fergrim420 wrote: ↑Fri, 24. Apr 20, 23:12
Am I correct in understanding that via this harass command, you are essentially guaranteed success in causing a pilot to abandon their ship? Except if they manage to kill you, I guess
People keep saying things like this, let me explain it in detail so that I can refer everyone to this post.
First, in order to understand what this mod changes, you need to know how bailing work in vanilla X4, which is not trivial, since it is not documented anywhere nor properly explained in any tutorial, let me properly explain it:
Vanilla
For S/M ships: You are guaranteed to succeed in causing a pilot to abandon their ship.
Yes, you read it right, you can already force absolutely any pilot in any (Not Xenon nor Kha'ak) S/M sized ship to bail in the base game, you do NOT need this mod to achieve that.
The (Simplified) rules are as follow:
- The shields need to be under 20%
- The hull needs to be under 75%
- Once every 30 seconds, you can either shoot or ask for "Surrender!"
- If you shoot (Even if you only hit shields) there is some chance (Inversely proportional to pilot morale) for 1 to 3 crew members to bail.
- If you ask for "Surrender!" there is some chance (Inversely proportional to pilot morale) for ALL crew members to bail.
- You can repeat step 3 an INFINITE amount of times (If you have an infinite amount of patience) until you get the ship
- Once everyone bails, as far as you do NOT destroy the ship or de scape pod in the process, no one will care (No reputation impact) and you can claim it, either by hand (Spacewalk + repair data leak) or using marines (Right click + claim), but using marines will seriously damage your ship.
For L/XL ships: You are guaranteed to reduce their crew to 1 to 3 members, then you can board them with anything.
Yes, you read it right again, you can already nullify the crew of absolutely any L/XL sized ship to between 1 to 3 crew members so that you can board it with anything, the rules are the same as for S/M sized ships, but "Surrender!" option does NOT work.
So, as far as you have several hours of spare time to shot it every 30 secs (Even if it only hit shields), you are guaranteed to succeed.
With "Better piracy"
Changes to vanilla bailing mechanics
- Changed "Bail chance" calculation and made it parametrizable
- Some strange parameters (Such as maxHull vs maxHull) were removed.
- Base chance is configurable via "Combat base bail chance" config option
- Forcing a pilot to bail will make you lose reputation with the pilot's faction (Configurable via "Combat reputation hit")
- Added some more parametrizations ("Combat bailing pilots damage hull" and "Combat bailing pilots destroy components") to tweak vanilla behavior
- Disabled "Surrender!", it was too OP (It will empty a full ship, even if it had 250 crew members onboard), replaced with "Harass" command
- Using marines to claim a ship will no longer cause extra damage to the ship
New harass command
The new "Harass" command is meant to be a more reasonable implementation of the Vanilla absolutely random, un-explained, un-documented and un-guided bailing, think on it as the "Board" (Mission guidance, step by step approach, auto-explicative) for "Bailing", it will not do anything that you can't already do in vanilla, and in some points, is far weaker than the vanilla approach (But much less random and less mystical).
- You need to start a "Harass" operation.
- The shields need to be under 20%, as in vanilla.
- This value is configurable.
- A mission objective will be added to explain it to you, and a progress bar will display your progress
- The hull needs to be under 75%/50%25%, depending on the number of "Harassment" attempts.
- Weaker than Vanilla, you can no longer acquire every single ship with 75% of the hull.
- All these values are configurable
- A mission objective will be added to explain it to you, and a progress bar will display your progress
- You need to be under 3km (S/M ships) or 6km (L/XL ships) of the target.
- Weaker than Vanilla, you need to be on weapons range, further risking your own life.
- All these values are configurable
- A mission objective will be added to explain it to you.
- If all the above points are checked, every 10 seconds you will "Threat" the target.
- For every "Threat", there is a chance for 1 to 1/5 of the current ship crew to bail, inversely proportional to pilot morale, successive "Threats" will increase the chance
- Versus L/XL ships, the operation will stop when there is only between 25% to 50% of the max crew left, proportional to pilot morale. (Remember that in vanilla you stip almost all the crew out)
- All the values are configurable
- Step 5 will be repeated every 10 seconds until
- Any of the prior steps becomes false (Shield regenerates, new hull threshold, you are too far away, etc.), then you roll back to that step and the operation continues.
- The ship is killed, the operation ends (Obviously)
- Everyone bails, you lose reputation with the pilot's faction and are guided to claim the ship, then the operation ends.
- You can't force anyone else to bail (L/XL ships with between 25% to 50% of the crew left), you are guided to board (Vanilla boarding operation) the ship, then the operation ends.
- All the values are configurable
TL;DR
As you can see, there are some differences, but the main one is that YOU are now in control of what's happening and that you have real FEEDBACK of what's going on.
Piracy is nor longer something mystical, random, and unexplained, but a clear process, with clear steps, clear goals, and clear rewards.
I hope that this helps to clear out all the doubts about "Better piracy".