It might be nice if you used the launch hanger pet command, that if your hanger-pets are outside a certain range, than they are teleported to your ship. The range at which your pets despawn, and where they are going to lag so far behind that they are useless while not being able to despawn yet is quite a big difference.
Or a dismiss pet option say double clicking the launch icon.
Carrier Pets:
•All Player Carrier Pets are now immune to Warp Core Breaches
•All Player Carrier Pets now have "Layered Defenses III"; which is an immunity to one torpedo every 30 seconds
•Carrier pets now have significantly increased damage, hitpoints, power draining, shield healing, and shield draining
Carrier Pets that previously had Scratch the Paint have received the following:
•Normal Callistos now have Cannon: Scatter Volley 2 instead of 1
•Advanced and Elite Callistos now have Cannon: Scatter Volley 3 instead of 2
•Advanced Xindi-Insectoid Fighters now have Beam: Fire at Will 2
•Elite Xindi-Insectoid Fighters now have Beam: Fire at Will 3 and Emergency Power to Shields 3 instead of Emergency Power to Shields 2
•Normal Xindi-Primate Heavy Fighters now have Torpedo: Spread 1
•Advanced Xindi-Primate Heavy Fighters now have Torpedo: Spread 2
•Elite Xindi-Primate Heavy Fighters now have Torpedo: Spread 3 and also have Jam Sensors 3 instead of 2
•Normal Xindi-Insectoid Fighters now have Beam: Fire at Will 1
•Normal Cestus, baSro', and Craeul Frigates now have Emergency Power to Weapons 1
•Advanced and Elite Cestus, baSro', and Craeul Frigates now have Emergency Power to Weapons 3 instead of Emergency Power to Weapons 1, and the Elite versions will use it significantly more frequently
Carrier Pets:
•All Player Carrier Pets are now immune to Warp Core Breaches
•All Player Carrier Pets now have "Layered Defenses III"; which is an immunity to one torpedo every 30 seconds
•Carrier pets now have significantly increased damage, hitpoints, power draining, shield healing, and shield draining
Carrier Pets that previously had Scratch the Paint have received the following:
•Normal Callistos now have Cannon: Scatter Volley 2 instead of 1
•Advanced and Elite Callistos now have Cannon: Scatter Volley 3 instead of 2
•Advanced Xindi-Insectoid Fighters now have Beam: Fire at Will 2
•Elite Xindi-Insectoid Fighters now have Beam: Fire at Will 3 and Emergency Power to Shields 3 instead of Emergency Power to Shields 2
•Normal Xindi-Primate Heavy Fighters now have Torpedo: Spread 1
•Advanced Xindi-Primate Heavy Fighters now have Torpedo: Spread 2
•Elite Xindi-Primate Heavy Fighters now have Torpedo: Spread 3 and also have Jam Sensors 3 instead of 2
•Normal Xindi-Insectoid Fighters now have Beam: Fire at Will 1
•Normal Cestus, baSro', and Craeul Frigates now have Emergency Power to Weapons 1
•Advanced and Elite Cestus, baSro', and Craeul Frigates now have Emergency Power to Weapons 3 instead of Emergency Power to Weapons 1, and the Elite versions will use it significantly more frequently
But that is not what the thread is about, most if not all of us like an agree the changes are great. Yet what the thread is about is that they are not enough in some people's eyes, since glaring issues have been left out that might pop up making the changes ineffective in the end. THey have made changes to the carrier commands to make the pets more responsive, but if i am not mistaken they have tried this before an it worked to some degree, though it did seem to be somewhat buggy as well.
Also just because changes are good does not make them enough, or effective in the end actually, which is what the thread is about also. We have seen them try an fix hanger pets as well as carrier commands specifically several times with varying degrees of success. As amazing as these changes are, which they are quite amazing an worthwhile, if your pets do not respond or arrive to combat in time to use them. How effective is the time an resources spent on these changes?
