Tachyon Drones don't use the same AI as other fighters (obviously, it doesn't make much sense for them to try to intercept mines or torpedoes).
Just as I stated above, all Pets (including Tachyon Drones) stop attacking / following your orders after some time.
I was fighting a tanky enemy for several minutes, my Tachyon Drones managed to drop his shields, my Fek'Ihri Fighters were attacking too.. then suddenly... Nothing. They ALL stopped attacking but kept following my enemy, who was still in my weapons range (I was still firing).
=> Attack / Intercept : Not working
=> All orders deactivated: Not working
=> Replacing Drones & Fighters by launching new waves: Not working - they would not attack, just follow my enemy
Again, my pets were never out of Range or more than 8km from my ship.
After 2 more minutes: They suddenly start to attack my enemy again.
This happens almost every 5-10 Minutes fighting Feds in Kerrat.
Well it looks like I can hold up testing until we are told of some fixes or an update hits as the team should have their hands full for a little.
This patch proves they don't test anything and that they ignore any feedback given to them unless its a technical glitch (like the 0hp bug).
We never asked for that TRIBBLE formation thing. It wasn't an issue nor a problem. Yet for some reason they decide to add a new element to the already bug-infested AI ... and the way they put the formations to work just shows they have no clue how the pets function. I mean look: The formation in 'attack' order only works when the pet is under the attack command.
Attack.. the one command that tells to the pets to attack anything they have on their target list or anything the player has targeted. Since the pets pick up targets from team-mates they will ALWAYS have a target. Ergo, they will NEVER use that formation UNLESS they have been recently launched AND there is no enemy in range AND no team-mate has been fired upon or fired on a target AND the carrier has nothing targeted.
This just shows a clear lack of understanding of the pet's issues and that they dont even bother playing or testing their changes. The same can be said for the way they have nerfed the hell out of science ships/science abilities... a complete ignorance of their own product and a rush to add new silly stuff without thinking it through. Thats what I see despite any claims otherwise. The end product (release patch on holodeck) speaks for itself.
I'm kind of glad that I've been working on gearing up my Fed Toons because if I'd been playing my Carriers I would be taking another 3 months off from this MMO.
I guess it's best that I not try to use my Carriers for a few months or years maybe :rolleyes:
Why not role back the Carriers so they can still be somewhat usefull
The bops were starting to get better but this latest patch they only use turrets and just circle around the enemy... Not sure if that was done intentionally so they could attack the things like cubes and gates until there was a fix for that but I did notice it would circle around fireing turrets and then was able to fire torpedos but none of the heavy or dual cannons are fireing now.
Currently it looks like something may have changed in how the code handles certain stacked groups -- which would explain fighters in a group not despawning when new ones are summoned, and would thus also potentially explain why they aren't dying and are losing responsiveness (possibly due to loss of association data).
Notably, the AI updates (and the AI routines in general) have no impact on several areas:
* The fighters are never made unkillable by the AI
* The AI never turns off any of the weapons in combat, so if Birds of Prey are not using weapons, it's either because they are not in position or because the enemy they are attacking has a target node problem (such as the Borg gates in the STFs)
* The AI never tells fighters to stop responding; when a carrier command is toggled on, it sends a command update every second. The fighter AI routines listen for these commands and shift to different actions based on the commands.
Right now, it appears that something happened with the way the fighter stacks are handled, which is causing some of the fighters to lose some of their team information. Thus, "rolling back" fighter AI controls would have no effect on this bug.
I spent about 2 1/2 hours playing my carrier on Holodeck last night and never had any problems with my Birds of Prey, which has made troubleshooting a bit difficult, but investigation will continue.
Currently it looks like something may have changed in how the code handles certain stacked groups -- which would explain fighters in a group not despawning when new ones are summoned, and would thus also potentially explain why they aren't dying and are losing responsiveness (possibly due to loss of association data).
Notably, the AI updates (and the AI routines in general) have no impact on several areas:
* The fighters are never made unkillable by the AI
* The AI never turns off any of the weapons in combat, so if Birds of Prey are not using weapons, it's either because they are not in position or because the enemy they are attacking has a target node problem (such as the Borg gates in the STFs)
* The AI never tells fighters to stop responding; when a carrier command is toggled on, it sends a command update every second. The fighter AI routines listen for these commands and shift to different actions based on the commands.
