Will a solo player with high quality NPC crew be able to compete with a skilled human crew, given all other conditions are equal?
TL;DRTodd Papy says yes: NPC turret gunners already hit at very high accuracy and should match skilled humans there, though problem-solving like repairs will take more time, and the intent is NPC crews as effective as human ones.
Yes. Right now the NPCs on some of the AI hit at 95, 96%. And I don't even think that the most skilled human will be able to do that. So assuming that they are trained right and they are at that level, yeah, I see absolutely no problem in them being able to, at least from a turret standpoint, act that way. Now, when we're talking about going around and problem solving and saying, oh, hey, this thing needs to be repaired at that time, that's where it's going to get a little bit trickier and it's going to take some time and finesse.
Lots of programming and Subsumption systems.
All the wonderful behaviors.
All the wonderful behaviors and with all the different variety of ships. 121 different ships right now.
Assuming that they know the layout, they have the nav points, they understand how they need to go, then it's actually interacting with that usable, switching it out or repairing it, and then running back to where they need to be.
And of course, we've touched on this topic a couple times in previous Calling All Devs. I'm certain this won't be the last time this topic comes up. But for those in the cheap seats, yes, our intention is that an NPC crew should be just as effective as a human crew. All things being equal. Of course, we all know in real life, in the Star Citizen universe, in any situation, things are rarely always equal.
Yeah, it'll depend on the ship. But I guess with anything in our game, we want to make sure that the player feels like, oh, I should have done this, not like, oh, this was super cheap.