So i just logged in on my Alt for something different and un-docked from a friends station in High Sec to find 3x Blood Raider NPC’s with the white icons like the npc mining fleets attacking the station in ins Vul window they were even doing a rather good Job of it
My Question has their always been NPC’s who attack the stations in Game or is this something really new and is their AI configured so they come back the remainder of the Vul Cycles to finish the job
i haven’t been able to find anything on this occurring b4 so i thought a thread was warranted for some answers / info
If so they are the new hyper-aggressive NPCs that roam, camp gates, attack players and so on, all over High Sec. They are very tough, designed to encourage High Sec players to fleet up and take them on in a way that would normally only be necessary vs enemy player fleets.
I’ve tried taking them on solo in both a Battlecruiser and a Battleship and nearly lost both, and there was a pile of player wrecks at the gate in the Attyn system that they were camping.
these were Blood raiders in Punisher’s and yea very hard to kill and do heaps of DPS
I like it , and if they can kill stations as well it will make high sec all that more interesting
they would have taken this stations shields if i didn’t lure them off
Sounds like the new NPCs then, think the Kestrels are Guristas so probably depends which pirate faction space you are in.
I was only trying to take them on because they were camping the Laurvier gate in Attyn and had killed a Rookie doing a starter mission, and the item required for mission completion was in her wreck at the gate. I was confident I could play hero but there were 5 of them doing around 1500 DPS total to my ship, so I had to bail.
Still, I have heard no reports that the NPC from the pirate FOBs are actually reinforcing, let alone destroying, Upwell structures. They seem to shoot them, but whether they will eventually explode a structure isn’t clear.
Let us know if they successfully reinforce your friend’s station.
What are you people talking about? I spotted 4 gurista kestrels one day that were trying to find a structure to destroy and dispatched them with haste in my shield tanked slasher. It was with medium shield booster, kinetic hardener, afterburner and cap stable.
I know for sure they attack structure, but stations ?
Also I still haven’t noticed them reinforcing the structures they attacked. Maybe they can’t keep focus long enough to reinforce a structure.
They must come in different strengths then. These ones give a warning of consequences if you attack them and you have to click yes to proceed with aggression.
I barely put a dent in one of the five with a 500 DPS ship and 5x Hobgoblin II. By then my heavily tanked ship was on half armour.
They were hitting for 364 each so x5 thats over 1800 total per attack.
I am using cheap throwaway fits when I try to engage every new NPC ship on tranquility, when engaging without testing beforehand on sisi. You dont know what kind of crazy idea CCP had recently.
When will devs learn trying to force soloers to group will never work? I like the idea of tougher, more aggressive NPCs to make high sec more interesting, but they’re kidding hemselves if they think solo mission runners are suddenly going to group up with strangers to kill some pirate base for no or **** loot. They’ll just move to a different system or log off.
Just because someone on the forum said that’s the reason doesn’t make it the only reason. Far more importantly, these rats have started attacking Citadels. With the sudden onslaught of disposable citadels springing up all over New Eden, a system of removal for junk citadels had to be created. Suddenly there are strangely high damage (enough to re-enforce a citadel timer) rats floating around that blow up anything not nailed down or defended. I think it’s quite obviously not really about making players team up, rather about cleaning up after us with an added bonus of more engaging NPC around the place generally.
800M ISK bounty on the structure divided among attackers isn’t exactly "no or **** loot"
Structure also drops Upwell modules as I understand it and rumored to have other possible drops but unconfirmed
you need to group up enough people. then you need to prepare the fight. Then the fight which lasts at least 15min IIRC. Then you also need to clean the battlefield.
So far people can’t do it with less than 6 toons. so divide the loot/bounty by 6.
also divide by the time required to kill+haul+scoop+clean .
And put that in relation with what people can do in burner/incursions/carrier.