Right now, it appears that something happened with the way the fighter stacks are handled, which is causing some of the fighters to lose some of their team information. Thus, "rolling back" fighter AI controls would have no effect on this bug.
I spent about 2 1/2 hours playing my carrier on Holodeck last night and never had any problems with my Birds of Prey, which has made troubleshooting a bit difficult, but investigation will continue.
Try like the cure stf and move around to keep up your defense since you have to be in 10km range for them to start attacking and you'll see the differences on how they behave when you launch birds of prey from different approaches to the target since you don't want to sit still and have negative defense... the position in which they spawn will have them activating their skills but will not be in cannon arc to use them.
I spent about 2 1/2 hours playing my carrier on Holodeck last night and never had any problems with my Birds of Prey, which has made troubleshooting a bit difficult, but investigation will continue.
How much of that time was PvP? I've seen a LOT of 0% fighters still flying around, and/or fighters/drones that are not shooting. And I've only played maybe 15-20 arenas the last couple of days. It seems like it might be more likely to happen in PvP.
Currently it looks like something may have changed in how the code handles certain stacked groups -- which would explain fighters in a group not despawning when new ones are summoned, and would thus also potentially explain why they aren't dying and are losing responsiveness (possibly due to loss of association data).
Notably, the AI updates (and the AI routines in general) have no impact on several areas:
* The fighters are never made unkillable by the AI
* The AI never turns off any of the weapons in combat, so if Birds of Prey are not using weapons, it's either because they are not in position or because the enemy they are attacking has a target node problem (such as the Borg gates in the STFs)
* The AI never tells fighters to stop responding; when a carrier command is toggled on, it sends a command update every second. The fighter AI routines listen for these commands and shift to different actions based on the commands.
Right now, it appears that something happened with the way the fighter stacks are handled, which is causing some of the fighters to lose some of their team information. Thus, "rolling back" fighter AI controls would have no effect on this bug.
I spent about 2 1/2 hours playing my carrier on Holodeck last night and never had any problems with my Birds of Prey, which has made troubleshooting a bit difficult, but investigation will continue.
I just did a cure and a infected on Holodeck and in both my pets stopped attacking and just sat in space doing nothing while i was defending the klingon ship in the cure and also when i was attacking the nanite spheres. Dunno what the problem is but if your having trouble reproducing it maybe the best way is to as some players to jump on tribble with you and do Pvp or Stf's since that is where most are seeing the problems. Tell us when you want to do testing and I'm sure there are plenty that will join you on tribble.
As things stand right now the carriers are virtually unusable. Most of the time the fighters just sit around doing nothing. When I give them an attack order, SOMETIMES they'll actually go out and start an attack run only to come back immediately. It's bad enough in the STFs, but in PVP we're just flying bricks with a light show. I've only seen this happening since yesterday so that patch has to have done something.
As things stand right now the carriers are virtually unusable. Most of the time the fighters just sit around doing nothing. When I give them an attack order, SOMETIMES they'll actually go out and start an attack run only to come back immediately. It's bad enough in the STFs, but in PVP we're just flying bricks with a light show. I've only seen this happening since yesterday so that patch has to have done something.
Same. As of right now im trying to find what ship most fits my build so i can switch to it until they fix the Ai. Really hate having to spend C-points on a ship or trade it so i can buy another ship and then have to try to shape it to work around a build i had with the Vo'quv but I hate being useless in STF's and dont want to stop grinding my Kdf completely.
Thus, "rolling back" fighter AI controls would have no effect on this bug.
Roll back the pets BEFORE the BoP's got their torpedo damage nerfed, apply the fix that was done to prevent them from picking up targets/orders from team-mates and start again from there.
No need to do formations or to add anything else. Fixing existing issues should be #1 priority before slapping on more things onto them. 20km range control, escort functionality, preventing/removing the ability of pets to pick up their own targets or pick up targets from team-mates should be the next things tackled.
Fix them first. Then you can think about improving them or adding fancy stuff.
I spent about 2 1/2 hours playing my carrier on Holodeck last night and never had any problems with my Birds of Prey, which has made troubleshooting a bit difficult, but investigation will continue.
Excuse me but I call absolute bollocks on this.
They stop dead in space the instant they are recalled. Didnt happen pre-patch in holodeck and this was reported on Tribble before the patch. Guess what? It was ignored.
The new attack pattern has them peeling off an attack run at 5km making them fire on target less than a second...because they spend the distance between 10 to 5km turning towards target at high speed on first pass and cant get nose on target. Again, this issue has been reported since before the patch, reported again in tribble during this patch as being even worse and... well, guess what? It was ignored.
