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I happened to save a game just before a universe trade freighter was attacked out-of-sector. About 30 seconds after I load the attack happens, and as I was correcting the buggy attack signal handler at the time, I took the opportunity to load the game to watch the attack. Interestingly, the attack never happens if the sector is being watched. I tried this many times, and I verified if the sector is being watched the attack never happens, and if it isn't being watched the attack always happens.

There is a clear observational bias, which is interesting by itself since I can't think of a reason why watching a sector should affect it. What is really interesting, though, is that in the above scenario if I load and immediately view the sector I see that my trader is moving away from the enemy ships, that there is a healthy distance between them, and the trader is faster than they are. So the only way the enemy ships should be able to catch it is if they get a speed boost when not being watched. I've looked around for more examples of this and have seen it on more than one occasion, where I look at a sector to see one of my ships moving away from a slower enemy only to get a notification a minute after I stop watching that the trader is being attacked.

I don't think they move faster, I think they have a greater attack range. When you are watching the process that checks for conflicts to resolve is different than when you aren't watching. The process when you aren't watching resolves things much more quickly and with less regard for details like whether the enemies are actually in range.

It's not really a cheat though, since it works both ways. If you had some ships in there to defend your freighter they would also benefit from the accelerated resolution.

Sectors you aren't watching update every 30 seconds, or something around there. If you watch, it drops to around 5 seconds. You can think of it like a turn based instead of real time system, where unit X gets a move, then unit Y, etc. With the longer times between updates, a unit can do more with its turn (eg. move further or do more damage). The reason for this behavior is to reduce the CPU load when running the full universe simulation.

In your case, it sounds like the attackers are getting one big turn where they can catch up to your ship and shoot it, before your ship gets a turn to move away. If you watch, however, the finer granularity of updates lets your trader keep some distance.

It's happened a lot to me, to the point that I make a habit of watching a trade ship trying to flee nearby pirates until it has a good amount of distance opened up, at which point it is safe to look away and give further commands.

Of course, some cases may have your ship get the first turn and open a large gap, but you tend not to notice those cases because your ship escapes without an attack message.

Another thing that can happen is your trader, who is otherwise staying ahead, takes a short move on one turn to stop at a gate, allowing the pursuers to catch up.

Here's what I've noticed. The sector you're in get top priority in processing movement and combat. A sector that you're watching in an overhead screen get processed out of its usual slot; therefore faster. If you want to gain some time or lose some, keep this in mind.

SirNukes wrote:Sectors you aren't watching update every 30 seconds, or something around there. If you watch, it drops to around 5 seconds.

Of course! And I knew that, or should have. The MSCI handbook notes this on the "get current galaxy flight timestep" command. What's embarrassing is that I wrote that. The things one forgets in ten years. Sigh.

Reven wrote:

SirNukes wrote:Sectors you aren't watching update every 30 seconds, or something around there. If you watch, it drops to around 5 seconds.

Of course! And I knew that, or should have. The MSCI handbook notes this on the "get current galaxy flight timestep" command. What's embarrassing is that I wrote that. The things one forgets in ten years. Sigh.

At the end of the day, if I remember my own name I call it a good day.