X3:R - Questions about Pirate Missions and Pirate Bases turning hostile

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Mazryonh
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X3:R - Questions about Pirate Missions and Pirate Bases turning hostile

Post by Mazryonh » Thu, 30. Aug 18, 01:48

The last time I played X3:R extensively, I didn't do much in the way of Pirate missions from Pirate Bases. I decided to try one this time, which was a simple delivery mission of Spacefly Eggs to a factory in a Pirate sector. I made the delivery on time but not before receiving a rudely-worded reminder from the game.

The funny thing is, after I finished the mission, the Pirate Base I got the mission from was marked as hostile by my ship computer. I tried docking at the base by turning on my autopilot, and I was actually accepted. I decided to try setting Pirates as "Friend" in my ship's settings, but have no idea whether or not this means that even attacking Pirates will show up as "Friend" to me.

I don't know why this happened; I made absolutely sure not to shoot any Pirate ships or bases or lasertowers while in sector or out of Sector to that base. I know there are a few things like Station Hacking that only Pirates can provide.

Exactly which circumstances do Pirate Bases turn hostile, aside from shooting them? I remember reading that shooting Pirate ships that spawned from an in-sector Pirate Base will turn that specific base hostile, but what happens when you shoot them (or they shoot you) out of sector? Can someone fill me in on this?

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Post by Bill Huntington » Thu, 30. Aug 18, 05:10

If you could dock there, it wasn't hostile; it only showed that way. A ship or Laser Tower you owned in another sector could have turned them hostile but that isn't the case here. Somehow your own setting got changed to Pirate as enemy.

You can have a Pirate as Friend setting and there are still red pirates, which might or might not attack you. With a good pirate rating, it's less likely that they will.

There's a lot of ins and out to figuring out pirates.

Note: I've only played TC and AP, but I'd expect them to be pretty close to the same.

Good luck, Mazryonh!
Bill in S.F., enjoying the game

DrSuperEvil
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Post by DrSuperEvil » Fri, 31. Aug 18, 03:59

Some jump gates count as pirate owned so stray shots can cause all pirates in the sector to go hostile.

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Post by jacex3tc » Fri, 31. Aug 18, 07:57

Sometimes hostile ships will swing their own friendlies in their vicinity hostile to you. This doesn't always happen but it does and it becomes more likely the longer you fight around hostile-friendly neutrals.

Some pirate groups are just spawned with a special hostile state that makes them more likely to attack npc stuff and always an enemy of the player. If you get near them they will attack you every time unless your ship greatly overpowers theirs in which case they might not if there are other targets for them that are weaker.

So my theory about what happened is that after you left the base, the base spawned a hostile group, the hostile group was near enough to you to trigger attacking, the moment they were attacking you it flipped the base hostile.

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Post by jlehtone » Fri, 31. Aug 18, 22:17

A ship can have homebase set. If you attack a ship, it should signal its homebase. If you attack the homebase, it should signal the ships it owns. For example, Lasertowers have a homebase, don't they?

A ship can be many sectors away from homebase, but home is home.

Gates belong to the owner of the sector. That is usually the Trading Station, but for Pirates a Base is "close enough". Again, if you attack the Gate (by accident), the owner will know.


A ship can be set to escort (Follow, Protect, Attack target, ...) another ship. Leader ship and its escorts are a formation.

Attack any ship in the formation. It should signal the leader and the leader signals the entire formation.


Police ships might be offended if you attack (almost) anything in the sector. (Not sure any more if that was in X3R.)

Enemies of their faction they do not care. In fact, you reputation improves, if you kill enemies.

Unfactioned ships they do not care. Assassination mission spawns ships with no faction in X3R.


Your assets have the Friend/Foes settings. Furthermore, they have "Show as enemy, if enemy to me" setting. These decide your attitude against the NPC. (Command Attack .. aborts, if your ships do not consider the target to be a Foe.)

Oh why one cannot launch a dumbfire Tornado in X3AP, if the sector has no foes?? :?


NPC hates you in two cases:
  • Your reputation is so low among their faction that they all dislike you, as a principle. That you can change by working on your reputation.
  • The ship/station has personal grudge against you, probably due to being shot at by you. You can say "sorry" to some ships. You can attempt to "hack" a station.
The Pirates ... are less predictable.


This applies to your ships too. If a Pirate damages your Trader and the Trader survives, then at least the Pirates are marked "Foe" in its settings.