The BoPs enter a stop-go-stop-go intermittent behavior when ordered to attack a ship when player/team has not entered combat yet. Curious fact: It was reported on Tribble... and ignored.
in fact EVERYTHING that we reported on Tribble as being borked to hell was ignored and is now in holodeck. Players noticed the problems within minutes of logging in.
Question is... how is it you guys (not you personally JH) work on something and not notice how broken it is on the test server of all things and just push it onto live despite the fact that your customers that give you their time to test your product warned you very specifically what the problem was, how it happened, how to reproduce it, how it affects the ships and that it was a very,very bad idea to put this in holodeck. ?
Tachyon Drones don't use the same AI as other fighters (obviously, it doesn't make much sense for them to try to intercept mines or torpedoes).
I suppose that makes it even more odd that they'd be demonstrating similar questionable behaviors (being lethargic; not attacking) at the same time after the patch.
I suppose that makes it even more odd that they'd be demonstrating similar questionable behaviors (being lethargic; not attacking) at the same time after the patch.
It's just more evidence that the odd behavior is the result of some other part of the code.
im not sure when it happened, but these damn power syphon drones became REALLY effective. my 9 power insulators do nothing, they are pretty durable, and they are launched faster then they can be desroyed. if 1 nipes you its all over, and you are permenetly disabled until killed
im not sure when it happened, but these damn power syphon drones became REALLY effective. my 9 power insulators do nothing, they are pretty durable, and they are launched faster then they can be desroyed. if 1 nipes you its all over, and you are permenetly disabled until killed
this was a really bad day to stop using FAW and trying out single cannons
soooo ya, maybe limit these to 1 per carrier? they are an i win button currently
This is because of an issue in how Power Insulators handles resistance against a wide range of powers. Borticus is working on making it more consistent.
This is because of an issue in how Power Insulators handles resistance against a wide range of powers. Borticus is working on making it more consistent.
even when insulators is all fixed, that's still a LOT of power syphon drones. a single carrier can launch a ton of these, that many proboly should be able to drain you dry even with 75% or whatever resist working.
once insulators is fixed, you might want to consider limiting how many you can use or nerfing them i hate to say it. on one hand we shouldn't have immunity from them with just skill point specing, but on the other getting swarmed by that many from 1 carrier is absurd.
some other things i've noticed on the bops earlier today in ka.
1. if you dont have any carrier commands running they have a tendency to just hang at a dead stop til they get shot at.
2. if you have an attack command running and targeting a nanite generator theres a chance they'll just flyoff to the other side of the map.
(i was targeting the closest generator to the vortex on the rightside gate when they just took off for the left gate)
3. when you relaunch your hangers its taking the bops closest to you and relaunching them.
some other things i've noticed on the bops earlier today in ka.
2. if you have an attack command running and targeting a nanite generator theres a chance they'll just flyoff to the other side of the map.
(i was targeting the closest generator to the vortex on the rightside gate when they just took off for the left gate)
This bit right here is very interesting and very useful, thanks.
I encountered something interesting when I was playing around with fighters in DS9 local space. I targeted a player, launched fighters, then clicked escort they would fly up to that player. Clicking another player, they stayed in place around the first player. Recalled them successfully. Launched a new set with the old hanging around behind me, clicked escort, the first set took off towards the first target, while the second set went to the new. Not sure if this gives any extra insight into the issues, but thought I'd share it just in case.
im not sure when it happened, but these damn power syphon drones became REALLY effective. my 9 power insulators do nothing, they are pretty durable, and they are launched faster then they can be desroyed. if 1 nipes you its all over, and you are permenetly disabled until killed
this was a really bad day to stop using FAW and trying out single cannons
soooo ya, maybe limit these to 1 per carrier? they are an i win button currently
Yeah, these are really good little drones, however I have to disagree with how you state that they are launched faster than people can shoot them down. Unfortunately, this is not quite true. The PSD have a higher recharge than most other launchables and they are destroyed with a slightly strong wind :^D
But I understand where you are coming from, when I can completely disable a tac cube by myself using only PSD, they may be a bit... Uber...
Yeah, these are really good little drones, however I have to disagree with how you state that they are launched faster than people can shoot them down. Unfortunately, this is not quite true. The PSD have a higher recharge than most other launchables and they are destroyed with a slightly strong wind :^D
But I understand where you are coming from, when I can completely disable a tac cube by myself using only PSD, they may be a bit... Uber...
