[FEEDBACK] Flee (7.00 Beta)

[Anomie]

What I often noticed is "flee and drop laser tower". The pirates often lose interest in the trader, although they are 5 m away. is that intentional?

[Anomie]

This is a problem that has existed since I started using x4 a few years ago. If you cancel the flee command, the ship immediately gets the flee command again. Unfortunately the whole thing is very annoying, especially when it comes to ships that are directly in front of a station, the ships have a habit of fleeing to the station. A few meters back and hold your position are usually enough to be out of danger. Sure, you can override the flee command with hold position or respond to the attack. “Take a step back” is missing here. Although it's probably too late at this point anyway.

This is a different Topic but,
It would probably be nice to be able to tell the ship during an attack to stay where it is. This is currently only possible by simply aborting all commands and letting the turrets fire. But that's a rather poor solution.

[Mr.Killer]

Maybe the best move would be if a ship of any kind is being harrassed by pirates, when close to escapeways like the protection from a station, to dock there, or take the fast route through a gate, but often I see ships on route through a gate, stop, turn around and fly travel speed away where no protection is at all.
Same goes when it is darn close to a station, simplest move would be, seek protection from station.

Maybe local security wants to kick in and protect to an extend towards the suppliers.

Don't know if this is already being asked, or told, but I hope it gives a better look into this 'flee' problem.

[kennet0508]

V: 7.00 Beta (528865)

Sorry if reposting but:
Im having some weird issues most likely related to the new xenon captains and the Flee order
When piloting a xenon ship manually (havent verified if this happens on other ships yet as i tried a new start)
Once the damage values for my Xenon B trigger the requisites for the xenon captain to "Flee" the order ends up in the behaviour tab even if im piloting.

This by itself is not a problem but, that for some reason makes it impossible to use travel mode: when travel mode is engaged, it will activate, be on for less than a second only to deactivate.
Workaround seems to be reseating myself in the cockpit or deleting the flee command from behaviour. this resolves the issue until the values alloted triggers flee again.

Ive had this happen in almost any battle where i take hull damage on a Xenon B

[CBJ]

Sorry if reposting but:

Reposting is not a problem. Not providing a savegame is though. We can't investigate what's happening, and more importantly why, in your specific case without one.

[kennet0508]

Ill do a little more testing to see if its replicable over a save or if a save load when it happens resets the behaviour, ill get back to you, im guessing the most ideal situation would be to provide a savefile when its "ongoing"

[CBJ]

Yes please. If you have one from just before, with steps to reproduce it from there, then that's also helpful as it allows us to see how the situation starts.

[Lazybun]

I have an ongoing OOS fight in Family Zin

Participants:
Xenon support blob
One fighter fleet
My separate modded Dragon

I tasked Dragon to take out Xenon Ms while fighters do their job
After completing task Dragon started drifting away from fighters, eventually getting surrounded by xenon fighter blob.
Tasked it to flee, manually
With flee [mode 1] Dragon tried to run away from closest ship sideways against the fighter mass
At this point i've set fighter fleet to protect Dragon

Fiddled with flee, switched to [mode 3], it started to run away while rolling about
Eventually it started running away from my fleet towards...nearby split station?

What i'd want from fleeing ship:
- Consider ...average position? general area? of all pursuers in immediate vicinity and run from the blob instead of single closest fighter when choosing flee direction.
- Prefer to flee towards nearby friendly fleet, especially if they are tasked to protect this ship
- Ideally Depending on calculation cost, consideration to combat strength of pursuers and friendlies may be nice, if friendly fleet is too weak, run to station or other system
- If it flees while being surrounded by friendly forces, flee to nearby station

save file of the combat moment pixeldrain.com/u/SqtjYPNt

[kennet0508]

Yes please. If you have one from just before, with steps to reproduce it from there, then that's also helpful as it allows us to see how the situation starts.

I think this issue may have been related to the Unknown Xenon pilot i was using at the time, but seeing as they were removed in Beta 3, i doubt i can recreate this.

[Scoob]

One criticism I do have with Flee, when it's appropriate for a ship to flee, is how it ignores the OBVIOUS escape route. For example, I see a ship just about to dock, it's literally seconds from docking (watching OOS) and it gets harassed by a close by Pirate. All it has to do is continue to dock, and it'll be fine. However, it will try to flee in a silly direction. Each time I CANCEL the flee, it docks and is perfectly safe. Pirate then rapidly exits the area. It might take the odd hit, but it WOULD have been destroyed if I'd let it flee. Same issue when a ship is just about to go through a gate. The GATE is the obvious escape route, but flee ignores this.

In each case, the ship has momentum - even travel drive levels of momentum - taking it towards the obvious escape route, but flee breaks that. Now, this does in part go back to why an "Ignore" option for Pirate Harassment would be beneficial in almost all Pirate situations. However, I have seen a couple of cases where the pirate is genuinely close, though they are rare, and it might have a slim chance of actually hitting the target ship.

Observation: Do Pirates generally only harass when closer to their potential victim now? It used to be normal to get the Harassment alert, pause the game and see that the Pirate is like 30km away, and rapidly out of range (over 40km away) before the flee triggers and the ship stops for a moment. Last night, I had several Harassment events, but the Pirate was much closer each time. Has a Pirate's scan / harass range been reduced?

Thought: Should Travel Drives be better? Sure, they're faster in travel mode, but should they also be able to engage faster and not be disrupted as long when hit? Would this enhance the whole trader vs. military ship balance in the game?

[GCU Grey Area]

Biggest problem I have with flee is when fleeing ships pick a potentially suicidal direction in which to flee. For example, my demolition fleet is currently destroying a Xenon shipyard. Carrier is positioned around 40 km behind the destroyers, so it's interceptors can provide cover for the destroyers against the shipyard's drones, without those interceptors engaging those drones as soon as they launch (thereby flying into turret range of the shipyard). For the most part this approach works well, at least until one of those fighters tries to flee. Sometimes fleeing takes them directly towards the shipyard - literally the worst possible direction they could choose. This screenshot should illustrate the problem: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tgshp07k ... 01fgq&dl=0
Have already lost a couple of fleeing Makos (i.e. the spacesuits to the south of the shipyard). Almost lost a couple of Threshers too before I managed to get rid of their flee orders. In the screenshot one's currently making a turn directly over the shipyard before returning to the fleet (miraculously it survived), while another is fleeing directly towards it. Sometimes I lose more ships to flee than I do to enemy action, as is the case here - flee killed 2, while the drone swarm only managed to get 1.

[Mr.Killer]

Observation: Do Pirates generally only harass when closer to their potential victim now? It used to be normal to get the Harassment alert, pause the game and see that the Pirate is like 30km away, and rapidly out of range (over 40km away) before the flee triggers and the ship stops for a moment. Last night, I had several Harassment events, but the Pirate was much closer each time. Has a Pirate's scan / harass range been reduced?

Thought: Should Travel Drives be better? Sure, they're faster in travel mode, but should they also be able to engage faster and not be disrupted as long when hit? Would this enhance the whole trader vs. military ship balance in the game?

My thought would be, how can a pirate know what's in the cargohold of a ship?????? If I want to know I have to glue my nose to its bulkhead and turn on scan!!!!!!!!!!!!

How about cheating? hmmm...? We get punished and AI pirates not? (puinshed in the way if we admit a savegame, the devs are quick to reside to the 'cheat' status interferring (this I had happened in the past, now? IDK))