Suicidal traders in X3. Let's not have them in X4, ok?

[Sorkvild]

Why are they doing that? Hoping to get through Xenon infested sector in their slowly buzzing transporter ships?

Got me a new pc and got back to playing after a hiatus and I'm still seeing this abnormal ai behavior. I was hoping to this fixed with recent patch but no, not this time.
Line of ships trying to cross XS 598, XS 347 and X427 and watching this and no one gets out of there alive. Thousands of cargo crates and million worth ships go to waste. This is really insane, what kind of logic is behind that besides "go careless" scripting?

Another Interesting thing observed after sitting in a XS 593 and watching from a safe distance. A Boron TS heading from Grand Exchange took course in XS 598 through the east gate leading to Xenon Core. Why he was going that? There is no station in this space where he could dock or do anything.

It is hard for me to image what sort of concept of space traveling will be implemented in X3, but while working n the X4, dear Egosoft please implement something like sector threat analysis for the ai traders, so the ship and the cargo and eventual profits could be saved by taking an alternative route or using jumpdrive if have.
I believe this game will have a solid economy based on the real resources rather than spawn out of thin air like those white rabbits from a magicians hat. TS got owned in a Xenon sector, *poof* the factory that sent him will have another one or ten in no time.
Instead I'd like to see - "that's a shame, we will have to spend another millions a ship and a trained pilot, and we have to be more careful, but now we can only wait until our new ship (we paid for) arrives.

[Timsup2nothin]

If Xenon and pirate sectors weren't removing goods by the shipful constantly the stations would all fill up and the economy would grind to a halt.

[RAVEN.myst]

What Tim said. Also, this sinking of goods also results in trading opportunities for the player, such as the shortages in some Teladi factories in the area divided between Eighteen Billion and Scale Plate Green by a Xenon sector. Of course, players who play exclusive by fighting and don't involve themselves in trade DO suffer shortages of finished tech items (such as weapons) as a result... It would certainly be great if the in-game economy didn't need to rely so heavily on gimmicks to keep itself viable.

[Alan Phipps]

So the TLDR version: It's not a bug, it's a feature.

[jlehtone]

Aldrin is within 9 jumps from Grand Exchange. In other words, that Boron had plausible, observable destinations before it departed from GE. The routing does not weigh graph edges by amount of hostility, only by distance.

The fighting players can feel heroic by ensuring safe passage for the hapless gerbils.

Exception: The blues are excellent distraction for the reds during raiding of the Xenon sector.

Exception to exception: It is easier, quicker and safer to take on a Q head on, rather than to chase a Q that dogfights a Dolphin.


No, I would not class the issue a bug or a feature. The scripts are not intentionally suicidal. They simply do not do complex math. Considering that the game world has close to 10'000 NPC ships, less is more. Less computation, more performance. Yes there is some attrition. As pointed out, that is not all negative.


The suspension of disbelief is unfortunately threatened. Are you sure that the Boron pilot had not visited your Weed&Fuel Emporium before that overly optimistic endeavour?


PS. On first glance at the thread title I did expect comments about gerbils in player's service. I'm glad that the actual question does show concern about the navigational regulations of all spacefarers, and does not involve large immovable objects (aka Gerbil Attractors).

[ajime]

Would be nice if they have more hapless gerbills escort missions intentionally wait at and spam mission before crossing those xenon sectors. and an npc task force will escort them cross if the player does not intervene before mission timer ends.

[JoeVN09]

Hopefully in X4 the economy won't need this "feature" to keep its economy running. Dropping that pretence for a second, it shouldn't be hard for the player or AI to check the ownership of a sector against the IFF global commands (or indeed a ship's own IFF settings) and blacklist it accordingly.

I like ajime's suggestion. Plotting a course through dangerous sectors should be a risk/reward proposition, not to be taken on without some insurance. And how cool is the notion of getting hired to be that insurance? I feel like that's something that would happen all the time. Imagine mercenary escort pilots bundling at the East gate of Eighteen Billion, like folks selling cheap souvenirs at the Eiffel Tower.