DR NPCs immune to GW?

rodentmaster

I ran the first few missions of DR. I fought the undine with Tuvok, I escorted Neelix (I SO wanted to vape him), and I ran the 5-part patrol mission with various baddies in all shapes.

The vast majority of the NPCs seem to totally shrug off the effects of Grav Well. I dropped it on a TIGHT cluster of Kazon (all almost touching) and they just flew out of it without a missed step. These weren't big ships, either.

The Undine seem to have no care at all for the pull of a GW. The whats-their-faces I fought to protect Neelix also ignored it. The borg spheres ignore it (though... probes seem to remain affected slightly).

I even ran Disconnected and wasn't noticing much if any grav pull.

Pretty much everything I fought in space all night long was ignoring grav well. Since I'm a sci character this is quite the slap in the face.

I started on easy, moved to advanced, and went back to easy. Noticed no difference between the difficulty levels. NPCs still seemed nearly immune to it. TBR seemed to work, but GW not so much.

isvarna

I haven't fought the Kazon yet, but I know that the Undine at least, even before DR were programmed to use EPtE when caught in a pull, hold or engine disabled. The dromias bio cruiser was also programmed to use its fludic space dive ability when caught in a pull it couldn't escape from with engines alone.

It wouldn't surprise me to find that the Kazon have a similar "escape" ability like Aux to Damp or Attack Pattern Omega. Just watch their buff icons for any patterns and if you need to subnuc or use that new intel power to strip off engine buffs from a group.

Incidentally, what's your combined grav generators skill sitting at?

resumod

Its the good old Evasive Maneuver if i remember correctly.

At last the small Kazons use it. And I think they don't even wait until they are in a grav well pull. More like "spread out for combat".
Other Enemys are still cought in Grav Wells. Afaik even larger Kazon vessels will fall to the Grav Well. But I was using 3.

My problem is more that tyken 2 seems to be useless. I was able to get a sphere to loosing its shields before DR, now that does not even work on a small Kazon ship.

rodentmaster

It's decent enough to pull in a dozen ships in NWS from quite a wide spread. I've also maxed part gens with 3 purple consoles adding more on top.


It's one thing to make NPCs a little more tricky... It's another to 100% negate skills and abilities that should affect them.

What if, say, Cryptic made some BS code change where FAW and BO simply didn't do anything to Kazon? They were just immune to it? There are some basic rules to the game, and they shouldn't be shredded every time Cryptic releases an update.

isvarna

Normally I'd agree with you, except this isn't just any update. It's a major expansion introducing quite a few lateral design changes and new mechanics and you can't expect everything to work precisely the same as it always have because frequently your perception of how well something "works" is relative. Yes engine boosting skills are a counter to grav well, but haven't they always been? APO in particular renders you straight immune to pulls and holdsfor its duration. Polarize hull, sci/tac/eng team all remove various debuffs as an Ensign level skill. Voth have that super shield that protects one facing. Even the example you cite, FAW and BO can be soft-countered with feedback pulse.

Point being that hard counters are not inherently bad design. They are only bad design when they are unidirectionally optimal choices and have no interplay potential. In the case of engine boosters, power drain and subsystem targetting can take the wind out of their sails. Most escape buffs can be subnuc'd either from your captain skill or the new intel power, or from a doff ability in a pinch. Ionic turbulence actually synergizes very well with grav well as it creates a "friction zone" with a chance tostraight up disable anything caught in it.

crappynamerules

The Undine use EPtE, the Kazon actually use aux2damp. The thing with Grav well is, pile on enough engine oomph and you can escape and it stops pulling entirely. These are tactics players would use to escape it. They're not immune, try piling on some immobilize or slow effects. Eject Warp Plasma does wonders if you've got a ship that can use that along with the gravity well.

lordmalak1

crappynamerules wrote: »

The Undine use EPtE, the Kazon actually use aux2damp. The thing with Grav well is, pile on enough engine oomph and you can escape and it stops pulling entirely. These are tactics players would use to escape it. They're not immune, try piling on some immobilize or slow effects. Eject Warp Plasma does wonders if you've got a ship that can use that along with the gravity well.

Yup, and I've seen those bubbles pop more often when some warp plasma is dumped into them.

crappynamerules

The other option is of course, to keep an eye on their buffs, and wait for the EPtE/aux2damp to expire. Then smack them with the grav well. I don't think they are necessarily only using the abilitities when caught. The Kazon especially seem to love popping that auxx2damp.