Escort AI ineffective, completely useless

[pref]

Yes, declaration of war could also work, with some care to make it possible to treat an individual member of a faction/race as enemy while not starting war with the rest (just a bit more UI i guess).

Sometimes i tend to see the part in X3 when my target race is not enemy yet as an exploit (i start a war on highest rank for ex). I steal several of their capships and they still treat me as friendly - which is a bit weird and makes my job extremely easy in the beginning.

[zazie]

@pref (slightly OT): you should play XTC then: attacking/capping a capship will HIGHLY affect your rep (use of capital letters intended ...). With all consequences for your (trading) empire.

[jkflipflop98]

It's a bug. In the earlier builds of the game the escorts work exactly as they should.

[spankahontis]

The Pirate variant of the Phoenix (mentioned by XenonS) is a fighting ship with trading capability and because it is tagged as a FIGHT ship, the pirate raiding capitals in TO sectors apparently ignore them as targets. The Lyramekron and Titurel are tagged as TRADE ships by contrast.

The main problem in TO sectors is that the raiding pirate capitals are typically neutral (or friendly - rep with the relevant pirate factions does not stop the raids last time I checked) until they open fire on one of your ships. This means that any escorts are acting reactively and can not act pro-actively as they might do elsewhere.

Very good explanation. However, I found that there are 2 types of raiders, one from UA (uguras armaments), the other from CART:
1) UA raiders are always red, they are constantly at war with you
2) CART raiders are blue, they are not at war with you (maybe I did some of their missions which improves their relationship); but if your tradeship gets into their vicinity, they will fire at you and may or may not turn red; there is also a bug, sometimes I saw CART ship firing at me without turning red, and my ship does not fight back.

Anyway, the whole thing about raider attack, alliance relationship, trade-ship escort, escort ship counter-attack is buggy. The game programmers have not made the game logic clear, that is why they mess up everything.

A good game logic should be something like this:
a) if relationship <-10, will attack both you and your tradeship, and is shown in RED
b) if relationship between -10 and +10, will not attack you (unless you attack them), but might attack your tradeship if it contains high-value cargo, and higher relationship requires higher value cargo to trigger a raiding; ship is shown in YELLOW
c) if relationship >=10, allied, will NOT attack you nor your tradeship, and is shown in BLUE
d) all raider-type races, limit relationship below 10 so that there is always a possibility that they will raid you. And put a mark in their name to hint players so that they won't waste time improving relationship with raiders beyond 10.
e) PMC is an enemy that will NOT raid you. So if it is an exception designed by the plot, then just make it an exception in the logic definition. Or just make them as raiders to make the campaign more challenging.

So simple! And there won't be any spontaneous and probabilistic colour change which confuses both the player and the programmer. So Egosoft should make the game logic self-consistent and clear to players!

Cartel and Uguras Armaments are better off made enemies, as Neutral the ships don't fight back when attacked by them.

[Snafu_X3]

Cartel and Uguras Armaments are better off made enemies, as Neutral the ships don't fight back when attacked by them.

No longer the case, although if your trade ships' DO is not set to ATTACK a first strike by CAR or UA may wipe it out while OOZ before the DO can get their retaliation in..

[kelmenwong]

the only workable trading is using big trader ship with defence officer onboard, don't bother with ship using pilot, which required escort, and escort is practically broken in 3.53

buy/cap a large trading ship, i don't even bother with interceptor, just prime the ship to max, with best crews, there it go

[spankahontis]

Cartel and Uguras Armaments are better off made enemies, as Neutral the ships don't fight back when attacked by them.

No longer the case, although if your trade ships' DO is not set to ATTACK a first strike by CAR or UA may wipe it out while OOZ before the DO can get their retaliation in..

They will shoot back at a neutral faction that attacks you?
Never seen it happen, but maybe recent patches have changed that from last I've seen.

[Snafu_X3]

AIUI NPCs (yours or others) IFF tag is now set to hostile when attacked by any aggressor; in previous versions this was overlooked for UA/CAR. I'm not sure if your NPC ships (with their DO set to ATTACK) will attack ships attacking the Skunk; I've never bothered to test that bit..

