Another Plea for the Devs to do something about Friendly Fire and Allies

[jlehtone]

Did you have a mod that increases range of weapons significantly?

[Midnitewolf]

Did you have a mod that increases range of weapons significantly?

Yep. VRO but that should be irrelevant because the issues isn't weapons range, the issue is that the AI has a hot trigger and takes any sort of accidental fire as hostile. There needs to be some threshold where a faction your in very good standing with tolerates friendly fire because I had this issue in Vanilla too especially when trying to help in a gate defense against the Xenon. One of my first encounters with this "feature" of zero tolerance friendly fire was in my first Vanilla run though. Khak'ak engaged a group of my ships near a 'Friendly" defense platform. "Friendly" defense platform got tagged by some fire directed at the Kha'ak and next thing I knew, "Friendly" defense platform wasn't so friendly. I thought it was a random bug until I saw it happen again a couple times and that is when I went to investigate.

So yeah I got range enhanced weapons. Yeah that means it is more likely that fire directed at a Kha'ak or Xenon will reach a "Friendly" somewhere but to use an old saying, "What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?".

[jlehtone]

Tea? I can kill all surface elements from an L ship and all the cops that come to look. All "allies". That is intentional fire. Yet, there is no escalation nor significant permanent change in relationships. Chewbacca says: That makes no sense.

[euclid]

What I do not like is this: If a friendly station/ship fires on an enemy and hits you by accident, nothing happens. But if the situation is reversed, everything turns red in a blink. In this case I usually load a saved game. It is frustratiing but I do realize that it's an issue that is tricky to resolve via xml coding.

Cheers Euclid

[Artean]

While I have had some accidents with friendly fire, it seems no where near what you are running in to. Perhaps you can provide the devs with a save illustrating your issues? Before that, however, you will need to make sure that the problems still stands in a vanilla game.

[Max Bain]

While I have had some accidents with friendly fire, it seems no where near what you are running in to. Perhaps you can provide the devs with a save illustrating your issues? Before that, however, you will need to make sure that the problems still stands in a vanilla game.

This is not neccessary because there have been posted dozens of threads in the past about this issue. So no one should doubt that this happens in vanilla as well (maybe not that often in comparison to a VRO game).

The point is that from any angle I see at this game mechanic, it makes absolutely no sense. It is a random factor that forces the player to reload a game where it should not be necessary.
The player has no influence for the turret AI or his NPC collegues and where they shoot at. Also in OOS this does not happen at all and this alone is a strong indicator that something here is not working good.
Why punish the player for something he can not control and when the AI shoots the player or one of his ships, nothing happens.

Also from an immersive point of view it also makes no sense. You want to defend a ship that is in urgent danger and surrounded by enemies. So it should be clear that every friendly fire was not intended and should be ignored.
I dont want to know how many friendly fires have happened during the Second World War without any consequences.

[GCU Grey Area]

every friendly fire was not intended and should be ignored.

Think there have to be some limits on friendly fire or exploiting the hell out of it would become standard procedure, that's just human nature. For example, park an L freighter on the far side of a station, smash it's engines, sell it to a 3rd party & mark as hostile. Then position a big warship with lots of turrets so it can only just see part of the freighter, guaranteeing that a good proportion of the missed shots will hit the station...

Personally I'm fine with the vanilla limits on friendly fire. Rarely cause me any bother. When they have done it's always been obvious I was pushing things a bit too far & should have been more careful. Have had no issues whatsoever with low attention friendly fire of the sort the OP has apparently experienced (suspect his mods must be involved). Even in situations where I've had my fleets operating alongside NPC fleets to guard gates etc, or running Protect Position right on top of NPC defence platforms. In the latter case I was normally in sector myself though often a fair distance away, assisting my demolition fleet with the removal of Xenon defence stations to flip sector control to my NPC allies (that's why it was critical their defence platforms remained intact).

[Max Bain]

every friendly fire was not intended and should be ignored.

Think there have to be some limits on friendly fire or exploiting the hell out of it would become standard procedure, that's just human nature. For example, park an L freighter on the far side of a station, smash it's engines, sell it to a 3rd party & mark as hostile. Then position a big warship with lots of turrets so it can only just see part of the freighter, guaranteeing that a good proportion of the missed shots will hit the station...

