Case in point

Flame hawk,
Combined hit point at 6200
Damage cap at 1000
7 attacks to kill at damage cap. Or 35 energy.

Well has if you are a high attack player. If you have lower attack chances are you will use about 10p energy just to kill this npc.

Total hitpoint should be lower or if this can't be done that darn npc better drop something useful besides experience. Because right now they are as powerful as the tyrants which is totally does not make sense

well hit points dont bother me, the D cap kinda does but that can be done. expecially if you use your deck space and Research like you should.

I can already kill this npc with 35 energy. Researche and Dec space is not a problem. But too much energy wasted on a single npc without real benefits is frustrating.

It's just the damage caps which are a problem, if there weren't any these would go down really easily

There is a damage cap for a reason: for balancing gameplay. Without damage caps, people would destroy NPCs within one shot, and elites and rares. I'm not at the level for Flamehawks but there are other NPCs my level range that are just as tough. I don't NPC farm very much. Defense and Scanning is my way.

wow, 35 energy out of how much? I am sure you are well over 3500 max energy, so to destroy that NPC represents less than 1% of your total power. I would pretty much say that is in balance already.

Well for most ships who have half of my attack. That would be way more than that. I'm not really advocating this just for my benifit. I'm advocating this for other players entering the rank when they see flame hawks.

Balance would be if the npc matches your attack power and your defense but still requires ample amount of energy. Say 3 to 4 attacks.

I don't think they can just remove the damage cap, because that's how damage is determined. I know somewhere Dan mentioned it uses the tanh function, and I think that just determines the percentage of the maximum damage you do; thus, taking out the damage cap (which could be interpreted as making it as large as possible) would cause everybody to kill everything in one shot. If I'm right on this, the equation would need to be entirely reworked if there was no damage cap, and would probably be reworked in such a way that this would be even more difficult for most players.

I agree about the Flamehawk vs. Tyrant thing; right now a Flamehawk usually takes 10 hits for me, whereas a Tyrant takes 9. Of course, I'd rather it stay this way than have the Tyrant be made more powerful...