Terran cutlass destroyed my ship OOS, but I am Citizen!

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum

Post Reply
mistercat
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon, 13. Nov 17, 05:34
x3ap

Terran cutlass destroyed my ship OOS, but I am Citizen!

Post by mistercat » Tue, 14. Nov 17, 21:51

I am doing the Argon start and I ordered a ship (that I bought used and repaired) to go to the shipyard in Omicron Lyrae to be sold. As soon as I jump to OL, I get a message saying my ship was destroyed by a Terran cutlass in Treasure Chest.

This makes no sense. I have never been hostile to the Terrans (currently Citizen) and have good relations with Argon.

Timsup2nothin
Posts: 4690
Joined: Thu, 22. Jan 09, 17:49

Post by Timsup2nothin » Tue, 14. Nov 17, 22:06

War sectors do not care about your reputation. Anything you try to send into those sectors unattended becomes "collateral damage." You have to be in sector with your stuff or otherwise work around it. Fortunes of war.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

Alan Phipps
Moderator (English)
Moderator (English)
Posts: 30368
Joined: Fri, 16. Apr 04, 19:21
x4

Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 14. Nov 17, 22:08

If this is X3AP then you unfortunately sent a ship OOS to a war sector. One of the sides fighting in that sector will target OOS player ships regardless of rep, and the side that does so can change as the race with the upper hand in that war sector changes between the Argons and Terrans. Think of it as civilian and neutral collateral damage in war zones that are dangerous places to be.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Tim.
A dog has a master; a cat has domestic staff.

jlehtone
Posts: 21801
Joined: Sat, 23. Apr 05, 21:42
x4

Post by jlehtone » Tue, 14. Nov 17, 22:44

The Survival Guide sticky is modest about it:
Do take care with empire-building in War sectors, though, as you may find yourself and your assets a target for enemy action.
:roll:

My advice is to use the save slots round-robin so that you have the option to reload multiple past points of your game.


I once went to a War Sector. Not just a peek, but to do things. A lot of them. No place to dock, but I did save often, for caution. To different slots. At some point there was a crash.

Reload latest save => crash on load. Repeatably.
Second to last save: crash on load.
Same thing with every save during my venture; something had corrupted on or before the first save in the War Sector.
The latest intact save was actually an autosave from moment before I launched into War.


On the other hand, you can mark that ship up as a cost of learning and keep trucking on from where you are now. There will be other ships and credits. :teladi:
Goner Pancake Protector X
Insanity included at no extra charge.
There is no Box. I am the sand.

Nanook
Moderator (English)
Moderator (English)
Posts: 27829
Joined: Thu, 15. May 03, 20:57
x4

Post by Nanook » Tue, 14. Nov 17, 23:32

Alan Phipps wrote:If this is X3AP then you unfortunately sent a ship OOS to a war sector. One of the sides fighting in that sector will target OOS player ships regardless of rep, and the side that does so can change as the race with the upper hand in that war sector changes between the Argons and Terrans.....
It's not the race with the upper/lower hand. It's the race with which you have the lower rep. Since the OP is playing an Argon start, his Argon rep is almost assuredly higher than his 'Citizen' Terran rep.
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

X4 is a journey, not a destination. Have fun on your travels.

RAVEN.myst
Posts: 2585
Joined: Mon, 20. Jun 11, 13:16
x3tc

Post by RAVEN.myst » Wed, 15. Nov 17, 02:33

Nanook wrote:
Alan Phipps wrote:If this is X3AP then you unfortunately sent a ship OOS to a war sector. One of the sides fighting in that sector will target OOS player ships regardless of rep, and the side that does so can change as the race with the upper hand in that war sector changes between the Argons and Terrans.....
It's not the race with the upper/lower hand. It's the race with which you have the lower rep. Since the OP is playing an Argon start, his Argon rep is almost assuredly higher than his 'Citizen' Terran rep.
Correct. Even if reputation with both races is in the highest category, the one with the lower rep, even if by 1% (or less, even), will be the one that picks on the player's OoS assets in a War Sector. [*] Which means that if said assets can and do defend themselves, whichever of the factions the player is on the worse terms with, will keep getting worse.