-Quiiliitiila
anyone not using FAW cant kill them faster then they spawn, only generic cruisers are relatively safe from them. carrier pets are still very vulnerable to FAW, though their defense is buffed. if there inst at least 1 person spamming FAW a team is basically helpless against pets. currently if you can sneak up on someone with these PSD, or you send them after any cannon user you just earned a guarantied kill.
Tractor beam repulsors exterminate drain drones and it recharges faster than drain drones can be re-launched.
You can also out-run drain drones with full engine or evasive maneuver speeds. You can do a torpedo spread on them and wipe out a good portion of them. A single tricobalt blast in their midst wipes them all out too.
A carrier needs to deploy 3 wings of drain drones to shut down a ship quickly. 2 wings take 10 to 15 seconds to shut down a player ship or npc. The 3 wings do it in 4 seconds. That means the moment you defeat one group of drones with repulsors or fire at will the carrier is literally on a timer to die as it cannot launch drones fast enough to shut you down fast enough. That is why drain drone carriers literally afterburn on top of you, tractor your TRIBBLE and dump the drain drones on you then.
anyone not using FAW cant kill them faster then they spawn, only generic cruisers are relatively safe from them. carrier pets are still very vulnerable to FAW, though their defense is buffed. if there inst at least 1 person spamming FAW a team is basically helpless against pets. currently if you can sneak up on someone with these PSD, or you send them after any cannon user you just earned a guarantied kill.
Wow, I did not expect such a lack of knowledge from a lifetimer.
Methods to stop/evade siphon drones (125 aux = 15 sec Relaunch timer per bay):
1. Target Auxiliary Subsystems => Unable to launch pets
2. Fire At Will
3. Tractor Beam Repulsors
4. Photonic Shockwave
5. Gravity Well
6. Torpedo Spread
7. Cannon: Scatter Volley
8. Evasive Maneuvers
9. Dilithium Surplus
10. Eject Warp Plasma
and many. many more abilities can stop them. If you get caught by them, it is your fault. Change your BO abilites, change your weapon layout.
No need to be so condescending. The truth is things like power syphons and tachyon drones are so effective so quickly that there isn't much time to react. Couple that with the fact that resistances aren't up to snuff and you can have a ship disabled and completely helpless very quickly. They are small and hard to target manually. They are very evasive. It's not as easy as popping a battery and doing whatever because the battery doesn't last and then the drones that were killed are back again.
I'm not saying that the waves need to be reduced yet. It would be fine by me if that was avoided all together as long as resistances are made to work as they are supposed to. Right now though it is just far too easy to completely disable a ship and I thought everyone agreed that long lasting holds were not fun.
No need to be so condescending. The truth is things like power syphons and tachyon drones are so effective so quickly that there isn't much time to react. Couple that with the fact that resistances aren't up to snuff and you can have a ship disabled and completely helpless very quickly. They are small and hard to target manually. They are very evasive. It's not as easy as popping a battery and doing whatever because the battery doesn't last and then the drones that were killed are back again.
I'm not saying that the waves need to be reduced yet. It would be fine by me if that was avoided all together as long as resistances are made to work as they are supposed to. Right now though it is just far too easy to completely disable a ship and I thought everyone agreed that long lasting holds were not fun.
J-man is still digging into resistances, and he's found a couple of bits of weirdness with shield resistance in particular that will take some programmer digging.
Also, found an old substate call that was making space pets invincible, so that should be updated shortly.
J-man is still digging into resistances, and he's found a couple of bits of weirdness with shield resistance in particular that will take some programmer digging.
Also, found an old substate call that was making space pets invincible, so that should be updated shortly.
Any news on the weird fighter AI? I'd like my To'Duj to begin acting normally again... Right now they're pretty useless, in fact they often don't do anything...
Any news on the weird fighter AI? I'd like my To'Duj to begin acting normally again... Right now they're pretty useless, in fact they often don't do anything...
-Quiiliitiila
There's a weird case in which having your fighters launch right next to opponents caused some odd behaviors; sorting that out today. (Viva le weekend again!)
This is because of an issue in how Power Insulators handles resistance against a wide range of powers. Borticus is working on making it more consistent.
