player reputation - RYK, UA, CAR (and to a lessor extent the rest)

[donzi]

The vanilla campaign game does pretty well making it clear who is who, but...

TL;DR = how to approach Teladi Outpost DLC?


XR base game

SS, REI, HV, XEN = pirates, just let rep sink to -30 with them, no hope of meaninful + rep
PMC = lore evil but major faction with can be useful with + rep
HOA = basically good but remain at odds with PMC via lore

Corp factions in AL and OL may have some lore based internal rivals which show in hacking missions.

Lore based rivals can be sided with or not as player chooses but trade agents remain for any - rep factions to clutter trade lists.

There is no automatic inverse rep movement based on player actions with lore based rivals (or any other factions). EG: + rep with HOA doesn't auto lower PMC

RYK = maelstrom patrols and NPC source with + rep, otherwise insignificant and of no trade value nor offer discounts based on rep (on their or your MA.BR stations which they infest as 'service personnel' / NPC population).


Teladi Outpost DLC

TU = typical teladi basically, positive rep should be worth having, but the teladi factions have unusual relationships.

CAR = basically pirates
UA = basically pirates yet have a significant station that produces weed and booze

Adding this DLC creates sort of a confusing climate in FO since both pirate factions start at neutral and neither are enemy of UA despite the fact that both CAR and UA slaughter UA ships, lift the cargo then sell it to UA.

UA and CAR (neutral and higher rep) will not attack FIGHT ships but will attack all TRADE and MINE ships that are not their own.

Further, it seems UA and CAR will not outright be enemies. They may never become permanent enemy of one another for all I know.

Note, that this main hurdle on trade in/through FO seems to be limited by UA/CAR capitol FIGHT ships only despite neutral/positive player rep. Their stations and fighters remain as expected with the rep.

Never having played this DLC much, I raised rep to 10 or more with both CAR and UA and figured that I'd just go along with the UA insanity -- assuming the + rep with UA and CAR would keep them from attacking my ships.

10+ rep didn't stop attacks on my trade ships (by design?) so apparantly it boils down to the player response.

A few options I've considered so far:

A) accept ship losses, nurse rep with CAR & UA for trade if desired -- grind and lost cash
B) supress both UA and CAR in order to minimize trade/mine ship losses
C) manually take control of trade ship routes and avoid trade in FO with anything but Pheonix
D) kill rep with OL and/or AL factions to eliminate the automatic routes through FO
E) forget universe wide trading, factor OUT universe trader (scaldis) value in present economy and let FO stagnate

(unknown if possible)

F) coax UA and CAR to be enemy with one another so their pheonix and condor spend some time at least reducing the threat
G) grind rep up more with UA and CAR if it'll eventually stop their attacks on the player trade/mine ship


Universe traders drop like flies in FO to the CAR and UA using the FO 'shortcut' -- more irritating than the wavy haze jump beacon to gate route.

This DLC (and my usual diplomatic/friend to all game play) may be the catylist that breaks my vanilla game play session. (adding mods)

[Simoom]

I think the idea was that Teladis are "profit-minded" so their main faction (TU) turns a blind eye on piracy. And being profit-minded, the UA and CAR factions only attack freighters because they want the loot (regardless of their relationship with the owner faction of those freighters), and don't bother with military ships.

I get the concept but I don't think the implementation was... very good, or convincing, hence I understand your confusion and frustration (I was a bit weirded out too, watching all the UA and CAR ships just blowing up everything in sight while TU sits idly).

Having said all that... I think the idea behind Teladi Outpost was that FO is meant to be a dangerous system for players to conduct business in, and if you really want to do so, you either have to be well-prepared for an all-out war with UA/CAR, or... do the sneaky approach (using Marauder Phoenixes as your trade ships).

Marauder Phoenixes count as combat vessels, but they have a universal storage (making them unique in this regard). Teladi pirate factions will NOT touch them, so if you use these ships to do your trade in FO, you will be safe (while maintaining friendly relations with all Teladi factions).

If you want to keep friendly relations with Teladi pirates, you can spawn Marauder Phoenixes through kill missions, and board those.

As for me... I just hack my save game and turn TU hostile against UA and CAR and watch them burn. (My mod comes with a convenient toggle-switch to do exactly that)

[donzi]

The Teladi have poor accounting I'd say. It can't be more profitable replacing all those ships and repairing Overwatch.

