NPC Power/Armour Levels?

catonikjames

Re-posting this here, as it seems more appropriate than the academy section.

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I'm curious if anyone has solid information on how power/armour levels work for NPCs in the game. I would appreciate a link or any other info you could provide.

Reason being, I'm looking at the Polaron space weapons, which have the chance to proc "-25 All current power levels for 5 seconds". While the chance is still low, -25 all power levels seems like a much larger affect than any other weapon can offer.

Unfortunately, as a software developer, I know a lot of dev's "cut corners" with this kind of thing. It usually stays hidden, and is much quicker and easier to do something like... say... give an advanced enemy 200 power, instead of 100, instead of having them assigned skills, and ranking their skills up- for example. If this is the case, then the -25 weapon power bonus would be significantly less effective.

I know there are player abilities to increase/decrease power transfer and reduction/gains, which will be a large factor on how effective the weapons are in PvP, but in PvE this seems extremely unbalanced, and I smell a rat.

snowpig74

if you watch carefully you can see, that sometimes (smaller) ships you shoot at with polarons drop their speed and/or their shields. therefore polaron proc is working. bigger ships (tac. cubes et.al.) have higher power levels and you need several player-initiated drains to make them drop their shields.

adamkafei

I seem to recall Hawk or Bort saying they have 50 base power in all systems, I should imagine unless they are made with any special properties they will have the same sort of power levels as the starting Miranda in the tutorial.

innuwarrior

adamkafei wrote: »

I seem to recall Hawk or Bort saying they have 50 base power in all systems, I should imagine unless they are made with any special properties they will have the same sort of power levels as the starting Miranda in the tutorial.

catonikjames wrote: »

Re-posting this here, as it seems more appropriate than the academy section.

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I'm curious if anyone has solid information on how power/armour levels work for NPCs in the game. I would appreciate a link or any other info you could provide.

Reason being, I'm looking at the Polaron space weapons, which have the chance to proc "-25 All current power levels for 5 seconds". While the chance is still low, -25 all power levels seems like a much larger affect than any other weapon can offer.

Unfortunately, as a software developer, I know a lot of dev's "cut corners" with this kind of thing. It usually stays hidden, and is much quicker and easier to do something like... say... give an advanced enemy 200 power, instead of 100, instead of having them assigned skills, and ranking their skills up- for example. If this is the case, then the -25 weapon power bonus would be significantly less effective.

I know there are player abilities to increase/decrease power transfer and reduction/gains, which will be a large factor on how effective the weapons are in PvP, but in PvE this seems extremely unbalanced, and I smell a rat.

Polaron weapons work well with high flow cap skill. The higher the flow cap the higher the drain and the more effective it becomes. A lot of smaller npc literally stop and drop shield with a high flow cap setup. So, from my experience, they work as intended.

catonikjames

Interesting, thanks for the information. I didn't realize they were affected by flow cap. Although that explains why I noticed them at nearly 50 drain at one point (I assumed it was a glitch).

if you watch carefully you can see, that sometimes (smaller) ships you shoot at with polarons drop their speed and/or their shields. therefore polaron proc is working. bigger ships (tac. cubes et.al.) have higher power levels and you need several player-initiated drains to make them drop their shields.

I enjoy flying carrier type ships a lot, so I don't usually worry about frigates and other small ships. A single AoE burst, and my carrier's frigates easily take care of them.

I'm hoping to get a good cripple effect on the bigger ships (esp. tac cubes). As of yet, they are my only significant challenge (besides being massively outnumbered of course). Their shield drain drops all my shields, and then a single torp can finish me off (they've crit me for over 40k).

I suppose what i'm trying to get at is "Are polaron weapons a viable means of (offensive) defense for a carrier against other large ships, or do I need to tank up more?

EDIT: P.S. Are other weapon 'procs' effected by abilities too? I've read the 2.5% chance is too low to make a notable difference in damage, but they would certainly be more interesting if they operated at higher values than listed on paper.