I'm still noticing how the pets in general when they use energy weapons aren't even hitting their target for the base value of a turret for that matter. Where as before the pets started having issue of not working or being broken back when we had 3 waves of them one single pet was stronger then than the combined force of all the waves damage combined that we have now.
Where it was also stated we would not lose any offense of these pets just for controlling spam purposes not to have so many pets. Pretty much right now the only damage I can count on is the projectiles that they fire.
All the work into getting them to one day be able to attack any enemy force be it a transformer, a gate, a huge tactical cube is appreciated and looking forward to when we can count on that dps from the pets overall
Tractor beam repulsors exterminate drain drones and it recharges faster than drain drones can be re-launched.
You can also out-run drain drones with full engine or evasive maneuver speeds. You can do a torpedo spread on them and wipe out a good portion of them. A single tricobalt blast in their midst wipes them all out too.
A carrier needs to deploy 3 wings of drain drones to shut down a ship quickly. 2 wings take 10 to 15 seconds to shut down a player ship or npc. The 3 wings do it in 4 seconds. That means the moment you defeat one group of drones with repulsors or fire at will the carrier is literally on a timer to die as it cannot launch drones fast enough to shut you down fast enough. That is why drain drone carriers literally afterburn on top of you, tractor your TRIBBLE and dump the drain drones on you then.
wow you guys must REALLY love your completely unoptimized and ineffective builds. tractor beam repulsers? i don't want to annoy people, i want to kill them. torpedoes? maybe if im using an escort. wont do you any good wile they are on cool down. in some perfect world were your ready for anything, you can counter everything. but if your already in the middle of combat and your damaged and half your abilities are on cooldown your vulnerable to any sort of thing, especially one you cant counter when caught by. i really have no interest making my builds much less effective just to kill stupid npc pets that are currently broken, that's the actual problem right now.
Wow, I did not expect such a lack of knowledge from a lifetimer.
that's adorable, really. i assure you i know every theoretical way to counter every thing there is in game. in practice though if your cooldowns don't some how line up perfectly to what you need to counter, you are helpless. i'll just counter your wonder solutions with situational reality.
Methods to stop/evade siphon drones (125 aux = 15 sec Relaunch timer per bay):
unless you have an aoe, it takes that long to kill 2 or 3 hangers worth of them individually
1. Target Auxiliary Subsystems => Unable to launch pets
no beams, useless if you don't see them coming and are already fighting 3 other people.
2. Fire At Will
no beams. useless as soon as you get snagged by them anyway, with 0 power and all
3. Tractor Beam Repulsors
on a cruiser for any reason? ya right, proboly wouldn't deal heavy enough damage to kill them without an aux battery. if slotted i loose TSS2, and i am much more vulnerable to actual threats from other players, not broken instadrain trash mobs
4. Photonic Shockwave
on an excelsior?
5. Gravity Well
on an excelsior?
6. Torpedo Spread
on a cruiser? torpedoes are worthless. the chances you will have this ready on cooldown, and be pointed at the pets right when you need to be is extreamly low.
7. Cannon: Scatter Volley
i had a boff on standby with it, couldn't swap to it due to the whole in combat at the time thing. also narrow arc, less effect unless they fly strait at me
8. Evasive Maneuvers
useless with 0 engine power. this is the only way to get out of a situation like the one in the picture i posted though. assuming you have an engine battery off cooldown and you can hit evasive fast enough to use the energy before its drained away in about a second.
9. Dilithium Surplus
useless with 0 engine power
10. Eject Warp Plasma
and give up ET3 or A2S3? again no, not on an excelsior. making my self unable to counter other players just to kill pets is insanity.
and many. many more abilities can stop them. If you get caught by them, it is your fault. Change your BO abilites, change your weapon layout.
its basically impossible to build for useful dps and survivability if you try to counter every little thing, a dps ship cant sacrifice dps for counters, thats what the heal boats on the team are for. but i really shouldn't have to explain something like this to some one as knowledgeable as you. the ship in question's weaknesses when it has no support are debuff you need science team to clear and pets, everything else it can handle.
one of my beam array wielding, plasma belching, healer cruisers could have dealt with them easily most likely, but if the drones had an opening my counter heavy cruiser would be just as completely shutdown and helpless. THAT'S THE ISSUE. now really, stop derailing the thread with personal attacks on my inability to counter overpowered due to broken resists pets in a ship that's a complete mismatch for taking out the trash. it doesn't make you look cool
Comments
Just as I stated above, all Pets (including Tachyon Drones) stop attacking / following your orders after some time.
