Combat Rank Status and SETA problem??

[Hubasan]

You guys probably know about this already but I just HAVE to be sure, so here goes:
I don't know if you guys noticed this, but it seems that every time I leave my X3 on SETA for a while, my Combat Rank Status drops to a lower rank, and sometimes more than one. Did anybody else experience this? I presume this is a bug, and NOT a feature right?

If this is NOT a bug and indeed a feature, than it's the most ridiculous feature I have heard of. You gotta be kidding me man. I have killed that many ships and EARNED my status, and that CAN NOT fade away with time. You think that Manfred von Richthofen's (Red Baron) 80 CONFIRMED kills just faded away over time. NO he was THE ACE of ACES in first world war because the number of allied planes he shot down. and even after his death, his STATUS was written in history of this planet.
EGOSOFT what are you thinking??? Decreasing our Combat Status with time??? That is beyond LAME. In fact LAME is a huge understatement. I'm sorry, but who ever made THIS decision in your management/development team, is just plane ignoramus maximums. Even more it's insulting to me to find out that my in-game achievements are deleted from the game because certain amount of time has passed!!??
You people better get you act together, and either give us a damn good explanation WHY on EARTH would somebody make this ridiculous decision or just FIX this embarrassment.

[Geaux]

its a feature.

they want you to mindlessly fly from station to station hunting the xenon invasion missions to pass the time. killing the 2 pirate m5's you'll find in every few sectors.

[Rad Jeebus^]

Be fair on them, it is a good idea in that it stops players from leaving the game on SETA for hours on end so they can come back to piles of money. Because if people were to be able to do that then it wouldn't be too long before people would start complaining that the game was boring and all you ahd to do was buy a bunch of factories and UT's and stick the game on SETA for a while.

I think it's a good feature

Jeebs

[Tritous]

so you are a massive combat ace...there has been a massive wave of attacks, yet the ace of aces has spent the last 6 days with hit boots on the console snoring while people call him and beg him for help. Richthofen was famous for the correct mixture of two things: skill and motivation. skill in that he was that good, motivation in that the situation was if he didn't fly, he would be executed. A generally effective method of motivation, I doubt he took days off when the war needed him.

[Hubasan]

I understand that every1 has their own opinions about this and that is cool, however, this "feature" is NOT mentioned anywhere in the manual! Nowere does it say that you will loose your Combat Rank over time if you don't fight?
But then again there ARE other things in that same manual that are also NOT in the game at all, for example Shield Elipsoid Indicator on you HUD. So it doesn't surprise me at all.

I guess Egosoft's slogan for X3, TRADE, THINK, FIGHT...etc proved to be TO BIG for them to handle, cause you can't have traders, fighters...etc happy at the same time. X2 with all the patches was a lot more fun than X3 if you ask me.

Hubasan™

[Hubasan]

I understand that every1 has their own opinions about this and that is cool, however, this "feature" is NOT mentioned anywhere in the manual! Nowere does it say that you will loose your Combat Rank over time if you don't fight?
But then again there ARE other things in that same manual that are also NOT in the game at all, for example Shield Elipsoid Indicator on you HUD. So it doesn't surprise me at all.

I guess Egosoft's slogan for X3, TRADE, THINK, FIGHT...etc proved to be TO BIG for them to handle, cause you can't have traders, fighters...etc happy at the same time. X2 with all the patches was a lot more fun than X3 if you ask me.

Hubasan™

[Barking Moonbat]

Frankly, it's a retarded feature.

Last time I checked, this was a single player game.

I'm not much of a SETA-whore myself, but I don't have a problem with folks who are.

Not that they should care. What they do in THEIR hermetically sealed single player bubble has exactly ZERO effect on what's going on in MY hermetically sealed single player bubble.

[ouch]

yep it's a feature carried over from x2. it was designed to keep people from waisting away in seta for hours, sometimes weeks on end (real time)... however the minor inconvinience doesn't stop me from doing it

if you really care about your rank then protect it... besides you can get to x-treme by just by wiping out xenon sectors, it's not like it's hard to achieve if you really want it...

especially when you consider the fact that egosofts x-series games have always had poor combat AI. X3 is no exception to this, but at least they tried this time around... They still blindly fly strait at you with thier BIREs blazeing... right into your wall of GHEPT blasts...

[martindemon]

I find it to be a very big problem for me too. It forces me to cheat to play the game the way I want to play it. For now, I don't play because I won't have the time for it until after december 20 but it is very strange that they FORCE PLAYERS TO FIGHT so that it is impossible to play a trading game. I'm a trader kind of player so when I will begin to play, I will reset my race relations to where they were before each seta session. And it will not be cheating IMO, just cheating in the opinion of egosoft, so no worry; I will not feel retarded or anything, just rightfully paid for my efforts.

**************************
Message to those complaining about the game being too easy if you use seta: Why don't you just not use it???
**************************

And don't tell me that I could play without seta because I want my game to last less than 200 hours. I have a life, lots of work, and other games to play... I have the right to see the end of this game in less than 200 hours, without using extravagantly hard strategies. I already force myself to think hard all day long (electrical engineering and programming) so when I play, I want it easy. This is my right and I take it no matter what egosoft or the others think. And I feel good about it. In fact, the real problem with it for me is that I must use script to play my game rightfully.

