I know this is a recognized bug, but from conversations on Discord it appears it is not anywhere close to being fixed and even the cause of it is not really known. It is quite a debilitating bug, not only for FCs where their entire solo ship/aug setup and gameplay mechanic is based around aggro and tanking, but also for runs with ShMs and Zerks.

This thread is not to badger the devs but for players to help the devs by posting your experiences/oddities/observations about the bug to help them track it down in order to fix it.

I'll start:

-Noticed since the 3/15 patch my FC is not generating hostility like it was pre-patch.
-Pre 3/15 my main FC would take aggro nearly 100% of the time except on a special bosses that purposely switches targets.
-Post 3/15 my slaves now always take aggro by AI nearly 100% of the time.
-AI now tends to start with my weakest slaves in terms of targeting. Fwing, Vicar tradeslave, etc. Though some AI like nightfury will target my PBF or subhat wild slaves right off the bat.
-The AI targeting seems to be based partially (but not fully) on shield bank size.
-I was able to briefly to get AI to target my main ship like they were pre-patch by using an extremely small shield bank, but then of course they killed me really fast.
-Besides shield bank AI seems to also use target resistance in determining their target. To test this out I hauled around a high resist Testudo trade slave with relatively low shield bank. It rarely ever gets targeted.
-AI rarely every shoot my fighters but;
-some AI get obsessed with the in-built Vazi nest drone and those mini fighters it pumps out. Once when fighting Emp all he did was shoot the nest drone and those mini-fighters from the nest drone the whole fight. Nothing else got shot. I can't reliably reproduce this scenario but I will keep trying and post results. I think it had to do with the order in which I laid down the nest drone vs when my slaves first did damage to him.


Please post any other experiences and observations you have had from this bug. Thanks.

Some new findings on this bug.

When doing a stellation dg with the following fleet:

2x PBF
1x Fwing
2x Subhat wild slave
1x Vicar tradeslave
1x Testudo tradeslave

the stellations tended to always target my weaker slaves such as Fwing or vicar. BUT, when I added another damage soak slave purposely setup for this bug (Tortoise trade slave with 3x good resist and low shield bank), not only did the stellations stop targeting my weaker slaves, but they started targeting my main ship again! It was as if the addition of that extra tradeslave target and its odd mix of low bank and high resists, caused the aggro formula to "balance out" so the AI once again targeting me like they should. BUT this mainly only seemed to "fix" the aggro with stellas or below. Once I hit Ohm dg level they reverted to targetting my slaves again. Also things like Nightfurys also still targeted my slaves, but Delquads behaved normally shooting my main ship when I added in this Tortoise.

ALSO - I can now somewhat reliably get Emp to target my nest drone, though not 100% sure. I went into Emp with the following fleet (slightly different than above):

2x PBF
1x Fwing
2x Subhat wild slave
1x MF angry pick wild slave
1x Testudo tradeslave
1x Tortoise tradeslave


At a distance Emp took down my Fwing, then when I engaged him and launched full fighters he killed my MF angry pick and tortoise tradeslave. I had set down a nest drone from the Vazi in-built but too far away for him. So while he was killing my other slaves I tractored him in range of the nest drone. Keep in mind he never shot my main ship once this whole time. When he was finally in range of the nest drone all targeting of my slaves seemed to have stopped (I was monitoring their shields and nothing was going down). Instead Emp either seemed confused or he was shooting the Nest drone fighters which is the only ships I couldnt see the shields of. He wasnt shooting my main-ship fighters as they were all alive at the end, BUT oddly enough he did shoot me a couple times (but rarely) once he got within range of the nest drone. Primarily though he was shooting something I couldnt track the shields of, and the nest drone fighters were the only thing in that category.

There definitely seems something whack in the aggro formula. And it appears you can somewhat balance it out or purposely game it some by adding/subtracting certain new targets for the AI, especially if they are either really tanky or really weak, those seem to have the most effect on changing its targets.