[*] I wonder what would happen if the player were (oh-so-improbably) to have EXACTLY the same reputation with both races...
-
Boron passenger: "You must hurry - my testicles are drying out!"
-
Born on Lave, raised on Freeport 7...
-
The Write Stuff

Timsup2nothin
Posts: 4690
Joined: Thu, 22. Jan 09, 17:49

Post by Timsup2nothin » Wed, 15. Nov 17, 02:49

"If said assets can and do defend themselves" that defense will be short lived. The assets left in the sector will not be attacked by stuff that is already in there, they actually trigger a spawn of hostiles specifically targeting them. That spawn is based on what assets you have left there, and the first rule of the algorithm seems to be "make sure we spawn enough."
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

mistercat
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon, 13. Nov 17, 05:34
x3ap

Post by mistercat » Wed, 15. Nov 17, 03:13

Timsup2nothin wrote:"If said assets can and do defend themselves" that defense will be short lived. The assets left in the sector will not be attacked by stuff that is already in there, they actually trigger a spawn of hostiles specifically targeting them. That spawn is based on what assets you have left there, and the first rule of the algorithm seems to be "make sure we spawn enough."
I was wondering why, when I reloaded, that I saw absolutely nothing that looked like the cutlass that destroyed it. Seems unfair. It's one thing to have Terrans attack my assets. It's another to spawn them ONLY OOS and to NEVER attack my personally piloted ship.

RAVEN.myst
Posts: 2585
Joined: Mon, 20. Jun 11, 13:16
x3tc

Post by RAVEN.myst » Wed, 15. Nov 17, 03:33

Timsup2nothin wrote:"If said assets can and do defend themselves" that defense will be short lived. The assets left in the sector will not be attacked by stuff that is already in there, they actually trigger a spawn of hostiles specifically targeting them. That spawn is based on what assets you have left there, and the first rule of the algorithm seems to be "make sure we spawn enough."
I know. Some time ago, I did extensive testing [*] in order to try to overcome this, looking for some sort of break-even point - I didn't find one. Whatever I had in a war sector, the pursuing forces would always be at least an order of magnitude greater. Even just TMs were causing Yokohamas to spawn! Perhaps I should have said "fight back" rather than "defend themselves" - the latter implies some degree of success :D

[*] I ran an Argon game where my role-play concept was that I would be supplying Omicron Lyrae (the War Trader, I called it) and the war effort there. I had moderate success, or so I thought at first - the going was way too slow, and I had to use Zephyrus TMs as freighters to give them a chance to outrun pursuers (but OoS calculations sometimes defeat even that), and so cargo space was limited, profits were very slow, and attrition was prohibitively high. I still have the save stashed away somewhere, though I think if I continue the experiment it may as well simply be in an established game - I still want to set up a station with heavy lasertower defenses around it, and see what happens - will that summon forth Tyrs and Osakas, or perhaps even Valhallas? If I also park a dozen warships, what sort of response will I trigger? If the algorithm has no upper limit (as I suspect is the case) this could lead to some really large fleets arriving! :D
-
Boron passenger: "You must hurry - my testicles are drying out!"
-
Born on Lave, raised on Freeport 7...
-
The Write Stuff

RAVEN.myst
Posts: 2585
Joined: Mon, 20. Jun 11, 13:16
x3tc

Post by RAVEN.myst » Wed, 15. Nov 17, 03:36

mistercat wrote:
Timsup2nothin wrote:"If said assets can and do defend themselves" that defense will be short lived. The assets left in the sector will not be attacked by stuff that is already in there, they actually trigger a spawn of hostiles specifically targeting them. That spawn is based on what assets you have left there, and the first rule of the algorithm seems to be "make sure we spawn enough."
I was wondering why, when I reloaded, that I saw absolutely nothing that looked like the cutlass that destroyed it. Seems unfair. It's one thing to have Terrans attack my assets. It's another to spawn them ONLY OOS and to NEVER attack my personally piloted ship.
The ship that attacked you will still be there - however, its IFF status will "blink" between neutral and hostile, so when you look, you won't see it as often it will have reverted to 'blue' - if you keep watching, it should turn 'red' again...

