Pirates reputation stuck, won't increase. Bug?

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Nomikos
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Pirates reputation stuck, won't increase. Bug?

Post by Nomikos » Sat, 12. Jun 10, 03:51

I've been trying to get friendly with the pirates in my game recently, but nothing I do will increase my reputation. It's currently at about -111,000 from doing a lot of assassination missions earlier. It still decreases if I destroy a pirate ship, but nothing makes it go up - I've tried doing every kind of mission from a pirate base (from an actual pirate there), even building a big illegal goods complex in the unknown sector east of PTNI HQ and trading with the pirate bases there (and the factories I helped construct).

I'm using the script editor debug info to check my rep values and it hasn't increased even 1 point since I started all this, it's only gone down. I have all my properties set to be friendly with pirates, and I haven't even lost a trader to pirates in a long time, only to Xenon and Yaki.

I remember hearing the "You were warned - pirate ships will now hunt you down like dogs" message once or twice a long time ago, but I don't know what it means.

So it seems like my pirates reputation is just "stuck". I've seen a few references to this situation while searching these forums (some related to the Goner plot) but no one seems to have any more information or a solution. Is this even really a bug, or is it intended to happen because I've killed too many pirates? If it is a bug, isn't there any way to un-stick it?

I started as a Terran Defender and completed the following plots: Terran, Kha'ak, HUB Gate 1, Goner, Aldrin, and Treasure Hunt. I have the following mods installed: Auto prep ships, Manual trade extension, Ship killed notifications, Universal Best Buys/Sells Locator, Universe Explorers, Dockware Manager, CAG, Mosquito Missile Defense, MARS. I started this game in version 2.6 but have since installed patch 2.7.

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EmperorJon
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Post by EmperorJon » Sat, 12. Jun 10, 17:43

111,000 is very high. You may have reached a cap.

INSTANT EDIT:

Actually, you'll notice when gaining race ranks that you'll usually get stuck on about 14% of the highest level.


This is because the highest level 0% is about 100,000, whereas 100% is 1,000,000.

Yes, you read that right. Getting from 0% to 100% of the top rank is like getting to the top rank 9 times. :roll:

So, 110,000 will be about 14% Super-Pirate-Buddy. :wink:
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Post by Nomikos » Sat, 12. Jun 10, 18:01

EmperorJon wrote:111,000 is very high. You may have reached a cap.
You misunderstand, my rep is NEGATIVE 111,000. The pirates hate me and I can't fix it.

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Post by EmperorJon » Sat, 12. Jun 10, 18:05

In which case that is below really super bad enemy and you need to kill enemies in pirate space for very very very low gain. :(
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Post by Nomikos » Sat, 12. Jun 10, 18:59

I read somewhere that reputation gain from completing missions is proportional to your current rank, so are you saying that below -100,000 you actually gain ZERO reputation from missions? It's supposed to work like that?

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Post by EmperorJon » Sat, 12. Jun 10, 19:02

You'll notice that with starts like Unholy Traitor, you have a special low level of notoriety which is only available through scripting. At this level, they all hate you and missions do nothing. And killing an enemy will probably get you 1%... :(
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Post by Nomikos » Sun, 13. Jun 10, 01:25

OK, I just went to Nopileos's Memorial and did a Xenon patrol mission. I wrote down my pirate rep before I started: -127,176. 2 Q's, 5 L's later, it's still -127,176. Shouldn't killing Xenon in a pirate sector increase my standing with them? I think I AM bugged :(

(It's lower than the -111,000 number I mentioned before because I sort of gave up a little and went back to doing assassination missions for a while)

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Post by Magnu » Sun, 13. Jun 10, 13:06

I started a thread some time ago after having this problem and I'm now convinced it's a bug. I hope I'm wrong but I think you're wasting your time trying to improve your rep.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... highlight=

No one could offer a solution and I had to start a new game.
Last edited by Magnu on Sun, 13. Jun 10, 22:13, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Alan Phipps » Sun, 13. Jun 10, 14:18

I have a background game (a vanilla game fork) on the go where my objective is to get from the max adverse Pirate rep of -1,000,000 back to neutral or better. I am still going strong at something of about -800,000 now and would hate for it to lock up at -1xx,xxx when close to my objective!

At worst possible rep with them, Pirate missions (from a Pirate for the Pirates in a Pirate sector) do a very small rep boost but my main progress is made through multiple small trades (use M5-M3 as traders) in basics and contraband from closed loop complexes built in Pirate Unknown Sectors that have many built and hacked Pirate-owned stations (much as the OP has tried in fact).

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Post by Nomikos » Sun, 13. Jun 10, 19:52

I did some testing using the script editor. At my current notoriety level with Pirates, around -131000, nothing I do raises it even one point - including killing enemies in their sector, trading with them, and doing convoy destruction, taxi, or station building missions.

However if I use a script command to manually set my notoriety to -99,999, then the very next mission I do for the pirates causes my notoriety level to suddenly & immediately jump to exactly zero. After that, missions, trading, and killing all raise and lower the notoriety as you would normally expect. If I then use the script editor to set my notoriety back to its original level of -131000, it goes back to never increasing no matter what.

So it seems that in my game at least, it's impossible to recover if the pirates notoriety ever dips below -100,000. But this is in direct contradiction to the above poster's experience. What's the difference between our games :? :? :?

