Most people won't like this, i'm sure i'll feel the hate for saying it lol.

But, give all npcs cloak. Depending on rarity.

Commons: No Cloak
Uncommons: 1 - 599
Rares: 600 - 1199
Ex Rare: 1200+

Because right now, scans and cloaks etc can be abused, in ways not intended. People should not be able to filter out commons with cloak to increase chances of finding rare's and uncommons which for some reason all have no cloak.. rules out the who point of them being common when you can have scan low enough to dodge them BUT still find rares which would then become alot more common with the dodging of commons.

Yeah the drops from rare's and uncommons are nice, but there meant to be worked for and earnt, I would not call it earnt when you've taken advantage of a loop in npc cloaking that doubles/triples/quad's of getting what is meant to be rare items.

You can't "dodge" commons other than a couple ... tech carriers have 50 cloak, you have to plan to dodge that. Flamehawks have no cloak. Assassins have no cloak. Chargers no cloak, dark runners no cloak.

Also, most elites and bosses have some form of cloak that is higher than what these commons/uncommons have.


Not sure who or what you're referencing that's been able to "dodge" commons and get elites and rares past this.


Edit: -1 to this idea. Really confused with your idea, most commons do -not- have any cloak ... perhaps you should add a little more information more clearly?

Assassins have cloak.

It's quiet simple and clear what I mean, basically, give ALL commons 0 zero cloak and give uncommons and higher, cloak.

Uncommons have no cloak, at all.
Rare's have no cloak, at all.
Rare Elite's have no cloak, at all. (Queen's, Titan's etc.)
Ex Rare Elite's, some have cloak. (Rethion's have, Telarys's dont)
Most Boss's have a small amount of cloak.

Sorry but -1 to this idea, not because its a bad idea but because your reasoning for the idea is based on something untrue. Being able to NPC with under 20 scan doesn't mean you find more uncommons/rares/ex.rares.

There is no way to increase the chances of finding uncommons/rares/elites because they all have set values.

i.e. commons = 65% / uncommons = 30% / rare = 4% / ex.rare = 1%. < Those are probably not the actual values, but they are there to make a point that from what i have seen in over 11K NPC kills, the different rarities have set values built into the RNG.

The RNG will basically work itself through a series of events. First it will pick your Rarity(so there have to be set values), then based on your scan it will choose an NPC from that category.

I obviously have no proof that that is how the RNG works, but i've gone entire NPC runs(over 200 kills in some cases) without finding a single rare/ex.rare, in some cases its taken me 60+ kills just to find an uncommon.

Just because a person like myself runs 6 scan permanently to avoid assassins/collectors, doesn't mean i get more uncommons/rares/ex.rares. What it does mean is that i can use my nrg more wisely and kill more NPC's during an NPC run, which would obviously increase my chances of finding uncommons/rares, not because they're more common, but because i'm getting through more NPC's than a person with 60 permanent scan could do with the same amount of energy.

Given that lots of people have been complaining about Assasins I'd say increase their cloak so people can screen them out. There's only two commons which can be screened out but as you get more episode completion rewards these can't be screened out.

The fact is most NPC hunters have a pretty tight ship build which eschews scan in favour of attack and hull so this would be a real pain. It wouldn't be too much of a problem for people with ships at Star Destroyer or higher but anything below really needs all the space for attack, hull and defence.

Rares are also rare enough. Boosting the cloak on a TO Troop Carrier would make it even harder to get. They're rare enough without having to stick in a big scanner to find one. It took me 6000-7000 NPCs to find enough of them to complete the hyperterraformer mission.

Remember that at rank 350 flamehawks appear. This was when I bossted my scan above 60. I didn't want the Rogue Tech Collecor ships but I wanted Flamehawks less. This is just strategy rather than abuse of scan.

Seems you are correct that Assassins have cloak ... all 20 points of it. The ONLY way to "dodge" that is by not completing above I believe 45 missions. If you complete above that, you will always have 21+ cloak with no modules equipped. So, while someone could do that, it's certainly not a common thing and it's also certainly not inherently abuse (i.e. they're giving up a bunch of stuff from missions to avoid these, but the rewards are not as great).

As far as all the rest not having cloak, most don't have cloak, but even still they're rare enough as it is. I think your point is people getting out of doing the commons and getting too much elites/bosses?

What rank and how many elites/bosses are you seeing? If I'm on an NPC blitz, half a dozen elites/bosses in an hour isn't terribly uncommon. There have been plenty of days where I'd have all 8 slots full of elites/bosses, kill a few, and turn around and have them full again an hour or two later.

