NPC's Rats are Structure Bashing

What?! When did this become a thing? I may have to go wandering in HS to find these, it sounds interesting.

They should add them to null :slight_smile: Would make it very interesting, crashing a group of players fighting these.

Didn’t a guy solo one in a Paladin on the test server?

Only a few weeks back with one of the most recent content updates :slight_smile:

guys soloed em in vnis on the tranq server. Then CCP corrected the AI.

I got tagged by a couple of Amar NPCs, they scrammed and webbed me and neuted for crapton. Luckily I was in a relatively high omni tanked missle boat with some drones, so didn’t have much cap use anyways and I killed 2 while they were killing the drones which was enough to turn critical mass. Had I been in a turret boat, active or mission specific tank, I’d have been a goner.

I have seen these NPCs camping NPC stations and gates for players, which is pretty cool, haven’t seen them actually taking out player structures yet though.

On the side note, since there are no more wars or large scale conflicts in this game anymore, its well pass the time that Null sec gets these sort of NPCs that would start camping miners, ratters and reinforce structures. It is very needed there, have entire regions under attack on multiple fronts.

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Not at all disagreeing that these NPCs would be very welcomed (scaled up in strength to match the fact that we’d just drop a dozen caps on them), but we’ve been involved in a large war for the last 5 months. Started on multiple fronts with multiple opponents, we’ve been working them down one by one. No idea what the political narrative is, don’t really care either. All I know is thank god it’s almost over. 5 months of war is just draining, and all of the major operations happen outside of my TZ so I haven’t even been on most of them.

Luckily, we’re in the home stretch now, it shouldn’t be long until the last group either surrenders or evacs.

800kk is a maximum payout for a fleet and it doesn’t mean it’s 800/player count as maximum payout per player is capped at around 23kk. At least that was a reward me and other people got for killing a FOB in a multiboxed or regular fleet before the patch and, as far as I know, that didn’t change. Reward for soloing one was 15kk.

Loot value, from my own experience was, around 170kk per FOB but I only got T1 structure mods.

yeah its new, I saw it at another place a few days ago, got the station down to 80% when I showed up and killed them

This is pretty cool tbh. I have heard opinions that people thought npc’ing was becoming boring due to the ease of killing rats, this is actually a game changer.

ccp can make some really good npc content with very intelligent combat npcs.

Will be cool if npc AI changes.

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Are the new rats worth killing for their bounties or are they too hard to even bother?

Because it seems the FOB spawns unlimited amount of NPC which includes battleships. Would it be possible to chain them for bounties?

Bounties? When did they add bounty for the new FOB rats? I destroy them for later ease of free passage and, in the case of my cheap fit ships, self preservation.

No, they come in one version, tough as nails. The person you quoted is trying to be funny, they can easily kill most ships. It requires a carefully built and moderately bling ship to take them head on solo, or it requires some clever gameplay to outthink them. But absolutely no T1 frigate is “EVER” going to take 4-5 of these on, period. He/She is just making a joke.

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Agreed, nullsec needs these in force, enough to cripple nullsec empires if not dealt with. Would at least give the blue doughnut something to do.

so what can these frigs do
all i read so far is they do 100 dps each
what is their weapon range
how well do their weapons track
how much tank do they have
what is their mobility like

you cant just say you cant take them on if these factors haven’t been explored

Roughly speaking they appear equiv to an all V’s pilot with a faction fit. Not quite on the level of burner frigates, but not that far off either.

i kinda feel like firing up the game to see for myself
i haven’t actually played in a few months
just been afk skill queue online
but if they perform like t1 frigs all 5s i see no reason they can’t easily be outskilled by player ships
has anyone tried neuting them yet

my gila with 4 rlml easily dispatched the roaming party I think in under 10 salvos, I haven’t taken the time to track down more from the agency that ccp has given us to make sure we grind something, to go hunt down a site.

Honestly they seem to be around 110-125 DPS per FOB frigate, they come in a minimum group of four to start with. As long as you can tank ~650 DPS to account for some bad luck and a wrecking shot landing the roamers aren’t too big an issue. Basically a well fit and well piloted cruiser with a rep/resist bonus being taken advantage of can take them with some difficulty. Step up to a BC and its just a temporary distraction.

I think you might even be able to take them with a couple friends with a few assault frigates given the new DCU that you could trigger when they shift focus to you while you blow up the first couple to massively cut incoming DPS and let local reps work overtime on having a strong EHP recovery.

They are absolutely death for miners in Ventures or crap fit paper tank barges chasing max yield in high security space. On the other hand if a pair of Procurers are in the same belt together with proper tank and full flights of T2 light drones the FOB patrol is going to blow up before either barge is in trouble. Might lose a drone or two, but the rats are going to be served up all the same.

The FOB defense fleet on the other and is indeed a far thornier proposition to deal with.

I don’t feel like we’re talking about the same ships.

The ones I fought did closer to 400 DPS and left a pile of wrecks at the gate they were camping.

I tried them in a Battlecruiser and a Battleship. I clear the Rogue Swarm Nests in 3-4 minutes in the same Battlecruiser. The Battleship has over 100k EHP. Both ships had to leave without being able to get one of the 5 past half shield.

Either the skills / fitting gap between us is so vast that you brush these guys off like flies while they demolish me, or we are not talking about the same ships.

how interesting