egosoft.com

Someone probably should've thought about or brought this up earlier, but with a current scenario I just experienced I feel like this is an important change to make.

So, I loaded a save and was immediately scanned by a police ship, meanwhile, a TEM Corsair Minotaur decides to ambush me and shoot a missile at me, of course I can't move because I don't want the police to get angry. The missile hits me, and I fight back because I'm down to half health, and the moment I hit their ship after they hit me first, I get the classic "We cannot tolerate your actions. Stop your attack immediately."

TEM isn't even allied with that faction, they're just neutral so there definitely should be a Self-Defense mechanic. Of course, if the faction is allied, then maybe the owning faction would be upset still.

It's certainly been brought up a lot. Nobody likes being the only entity in the universe that is always assumed to be at fault in every encounter, it's just annoying and counter-intuitive.

I guess that Egosoft have either not thought of a solution they like, or don't view it as much of an issue.

I'm guessing the devs' biggest issue is thinking of a solution that players can't easily abuse

Katorone wrote: ↑

Thu, 30. Mar 23, 19:45

I'm guessing the devs' biggest issue is thinking of a solution that players can't easily abuse

I cannot see how this would be abused, could you elaborate? Somehow making the target red, then attacking it with no consequence? I.e. marking it as a hostile and doing stuff with it? Well the mechanic could be "if the AI ship attacks player's property, it's marked for not reptuation loss killing for... let's say 5 real time minutes", this way player couldn't abuse it. And the friendly fire doesn't count, this is simple since there is a mechanic which conciders which fire is friendly. Or this could be a great mechanic to hire NPC ships to protect the traders (idk what kind of ship it would take to protect from L with plasma and stuff with 200 m\s), for some fraction of a price of buying your own ship, or just paying the Syndicate montly fee to leave my ships alone, or buying one time "don't touch me" license, or... I'll check if there's a mod for any of this.

I've lost like 20 traders to Syndicate's Barbarossas and cannot do anything about it without losing reputation with them. And i have already -18, so the only way to get Barbarossa's blueprints are quests, and i cannot allow myself even retaliate no more.

IMO, in the case of pirate attacks, what's missing is the player being able to contact police.
Right now you'd have to get a police license, scan a pirate ship so it drops their fake identity and then you're free to attack. Though pirates should drop their cover as soon as they attack you, and not be able to cause a rep drop with the sector you're attacking them in. Of course, they're pirates so you will still lose rep with their actual faction. That's how criminals operate.

As for an option to retaliate against every attack because "they shot first", you could position your ship between a station and its target, get hit, and get license to destroy that station.

Using the jobs system to hire protection sounds like a good idea to me. I'd love it if the next game would be based around this idea. Find a good trade, create the contract, hire NPCs to transport the wares for a share of the profits, traders could decide to hire protection and create a job for that. And in the early game, the player could be the one to do these contracts.

VIG's behavior is a bit of an issue, I agree with that. You have to know how to deal with them when starting the game, because as you say, it's very hard to come back from -18. I don't like to have to metagame. I got back from -16 by flying around in an empty trader and shooting at SCA near their stations while setting my attack override option to "defensive" only. Then at -10 you can start doing missions for them, I did those till I got to +15, then I sent manual traders to keep their shipyard stocked till +20. So it's possible, but finding a suitable SCA target requires a lot of luck. Sadly the VIG's storyline doesn't help the player with reputation either.
As for dealing with them at the start of the game, just blacklist the sectors they operate in until you get your rep high enough to be left alone.

I too would like to be able to "accidentally" walk into the line of fire of a capital ship and be able to board it with no negative repercussions whatsover.

Jokes aside, you should be able to defend yourself, it's just not going to be easy to make it so the player doesn't abuse it. I suppose the AI is always aware of what it's shooting at, so maybe you can make it only count if the hit was intentional?

The Ai has to figure back to what just happened, then track it to the player and realise the enemy attacked the Player first. Sounds simple to us, but it's likely a headache to code so it works right in the sandbox game.

Still, I'm sure I've seen some games that managed this.

Tranxalive wrote: ↑

Thu, 30. Mar 23, 17:59

The missile hits me

There's a bit of logic handling this case that should have caused the police ship to stop the scan, clear you, attack your attacker, and call for reinforcements at this point. That is unless the police faction is on better terms with the attacker than with you (and no, the attacker pretending to belong to a different faction doesn't count for this). If you have a reproducible case where that does not happen, report would be good. Still have that save where it happens right after you load?

j.harshaw wrote: ↑

Tue, 4. Apr 23, 00:56

Still have that save where it happens right after you load?

I don’t think so sadly. I should’ve been smart and archived it. I could try to set up a similar scenario, but I doubt it’ll be as useful as it was.

But I was +27 with “that” faction and hostile with Duke’s Tempest. For some reason TEM is neutral with “them,” and I’m not sure if it’s intentional or an oversight.

They say “Cease your attacks” even if your in the right sometimes, doesn’t usually garner a rep loss

I’ve attacked SCA pillagers that I flagged with the police scanner and have gotten that dialogue before without the police intervening or losing rep

And you should outrun the police every chance you get, too time consuming to get scanned

Treycore wrote: ↑

Tue, 4. Apr 23, 10:59

And you should outrun the police every chance you get, too time consuming to get scanned

Yeah, but I want to be a “law abiding citizen”… with a fleet of 40 Asgards… and Raptors.