Player Fleet helping Faction Fleet - Still impossible

[phrozen1]

I wonder why 3 years after release it`s still impossible to
let a player-fleet help a faction-ship/fleet.
You will be their enemy in seconds because of friendly fire.
Thats so not fun!
Idk how often i tried and rage-quitted because of this.

Egosoft please, do something...

[Lord Dakier]

It does seem like a fairly simple set of rules would fix this.

PlayerAI ships do not incur rep loss for allied damage caused, unless specifically commanded to attack.
PlayerAI ships do not cause friendly fire damage.

[Scoob]

I agree, this is needed, well, it's essential for combined fleet battles.

Let's face it, it's AI-controlled turrets that are the problem here, so, if a Turret from a player ship accidentally hits an allied ship it should be ignored. This *cannot be exploited* by the player as turrets cannot be manually controlled. Turrets cannot be forced to fire on a target that isn't already an enemy. Of course, if the player themselves is blazing away with fixed weapons then penalties should apply. With turrets though, no.

So many times a FUN fleet battle with a combined Player & Faction fleet holding off a mutual enemy has turned into a reload & avoid that situation due to this problem.

I really hope the game knows where a bullet came from, if it's from a turret, then ignore any penalties. When I think how much fire MY ship often take from allies, which they then ignore, it'd be nice if our allies did the same.

[Falcrack]

A big Plus One. This is something I hope Egosoft really does intend to fix.

[LameFox]

I really hope the game knows where a bullet came from, if it's from a turret, then ignore any penalties. When I think how much fire MY ship often take from allies, which they then ignore, it'd be nice if our allies did the same.

I could be wrong but from memory I think each gun has its own projectile that determines speed, lifetime, damage, etc. and since turrets in X4 are all weaker than the gun-equivalent, I assume none are shared.

[Ragnos28]

I wonder why 3 years after release it`s still impossible to
let a player-fleet help a faction-ship/fleet.
You will be their enemy in seconds because of friendly fire.
Thats so not fun!
Idk how often i tried and rage-quitted because of this.

Egosoft please, do something...

You are right Even more so when fighters are involved But i'm guessing that is dificult to implement something in that regard, w/o the players abusing it. Let's say you capture an Asgard, you "apologise" (the option we had in X3 TC) to all escorts and all is good in the world Of course, I'm not really happy that the allied AI ships can blow up mine and going hi hi, is your fault cuz you were in my way, but as soon as one of my fighters has a random shot on an AI ship, is ww3

[Lord Dakier]

Let's say you capture an Asgard, you "apologise" (the option we had in X3 TC) to all escorts and all is good in the world Of course, I'm not really happy that the allied AI ships can blow up mine and going hi hi, is your fault cuz you were in my way, but as soon as one of my fighters has a random shot on an AI ship, is ww3

You surely just opened fire at said Asgard as the player using manual guns, AI targeting turrets or commanded your AI ships to, as I said previously, these would invalidate the 'accidental friendly fire' mechanic. The only real issue that would remain is use of heavy weapon as the player themselves, but it would make it far less common at least.

[Shuulo]

There is a mod that fixes this

[phrozen1]

There is a mod that fixes this

Oh, i haven't seen this mod yet. Very nice. The description sounds perfect.
Will have a try but at the moment i play a vanilla game.

Nevertheless this should be fixed in the base-game, imo.
It just feels incomplete.

[Imperial Good]

Ideally the solution would be that ships try better to avoid friendly fire. At enough reputation instead of turning hostile, the accidental attacker should be forced to take action to avoid friendly fire such as forcing all their turrets to stop shooting in the direction of the accidental victim for a period of time and ordering them to space out. This would be a lot less abuseable as any abusable layout would be disrupted for an extended period.

Another suggestion is to have "reparations". If you are friendly enough with a faction they avoid going hostile for an extended period of time while fighting a mutual enemy as long as you settle the reparation debt in a timely manner. Friendly fire has some nominal reparation cost (credits based on damage dealt), while friendly kills have a large reparation cost which is some >>1 multiple of the cost of the ship destroyed. Station modules destroyed could have an even larger penalty, and exclude any that count as administrator modules (which cause instant hostility when destroyed, like currently). Failure to settle the debt results in a massive penalty lost, based on the remainder of the bill. This would allow mixed fleet fights to happen without worry about friendly fire as long as the player can afford it. It does open up some options for abuse, but those still have a large cost associated with them since the player still is punished for the kill either in the form of reputation or financially.

You will be their enemy in seconds because of friendly fire.

Only in high attention levels. Friendly fire does not happen in low attention levels so you can tag along with their fleet in map view all you like.

It does seem like a fairly simple set of rules would fix this.

Developers responded to these long ago by pointing out that they can potentially be exploited. By placing your ships purposely in a way that they can cause friendly fire with the intent to kill the friendly target rather than assist it.