What is there in the patch notes for carrier pets to discuss? All of these changes prop up hanger pets potential value, but in the end if the effectiveness an responsiveness of the pets is not addressed the changes are a waste of resources. Again when your pets are in combat, they will be more effective an survive much better than prior in the same situation prior to this upcoming patch, which addresses prior complaints in this area of dealing with pets. This does not change that in those times like during transit between groups of enemies if your pets are not responding or you outrun them an have to wait to arrive an get any worth out of them these changes do not affect their effectiveness in that situation.
In truth you could say this is a derailing of the thread to talk about something that is not the focus or discussion of the created thread.
Point being NO ONE has experience with what pets are going to be like from which to ground their arguments that they should be better.
With added fun the Devs already know the AI's buggy, because they tried to fix it, and the fix got eaten in a reversion error. That buggieness is the cause of most of the heart ache, so we don't need new solutions, we need somebody to go through and re-apply the solution that already - briefly - existed.
Point being NO ONE has experience with what pets are going to be like from which to ground their arguments that they should be better.
With added fun the Devs already know the AI's buggy, because they tried to fix it, and the fix got eaten in a reversion error. That buggieness is the cause of most of the heart ache, so we don't need new solutions, we need somebody to go through and re-apply the solution that already - briefly - existed.
I agree that re-applying the prior fix, which was reversed would be great.
Most don't have experience with the upcoming pets after the changes, but in the end we have experience with attempts an how they have worked out to draw some degree of knowledge of how they will work after the changes go thru (both if the fix holds or fails).
Also many of the changes put forth in the patches have been from thread people listed ideas on how to improve things. So having a discussion of what could be done to improve pets, or other aspects fo the game can have a effect on the game in the long run, since if a change like the upcoming one does not work as intended the devs might again look to ideas brought up on the forums for ideas that could be used. Again the thread is not about how good, or if the changes to the pets are good, but about the changes not affecting a large area of contention for many players that use hanger pets.
Just looking at those changes the fact that pets are immune to warp core breaches (a suggestion that has shown up in thread on pets) is a huge buff to pets that makes them far more effective, since that is one issue the pets have is dying off from spending too much time near breaching ships.
THe question is is it worth more to spend the resources to fix the Ai now, or would it be better to scrap it all an implement a new Ai an Ui instead. With how many times they have attempted to fix the issue, and either had it break again, or just reverted it as it made pets supposedly too op making a new Ui an Ai seems better.
I think somewhere a Developer's soul dies every time a player casually tosses out "hey, I think you ought to undertake a pure R&D project of the 8-18 month variety building a whole new AI module." Especially when most of the issue could be fixed by digging through the update files and seeing how your patch got lost. No **** a new module "would be better". You're only talking about twenty-five-thousand times as many man hours being applied to the problem .
I think somewhere a Developer's soul dies every time a player casually tosses out "hey, I think you ought to undertake a pure R&D project of the 8-18 month variety building a whole new AI module." Especially when most of the issue could be fixed by digging through the update files and seeing how your patch got lost. No **** a new module "would be better". You're only talking about twenty-five-thousand times as many man hours being applied to the problem .
Low hanging fruit, man. It's a thing .
That is always the best course of action to take when you start out, but then there is a point you need to reevaluate if the tree the low hanging fruit is on an is rotting away, They have already wasted a lot of resources an time fixing the pets, either via the fix not holding, or having to revert it for making the pets too op in the eyes of the playerbase. So how many more fixes/patches need to be reverted, or fail before you call it a lost cause an start over.
They could even just leave the Ai in place with some minor tweaks, while seeing if they could implement a Ui that is somewhat like the Ui used for the ground Boffs for the hanger/seperation pets that could allow the player to bypass the ai to some degree.The ground boff Ui might not be the best seen, but in the manner of how pet's normally are seen an worked that Ui would do wonders for career/seperation pets, since then we could actually manually handle our pets over leaving it to a buggy Ai. Also such a implementation could give the devs time to wade thru the patch files, while propping up the value an effectiveness of the pets in the eyes of the players during the interim.