I was fighting a tanky enemy for several minutes, my Tachyon Drones managed to drop his shields, my Fek'Ihri Fighters were attacking too.. then suddenly... Nothing. They ALL stopped attacking but kept following my enemy, who was still in my weapons range (I was still firing).
=> Attack / Intercept : Not working
=> All orders deactivated: Not working
=> Replacing Drones & Fighters by launching new waves: Not working - they would not attack, just follow my enemy
Again, my pets were never out of Range or more than 8km from my ship.
After 2 more minutes: They suddenly start to attack my enemy again.
This happens almost every 5-10 Minutes fighting Feds in Kerrat.
This patch proves they don't test anything and that they ignore any feedback given to them unless its a technical glitch (like the 0hp bug).
We never asked for that TRIBBLE formation thing. It wasn't an issue nor a problem. Yet for some reason they decide to add a new element to the already bug-infested AI ... and the way they put the formations to work just shows they have no clue how the pets function. I mean look: The formation in 'attack' order only works when the pet is under the attack command.
Attack.. the one command that tells to the pets to attack anything they have on their target list or anything the player has targeted. Since the pets pick up targets from team-mates they will ALWAYS have a target. Ergo, they will NEVER use that formation UNLESS they have been recently launched AND there is no enemy in range AND no team-mate has been fired upon or fired on a target AND the carrier has nothing targeted.
This just shows a clear lack of understanding of the pet's issues and that they dont even bother playing or testing their changes. The same can be said for the way they have nerfed the hell out of science ships/science abilities... a complete ignorance of their own product and a rush to add new silly stuff without thinking it through. Thats what I see despite any claims otherwise. The end product (release patch on holodeck) speaks for itself.
I guess it's best that I not try to use my Carriers for a few months or years maybe :rolleyes:
Why not role back the Carriers so they can still be somewhat usefull
Notably, the AI updates (and the AI routines in general) have no impact on several areas:
* The fighters are never made unkillable by the AI
* The AI never turns off any of the weapons in combat, so if Birds of Prey are not using weapons, it's either because they are not in position or because the enemy they are attacking has a target node problem (such as the Borg gates in the STFs)
* The AI never tells fighters to stop responding; when a carrier command is toggled on, it sends a command update every second. The fighter AI routines listen for these commands and shift to different actions based on the commands.
Right now, it appears that something happened with the way the fighter stacks are handled, which is causing some of the fighters to lose some of their team information. Thus, "rolling back" fighter AI controls would have no effect on this bug.
I spent about 2 1/2 hours playing my carrier on Holodeck last night and never had any problems with my Birds of Prey, which has made troubleshooting a bit difficult, but investigation will continue.
Try like the cure stf and move around to keep up your defense since you have to be in 10km range for them to start attacking and you'll see the differences on how they behave when you launch birds of prey from different approaches to the target since you don't want to sit still and have negative defense... the position in which they spawn will have them activating their skills but will not be in cannon arc to use them.
I just did a cure and a infected on Holodeck and in both my pets stopped attacking and just sat in space doing nothing while i was defending the klingon ship in the cure and also when i was attacking the nanite spheres. Dunno what the problem is but if your having trouble reproducing it maybe the best way is to as some players to jump on tribble with you and do Pvp or Stf's since that is where most are seeing the problems. Tell us when you want to do testing and I'm sure there are plenty that will join you on tribble.
Same. As of right now im trying to find what ship most fits my build so i can switch to it until they fix the Ai. Really hate having to spend C-points on a ship or trade it so i can buy another ship and then have to try to shape it to work around a build i had with the Vo'quv but I hate being useless in STF's and dont want to stop grinding my Kdf completely.
Roll back the pets BEFORE the BoP's got their torpedo damage nerfed, apply the fix that was done to prevent them from picking up targets/orders from team-mates and start again from there.
No need to do formations or to add anything else. Fixing existing issues should be #1 priority before slapping on more things onto them. 20km range control, escort functionality, preventing/removing the ability of pets to pick up their own targets or pick up targets from team-mates should be the next things tackled.
Fix them first. Then you can think about improving them or adding fancy stuff.
Excuse me but I call absolute bollocks on this.
They stop dead in space the instant they are recalled. Didnt happen pre-patch in holodeck and this was reported on Tribble before the patch. Guess what? It was ignored.