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Post by Alan Phipps » Sun, 13. Jun 10, 20:20

I can only guess for you (and fear for myself!) that the rep increase blockage happens only at that -1xx.xxx band level while the increases with missions or trade work 'normally' either above or below that particular band. I really, really hope that this is wrong though and I cannot see why the devs would deliberately put in a Pirate rep non-return valve at such a comparatively small negative threshold (especially one ineffective at even more negative rep). I won't know for sure myself until I get close to there and that could take months in real life.

By the way, that one-mission jump from -99,999 to exactly zero sounds like a broken or deliberately-biased script action to me. I think some rep guru/dev would have to look at the Pirate rep coding to tell for sure what is going on versus what was intended in both these issues.

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Post by kurush » Sun, 13. Jun 10, 22:19

From what I remember, below a certain reputation level only combat missions actually help to get an increase. Also, Pirates just don't care about killed Xenons or anything for that matter. I'm not sure whether you can still get "destroy ships" missions from pirates but they definitely helped me in a similar situation. A funny way to do these missions is ramming those freighters in a springblossom. This way you don't ruin your reputation with other races.

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Post by Nomikos » Mon, 14. Jun 10, 02:53

kurush wrote:From what I remember, below a certain reputation level only combat missions actually help to get an increase. Also, Pirates just don't care about killed Xenons or anything for that matter. I'm not sure whether you can still get "destroy ships" missions from pirates but they definitely helped me in a similar situation. A funny way to do these missions is ramming those freighters in a springblossom. This way you don't ruin your reputation with other races.
Unfortunately I've tried doing destroy ship missions, both by ramming and shooting, and they don't increase reputation by even a single point (checking before and after completing the mission).

I've also tried taking an assassination mission from the pirates against a Yaki target, which since Yaki are a separate faction should theoretically give a net increase in pirate rep (as opposed to killing plain pirates for other pirates, which tends to hurt you). Again, no change.

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Post by Nomikos » Mon, 14. Jun 10, 02:57

Alan Phipps wrote:By the way, that one-mission jump from -99,999 to exactly zero sounds like a broken or deliberately-biased script action to me. I think some rep guru/dev would have to look at the Pirate rep coding to tell for sure what is going on versus what was intended in both these issues.
I would love an official response on these issue. At least to let us know if this behavior is intended or if it's really a bug.

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Post by Alan Phipps » Mon, 14. Jun 10, 13:48

@ Kurush: I can confirm that true Pirate missions of all types and trades do indeed give a modest Pirate rep increase even at a worst rep of about -1,000,000. That is outside what now appears to be a particular negative rep band much closer below the -100,000 that may block any further rep increase.

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Post by kurush » Tue, 15. Jun 10, 00:32

Alan Phipps wrote:@ Kurush: I can confirm that true Pirate missions of all types and trades do indeed give a modest Pirate rep increase even at a worst rep of about -1,000,000. That is outside what now appears to be a particular negative rep band much closer below the -100,000 that may block any further rep increase.
By trades you mean actually trading with stations? Or trade missions? I remember monitoring this rank in X3:R and there trading with pirate bases indeed was helping a bit (but not much). I think I recovered my reputation from < -200,000 I got after a bunch of corporate missions by ramming those ships pirates ask you to destroy. It was a couple of patches ago though.
I would also love to hear the official response here. And also would love to have the whole pirate reputation thing fixed to the point where you can actually stay on friendly terms with them and still do some missions and plots.

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Post by Nanook » Tue, 15. Jun 10, 02:47

I just looked in the Public Beta Test forum and didn't see a thread about this issue. One of you who have the problem and have level 3 access should probably start a thread there so the devs know about it. They don't often visit this forum, mostly just us mods and site admins, so you're unlikely to get much of an official reponse here.
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Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 15. Jun 10, 11:00

@ Kurush: Just normal trading with Pirate-owned stations that I have built and hacked in Pirate Unknown Sectors with Pirate Bases and where I have built basics/contraband complex loops. The quantity of trades (not quantity or value of wares) is what counts so use small ships for lots of small trades. This does far better over time than just you personally doing missions for Pirate rep increase.

@ Nanook: Thanks. That won't be myself as I hate to have wind of what is coming up in a patch etc until I play it (I even avoid Spoiler threads until I have).

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Post by maniczombie1 » Mon, 12. Jul 10, 15:49

I can confirm that trading with pirates does indeed increase pirate rep but very very slowly. I built a flower farm near a pirate base and had an enhanced jaguar selling the sunrise flowers to it. After about 7 trades, my pirate rep went from -209,223 to a whopping -209,222. 1 WHOLE point, WHOO HOO!!! I myself tried doing many pirate build and transport missions with absolutely NO rep increase. So I tried the trade thing with em. I'm hoping that after about -100,000, my pirate rep will increase quicker with missions. Im thinking that if I set up more factories somewhat near pirate bases running short of the basic resources like sunrise flowers, I may be able to get the rep up fairly quick. That is, if I have a whole bunch of M5's runnin back and forth. There seems to be somekind of negative number that does not allow further rep increase with missions, wish I knew the exact number...........

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Post by Nanook » Tue, 13. Jul 10, 00:01

OK, I think I've found another bottleneck right around +300,000. And I don't know what triggered it. My pirate rep was steadily increasing for a while, even as far as +560,000 or so. Then I killed a few pirates in a plot mission, and it dropped to around +100,000. After a number of pirate missions, the best I could get it to was a little over +360,000. It just stayed there, no matter how many hard missions I did for the pirates. If I dropped it again by killing pirates, it would still top out at about the same number. What's odd, though, is after I do a bunch more high level missions for them, I can kill quite a few before the rep shows a drop again. It's almost like there's a hidden rep gain/loss above this point. Odd, though, that I was able to get over +500K originally.
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