[GCU Grey Area]

AIUI NPCs (yours or others) IFF tag is now set to hostile when attacked by any aggressor; in previous versions this was overlooked for UA/CAR. I'm not sure if your NPC ships (with their DO set to ATTACK) will attack ships attacking the Skunk; I've never bothered to test that bit..

Think they may have indeed made some changes to IFF. Was just in Verdant Profit (buying a pair of Vultures) & had a run in with a Cartel Marauder. It had decided to hassle my personal trade ship & for once it appeared red before commencing the attack (Cartel Rep at this time was 3, positive though not by much). Switched my DO to attack orders & it blew it out of the sky without much difficulty (trade ship is a Lyramekron, so not an entirely unexpected outcome). There was also a UA Marauder hanging around, though apparently not interested in my stuff (too busy hunting TU freighters instead) & it remained blue throughout my visit to the zone. UA rep is considerably higher (17) - perhaps that's why it chose other targets?

[Snafu_X3]

UA rep is considerably higher (17) - perhaps that's why it chose other targets?

Not AIUI: CA/UA will attack any FREIGHT ship but ignore any FIGHT ship, throughout (ie regardless of rep). Chances are there were plenty of other (NPC) freighters within the UA target acquisition zone, so yours wasn't picked

Lucky you were IZ though; 3 MPs can make a mess of even a Ly OOZ if they all get first strike..

*NOTE for other players: the Ly is excellent in defending itself from hostiles in most zones, but don't send it to Verdant Profit (or any other Teladi DLC zone) expecting it to come out unscathed. It's so big & slow-moving that more maneuverable hostiles will quickly overcome it. Escorting it personally for 1/2 hr will save you /lots/ in damage repairs or ship/officer replacement, or use a faster more nimble ship..

[GCU Grey Area]

Agree - best to be IZ when trading in the Teladi sectors, so you can help out a bit with the Skunk if there's a major attack. Know from experience Lyramekron can hold it's own against at least 5 MPs in such circumstances with only minimal hull damage & a few broken subsystems (shields went down during the 4th MP's attack). Did my best to help, although in all honesty spent most of my time hiding from the Plasma JET turrets on the MPs (those things hurt), however did manage to lob the occasional Tristar in their general direction before scurrying back into hiding behind the Lyramekron.

[XenonSurf]

Yes, I think the only good tactic for trading in Teladi Space is to actively protect your ships with your Skunk while having a powerful fleet to help you out.

So I think that ships or a fleet which are left alone in TS will be doomed or take heavy damage without being able to complete their trade. If you rely on a Manager, be sure to exclude Teladi space in his trading activity ! (In the vanilla game he will only trade in the same system, but with some mods this is no longer true).

Instead you should succeed if you go along with them and attack any potential enemy, so they stay away from your trade ships. You will then have to make your trade ships "Disengage" from combat so they - hopefully - dock at the station and do the trade. Meanwhile, you can attack or even try to board the enmies until your trade ships are done.
Be sure that your fleet has a good number of drones and expert crew.
You need to have a *strong* fleet together with your trade ships, it's not about the quantity of your ships but their quality.

Is it worthwhile? Yes, the price tag difference from TS to Albion is very high.
This tactic is also important out of Teladi space: For example in the case of some mods, if a war is going on in the zone you want to trade, it will depend on your reputation with the parties involved.


XenonS

[burger1]

As people have said before capture the 60k cargo space phoenixes. To do this I fly to sanctuary and look for bounty missions. Save the game before accepting. Accept the mission and fly to the mission area. Check out the ships if they aren't two 60k cargo phoenixes reload and do the same thing and the mission ships should be different. If there's a xenon I in the area 3-6 fulmekrons can blow it up just jump the ships out to another area when their shields start to fail. It takes about 10 seconds for a ship to jump. For 3 fulmekrons you'll need to form a wall so that they reach the xenon I at the same time. Watch for friendly ships of course and wait till they are destroyed or move off.

For phoenixes you might get lucky and be able to take out all the rear turrets with one novadrone missile shot into the center back of the ship. After that you can just stay behind them and shoot.