The new attack pattern has them peeling off an attack run at 5km making them fire on target less than a second...because they spend the distance between 10 to 5km turning towards target at high speed on first pass and cant get nose on target. Again, this issue has been reported since before the patch, reported again in tribble during this patch as being even worse and... well, guess what? It was ignored.
The BoPs enter a stop-go-stop-go intermittent behavior when ordered to attack a ship when player/team has not entered combat yet. Curious fact: It was reported on Tribble... and ignored.
in fact EVERYTHING that we reported on Tribble as being borked to hell was ignored and is now in holodeck. Players noticed the problems within minutes of logging in.
Question is... how is it you guys (not you personally JH) work on something and not notice how broken it is on the test server of all things and just push it onto live despite the fact that your customers that give you their time to test your product warned you very specifically what the problem was, how it happened, how to reproduce it, how it affects the ships and that it was a very,very bad idea to put this in holodeck. ?
Its mind boggling.
I suppose that makes it even more odd that they'd be demonstrating similar questionable behaviors (being lethargic; not attacking) at the same time after the patch.
It's just more evidence that the odd behavior is the result of some other part of the code.
so wile you guys are complaining about the damage dealing pets here, there are others that have found a work around
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577826127607620729/64EA93944BD2C89D9581392801AC1BA0B6166A3C/
im not sure when it happened, but these damn power syphon drones became REALLY effective. my 9 power insulators do nothing, they are pretty durable, and they are launched faster then they can be desroyed. if 1 nipes you its all over, and you are permenetly disabled until killed
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577826127607619581/A216BBC01874F74D349877AC24501DAC526A860C/
this was a really bad day to stop using FAW and trying out single cannons
soooo ya, maybe limit these to 1 per carrier? they are an i win button currently
This is because of an issue in how Power Insulators handles resistance against a wide range of powers. Borticus is working on making it more consistent.
even when insulators is all fixed, that's still a LOT of power syphon drones. a single carrier can launch a ton of these, that many proboly should be able to drain you dry even with 75% or whatever resist working.
once insulators is fixed, you might want to consider limiting how many you can use or nerfing them i hate to say it. on one hand we shouldn't have immunity from them with just skill point specing, but on the other getting swarmed by that many from 1 carrier is absurd.
1. if you dont have any carrier commands running they have a tendency to just hang at a dead stop til they get shot at.
2. if you have an attack command running and targeting a nanite generator theres a chance they'll just flyoff to the other side of the map.
(i was targeting the closest generator to the vortex on the rightside gate when they just took off for the left gate)
3. when you relaunch your hangers its taking the bops closest to you and relaunching them.
This bit right here is very interesting and very useful, thanks.
Yeah, these are really good little drones, however I have to disagree with how you state that they are launched faster than people can shoot them down. Unfortunately, this is not quite true. The PSD have a higher recharge than most other launchables and they are destroyed with a slightly strong wind :^D
But I understand where you are coming from, when I can completely disable a tac cube by myself using only PSD, they may be a bit... Uber...
-Quiiliitiila
anyone not using FAW cant kill them faster then they spawn, only generic cruisers are relatively safe from them. carrier pets are still very vulnerable to FAW, though their defense is buffed. if there inst at least 1 person spamming FAW a team is basically helpless against pets. currently if you can sneak up on someone with these PSD, or you send them after any cannon user you just earned a guarantied kill.
You can also out-run drain drones with full engine or evasive maneuver speeds. You can do a torpedo spread on them and wipe out a good portion of them. A single tricobalt blast in their midst wipes them all out too.
A carrier needs to deploy 3 wings of drain drones to shut down a ship quickly. 2 wings take 10 to 15 seconds to shut down a player ship or npc. The 3 wings do it in 4 seconds. That means the moment you defeat one group of drones with repulsors or fire at will the carrier is literally on a timer to die as it cannot launch drones fast enough to shut you down fast enough. That is why drain drone carriers literally afterburn on top of you, tractor your TRIBBLE and dump the drain drones on you then.
Wow, I did not expect such a lack of knowledge from a lifetimer.
Methods to stop/evade siphon drones (125 aux = 15 sec Relaunch timer per bay):
1. Target Auxiliary Subsystems => Unable to launch pets
2. Fire At Will
3. Tractor Beam Repulsors
4. Photonic Shockwave
5. Gravity Well
6. Torpedo Spread
7. Cannon: Scatter Volley
8. Evasive Maneuvers
9. Dilithium Surplus
10. Eject Warp Plasma
and many. many more abilities can stop them. If you get caught by them, it is your fault. Change your BO abilites, change your weapon layout.