Let hangers be mounted at weapon hardpoints, then you'd see ships with a couple omni-directional beams and 6 hangers!
And obviously... increase fighter ranges to 20 or 30km.
A workaround for the full impulse issue being to have the summon also act as a teleport for pets that are outside 20km radius of the carrier would surely be simpler than other options. Similar cooldown to the standard spit the pet out but would offset the dead space between when they despawn naturally becuase they can't be bothered keeping up.
I seem to recall a time when you could get loads of ships out at once by summoning a full batch then swapping out the slot with a different type. Of course that was back in the days of klink only carriers, kdf levelling only off pvp and of course it got "fixed" due to the fedballers complaining vehemently about how unfair life was.
One thing about increasing the range on pets is they already drop you into combat when you're 15km out and unable to back them up in any meaningful way so increasing the range would make this bigger and therfore harder for a carrier player to do anything much themselves. Would the game start flagging grouped carriers as being afk simply because their pets are forcing them to move around slower than they other wise could do.
Still I wish they'd just fix the AI for pets, because not going to impulse was not the only problem, for cannon pets, keeping Dual Cannons, Dual Heavy Cannons, and Quad Cannons on target seems to be a challenge for pets.
Yeah I love cannon/torp using pets myself, and wish we had a system in place that allowed us to set what kind of attack pattern/run style the pets use. Such as that you could set your cannon/torp pets to use a figure eight type loop, while you might use just a stand circling pattern for beam types, and for mine layers using a close proximity type of of pattern would work. I think this though in some way was supposed to be implemented in the ai of the pets, but been eeing most of my pets using a standrd circling maneuver regardless of type.
Also though making a alteration to cannons specifically on pets that they have a increased firing arc would be nice to make them more viable a choice. Though having lock trajectory does help abit, it is not a standard on all pets, so may like they did wiht this latest set of pet changes they could remove lock trajectory an give all cannon/torp pets an increased firing arc with cannons an torpedoes.
Carriers could arguably use 1 or 2 more hanger slots since so many ships have been given hangers not to mention the new Dreadnoughts that get 2 hangers (and frigates) with out any of the drawbacks Carriers suffer from.
With hangar numbers I think they'd have to nail down the definition of what a carrier actually is.
Having more weapons dread carriers could keep the same pair they have at the moment with same restrictions.
Cruisers and other smaller "flight deck" ships should only have the one and be limited to fighter sized craft.
Pure carriers could then either get a third hangar bay or (worse option due to summon cd) have the number of frigates spawned per bay upped to 3.
Or as an alternative to that get an extra uni/command boff seat to allow the carrier to work more as a support vessel to the frigates. Command boffs could then have skills added that are carrier specific for buffing or generally aiding the pets effectiveness.
We already have things that are specific to ships so why not expand that to boff skills.
How about someone actually run some playtesting and parses - see how it feels and measures?
I don't think anyone really expects most carriers and pets to match what the same player can do in a cruiser, realy its more of a case of closing the gap some.
buffs to pets are nice... but it doesnt mean jack if they lag behind you 20+ km away preventing you from summoning anymore. the moment you drop out of "Red Alert" the pets should all teleport directly next you, either being locked into a V formation as you travel at full impulse or auto dock back into the carrier/ship.
buffs to pets are nice... but it doesnt mean jack if they lag behind you 20+ km away preventing you from summoning anymore. the moment you drop out of "Red Alert" the pets should all teleport directly next you, either being locked into a V formation as you travel at full impulse or auto dock back into the carrier/ship.
Exactly. For some alerts & queues I sometimes don't bother to summon pets until the end since I know they'll just disappear moving between groups. Which stinks because then they can't level up.
