Encounters not just for the player's current ship?

[Scoob]

Hey all,

So, I just lost my best pilot. I loaded my save and, moments later they're under attack and dead. Why? It looks like it was an "Encounter" aka, ships teleported to another location to make things "interesting".

My Explorer ship - a Kestrel - was exploring Pious Mists IV. It was still in the main area of the sector - the map hadn't expanded yet - so I'd have expected it to be safe from such things. As I'd not long loaded the save, I reloaded it to check what happened, pausing the game instantly upon loading. I see my Kestrel exploring the sector about half-way between the centre and the un-zoomed edge. NO enemies on the Map and none in the list either - I note that sometimes the map is slow to update upon loading, but the list is generally accurate. I watch it continue it's order for a moment then POP, a large number of Kha'ak ships appear all around it - 17 in all.

These ships look to be within 10-15km, maybe less, but all of them are near instantly at full travel drive speeds racing towards my ship. Luckily, despite them appearing all around my ship, there's a small gap and I order the Kestrel to make a run for it. It escapes.

Was this fun? No. Did it enhance *my* exploration of the edges of the Sector? No, I wasn't there. Did my AI Pilot have fun? Doubtful lol. I get encounters, sort of, but I don't really like them. When they occur and I've flown off the edge of the (un-zoomed) sector, causing the map to expand, then they're fine, I've triggered it in effect. They can present opportunities when ships that would NEVER go to a given sector do so - I've had some good ship boarding from this feature in the past, thinking how daft these ships were to stray into one of my sectors. However, it was encounters, they never chose to be there and tried to leave the moment they appeared. However, ships magically appearing right on top of another ship when the player isn't present doesn't really seem to add anything to the game other than a reload.

Is it deliberate that player-owned but AI controlled ships in remote sectors should trigger encounters when they're still near the sector centre like this? Has something changed? I'd not noticed behaviour like this since the prior changes to encounters which pushed them to the sector (un-zoomed) borders more. I don't use the Mod to suppress encounters yet, as I was fairly content with them being at the sector edges, but this was a bit excessive.

To be clear, I had a save from a few minutes prior, so I could load it, see there was nothing near my ships then see them all appear a few moments after loading. Unless something else is going on, this certainly looks like Encounters triggering incorrectly? Just wanted to ask if others have experience with this recently?

Scoob.

[Rei Ayanami]

I don't think it's random encounters. When my trading ships don't find any trades for a longer period of time, while searching for trades they often wander off thousands of km away from the sector center and they have never triggered random encounters.

Pious Mists IV has a Khaak station (slightly north east in my case), I guess your AI ship went nearby it before you saving the game. The thing is, even if all Khaak ships were destroyed before doing the save, Khaak stations do a full respawn of all 20~30 Khaak ships that belong to that station if you load a save, meaning your ship that is nearby a KHK station could be suddenly surrounded by KHK ships after loading the save.

I don't know why Egosoft thought this was ok design-wise, the Khaak overall seem rather placeholder-ish and underdeveloped to me...

[Scoob]

Hi,

Good points, though my ship went no where near the Kha'ak installation in that sector - it's barely revealed a third of the overall area an Explorer typically uncovers in an non-zoomed Sector. I will revisit the location to confirm this though.

Basically, those Kha'ak ships were not spawning near a Kha'ak installation, but right around my ship, which was half-way between the centre and un-zoomed edge of the sector.

I didn't think Encounters were triggered by AI-controlled Player ships, but seeing those guys just pop in like that got me wondering. Perhaps there was some other cause, I'm just not sure what it is.

Scoob.

[Rei Ayanami]

Basically, those Kha'ak ships were not spawning near a Kha'ak installation, but right around my ship, which was half-way between the centre and un-zoomed edge of the sector.

Well, to clarify : unlike ships built by shipyards and wharfs of the normal factions, the KHK ships don't appear right next to nor inside the station, but rather pop into existence in an, if i had to guess, about 20~40km radius circle around the KHK station, so while your ai ship might not have discovered the station itself, it might have come close enough for the newly spawned Khaak ships to detect and immediately attack it.

That being said, this is all just speculation based on my experiences with the Khaak mechanics and encounter mechanics, but considering that this sector does have a KHK station I find it rather likely that this is what happened.

If you want, if you still have an unmodded save from right before this happened I'd be willing to check it out.

[Scoob]

I get what you're saying, but with my ship's detection range being 40km, I don't see how I could be close enough to the Kha'ak installation to both not see it and have it able to spawn ships right on top of me. If, upon loading the game, there had been a stream of Kha'ak ships coming from that direction, I'd likely have assumed that's what happened. However, as they appeared all around me, something else must be going on.

I will revisit that sector at some point, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Scoob.