something I hope this has (variations in crew left floating in space)

[KRM398]

OK every game so far has had astronauts floating after battles...but...they are nearly all the same. If you rescue one it becomes a passenger. OK if they are civilians that would be true, but pirate pilots? All the other enemies we fight combined? Not hardly. Mercenarys are soldiers so all the pirates no matter which are soldiers and enemy forces like the Terrans in AP and other games were soldiers, on very,very rare occasions you saw one marked as a marine floating...while at least half should have been marines or mercenarys. So for those boarding ships and losing 50 at a time. this needs fixed, or at least more pilots in suits need to be soldiers instead of faking them all as civilians.

[Alan Phipps]

I think the change to 'passengers' from pilot bail pick-ups in later X3 games was for two main reasons when comparing X3:R with X3:TC/AP:

1. In X3:R the pick-ups were marked as 'slaves' which were illegal to carry in most sectors. In later X3 games they were marked as neutral 'passengers'.

2. In X3:R you had to deliberately drop the shields to pick up bailed crew while in later games you did an automatic pick up if you just ran over them. Hence you could quite easily have picked up illegal slaves as contraband quite unknowingly unless for the change in designation and legality.

It is also worth noting that in X Rebirth the escape pods from ships that you cause to bail remain marked as 'enemy' and show as red. That is an aspect that many players intensely dislike as it means that 'target nearest enemy' often targets an escape pod rather than one of the surviving enemy attacking you. Also the red icon for the pod in the radar often distracts the player even when not in combat. Many would like to see all escape pods show as neutral.

[Seanchaidh]

Yeah, I very much dislike that the game makes it so preferable to commit war crimes when pilots bail. Easier to kill the defenseless pilot than retarget w/o nearest enemy.

[KRM398]

playing AP lately and in here a few astronauts are marked as Marines, and so can be captured and added to your security or whatever. thats what I meant. If we are to see astronauts in the next game, no red icons, no armored suits that act as M5 fighters, just astronauts marked as marines or civilians, thats all. civilians get dropped at the next station you stop at, maybe a reward for saving them marines can be dropped off for rewards or kept for your ships (have to pay of course but cheap since you saved their lives.)

[RodentofDoom]

I liked that pods were shown as red in XR

Allowed me to ensure that no filthy pmc scum survived an encounter.

[Nanook]

playing AP lately and in here a few astronauts are marked as Marines, and so can be captured and added to your security or whatever. thats what I meant....

[For both X3TC and X3AP]:

That's because they were marines. Many capital ships carry marines on board, not just the player ships. When such a ship gets destroyed or captured, there's a small chance that those marines will survive and float in space, ready for pickup. These guys were never pilots. When pilots bail, they show as 'astronauts', not 'marines'. Thus there is a clear distinction.

The passenger list does not distinguish between 'good guys' and 'bad guys', nor should it. That's up to you to decide. You can drop passengers off at a station, or you can take them to a pirate base and turn them into 'slaves' for resale. And if you take passengers captured in a TP to their destination (which is listed in their info window), you'll collect their fares.

And just in case you didn't notice, when you pick up a pilot, they show up as their race in your cargo bay. Pirates are listed as 'pirates', eg., under the list of passengers. Marines are never listed as 'passengers' in your cargo bay, and you can only collect marines with ships that have the ability to carry them. So as you can see, they're not really "nearly all the same".