I'm not saying that the waves need to be reduced yet. It would be fine by me if that was avoided all together as long as resistances are made to work as they are supposed to. Right now though it is just far too easy to completely disable a ship and I thought everyone agreed that long lasting holds were not fun.
J-man is still digging into resistances, and he's found a couple of bits of weirdness with shield resistance in particular that will take some programmer digging.
Also, found an old substate call that was making space pets invincible, so that should be updated shortly.
Any news on the weird fighter AI? I'd like my To'Duj to begin acting normally again... Right now they're pretty useless, in fact they often don't do anything...
-Quiiliitiila
There's a weird case in which having your fighters launch right next to opponents caused some odd behaviors; sorting that out today. (Viva le weekend again!)
I'm still noticing how the pets in general when they use energy weapons aren't even hitting their target for the base value of a turret for that matter. Where as before the pets started having issue of not working or being broken back when we had 3 waves of them one single pet was stronger then than the combined force of all the waves damage combined that we have now.
Where it was also stated we would not lose any offense of these pets just for controlling spam purposes not to have so many pets. Pretty much right now the only damage I can count on is the projectiles that they fire.
All the work into getting them to one day be able to attack any enemy force be it a transformer, a gate, a huge tactical cube is appreciated and looking forward to when we can count on that dps from the pets overall
wow you guys must REALLY love your completely unoptimized and ineffective builds. tractor beam repulsers? i don't want to annoy people, i want to kill them. torpedoes? maybe if im using an escort. wont do you any good wile they are on cool down. in some perfect world were your ready for anything, you can counter everything. but if your already in the middle of combat and your damaged and half your abilities are on cooldown your vulnerable to any sort of thing, especially one you cant counter when caught by. i really have no interest making my builds much less effective just to kill stupid npc pets that are currently broken, that's the actual problem right now.
that's adorable, really. i assure you i know every theoretical way to counter every thing there is in game. in practice though if your cooldowns don't some how line up perfectly to what you need to counter, you are helpless. i'll just counter your wonder solutions with situational reality.
Methods to stop/evade siphon drones (125 aux = 15 sec Relaunch timer per bay):
unless you have an aoe, it takes that long to kill 2 or 3 hangers worth of them individually
1. Target Auxiliary Subsystems => Unable to launch pets
no beams, useless if you don't see them coming and are already fighting 3 other people.
2. Fire At Will
no beams. useless as soon as you get snagged by them anyway, with 0 power and all
3. Tractor Beam Repulsors
on a cruiser for any reason? ya right, proboly wouldn't deal heavy enough damage to kill them without an aux battery. if slotted i loose TSS2, and i am much more vulnerable to actual threats from other players, not broken instadrain trash mobs
4. Photonic Shockwave
on an excelsior?
5. Gravity Well
on an excelsior?
6. Torpedo Spread
on a cruiser? torpedoes are worthless. the chances you will have this ready on cooldown, and be pointed at the pets right when you need to be is extreamly low.
7. Cannon: Scatter Volley
i had a boff on standby with it, couldn't swap to it due to the whole in combat at the time thing. also narrow arc, less effect unless they fly strait at me
8. Evasive Maneuvers
useless with 0 engine power. this is the only way to get out of a situation like the one in the picture i posted though. assuming you have an engine battery off cooldown and you can hit evasive fast enough to use the energy before its drained away in about a second.
9. Dilithium Surplus
useless with 0 engine power
10. Eject Warp Plasma
and give up ET3 or A2S3? again no, not on an excelsior. making my self unable to counter other players just to kill pets is insanity.
its basically impossible to build for useful dps and survivability if you try to counter every little thing, a dps ship cant sacrifice dps for counters, thats what the heal boats on the team are for. but i really shouldn't have to explain something like this to some one as knowledgeable as you. the ship in question's weaknesses when it has no support are debuff you need science team to clear and pets, everything else it can handle.
one of my beam array wielding, plasma belching, healer cruisers could have dealt with them easily most likely, but if the drones had an opening my counter heavy cruiser would be just as completely shutdown and helpless. THAT'S THE ISSUE. now really, stop derailing the thread with personal attacks on my inability to counter overpowered due to broken resists pets in a ship that's a complete mismatch for taking out the trash. it doesn't make you look cool