boarding related bugs in 3.0

[dmk]

1. very bad pathing especially in TO maze. (very slowly, small transport stucks, while player in zone, ship with player on board flies through maze asteroids),
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/431 ... 5A59AC1B8/
(two titurels after undock (after exchange) collided, so shields is gone-> sitting ducks without shield).
1.1 ordering other capship to attack will result in 15 minute waiting for him to find way to target, and there is no attack specific for boarding(heavy turrets, its shields/jumpdrive/engines, while staying away from other heavy turrets).

2.1 some engineers repairs hull 10 times faster than engines.
2.2 leaving zone when repairs occurs may result in immediately all defensive components repair (turrets and shield, including capital).

3. "ship is under attack"
3.1 message "ship is under attack" appears too late, for any M/S ship it means that ship is 100% dead (which makes small transport non usable).
3.2 for large ship it's not too late ONLY to give order escape from battle, BUT IT SHOULD BE AUTOMATIC for most ships/cases (all capitals in non fight mode (transport, waiting warships) in case if attacked by of capital ship(or criticall mass of small ships), all small ships in non fight mode in any case)
3.2* I think idle ships should avoid battle when see enemy ships on radar(i.e. don't even wait while enemy spotted they as target)
3.3 escape from battle command now do clear all trades, and that's probably wrong, but when ships returns to trade duty it should inform player
( all it was in x3 CLS MK1 )
3.4 no any information about who attacked the ship and how many attackers, (not even on map, i.e. ships radar is "not function")
3.5 I think in single player game some "cheating" may be better, so may be warn player as soon as any ship get's player ship as target, i.e. before actual shooting begins (actually enemy ship commands is anyway visible now for player in onscreen display).


4. balor lowest boarding resistance is 40, while titurel (5) and Sucellus (~25). i.e. capturing succellus is much easy than balor.

5. ship to ship transfer selects randomly which ship should move, even when it's means to order ship without working engines to move, and ship with fully repaired engines to wait. (leaving the zone could fix that)

6. ai's freighter turrets is constantly missing balor's firing same place, probably in bounding box corner,
I did see same with other ships (i.e. they constantly fires wrong place outside of target, even if target is not moving, funny that same bug is in x3 xrm)
(that's bug save me balor (it was not killed by stupid freighter with my boarding team inside), but it stops from using capital helping capturing other capital)

7. assassinate missions in 50% cases fails before you get to zone (because target is killed by station defences) in 90% cases target is under station defences attack so it is impossible to board and you'll get reduced payment for killing, mission chains abortion do this problem even more significant(i.e. even if you do capture/kill first target second could be killed before you get there and you'll fail all chain).


8. assassinate's target capital ship, which is clearly enemy to you don't start shooting on skunk while player don't shoot them.
9.1 same way with enemy factions (reivers for example)
titurel has clearly patrol:attack skunk command (which in visible though interface) but did not shoot, while I did not shoot on him.

10. Shipyards:
10.1 ship is fully repaired even if you ask to repair it only by 2%.
10.2. damaged ship repair/rearm requires 3 time reenter shipyard dock,
that part of interface should be fixed, because now it's insane (player need to issue all 3 commands ONLY after previous one is completed (and ship with damaged jumpdrive/engines aborts moving, and not wait for repairs))
i.e. why it's not done same way as building (with drone/missile rearming)?
10.3. shipyard should not build npc ships if no resources (for that ship), because this force player to get resources for npc ships just to rearm/small repair his ships.
(more widely I think that in single player game player's ship should always has advantage in equal situation with npc ships (same applies to gate/dock queues), or it's just will contrast any small defects, because player will wait and watch what's happening.)
10.4. player should be able to send his shipS! for rearm/repair, and this should not stuck(i.e. several XL ships for repair/rearm), or no resources reason should be reported explicitly.
10.5 it was good in x3 that you could explicitly set which equipment(mostly missiles, but in case of x-rebirth drones too) your ship should buy, so if just add this interface page to x-rebirth, and command for captain go to rearm/repair ... may be in x-rebirth should be screen for repair rearm(percentage + equipment) and 1 order for captain go repair/rearm (with choosing only shipyards)

11 M to L freighter exchange results in dropping ware into space, when L has no drones (NO error is reported).


12. useless small ships for player:
12.1 small freighters is useless for player (because without escort they dies too quickly and with escort cost more than cheap L freighters (without weapons), L freighter may escape faster using booster or jumpdrive)
12.2 there should be xl ships which could carry M freighters(and optionally S/M fighters)
12.3 S/M ships should be docked inside station/or xl ship(s) while they not needed. (parking place may cost something in case of npc station for player ships)
12.4 small fighters should optionally retreat to XL carrier when shield is significantly weakened (to 50%?), XL carrier should be able to repair (partially?) hull damage.

i.e. why Arawn can't dock S/M ships?
( http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=4284336 )

13. shield which protects capital shield generator should be 3 or 4 times weaker, while health points of capital shield generator should be 3 or 5 times more.

14. needed mobile repair ship, which could help engineer repair significantly damaged capship (without hangar/damaged hangar).

again what's really boring:
now to capture ship you need
funpart: 1. kill jumpdrive, engines, all turrets and drones/hangar (there is no emp like weapon(ion mines from x3 probably better than nothing) which influence on boarding resistance, so you can't save them)
(5-10 min)
boring part:
2. 10 minutes kills shield which protects capital shield generator.
3. lower hull so boarding resistance is acceptable, kill remaining parts
4. wait for your boarding team capture ship (3 min), there is already nothing to kill.
5. place engineer, captain and optionally defence officer.
6. order other ship to transfer jump fuel. (reorder/leave zone if wrong ship is waiting/moving)
7. babysit your new ship 30 min for engines/jump drive repair (or it could possible be killed by raiders, your other transport could help though)
8. order 3 times to dock and repair/drone/missile rearm with shipyard.
(10 min each with crazy pathing)

==> >HOUR of waiting or pressing "fire" on non moving non firing target.


i.e. I think that x3 boarding is less boring than x-rebirth boarding,
at very least there you could mostly save ship weapons and order him to jump to dock to shipyard and forget about him, ordering other heavy ship to escort him (actually last one is not needed because you could jump to safe sector).

that's only boarding related bugs/bad designs, there are enough other bugs.
i.e. game is STILL beta, though is has MUCH MUCH less bugs than year ago.
still very bad interface for commanding large space battle (i.e. actually no interface at all, unix command line would be better replacement).
P.S. it's pity that captain does not understand "stop here" directly,
i.e. if you say move to other zone with boosters, and then decided to jump to other sector, then (reported bug) ship will jump with boosters enabled,
and will not stop even if you will directly order that (you could get very far that way).

[Hardcard]

If I were you, I'd ask Egosoft for payment...since you are doing their job, basically.

Amazing bug report, you clearly made a huge effort in order to put this together.

Let's hope someone at Egosoft will use some of this info to improve and fix the remaining bugs of the game.