How do you know people are avoiding commons? All the commons without cloak would still show up for them and they make up a very high portion of NPCs. I understand what your words are saying, I'm having trouble understanding the facts behind it because 1) you cannot "dodge" all common NPCs, not even half of them, probably not even a quarter of them and 2) when you say people are getting all these elites/bosses, perhaps they're just NPC blitzing?

Its kinda common sense that eliminating a group of npcs or anything, will increase your chances to find something else, so no, thats not untrue. Take this example;

You have a bag full of balls;

10 Yellow (common)
10 Blue (common)
10 Red (common)
10 Green (common)
5 White (uncommon)
1 Black (rare)

Now say you took out all the yellows and blues, what do you think will happen? More chance to pick out the whites and the blacks.

An ingame example, The roids used to get the Kalvium Fortified Plating. A very common mission npc, now honestly, did you find more rare's uncommons when this mission was active then when it was not? Assuming you did the same amount of npc'in. I would say no, you found less, and why? Because they were common and lessened the chance to find something else.

I've witnessed this myself recently, recently cleared part runners from the list of NPCs that can spawn on my BT, a fairly common NPC, about the same as flamehawks, what do you think I notiched after? More uncommons then when I had part runners active.

I didnt think most would agree with this if any at all, hell I don't. But its about the bigger picture, about balacing and fixing exploits and loops.

That's the thing. Lowering scan to avoid 2 of the uncommon ships isn't an exploit per se. It's strategy. There are things which players lose out on for lower scan. Some of the epiosde completion rewards are really useful, for example the ones which boost recharge, so ships which can achieve really low scan are losing out on those.

I focus on killing the easiest NPC to get a slightly higher chance of finding the ships I want. That's also another way to increase the chances of finding those rare ships. Is that also an exploit?

They're rare enough already and there are a lot of tough new NPCs with poor rewards and XP.

Using the "bag of balls" as an example is a poor example, especially using set values for how many balls are in the bag, because when there are set values for how many balls there are in the bag, then % is no longer based on rarity, its base on quantity, because when you remove balls the quantity of balls decreases so therefore the % of finding a certain ball will either decrease or increase. NPC'ing does not work that way at all.

NPC's are drawn from an infinite resource so therefore there has to be a set value at some level in the RNG, which i believe to be the rarity values. Meaning that no matter what commons you have activated from missions they fall under a certain percentage value.

I can't speak to the Kalvium roids because i've not done that mission yet. What i can say is did you take notes before you started that mission of how many commons NPC's you saw, because maybe, just maybe when that mission is activated theres a 50% chance of finding a Kalvium Asteroid, when a common NPC is called from the RNG.

So kinda like this;

RNG Call - NPC Rarity = Common(65% chance)
RNG Call #2 - NPC Species = Sha'din Charger(15% chance)
RNG Call - NPC Rarity = Common(65% chance)
RNG Call #2 - NPC Species = Kalvium Asteroid(50% chance)

So what i'm saying is that not only is there a set percentage for the rarity of the NPC you find, but when that rarity is chosen, there are also set percentages for which species the RNG will choose.

Which would explain why people complain about the number of flamehawks they find, because they probably have a 50% chance of appearing when the RNG chooses a common NPC to appear.

Its also why people complain about finding more Rogue Labpod's than they do Blade harvesters, just because the latter is uncommon compared to the first being rare, that doesn't mean you have a better chance at finding it. Especially if theres an 80% chance of finding a Labpod when a Rare NPC is called, but only a 5% chance of finding a Blade Harvester when an UnCommon NPC is called.

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Also at rank 295 i've still only completed 41 missions fully, and i've stopped completing them because otherwise my perma-scan will increase to 20 meaning i cannot avoid assassins anymore. I'll continue to do this until rank 350, when flamehawk's appear, because at that point it will no longer matter what my scan is as something more annoying can appear even if i had 0 scan.

Its called strategy.

Good point on the balls maths.

And spot on on the aspect of strategy rather than this being an exploit. The choice you make means you'll not be able to get many dark badge rewards for a while so there's trade offs. There's also some missions which are worth completeing, for example the Lazuli chain to get extra NPC slots or the planet boosting chain to get to Potent Residium to boost your 15x toxic planets.

Personally I like Assassins. got about 100 more to kill to get my first Composite Ray The attack bonus from all 4 is the same as the boost I recently got by upgrading from 8 Heavy Nulls to 6 thetacrons and 2 light ones but that cost me loads of creds and about 800 million a day in upkeep, plus I don't get the extra bonuses which come with composite rays. (going for scan first because I'm soon to do a scan blitz but will have defence onces permanently installed after that).