[ouch]

yep it's a feature carried over from x2. it was designed to keep people from waisting away in seta for hours, sometimes weeks on end (real time)... however the minor inconvinience doesn't stop me from doing it

if you really care about your rank then protect it... besides you can get to x-treme by just by wiping out xenon sectors, it's not like it's hard to achieve if you really want it...

especially when you consider the fact that egosofts x-series games have always had poor combat AI. X3 is no exception to this, but at least they tried this time around... They still blindly fly strait at you with thier BIREs blazeing... right into your wall of GHEPT blasts...

[Bhruic]

I find it to be a very big problem for me too. It forces me to cheat to play the game the way I want to play it. For now, I don't play because I won't have the time for it until after december 20 but it is very strange that they FORCE PLAYERS TO FIGHT so that it is impossible to play a trading game.

How does it force you to fight? If you don't want to fight, don't. You won't have a combat rating anyway, so why would you care if it drops?

Bh

[martindemon]

I find it to be a very big problem for me too. It forces me to cheat to play the game the way I want to play it. For now, I don't play because I won't have the time for it until after december 20 but it is very strange that they FORCE PLAYERS TO FIGHT so that it is impossible to play a trading game.

How does it force you to fight? If you don't want to fight, don't. You won't have a combat rating anyway, so why would you care if it drops?

Bh

Important question: Does the trading rating also drop with time?
Even if the combat rating is the only one affected, I might like it to do a fighting mission every week or so, and I want my rank obtained from the missions to remain, just because I feel this is my right...

[pjknibbs]

I guess Egosoft's slogan for X3, TRADE, THINK, FIGHT...etc proved to be TO BIG for them to handle, cause you can't have traders, fighters...etc happy at the same time. X2 with all the patches was a lot more fun than X3 if you ask me.

I'm a bit confused here. This decrease of combat rank over time (and it happens whether you have SETA active or not--it's just a lot more noticeable in SETA because of the time acceleration) was exactly the same in X2. EXACTLY. So, if it's a game breaking problem in X3, why wasn't it so in X2?

[GaddyG]

if you've enough stations to make it worth while SETA'ing to make cash chances are they'll keep on boosting your trade rank, only combat will take a hit because you yourself have to do the work.
it's been a 'feature' since X2...
it was roughly an hour of idling that caused it to kick in while playing X2,
which is 6 minutes on SETA x 10...
plenty of time to do whatever you're supposed to be doing with SETA.
it's and engine time accelerator not a ruddy time machine...

[Apocholypse]

I don't even use seta and mine still goes down because I'm trading all the time. But somebody's gotta build stations??

[ouch]

yep it's a feature carried over from x2. it was designed to keep people from waisting away in seta for hours, sometimes weeks on end (real time)... however the minor inconvinience doesn't stop me from doing it

if you really care about your rank then protect it... besides you can get to x-treme by just by wiping out xenon sectors, it's not like it's hard to achieve if you really want it...

especially when you consider the fact that egosofts x-series games have always had poor combat AI. X3 is no exception to this, but at least they tried this time around... They still blindly fly strait at you with thier BIREs blazeing... right into your wall of GHEPT blasts...

grrrr: Ran into problems sending Mail. Response: 550 relay not permitted

[theKettle]

In X2, it was not the case that the combat ranking decreased if you only traded and avoided fighting - it was if the game was left for 30 mins (3 mins at 10xSETA) without any input (ie pressing a key or something, which would disengage SETA).
There was a fairly simple workaround: stick a weight on the j key. I've no idea whether this works in X3 or not as I currently have nothing to gain by leaving it on SETA.

[Allan F]

The deceased Manfred von Richthofen was a flying ace in his days. Now, in a war against a modern enemy, if he was given a modern plane, he wouldn't be able to start the engine!

Richthofen's strength was superb situation awareness, but in a modern plane, without years of training, he would not be allowed to polish the windscreen.

Pilots in the First World War didn't get a lot of training. Today, with the infinite more complex planes, it's much more of a team effort. A fighter rarely engage in combat without a AWACS-type controller in the background, calling the shots.

Manfred was a great pilot then, but his current achievements aren't that great.

If you destroyed a lot of pirates a couple of weeks ago, and haven't fired a shot since, your star will also begin to fade in the fastmoving X-universe. That's the way the game is programmed. If you don't like it, feel free to play something else. You're not forced to play this game. There's also a lot of things in this game that works different than I would prefer, like slower ships and less stations to trade with than X2, but that doesn't stop me from playing it.

[steel chicken]

just run a cheat script and get your rep back. I think its a dumb idea too, i prefer not being penalized if I choose a particular playing style.

[Fozzie the bear]

I'm getting a bit bored with people saying that there is a bug in the game.For example the player who started this thread when it is clearly intended to be part of the game. (that your ratings go down if you don't fight or trade regularly)

Players are getting so obsessed with X3's problems that anything that does not make sense to them or they are not sure about is a bug. Play the game for a while, read the manual and use your common sense as most bugs that this game has are really very obvious i.e no mobile mining.

rant over.