The whole point of this mechanism is to loosely simulate "collateral casualties" of a war-torn area - basically, the war zone is so dangerous, that passersby often get caught in crossfires and die... Well, at least that's how I interpret the intent of it.
-
Boron passenger: "You must hurry - my testicles are drying out!"
-
Born on Lave, raised on Freeport 7...
-
The Write Stuff

SirNukes
Posts: 546
Joined: Sat, 31. Mar 07, 23:44
x4

Post by SirNukes » Wed, 15. Nov 17, 09:40

RAVEN.myst wrote:I still want to set up a station with heavy lasertower defenses around it, and see what happens - will that summon forth Tyrs and Osakas, or perhaps even Valhallas? If I also park a dozen warships, what sort of response will I trigger? If the algorithm has no upper limit (as I suspect is the case) this could lead to some really large fleets arriving! :D
Spawns are based on how many ships you have, categorized by "huge ship", "big ship", "fighter", and other. The enemy ship groups that spawn are keyed off these categories, but are pretty simple, eg. groups of 2 M2s and 2 M7s to kill your huge ships. It only picks Terran or Argon ships, so no Tyrs or Valhallas.

I tried a lasertower defense once, but I can't recall if they counted as fighters (spawns m4s and m3s) or other (spawns m3s and m6s); I think it might have been the former. It sorta worked, though mainly because the lasertowers tanked well enough that local Argon forces would fly over and clean out the pesky Terrans.

The algorithm is capped at 200 player ships checked. The relevant scripts are "!fight.war.protectsector" for making the enemies and "!lib.war.analysesector" for selecting the enemies. An enemy group will be created for each 5 ships you have in a given category, rounded down, +1, with empty categories skipped. Eg. one enemy group if you have 1-4 ships in a category, 2 enemy groups if you have 5-9 ships, etc.

Even if you win the fight, the enemy attack group will immediately respawn and attack again, grinding your forces down if you aren't prepared for that.

In one game I did hold Elysium of Light for the better part of a game day using a couple Boreases. That only worked because the enemy Osakas weren't equipping their weapons properly into turrets, for whatever reason. At one point I poked my nose in to watch the show for a moment before leaving, after which the Osakas properly equipped their turrets and 1-shotted my Boreases in OOS combat. Oops.

(Personally, I think this enemy spawning is the hokiest thing in AP by a good margin, and disabled it in my game.)

RAVEN.myst
Posts: 2585
Joined: Mon, 20. Jun 11, 13:16
x3tc

Post by RAVEN.myst » Wed, 15. Nov 17, 11:15

Thanks for once again some detailed technical info on AI behaviour, SirNukesUnderTheHood :) It gives me a framework should I choose to continue my little experiment at some point (the "groups of up to 5" bit is particularly interesting and potentially useful.)

SirNukes wrote:Personally, I think this enemy spawning is the hokiest thing in AP by a good margin...
I agree. I understand the (surmised) intention of making the area hazardous for "civilians" and what-not, but it could have been done a lot more elegantly. Such a challenge needs to be beatable, in my opinion, as it's precisely the sort of thing that advanced players would enjoy tackling and overcoming.

My thematic experiment was about viably supplying the Argon side of the war zone with much-needed wares - given the war-torn situation, those factories are pretty undersupplied, and eventually also overstocked with products - ideal for lucrative trade. I managed to train CLS2 pilots in Elysium of Light, but it took very long:
- the ship would undock, resulting in a pursuit wave spawning
- thanks to the short distances between stations, the ship would make it to its destination
- now it's waiting for the locals to deal with the pursuit wave
- once dealt with, the ship waits out the remainder of its current "huddle interval"
- undocks, repeating the whole process...

Also, upon reaching level 3 (Supplier), the Zeph now wants to go to OmLy for fighter drones - and gets eaten en route. Manually providing the drones or not installing the FCS (thus disabling drone usage) allowed it to train to level 4 (jump-capable) without a problem, but even so, once I tried to have it trade in OmLy and Chest (never mind Circle!), it spent most of its time avoiding hostiles and eventually dying... :S
-
Boron passenger: "You must hurry - my testicles are drying out!"
-
Born on Lave, raised on Freeport 7...
-
The Write Stuff

Nanook
Moderator (English)
Moderator (English)
Posts: 27829
Joined: Thu, 15. May 03, 20:57
x4

Post by Nanook » Wed, 15. Nov 17, 21:43

SirNukes wrote:...
(Personally, I think this enemy spawning is the hokiest thing in AP by a good margin, and disabled it in my game.)
Can you point me to a link in S&M on how you did this? We don't want to discuss such things in the vanilla forum, after all. :wink:
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

X4 is a journey, not a destination. Have fun on your travels.

patient zero
Posts: 329
Joined: Sun, 25. Mar 07, 19:19
x3tc

Post by patient zero » Thu, 16. Nov 17, 00:46

Terran "citizens" are ranked as undesirables just one step above criminals. You're lucky if they give you a warning before they shoot you in the back.
This is only a virtual reality.