I can only imagine how ate up the trade offers has become with buy/sell orders dropping in and out of existance due to the situation in that zone.

Overwatch is a great station, but.. This branch of teladi has apparently lost their mind and can't be left to breed more. I may try and burn all of the sector.

The CAR and UA don't apparently rely on Overwatch for their ships though.. and if TU doesn't either then I dunno. Might just be like dealing with xenon.

Not quite clear if you mean only captured marauder pheonix are left alone. Are they unique somehow?

My understanding is the other 'Marauder', 'Warden', etc ships are generic ships. Figured these pheonix were also.

[Simoom]

Ships have a inherent "Specialty" value in their asset file. You can see this when you examine their encyclopedia entry ("Fight", "Trade", "Mine", "Build").

Teladi pirates run a special "plunder" aiscript, which makes them target ships tagged with the "Trade" specialty (regardless of your relationship with the pirate factions. You could be +30 with them and they will still try to shoot at your freighters).

The Marauder Phoenix is a special variant of the Phoenix (examine their stats, they are different from the ones you can buy from the TU Overwatch) that's flown by the Teladi pirates and also spawned as the boss for some Teladi kill missions. They are much faster than the standard Phoenix (95m/s, making them one of the fastest capships), and comes with an universal cargo hold. This allows them to trade - but because it's a combat vessel with "Fight" specialty, the Teladi pirates will leave them alone (their aiscript dictate them to). This means if you want to play a pacifist and be friends with everyone, you can simply trade in FO using Marauder Phoenixes; no need to fight the Teladi pirates.

In general I avoid fighting "wars" with NPC factions if possible, simply because they can keep spawning ships out of thin air and it's just annoying (if not attrition, then the constant combat event message spam is enough to drive me crazy). This is why my preferred solution to decreasing pirate activity is to simply set TU to be hostile against UA/CAR (it makes sense anyway, TU should enforce some level of order in their own damn system).

And FYI, all NPC patrol fleets are spawned out of thin air, not built at shipyards (ships built at shipyards are simply eyecandies/economy sinks, and are issued a "move.die" command so they fly somewhere out of your sight and self-destruct). So yeah, the whole simulated economy thing is just that - simulated. I would prefer a much more realistic ship construction/job assignment/attrition system, but hey... this is what we got for now. May be next X will be better in this regard.

[donzi]

Thanks much for the detailed explanation.

Come to think of it, I 'compared' with the encyclopedia. ..and although I did look directly at the ship details on the marauder variation, failed by concluding with an assumption.

Since adding in the HoL DLC to my mix I'll probably explore for a while and lay all trade to rest and let FO stew.

I may take your approach and just get TU to upkeep their own yard and help provide me with some crippled mauders to board more easily.

[Simoom]

Give my mod a quick try - it has a tool specifically for toggling hostility settings between TU and the pirate factions (also HOA and PMC, if you want to change that). Don't have to use any of the other features if you don't want to.

[donzi]

Simoom's Lantern looks great when I read the info thread about it.

I will give it a go perhaps this weekend.

The time spent -might- be limited as I want to fill out a vanilla only saved game series (still have some HoL stuff to do) so time spent using any mod will dictate that I rewind eventually to wrap up the vanilla save series I want to archive.

Once that is out of the way, testing mods and perhaps spinning one or two of my own would be nice.

I just know that reality is soon to creep in again for me. My gaming binge is about some 4 months now, got to shave and buy some new clothes soon.

[johnhirix]

not sure it is just me or boarding is really difficult with 4.0 version, I used 50 marines with all 5 star marine officer, destroyed every bit of shields, turrets, drone bay, radar, jump drive, engines and constantly keeping the hull at 1% Scanned the ship and find the boarding resistence is only 26 or something with nothing else left (i tried boarding a Sanahar). Fails every time. There's no mini game during boarding because I already took out all parts of the ship... But then every 10 seconds system shows a batch of marines killed until all dead.

Now I resort to Lyramekron for doing trade runs in the FO, the pirates are no match for it, 2 Marauder phoenix get shredded without even being able to damage my ship hull, also the cargo bay is 5 times bigger than the Marauder phoenix.

[Alan Phipps]

@ johnhirix: Are you sure you posted in the right thread?

[johnhirix]

@Alan, well a bit off the topic I think, I'm referring to Simoom's suggestion on boarding Marauder Phoenix and using them for trading in FO, if you think it should be removed, feel free, no worries.