For battle zones I've just gotten used to travelling at half-throttle full-impulse or again losing them if something is time-sensitive like the Undine planet killers.
I keep seeing people complain about hanger pets, I think the problem is down to the actual hanger you are using.
I've used the Breen carrier and the advanced frigates since I unlocked it in the winter event. The frigates can be a bit slow to follow at full impulse, however as long as there are no hostiles within 15K then they are usually docked within 10 seconds of me hitting the recall button, since the skill tree revamp they can do Argala normal without me firing a shot, I just need to follow them around to keep the hostiles in range.
Now I also have the 31st Century Temporal bundle, two of the ships have a single hanger of fighters, and boy are they hopeless, they do attack their targets but wont follow at full impulse, and don't bother trying to dock them, half of them wont dock and the ones that did dock wont relaunch, you have to unequip and then reequip the hanger to clear them.
I keep seeing people complain about hanger pets, I think the problem is down to the actual hanger you are using.
I've used the Breen carrier and the advanced frigates since I unlocked it in the winter event. The frigates can be a bit slow to follow at full impulse, however as long as there are no hostiles within 15K then they are usually docked within 10 seconds of me hitting the recall button, since the skill tree revamp they can do Argala normal without me firing a shot, I just need to follow them around to keep the hostiles in range.
Now I also have the 31st Century Temporal bundle, two of the ships have a single hanger of fighters, and boy are they hopeless, they do attack their targets but wont follow at full impulse, and don't bother trying to dock them, half of them wont dock and the ones that did dock wont relaunch, you have to unequip and then reequip the hanger to clear them.
Yeah it is down to specific pet types,a nd weapon layout of those pets. The frigates on average are normally pretty good (the Callisto frigate is about the only one i have had issues with), beam using shuttles are also pretty good, but fighter an cannone using ones seem to have issues alot. Though it is also down to more of value various investment on pets too, most of the time to get that hanger you are giving up a weapon slot an getting inferior pets comparatively for that investment or cost you paid.
I asked crypticspartan and he said they are going to improve the hangar pet AI as well. I think that along with these pet buffs will make for some pretty formidable pets... if they can pull it off...
I asked crypticspartan and he said they are going to improve the hangar pet AI as well. I think that along with these pet buffs will make for some pretty formidable pets... if they can pull it off...
They haven't I still have the same old problems of the pets wonder to far away from me and fade away as I fly around the map.
@pottsey5g they haven't done anything to the pet AI yet as far as I know. It's supposedly coming. Like I said though I'll believe it when I see it. They've tried fixing it before, at least for the Jupiter hangar pets, and failed.
Having tried some of my pets on tribble I'll admit the effects are already extremely noticeable, my pets survivablity is really good, the damage boost is very noticeable. Layered Defence and Warp Core Breach Immunity are massive survivablitx boosts by themselves, but with the extra Hull points the survivablity is no longer an issue, I mean they can still be killed, but they last along time.
Heavy torp pets benefit from torp speed change
Fighters probably benefit more from breach immunity than frigates that have some survivability already
Beams trump cannon, probably even after ai is fixed due to firing arc and elite pets having Bo or Faw.
I suspect that for a cannon pet to match a beam pet it would need at least two of: wide angle cannons, surgical strikes and rapid fire; for a fighter that would exclude a torp ability.
Yeah I am finding the same, that most of the biggest issues, and short comings are quite well handled with the new changes. I hold off abit on the Ai change, till we see it on the live-server an it stays in place without issue for awhile, since in the end their has been attempts before that did not hold so staying abit cautious.
I agree that issue of that beam-using pets, will pretty much always trump cannon-using pets, is more a combination of the Ai an also the large difference in firing arc. I think a shift to the firing arc of cannon-using pets to have innately a higher firing arc would be nice, even if it was 10-20 degrees it would make them more viable a choice.
Comments
Or a dismiss pet option say double clicking the launch icon.