An example would be ordering an Asgard to kill a criminal mass traffic. It is very likely that given enough time it will destroy many modules of the associated station with its XL battery.

This *cannot be exploited* by the player as turrets cannot be manually controlled. Turrets cannot be forced to fire on a target that isn't already an enemy.

However they can be told to fire on an enemy in such a place that it will cause friendly fire, with the intent of causing friendly fire.

[Nanook]

I personally think Egosoft should be less worried about how players might abuse a mechanic in a single player game. If a player wants to 'abuse' a game mechanic, it's their game to abuse. I think Egosoft should be more concerned with making it fun for the vast majority of non-abusing players. The friendly fire issues when helping an NPC faction in the game are much more serious than any possible exploit some players may take advantage of, IMO. But that's just me.

[Y-llian]

There has indeed been much discussion on this topic and on balance, I agree with Nanook. While we all appreciate the devs attention and diligence to avoid exploits - I do feel in this instance, the balance is overly cautious and to the extent hampers gameplay possibilities.

[Manawydn]

Working with what we can

-Protect Ship, Protect Station, and Protect Area orders are pretty much my go-to's for fleet combat. Outside of attack all in range single-fire commands.

A priority-based template system would be the solution for our problems. It would be so because it would give us the book with which to write the rules.

[grapedog]

Yeah, if there are too many AI ships around me, I'll leave what I'm doing and teleport away, which really sucks.

So I build a defense station at a Xenon gate, the AI factions bless their hearts, use my station as a rally point for their forces. Which I love the mechanic and how it works... but I feel like I can't be there for any big battles, because inevitably my defense station, or one of my defending ships, will hit the AI... and now I have an entire friendly fleet who is aggro to my ships and my defense station, which then opens up on them.... it's crappy that I can't take place in big battle with friends against the enemy.

[LameFox]

I do feel like this is one of those cases where preventing a potential exploit should be outweighed by letting the game be fun. I mean you can kill most things in this game without a serious reputation hit anyway, if you're careful not to destroy surface equipment. To me that is more exploitative than getting your turrets to fire at something on the far side of an object, yet they made it that way on purpose for some reason.

[Scoob]

I personally think Egosoft should be less worried about how players might abuse a mechanic in a single player game. If a player wants to 'abuse' a game mechanic, it's their game to abuse. I think Egosoft should be more concerned with making it fun for the vast majority of non-abusing players. The friendly fire issues when helping an NPC faction in the game are much more serious than any possible exploit some players may take advantage of, IMO. But that's just me.

I agree. It' a single player game. This issue reduces the fun. Sure, it could perhaps be abused by careful ship positioning as Imperial Good says, but that's a bit of an edge case vs. how most people play I suspect.

[Lord Dakier]

I personally think Egosoft should be less worried about how players might abuse a mechanic in a single player game. If a player wants to 'abuse' a game mechanic, it's their game to abuse. I think Egosoft should be more concerned with making it fun for the vast majority of non-abusing players. The friendly fire issues when helping an NPC faction in the game are much more serious than any possible exploit some players may take advantage of, IMO. But that's just me.

This x100.

We're in a singleplayer game. if it's such a big deal then make an option that enables this feature but turns the game modified. I'm really unsure how you can call this out as exploiting, but not look at how broken some Terran and Split ships are compared to non-DLC ships.

[phrozen1]

I think this part of the gamplay is a core-aspect of X4.
The player is encouraged to build fleets and help factions several times.
Not fixing this issue just doesn't seem right.
And blaming it on possible exploits is not a valid excuse in my book.

No solution is not a solution.

[Eyeklops]

Have to agree with the general sentiment here. Being IS and not have a friendly faction get butthurt because my flak turrets eviscerated their fighters would be nice. I support the option to enable "consequence free" AI friendly fire.

[Ragnos28]

What you want is an option to disable the "agrro" mechanic and the reputation mechanic.

Case in point, the split have taken the sector Eleventh Hour from the argon. I don't like that, want to help my argon bros. I'm at +28 rep with the split and +30 with the argon. I bring my fleet in Eleventh Hour, some destroyers on defend, some fighters on intercept. Personally, I don't fire a single shot. The split have about 12 Rattlesnakes, 50 fighters, 2 Monitors, 1 Raptor etc. I only give an order to the destroyers to atack 1 Rattlesnake in the middle of a group. That cascade aggro the entire split fleet...but, I only have given orders to atack a single ship...after that is AI vs AI, my destroyers engage all the other ships automatically, the fighters on intercept also engage S/M ships automatically. After that, because I'm not satisfied with the performance of my argon allies, I order my destroyers to atack a single Behemoth, the same scenario as with the split, my fleet destroy all argon ships as well.

So, in this scenario, my fleet will destroy 12 Rattlesnakes, 50 fighters, 2 Monitors, 1 Raptor + all the Argon ships in the sector and I will not lose a single reputation point? Neat