A new patch for Elite: Dangerous now prevents rogue NPCs building their own never-before-seen superweapons. The problem was a big one – the AI could create completely unique weapons that weren’t able to be created by normal means and use them to devastating effect.
Zac Antonaci, the head of community, said “It appears that the unusual weapons attacks were caused by some form of networking issue which allowed the NPC AI to merge weapon stats and abilities, meaning that all new and never before seen (sometimes devastating) weapons were created, such as a rail gun with the fire rate of a pulse laser.”
The patch fixes four AI problems in total: stopping NPCs from ending up with overpowered hybrid weapons, preventing NPCs from deciding to attack if they only attack opposing powers and the player and AI powers are aligned to the same superpower, a slight rebalance of the ambient AI rank chances, meaning players should see slightly less of the top end and more of the low/mid range and finally, a smoothing out the mission-spawned USS AI levels so that high ranks are rarer and only elite missions hit the top end AI (though deadly can get close).
A post on the forums details the rest of the patch and changes made to other areas of the game. At least the galaxy isn’t doomed quite yet…
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