Strange Bailing behaviour

[Sirus5]

Love Capturing - Thus have 27 Minotaur Raider - Labelled A-Z plus a spare

However, during all the first 26 captures - when the last person bailed and the hull went blue
the hull damage stayed at the level of the last hit - so say it was 65% - I could expect 64% or 62%
Obviously mostly using Nodan or Asp with 1 Ion Blaster and then Pulse.

HOWEVER, I have since done a few captures of Minotaurs and each time the last man bails - the hull
goes down to 24% - always 24% - I was at 65% and it turned blue and went to 24% - I had stopped shooting
and expected to lose 2% or 3% with just one MK2 pulse hitting it and me stopping quickly.

I saved, reloaded and tried again - and over several hours had him bail a few times - always he left at 24%.
Okay - maybe he's just doing that to annoy me - I move on and do a few other things - come to a Marauder Dragon
Captured - when I did so the hull was around 55% and went down to about 53% - which is what you would expect.

Came across another Minotaur - and when it went blue - 24% AGAIN....
It appears to be only Minotaurs and it didn't happen previously - Maybe I have too many of them and they are
hinting that I don't need so many...

Anyone experienced this behavior? - BTW - totally clean vanilla with no mods.

Thanks

[Alan Phipps]

I see that behaviour sometimes too (4.10 vanilla).

When it turns blue, do you also get an explosion sound and effect from the target? That usually means that various surface elements such as weapons and turrets have just exploded and sometimes can take along with them a percentage of the hull too. You tend to get the explosion effect also when you damage the ship past a hull milestone such as 50% - even if it doesn't bail at that time. I guess there's a flag somewhere that says, 'this ship will not bail without some consequences'.

[Sirus5]

Phew -
I thought it was the fact that I had already used up all the letters of the alphabet
and it was punishing me....
Obviously my next line of thought was to learn Greek and use the Greek alphabet

Yes, you are quite correct - It only happens on Minotaurs and it's happening on every one now
Doesn't happen on anything else I capture. - and I haven't had this on boarding but then I have
only boarded about 5 ships - (4 BEhemoth and one Rattlesnake). Sound effects are there too.
However, I suspect if I captured 27 of any type it may do the same. - and sometimes it's around
65%, sometimes a bit more... sometimes a bit less - goes instantly to 24% and if I am not quick
enough letting my trigger go and a few pulse shots hit it's down to 22%.

Interesting - thanks Sir for reassuring me that I am not going mad (well, I still may be but...)
At least I know it could be intended behavior and not a bug

[Alan Phipps]

I'm still capturing Minotaur Raiders in 4.10 vanilla today. While some of those get the explosion and hull etc drop when they bail, I also get some that do not do that and so I get hulls left at 60-70% and some quite nice ship loadouts and cargo left too. If literally all of yours from several operations are dropping to 24% hull on bailing then something odd is going on in your game.

[Nanook]

If you post a savegame file and link it here, someone may be able to verify your problem on their system, or not. Either way, it may give a hint as to the problem. I currently only have 11 minotaurs, so my game is quite a ways away from your 27 (great job, btw ). I'll keep plugging away and see if my 27th or 28th minotaur does the same thing.

P.S. If it's verified by someone else, we should probably move this thread to tech support and see if the devs can deal with it. And maybe someone else will see this who has the same issue.

[Imperial Good]

When looking at the bail scripts I recall there being a "sabotage" mechanic. It is possible that this is it.

The pilot is not happy that you forced them to bail, as such they sabotage the ship on the way out.

[Sirus5]

Wow - replies from most of the "Senate"

Thanks so much for all replying.

I suspect that as Imperial Good has seen the bail scripts and realled a "sabotage mechanic"
that this is quite reasonably what is happening - it does make complete sense - and it's probably
tied in with how many of that type you have captured - I should look at those scripts myself
(programmer since about 1980 - currently C# and some Kotlin)...

@Nanook - yeah I started this run through by going into second contact (Flashpoint) found HOP and the locals dropping lots
So - I grabbed them and took them back to the BHS EQ Dock and then went anomaly jumping until I found
Trinity VII and the aliance wharf - buying a Nodan Vanguard before going to free Boso -
and that Nodan was used for most of my captures until they started using stronger guns -
then switched to an asp with central ION and pulse.
As I have a lot of flight hours IRL on many different things - flying a fighter is my thing rather than being on the
bridge of something large - hence having more minotaurs than anything else as they don't incur a rep-drop.

@Alan Phipps - Not ALL of them - But the last 2 minotaurs have done this - and then an SCA Kestrel and
FAF Dragon didn't. I will continue and see if it's just minotaurs or if it's other things as well and let you know.
at the moment, it's just a case of Once is happenstance, Twice is coincidence, lets hope we don't meet again Mr Bond

[Scoob]

I think there are two ways a Bailed ship might be further damaged:

1) The resentful ex-owner of the vessel sabotages it on their way out.

2) If you send a Marine over to claim it, rather than doing it yourself, they'll likely damage stuff.

In both instances, I don't think it's just the hull that gets damaged, you may lose weapons too for example. This obviously lowers the value of the ship.

With this is mind, I always used to claim ships myself to avoid the Marine damage, I couldn't avoid the sabotage damage, if it happened, it happened. A high enough level Marine will not damage the ship, though. That said, I hire good *pilots* and assign them as Marines for claiming, which means - as they are a low-level for a Marine of course - they'll damage the target ship, even though they are good pilots.

Considering how things work, I use mods that prevent damage by Marines upon claiming. I now make use of the "Claim" command as a result

I love capturing ships early-game too. As I run modified now, it can be really tough vs. vanilla. I recall in vanilla I used to target the first SCA Minotaur Raider I saw and was able to force it to bail in the starting Elite Vanguard with the pea-shooter lol. That doesn't go so well in a modified game...

[Sirus5]

@Scoob -

I always claim myself - don't trust any marines - I like to spacewalk because it's Newtonian physics.
And - it's dropping before I go and claim it - it's just as it turns from Red to Blue - thus the most likely
cause seems to be the "Sabotage Mechanic" part of the Bail Scripts.

[Nanook]

Well, it's a rather odd implementation of a sabotage mechanic if it only happens after having captured 26 of them previously, and then happens to all subsequent captures of that ship type. One would think such a mechanic would be a random occurrence applied to all captures.