You think that someone who puts so much effort into this exploit for such a little benefit would not prefer going into the save file and edit it to his liking? What would be the intention to do such a complicated exploit? Just to damage a friendly station without consequences? This would also require that the turrets do miss a lot and that the station has way less hull points than the freighter, else you have to repeat this complicated sequence to exploit it several times.
Seriously, I know plenty of other ways to exploit the game easier for far more profit if I want to.
You could for example just edit your save and remove the station completetely, or set your reputaion on +30 after you have destroyed the station.

Personally I'm fine with the vanilla limits on friendly fire. Rarely cause me any bother. When they have done it's always been obvious I was pushing things a bit too far & should have been more careful. Have had no issues whatsoever with low attention friendly fire of the sort the OP has apparently experienced (suspect his mods must be involved). Even in situations where I've had my fleets operating alongside NPC fleets to guard gates etc, or running Protect Position right on top of NPC defence platforms. In the latter case I was normally in sector myself though often a fair distance away, assisting my demolition fleet with the removal of Xenon defence stations to flip sector control to my NPC allies (that's why it was critical their defence platforms remained intact).

I dont agree with this because always when it happens on my end, I think... WHY??? And then I reload the game. Costs me lot of unnceccesarry time if I havent saved the game short before.

Edit:
I think we all agree that IF it happens, in most cases you just reload your game. Lets make some math just for fun:
Lets assume 100.000 people play X4 and that each one at least has this situation 2 times in his X4 life time (I think its way more often). Lets assume that your last save is about 10 minutes back in the past in average (I think its older but assume 10 minutes).
An average load time lasts 2 minutes.

100000 * (10 + 2) = 12000000 minutes = 20000 hours

Thats 20000 hours or 833.333 days of wasted life time in contrast to maybe a hand full of people who would want to exploid this damaging a station without rep loss.

[jlehtone]

You think that someone who puts so much effort into ...

There are probably more "rational" examples, but the main point is: "that's just human nature". We tend to put effort on "questionable things". Play a game, muse on fora, etc.

Personally I'm fine with the vanilla limits on friendly fire. Rarely cause me any bother.

Same here. Can't even recall latest incident, but I'm quite sure I've never had huge escalation.

[terodil]

the main point is: "that's just human nature".

Not to wax philosophical, but the nature of humans has been a hotly debated topic with positions all along the range from devil to angel. At some point in game design you need to decide where you want to balance the trade-off between playability and security. A single-player game can easily afford a more playability-oriented balance point since the only person potentially hurt by exploiting loopholes is the player, and the only one to blame for doing that is... the player. With all due respect, that scheme of parking a ship so that you can friendly-fire-nuke a station down a few %hp strikes me as far-fetched. If a player put that into practice, the only one to blame and to be blamed would be the player him/herself; a bit of a pointless exercise.

For the record, I'm also for revising the friendly fire rules in the vein of suggestions made before, with tolerance levels somewhat proportionate to faction reputation; and an apology hotkey would be nice too.

[easternsun]

If it's a post about friendly fire sorry "EGO"soft thinks it's perfectly fine to start a war from the AI's stupidity.

[Max Bain]

This is my third try to defend a PAR station against Xenon fleet and ALWAYS a stupid ship or turret hits the station and suddenly the whole station attacks me. This is so plain stupid really . I wish the devs would also play their game then they would know how bad this game mechanic is and that it adds nothing to the game other than forcing the player to randomly reload their game.

[Midnitewolf]

the main point is: "that's just human nature".

Not to wax philosophical, but the nature of humans has been a hotly debated topic with positions all along the range from devil to angel. At some point in game design you need to decide where you want to balance the trade-off between playability and security. A single-player game can easily afford a more playability-oriented balance point since the only person potentially hurt by exploiting loopholes is the player, and the only one to blame for doing that is... the player. With all due respect, that scheme of parking a ship so that you can friendly-fire-nuke a station down a few %hp strikes me as far-fetched. If a player put that into practice, the only one to blame and to be blamed would be the player him/herself; a bit of a pointless exercise.

