Not nearly as high as the same amount of players in the same classes of ships would do. Look at Anoms and what the NPCs do there. X Battleships, X Cruisers etc: “oh ■■■■, a single VNI, we’re doomed”. Sure there are harder forms of PvE than Anoms and I’ll admit that my knowledge about that is limited, but I’ve never come across any NPC behaviour that wasn’t weak compared to what they had on field.
Also, as far as I know, you’ll mostly face a limited amount of e-war from NPCs. It is one thing when they neut, web and point you (Blood Raiders for instance), but another thing if they’d also jam you, primary your drones and use weapon/missile disruptors, so you can’t even kill off the tackle. That’s what players would do, while doing significantly more damage.
Imagine you warp to a PvE site, let’s say in a passive fit Gila, you land on grid with 10 NPC cruisers. What do you do? Have a laugh, deploy drones and chill while easily tanking all of them. Do the same with Players cruisers, even T1. You’ll face 4000 DPS at least and let’s ignore the fact, that they’ll use some form of e-war. Your very same Gila would melt. That’s for DPS comparison.
Now for tank. There are a few hairy ones amongst NPCs, I’ll give you that. The Drifter Cruiser in the Event, might be an example. He doesn’t tank well when webbed down, but he has a decent speed tank. Not higher level Kite that players might bring, but surely not bad. However, most NPCs have a very weak tank for their ship-size, which is probably due to their stupid behaviour more than due to low hp or resists. None of them seems to have a DCU though, not even the obvious Armor brawlers. Most of them have gigantic holes in their resistances, something that you wouldn’t find too often amongst players.
Anyhow, my point wasn’t wether or not NPCs should be as strong as players, but that new types of NPC behaviour could teach players a few things that they’d face in PVP, albeit in a much safer environment.
Using Stratios for every event. 