From the Tribble Patch notes.
But that is not what the thread is about, most if not all of us like an agree the changes are great. Yet what the thread is about is that they are not enough in some people's eyes, since glaring issues have been left out that might pop up making the changes ineffective in the end. THey have made changes to the carrier commands to make the pets more responsive, but if i am not mistaken they have tried this before an it worked to some degree, though it did seem to be somewhat buggy as well.
Also just because changes are good does not make them enough, or effective in the end actually, which is what the thread is about also. We have seen them try an fix hanger pets as well as carrier commands specifically several times with varying degrees of success. As amazing as these changes are, which they are quite amazing an worthwhile, if your pets do not respond or arrive to combat in time to use them. How effective is the time an resources spent on these changes?
What is there in the patch notes for carrier pets to discuss? All of these changes prop up hanger pets potential value, but in the end if the effectiveness an responsiveness of the pets is not addressed the changes are a waste of resources. Again when your pets are in combat, they will be more effective an survive much better than prior in the same situation prior to this upcoming patch, which addresses prior complaints in this area of dealing with pets. This does not change that in those times like during transit between groups of enemies if your pets are not responding or you outrun them an have to wait to arrive an get any worth out of them these changes do not affect their effectiveness in that situation.
In truth you could say this is a derailing of the thread to talk about something that is not the focus or discussion of the created thread.
With added fun the Devs already know the AI's buggy, because they tried to fix it, and the fix got eaten in a reversion error. That buggieness is the cause of most of the heart ache, so we don't need new solutions, we need somebody to go through and re-apply the solution that already - briefly - existed.
I agree that re-applying the prior fix, which was reversed would be great.
Most don't have experience with the upcoming pets after the changes, but in the end we have experience with attempts an how they have worked out to draw some degree of knowledge of how they will work after the changes go thru (both if the fix holds or fails).
Also many of the changes put forth in the patches have been from thread people listed ideas on how to improve things. So having a discussion of what could be done to improve pets, or other aspects fo the game can have a effect on the game in the long run, since if a change like the upcoming one does not work as intended the devs might again look to ideas brought up on the forums for ideas that could be used. Again the thread is not about how good, or if the changes to the pets are good, but about the changes not affecting a large area of contention for many players that use hanger pets.
Just looking at those changes the fact that pets are immune to warp core breaches (a suggestion that has shown up in thread on pets) is a huge buff to pets that makes them far more effective, since that is one issue the pets have is dying off from spending too much time near breaching ships.
THe question is is it worth more to spend the resources to fix the Ai now, or would it be better to scrap it all an implement a new Ai an Ui instead. With how many times they have attempted to fix the issue, and either had it break again, or just reverted it as it made pets supposedly too op making a new Ui an Ai seems better.
The pet changes are good, but without fixing the AI it's of limited utility for many players.
That being said the original blog post mentioned an AI fix, so it is likely still coming, perhaps in a second patch coming later.
Low hanging fruit, man. It's a thing
Fleet tugs, with carrier pods.
FWIW, he said he was sorry about all that; going through a rough patch & all. Post is buried now.
That is always the best course of action to take when you start out, but then there is a point you need to reevaluate if the tree the low hanging fruit is on an is rotting away, They have already wasted a lot of resources an time fixing the pets, either via the fix not holding, or having to revert it for making the pets too op in the eyes of the playerbase. So how many more fixes/patches need to be reverted, or fail before you call it a lost cause an start over.
They could even just leave the Ai in place with some minor tweaks, while seeing if they could implement a Ui that is somewhat like the Ui used for the ground Boffs for the hanger/seperation pets that could allow the player to bypass the ai to some degree.The ground boff Ui might not be the best seen, but in the manner of how pet's normally are seen an worked that Ui would do wonders for career/seperation pets, since then we could actually manually handle our pets over leaving it to a buggy Ai. Also such a implementation could give the devs time to wade thru the patch files, while propping up the value an effectiveness of the pets in the eyes of the players during the interim.