For the record, I'm also for revising the friendly fire rules in the vein of suggestions made before, with tolerance levels somewhat proportionate to faction reputation; and an apology hotkey would be nice too.

This is always the point I make. X4 is a single player game where only you are affected by your "Human Nature". In my current playthrough I am doing a ton of cheating to make the game more dynamic and fun but I have rules I set for myself that I have to follow such as if I make a mistake, screw up and it costs me an entire fleet of ships, I can't save scum rather I just have to accept it. The point is that even though I am cheating, I am creating my own game experience and have control over what I do. I mean I could just cheat and make myself invincible or give myself 100 billion credits or all the blueprints in the game or any number of other game breaking things so being able to exploit 'Friendly Fire" because they increased NPC tolerance to taking friendly fire damage is pretty meaningless.

[Alkeena]

Just an FYI to interested parties that Kuertee has put something together for this if you're not opposed to playing moded: viewtopic.php?f=181&t=437830

Haven't had a chance to try it myself, but presumably it's a move in the right direction at least.

[Midnitewolf]

Just an FYI to interested parties that Kuertee has put something together for this if you're not opposed to playing moded: viewtopic.php?f=181&t=437830

Haven't had a chance to try it myself, but presumably it's a move in the right direction at least.

Yeah I saw that thread. Was just waiting until it has been tested and uploaded to steam or nexus. Was going to keep my eye out for it because it sounds like just what we need.

[KextV8]

This is my third try to defend a PAR station against Xenon fleet and ALWAYS a stupid ship or turret hits the station and suddenly the whole station attacks me.

So, you've tried the same thing multiple times with the same result and you keep doing it? Stop using turrets and ai ships around stations m8. Its just asking for trouble. You need surgical precision. Get something like a Nemesis, Katana, or Dragon and use their ample forward guns only with turrets turned off around stations.

There is a keybind to enable and disable turrets. By default it isn't bound, but go into settings and bind a key to it. Then use it every time you're near a station. Because even criminal traffic can trigger some turret fire if you aren't careful.

[terodil]

stop using turrets and ai ships around stations m8

That's the solution we need, but not the solution we want.

[Max Bain]

This is my third try to defend a PAR station against Xenon fleet and ALWAYS a stupid ship or turret hits the station and suddenly the whole station attacks me.

So, you've tried the same thing multiple times with the same result and you keep doing it? Stop using turrets and ai ships around stations m8. Its just asking for trouble. You need surgical precision. Get something like a Nemesis, Katana, or Dragon and use their ample forward guns only with turrets turned off around stations.

You suggest me to fight 40 S and M ships solo without even using turrets? o.O
Turrets and AI controlled ships are an elemental part of the game and I will fight enemy fleets with my fleets intead of doing suicide. If that does not work because suddenly the station I want to defend becomes hostile, something should be changed because it feels broken.
Btw in my third try, it worked, so yes, I often try things more than once before I give up.

[KextV8]

You suggest me to fight 40 S and M ships solo without even using turrets? o.O

You aren't solo. The station will help you. Most of the targets will shoot at the station. The station can be used as cover. You can dock to refill shields. You can boost around and travel drive back and forth.

Early in the Terran mission chain:

Spoiler

Show

Their station come under attack in a massive furball.

I did that in the starting Rapier with no issue. Just fly the ship, and use cover appropriately.

[Jeraal]

You suggest me to fight 40 S and M ships solo without even using turrets? o.O

You aren't solo. The station will help you. Most of the targets will shoot at the station. The station can be used as cover. You can dock to refill shields. You can boost around and travel drive back and forth.

Early in the Terran mission chain:

Spoiler

Show

Their station come under attack in a massive furball.

I did that in the starting Rapier with no issue. Just fly the ship, and use cover appropriately.

I did that mission once in a Gladius. Station went red. Turns out, It was building a new piece and wasn't fully visible. I accidentally shot something I couldn't see. Luckily, no fleet to get involved and escalate further. I'm not sure what needs to be done, but something needs to change.