RAVEN.myst
Posts: 2585
Joined: Mon, 20. Jun 11, 13:16
x3tc

Post by RAVEN.myst » Thu, 16. Nov 17, 02:39

patient zero wrote:Terran "citizens" are ranked as undesirables just one step above criminals. You're lucky if they give you a warning before they shoot you in the back.
:D

Personally, I found that particular relation designation to be... "silly", let's just call it (I was thinking a much stronger word!) After all, citizenship is something that is usually rather hard to acquire, and yet with Terran you can be "citizen" having never been there and claiming no ancestry, and being of a different race? And this from supposedly insular, xenophobic, tight-bordered faction... Whoever designed those designation didn't put a *whole* lot of thought into some of them... :P
-
Boron passenger: "You must hurry - my testicles are drying out!"
-
Born on Lave, raised on Freeport 7...
-
The Write Stuff

SirNukes
Posts: 546
Joined: Sat, 31. Mar 07, 23:44
x4

Post by SirNukes » Sat, 18. Nov 17, 05:50

Nanook wrote:Can you point me to a link in S&M on how you did this? We don't want to discuss such things in the vanilla forum, after all. :wink:
I hate to make a shameless self-plug, but I went ahead and added the script edit to my personal modding tool, https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php ... 74#4689974. You can directly grab the edited "!fight.war.protectsector" off github, if preferred.

mistercat
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon, 13. Nov 17, 05:34
x3ap

Post by mistercat » Sat, 18. Nov 17, 07:34

RAVEN.myst wrote:Thanks for once again some detailed technical info on AI behaviour, SirNukesUnderTheHood :) It gives me a framework should I choose to continue my little experiment at some point (the "groups of up to 5" bit is particularly interesting and potentially useful.)

SirNukes wrote:Personally, I think this enemy spawning is the hokiest thing in AP by a good margin...
I agree. I understand the (surmised) intention of making the area hazardous for "civilians" and what-not, but it could have been done a lot more elegantly. Such a challenge needs to be beatable, in my opinion, as it's precisely the sort of thing that advanced players would enjoy tackling and overcoming.

My thematic experiment was about viably supplying the Argon side of the war zone with much-needed wares - given the war-torn situation, those factories are pretty undersupplied, and eventually also overstocked with products - ideal for lucrative trade. I managed to train CLS2 pilots in Elysium of Light, but it took very long:
- the ship would undock, resulting in a pursuit wave spawning
- thanks to the short distances between stations, the ship would make it to its destination
- now it's waiting for the locals to deal with the pursuit wave
- once dealt with, the ship waits out the remainder of its current "huddle interval"
- undocks, repeating the whole process...

Also, upon reaching level 3 (Supplier), the Zeph now wants to go to OmLy for fighter drones - and gets eaten en route. Manually providing the drones or not installing the FCS (thus disabling drone usage) allowed it to train to level 4 (jump-capable) without a problem, but even so, once I tried to have it trade in OmLy and Chest (never mind Circle!), it spent most of its time avoiding hostiles and eventually dying... :S
It's a hit detection issue. When I started my game, I had an M4 and no money, so I did what anyone would do: scavenge the war sectors for missiles and sell them to EQ docks. I ended up getting killed twice even though neither the Terrans nor the Argon were red. Well, OOS there is no hit detection so collateral damage is technically impossible, so I guess the devs "fixed" it this way.

RAVEN.myst
Posts: 2585
Joined: Mon, 20. Jun 11, 13:16
x3tc

Post by RAVEN.myst » Sat, 18. Nov 17, 07:42

mistercat wrote:
RAVEN.myst wrote:-stuff-
It's a hit detection issue.
Nope - the whole point of my experiment was to try to defeat the OoS pursuit waves in the war sectors without my direct intervention (ie. to set up a self-defending infrastructure - I try such off-the-wall things in these games :D ), which meant all of what I described was taking place OoS (and I was therefore actively staying out of there in order to not corrupt the test), which as you know isn't subject to collision detection...
-
Boron passenger: "You must hurry - my testicles are drying out!"
-
Born on Lave, raised on Freeport 7...
-
The Write Stuff

Post Reply

Return to “X Trilogy Universe”