[X3:TC] Mission Spawned Capital Boarding *solved*

[Sinxar]

I've been collecting Carracks from defend station missions. Boarding itself isnt the problem. Its the loot. When reloading from the core hack save the loot always consist of some combo of 15 CIGs, Banshee Missiles, 1GJ shields, a jumpdrive, random upgrades or usually just empty.

I reloaded a save today for over an hour and not a single IBL spawned on it. Unsurprisingly I later capped two natural spawned ones in a pirate sector and they yielded the 8x IBLs and various other loot within 5 reloads. Got another brigantine too and it had 26 IBL onboard on the 3rd reload.

So whats the deal with that? Do mission capitals use a different loot table or what? I've been doing a little bit of searching but yielded no results that is even remotely close to what im experiencing.

[46_n_2]

i have gotten ibl's from capped mission spawned ships before... its prolly just crap rng luck...

also they will only drop if they were unequipped when boarding op succeeds

[Sinxar]

also they will only drop if they were unequipped when boarding op succeeds

Tell that to my pile of IBLs lol. Never heard of that. its always been randomized when you hack the core for me.

[Triaxx2]

Agreed it's false. I've come away with more than 20 IBL's and the next with a few PAC's, without concern for whether they were equipped or in the hold.

[Coreblimey]

I think 46_n_2 is getting mixed up with destroying and boarding. A destroyed ship will only drop those weapons that are in it's cargo bay.
A boarded ship will normally keep all equipped weapons & shields as well as those in it's cargo bay.

[Sinxar]

Alright I got a save for people to try out

This is X3:Terran Conflict - For the love of God back up your saves before testing.

(link removed) - thanks anyway folks.

Needs Bonus Pack installed.

All you need to do is press "J" its on the hacking core part. This carrack was spawned from a defend station mission. If you can get it to spawn IBLs let me know because im almost 100% sure its not my imagination.

[Sinxar]

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[Alan Phipps]

The difficulty factor and quantity of a particular ware remaining as boarding loot is probably pre-calculated or fixed at the time a ship is first spawned or maybe when first boarded. Each time you reload at the hack you generate a new RNG test against that same ware difficulty which means you might or might not get the fixed predetermined number of that ware left but always tested randomly against the same difficulty level each time. Each ware type is tested separately against its own difficulty.

If the difficulty is set such that you are strongly unlikely to get the fixed number of IBLs, or a particular shield type, or a jumpdrive, etc then that difficulty target does not change with reloading the hack.

Think of it as rerolling four six-sided dice each time, but the target to beat may be stuck at 24 for each roll. On most other boardings you hope the target to beat may be say less than 20.

This is not the same as loot left after a ship is destroyed as that can only come from stuff left in cargo at the point of destruction and never from stuff installed. Player fight rank seems to play a part in the destroyed ship dropped tech loot formula too as in early game it seems to be far more missiles than weapons.

[Sinxar]

While that makes sense it doesn't explain why mission spawned carracks always spawn the same thing and naturally spawned ones do not.

I've been capping more to collect data on this and every time it always spawns the same loot. However my current data set only consist of 18 carracks and only about 30 reloads each. Compared to naturally spawned ones I only have 5 captures to go on with only about 10 reloads each (because the produced the IBLs i need).

as in the OP, it is always a combo of CIGs, 1GJ shields, Banshee Missiles and 2 IPGs.

always 15 CIGs
always 2 IPGs
variable banshees 7 or 9
the shields come as 1 or both.

What makes the mission spawned ones impossible to get the IBL dice roll? Why does mission spawned carracks spawn different loot than natural spawned ones?

Was capping in missions nerfed? I can see why it would be if it was. I cannot find any patch notes that suggest it was but I also cannot find a good change log from 1.0 -> current.

[Nanook]

...
What makes the mission spawned ones impossible to get the IBL dice roll? Why does mission spawned carracks spawn different loot than natural spawned ones?...

