilot anymore in combat because they made combat too annoying to actually enjoy.

[Nettle]

Originally posted by maestro:

The enemies need to not have such godlike maneuverability on all their ships.

It's like they're using auto-follow too.

We need something to slow them down. Like a glue gun.

~~~

Wait, isn't the cyclotron ballista supposed to mess with electronics?