In X3TC/AP this can quickly lead to ... Your bomber fires missiles at hostiles (like Xenon). Some hit the cops. (Argon) Cops shoot at your bomber. Your bomber decides that Argons are a Foe, sees red everywhere, unleashes missile barrage, makes many Argon genuinely hostile or dead, they attack your other ships too, and ...
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Fri, 31. Aug 18, 22:30

jlehtone wrote:
In X3TC/AP this can quickly lead to ... Your bomber fires missiles at hostiles (like Xenon). Some hit the cops. (Argon) Cops shoot at your bomber. Your bomber decides that Argons are a Foe, sees red everywhere, unleashes missile barrage, makes many Argon genuinely hostile or dead, they attack your other ships too, and ...
Even worse: You do a favor for the Boron by shooting up some Splits in their territory. The Split become slightly hostile so you head to Split space looking to make amends.

Before you get there, some lame Split decides to attack your widget factory in Argon space and is promptly dispatched by your automated defenses. The Argon cops take offense at this hostility to the guests in their space, so they attack too and get dispatched just as promptly, leaving your automated defenses in an Argon sector thinking that Argons are hostiles.

And down the tubes we go.
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Post by DrSuperEvil » Sat, 1. Sep 18, 03:45

Then the rapid response fleet usually joins the party.

jlehtone
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Post by jlehtone » Sat, 1. Sep 18, 17:11

Indeed.

All that bar-talk about X3AP was to emphasize how much more demanding and difficult the X3R is. Even getting into serious trouble isn't as easy as in the later games. :roll:


In other words, when you achieve something in X3R, you really feel it. :x3:
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Post by DrSuperEvil » Sun, 2. Sep 18, 10:52

True gaining race rank was a lot harder in X3:R since missions were hidden in the bulletin boards.

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Post by Mazryonh » Mon, 3. Sep 18, 17:37

Okay, something funny happened recently with a Pirate Base. I was on an Assassination Mission, and a few of my stray shots hit one of the sector's gates. The nearby Pirate Base truly turned hostile (couldn't dock there anymore) for no reason I could determine. I mean, Pirate Bases don't own Gates, do they?

Also, does anyone here know how to get a certain Pirate mission that mentions retrieving cargo from a "baka-ne ex-pilot"? I try to sign up for it but all it says is "Are you talking to me? You smell like an informant!". What does that mean? Should I have no police licenses at all to get the mission, or just not a police license for the sector I'm in?

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Post by Alan Phipps » Mon, 3. Sep 18, 17:52

@ Mazryonh: A post by DrSuperEvil above in this thread.

On your question about the mission, it sounds as though your reputation with the Pirate faction is too low for them to be prepared to give you the mission.
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Mazryonh
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Post by Mazryonh » Tue, 4. Sep 18, 01:39

Alan Phipps wrote: On your question about the mission, it sounds as though your reputation with the Pirate faction is too low for them to be prepared to give you the mission.
How can I look at my reputation with the Pirate faction? I don't see it normally ingame.

I think it might have something to do with the possession of Police licenses because the last time I took a Pirate mission the mission giver said "I thought you were a Cop but nothing came back, so here's the mission." back when I had no Police licenses at all.

Assuming the ability to undertake Pirate missions has nothing to do with the possession of any Police licenses, how do I raise Pirate missions? Buying and selling stuff to them is likely to be a rather slow way to do it, and most of the goods they'll take have to be smuggled in.

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Post by Timsup2nothin » Tue, 4. Sep 18, 02:34

Mazryonh wrote:Buying and selling stuff to them is likely to be a rather slow way to do it, and most of the goods they'll take have to be smuggled in.
Trading is slow, but properly automated a slow steady drip can do amazing things. Use a big hulk ship with CLS to buy from a distillery cheap. Use small fast ships to pick up the goods from your buyer, so that there is little opportunity for the cops to scan them and if they do get scanned and jet the cargo the loss will be small.

Just a handful of such smugglers will give you a slow but steady improvement in relations, and if the pirate bases you sell to are in race space paying max price you will turn a tidy profit as well...far more than enough to cover the occasional lost load and the replacement cost for the inevitable casualties among the little rumrunners.

The only maintenance required is due to pirate bases in race space always being somewhat temporary fixtures. I always give my rumrunners two alternated buyers, so that if one gets blown up they won't just sit around drinking the product. Checking in once or twice a day and making sure everybody is keeping busy is not a big effort.
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!!!

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Seeing your pirate reputation

Post by Bill Huntington » Tue, 4. Sep 18, 07:15

There is a way to check your pirate standing. To get to it, you get to the Change Name menu, type in 'Thereshallbewings', then press 'Return' twice, locate 'Additional Info' on the screen, and click on 'Yes'. Then when you click on a ship or icon, you get more information details than before. It's for every race and includes Pirates and Yaki.