So what you're saying is that the mission spawned Carracks do not have IBL's onboard at all? If that's the case, then it's due to the way they programmed the equipment tables for those missions. At a guess, I'd say it's to allow the player a chance to destroy the attacking Carracks before they destroy the station. A Carrack with a loadout of IBL's will make very short work of a station, leaving the player very little time to respond and save the station. Even a non-IBL equipped Carrack can do serious damage to a station in a short amount of time.

And if that's the case, you'll never get IBL's to spawn. Certainly they won't spawn after the ship is created and during the boarding process. Once the ship is spawned for a mission, the loot table is fixed and won't change no matter how many times you reload during the boarding process.

[Sinxar]

Interesting observation. I never actually scanned the ships before boarding them. I always just destroy them with missiles before they get in range or start boarding right away.

So, I just went and scanned 3 of them spawned in different protect station missions and sure enough, they have the 15 CIGs equiped instead of the 8x IBLs.

Guess that solves it then. That was a colossal waste of time and effort on my part. Should have stuck to capping brigantines.

ed: Just as an experiment I started capping regular naturally spawned ships and made sure to scan them beforehand. When reloading the core hack they spawn weapons that were not equiped or in the hold when the boarding started. Just capped that Yaki M2 and it was loaded with ion disruptors... it had none when it was scanned before I started.

[Alan Phipps]

I did say it was different to destroyed ship dropped loot which has to be in the cargobay.

Each ship has a range of equipments with which it is permitted to be spawned as given in the job scripts. Some ships are limited to smaller weapons for gameplay reasons rather then ship capacity reasons. They will only retain from whatever is in the range permitted when boarded even if some wares in that range were not actually there on spawning. I think that ship extensions/softwares have to be there to remain though, eg no jumpdrive installed = no jumpdrive ever left on boarding.

[Sinxar]

Each ship has a range of equipments with which it is permitted to be spawned as given in the job scripts....

...They will only retain from whatever is in the range permitted when boarded even if some wares in that range were not actually there on spawning.

Hopefully if people search for why IBLs don't spawn on Carracks in station protect missions they will find this.

Thanks for the good explanation.

[Nanook]

...They will only retain from whatever is in the range permitted when boarded even if some wares in that range were not actually there on spawning...

Are you saying that weapons or shields, for example, can appear in a ship once it's boarded, even though scans did not reveal it in that ship prior to boarding? I have never, ever, had a piece of gear 'spawn' on a ship as I captured it. If it wasn't in the original loadout of that ship, it did not appear in the ship once captured. Whatever I captured with the ship was a subset of what spawned with the ship originally.

[Sinxar]

Yep it happened a little bit ago to me.

ed: Just as an experiment I started capping regular naturally spawned ships and made sure to scan them beforehand. When reloading the core hack they spawn weapons that were not equiped or in the hold when the boarding started. Just capped that Yaki M2 and it was loaded with ion disruptors... it had none when it was scanned before I started.

[Nanook]

If that's the case, it must be relatively new. I haven't boarded a ship at least since the last patch. And it seems to be really a lame way to do things. Talk about spoiling the immersion. You go and scan ships to find something worthwhile to board because it has good gear on board, only to realize there's no point. The game gives you something out of empty space just for the helluv it. Dumb design, IMO.

[Sinxar]

But hey man I could be mistaken or my game could be screwed up. I mean its not like I took screenshots of it before and after.

Found another source of IBLs though sometimes the carracks that spawn in the kill missions have IBLs on them.

There is at least 2 types here. One with IBLs and is fitted like a standard naturally spawned one. One with the 15 CIGs that is fitted exactly like the type that show up in station protect missions. Capturing and reloading on both of them shows the CIG version only spawns CIGs and the IBL one has them as loot as I would expect.

I was wondering if you can board the target ship instead of destroy it and turns out you can and still get paid.

[Alan Phipps]

With some further thought on this I think Nanook is correct. I was probably thinking more of boarding loot in a total mod where some weapons share common weapon slots in the way the MDS/TB/RL do in vanilla and so you can occasionally get some surprises in what is found after boarding.

In vanilla I agree it is probably just selections from the quantity by type of what is onboard and so the IonDs you found were probably already there but overlooked as unimportant on the prior scan. Sorry for the mislead (one of the downsides of playing several campaign types in parallel).