I like this a lot
+1
I seem to recall a time when you could get loads of ships out at once by summoning a full batch then swapping out the slot with a different type. Of course that was back in the days of klink only carriers, kdf levelling only off pvp and of course it got "fixed" due to the fedballers complaining vehemently about how unfair life was.
One thing about increasing the range on pets is they already drop you into combat when you're 15km out and unable to back them up in any meaningful way so increasing the range would make this bigger and therfore harder for a carrier player to do anything much themselves. Would the game start flagging grouped carriers as being afk simply because their pets are forcing them to move around slower than they other wise could do.
Still I wish they'd just fix the AI for pets, because not going to impulse was not the only problem, for cannon pets, keeping Dual Cannons, Dual Heavy Cannons, and Quad Cannons on target seems to be a challenge for pets.
Also though making a alteration to cannons specifically on pets that they have a increased firing arc would be nice to make them more viable a choice. Though having lock trajectory does help abit, it is not a standard on all pets, so may like they did wiht this latest set of pet changes they could remove lock trajectory an give all cannon/torp pets an increased firing arc with cannons an torpedoes.
Having more weapons dread carriers could keep the same pair they have at the moment with same restrictions.
Cruisers and other smaller "flight deck" ships should only have the one and be limited to fighter sized craft.
Pure carriers could then either get a third hangar bay or (worse option due to summon cd) have the number of frigates spawned per bay upped to 3.
Or as an alternative to that get an extra uni/command boff seat to allow the carrier to work more as a support vessel to the frigates. Command boffs could then have skills added that are carrier specific for buffing or generally aiding the pets effectiveness.
We already have things that are specific to ships so why not expand that to boff skills.
I don't think anyone really expects most carriers and pets to match what the same player can do in a cruiser, realy its more of a case of closing the gap some.
Exactly. For some alerts & queues I sometimes don't bother to summon pets until the end since I know they'll just disappear moving between groups. Which stinks because then they can't level up.
For battle zones I've just gotten used to travelling at half-throttle full-impulse or again losing them if something is time-sensitive like the Undine planet killers.
I've used the Breen carrier and the advanced frigates since I unlocked it in the winter event. The frigates can be a bit slow to follow at full impulse, however as long as there are no hostiles within 15K then they are usually docked within 10 seconds of me hitting the recall button, since the skill tree revamp they can do Argala normal without me firing a shot, I just need to follow them around to keep the hostiles in range.
Now I also have the 31st Century Temporal bundle, two of the ships have a single hanger of fighters, and boy are they hopeless, they do attack their targets but wont follow at full impulse, and don't bother trying to dock them, half of them wont dock and the ones that did dock wont relaunch, you have to unequip and then reequip the hanger to clear them.
Yeah it is down to specific pet types,a nd weapon layout of those pets. The frigates on average are normally pretty good (the Callisto frigate is about the only one i have had issues with), beam using shuttles are also pretty good, but fighter an cannone using ones seem to have issues alot. Though it is also down to more of value various investment on pets too, most of the time to get that hanger you are giving up a weapon slot an getting inferior pets comparatively for that investment or cost you paid.
It's really an AI/Cannon issue now.
Fighters probably benefit more from breach immunity than frigates that have some survivability already
Beams trump cannon, probably even after ai is fixed due to firing arc and elite pets having Bo or Faw.
I suspect that for a cannon pet to match a beam pet it would need at least two of: wide angle cannons, surgical strikes and rapid fire; for a fighter that would exclude a torp ability.
I agree that issue of that beam-using pets, will pretty much always trump cannon-using pets, is more a combination of the Ai an also the large difference in firing arc. I think a shift to the firing arc of cannon-using pets to have innately a higher firing arc would be nice, even if it was 10-20 degrees it would make them more viable a choice.