But making this choice gives you a 'modified' tag after that. If you don't want that, you can choose 'Additional Info', use it to get the info you want, then reload to a save that you made before that choice. Then you have the info but you're not 'modified'. I just accept the 'modified' tag now. I know it's just that item.

Good luck, Mazryonh!
Last edited by Bill Huntington on Tue, 4. Sep 18, 17:37, edited 1 time in total.
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Mazryonh
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Post by Mazryonh » Tue, 4. Sep 18, 17:18

Timsup2nothin wrote:Trading is slow, but properly automated a slow steady drip can do amazing things. Use a big hulk ship with CLS to buy from a distillery cheap. Use small fast ships to pick up the goods from your buyer, so that there is little opportunity for the cops to scan them and if they do get scanned and jet the cargo the loss will be small.

Just a handful of such smugglers will give you a slow but steady improvement in relations, and if the pirate bases you sell to are in race space paying max price you will turn a tidy profit as well...far more than enough to cover the occasional lost load and the replacement cost for the inevitable casualties among the little rumrunners.

The only maintenance required is due to pirate bases in race space always being somewhat temporary fixtures. I always give my rumrunners two alternated buyers, so that if one gets blown up they won't just sit around drinking the product. Checking in once or twice a day and making sure everybody is keeping busy is not a big effort.
Thanks for the info, but I still need a definitive answer as to whether or not Pirate missions require the player character to have no Police licences at all to get those missions (which pay out quite a lot) in the first place.

Also, Pirate Bases being "temporary fixtures" can happen in Pirate space sectors too. I had a Pirate Base in Brennan's Triumph get destroyed while I was Out of Sector, and last I remember it was under attack from a large Kha'ak cluster.

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Post by DrSuperEvil » Tue, 4. Sep 18, 18:01

Missions for pirate still spawn if you have police licences and spawn even at -5 race rank (on stations of friendly races within 2 jumps of pirate sectors) but the rep rewards for the mission will not apply until >-4.

I usually build an illegals complex in Hatikvah's Faith 40km above a gate and let pirates buy space fuel and weed just below average price. It is surprisingly effective at cranking out rep even from the lowest of race ranks for Pirates, Argon, Paranid, Split and even Boron occasionally.

OOS ships are not scanned for illegals and IS it is very rare for police to scan a ship other than the player ship so it is quite safe to transport them as long as it is not on the player ship.

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Post by Timsup2nothin » Tue, 4. Sep 18, 18:48

DrSuperEvil wrote: OOS ships are not scanned for illegals and IS it is very rare for police to scan a ship other than the player ship so it is quite safe to transport them as long as it is not on the player ship.
I have anecdotal evidence that seems to contradict this.

I did a Humble Merchant start. I did just enough rumrunning to get the freighter set up as a CLS buying cheap at the distilleries and selling at the trading station, then set off looking for missiles to salvage.

My guy was spending my entire account on a handful of product, selling it, buying a slightly larger handful of product, selling it, etc. So I could watch my account bounce from near zero to a number, near zero to a higher number, near zero to an even higher number...then all of a sudden it stopped. On near zero.

I had been expecting this, figuring that the trading station would fill up and he'd be stuck with a load of fuel, but he didn't have any fuel and the trading station wasn't full. He had spent all my credits on fuel, and that fuel had never made it to the trading station.

The only explanation I could come up with was that he had been challenged and had ejected the contraband.
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!!!

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Post by SirNukes » Tue, 4. Sep 18, 20:21

DrSuperEvil wrote:OOS ships are not scanned for illegals and IS it is very rare for police to scan a ship other than the player ship so it is quite safe to transport them as long as it is not on the player ship.
Maybe it was changed since Reunion, but in TC and AP (both use the same script) there is no difference IS vs OOS. The police randomly pick scan targets, and are actually biased against scanning the player's ship in two ways: they won't scan the player more than every 10 minutes, and they will stop chasing the player if the player moves more than 30 km away from the sector center.

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Post by DrSuperEvil » Thu, 6. Sep 18, 14:38

Pirates preferentially target player ships carrying illegals (relative to the teladi list).

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Post by Mazryonh » Sun, 9. Sep 18, 00:21

Does paying the protection racket fee at Pirate Stations increase your standing with the Pirate faction like donating to the other factions via BBS message does?

Also, I haven't found any Pirate-specific missions in a long while. I don't know if that means they'll no longer spawn.

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