Do pilots bail when attacked by the AI?

[Handicapd_Hippo]

Hey everyone I bought X3 Reunion recently and have been having a blast so far. I am currently trying to expand my small fleet by capturing pirate craft and was wondering if it is possible to speed up the process by luring them to towards police or militry ships and waiting for them to bail when damaged or do they only bail when you attack them?

[Targ Collective]

As far as I am aware, they'll only bail if you attack them.

[Lord Kellmar]

They will bail only if you attack them.
But there is a script for that ! (See S&M section)

[perkint]

Yeah, in vanilla they'll only bail if hit by your ship - that includes missiles, main gun fire and turrets...

And possibly ramming

Tim

[Handicapd_Hippo]

Thanks for the help

[nponoBegHuk]

Ramming doesn't force a bail check. Only laser and missile hits. Turret fire does too.

[Ripskar]

There was a link to something on the Russian forum that went into it in more detail a couple of days ago. Alas I can't find the thread now...
A significant factor was the size of your ship.

[Alan Phipps]

Ramming doesn't force a bail check.

Hmm, well that's an undocumented change to the X engine then because I'm sure ramming used to trigger the odd bail in X3 Reunion if you brought their shields and hull down in one go - even the accidental ones on friendly NPCs where no shots were fired. (Or maybe I'm just thinking of X2 The Threat - it is all so long ago.)

[nponoBegHuk]

http://x3tc.ru/zahvat-malyh-korablej_111.html

I could translate it for you if you're not fluent in russian.

[perkint]

Please

Tim

[MarvinTheMartian]

was going to copy/paste from Google Chrome's translation but it's a very long interesting and detailed post, the translation is also not that great.

According to it, ramming does not trigger a bail and what I found interesting was the way relative ship size is factored in, it's nothing to do with classes but is more to do with installed shield and weapon values, think I might go capping in my Elephant!

The other thing which is interesting but don't fully understand is the time between bail checks, maximum is 8 minutes! but I could be ready that wrong. It goes in a cycle between checks and factors into the bail chance.

[nponoBegHuk]

Hope my english is better than google translate.

Spoiler

Show

This algorithm is common for all ships except those that lack cockpit (drones, laser turrets and UFO), ships belonging to the player and M1/M2/M6/M7/TL/TM class ships.

The results of divisions are integers, rounded down.

Each time a ships receives damage, there is a possibility of getting a bail check, if the following conditions are met:
-Attacker ship is the player ship
-Attack dealt with a missile or laser (not ramming). Tractor Beam and Boarding Pods are treated separately and can't trigger a bail.
-Ship doesn't belong to Terrans or ATF. Terran and ATF ships won't bail, ever.
-If the attack is performed with an Ion Disruptor, only 4 out of 100 attacks will allow a bail check, in the remaining 96 cases no further condition check is performed and the pilot doesn't bail.
-Ship has a cockpit
-Ship is not flagged as "not capturable"

If all of the criteria are met, ship status check takes place:
-Shield has to be both below 1% and below 1000kJ
-Hull has to be greater than 0
-The hull is less than 100% * SE_Random (8) / 8. The maximum value of the hull, at which the pilot can bail - 87.5%.
SE_Random (8) - randomly generated integer from 0 to 7.
-Certain amount of time passed since the last bail check (described below in detail)

If ship and time conditions are appropriate, then the chance to get a bail is calculated this way:
<bail chance> = 30 - <enemy pilot morale> - <ship power modifier> + <hull modifier> - time modifier

-<ship power modifier> - if the player ship's shield+hull+installed laser power is less than the enemy's, the modifier equals to 5,(which reduces the chance to get a bail by 5%) otherwise it's 0.

-<hull modifier> - the chance to get a bail is increased if the hull is badly damaged during the attack, according to following formula: <hull modifier> = <max hull value> / (<current hull value>*4) , but not more than 10

Hull integrity      bail chance bonus
more than 25%   0
12.5% - 25       +1
8.33% - 12.5%  +2
6.25% - 8.33%  +3
5% - 6.25%      +4
4.17% - 5%      +5
3.57% - 4.17%  +6
3.13% - 3.57%  +7
2.78% - 3.13%  +8
2.5% - 2.78%    +9
0% - 2.5%        +10

-<time modifier> depends on the time until the next bail check is allowed.
the intervals between the bail checks are 60,120,240,480 and 30 seconds, after then they are repeated in a loop.
the time modifier during these checks equals 2, 4, 8, 16 and 1, respectively

-if the enemy ship belongs to Kha'ak, there's an additional penalty to bail chance, related to player's combat rank, according to the following formula
<final bail chance> = <bail chance>*(<fight rank> - 5)/25

After this, the random number generation takes place, if the bail chance is greater than a random number from 0 to 99, the pilot will bail.

The ship's race will be set to "Neutral Race" and the ship's cargo and equipment gets destroyed.
The reputation decrease is the same as if the ship was destroyed.

Algorithm of the wares destruction is as follows:
Kyon emitters are destroyed 50% of the time, rest of the lasers, shields and missiles have 90% chance to be destroyed.
The remaining wares' amount is set at SE_Random (SE_Random (<initial amount> + 1) + 1), which means a random number N from 0 to <initial amount> is generated, and afterwards another random number from 0 to N is the final amount of ware.

Summary

-The enemy ship's hull has to be at 87,5% or less
-Ships with 28-30 morale will only bail on first attempt if you pre-damage their hull with mass driver
-ATF and terran ships don't bail under any circumstances
-Kha'ak ships are theoretically possible to capture starting at Trainee fight rank but the chances are minimal
-To quickly seize the ship with high morale, damage the body to 2.5% within one minute and then strip the shields
Alternatively you can damage the hull with mass driver until 2.5% and then strip the shields
-if the pilot didn't give up after 3 minutes, it's better to look for another ship or reload prior to the attack
-when using Ion Disruptor, only one shot out of 25 can make a pilot bail.

[nponoBegHuk]

According to it, ramming does not trigger a bail and what I found interesting was the way relative ship size is factored in, it's nothing to do with classes but is more to do with installed shield and weapon values, think I might go capping in my Elephant!

There are only two possible outcomes on ship strength, either your ship is bigger and nothing happens, or the enemy ship is bigger and you substract 5% from the bail chance. As long as you go in a M6 there is no way a fighter can have more hull+shield+laser energy than you.

The other thing which is interesting but don't fully understand is the time between bail checks, maximum is 8 minutes! but I could be ready that wrong. It goes in a cycle between checks and factors into the bail chance.

The first bail check is few shots after you damage the ship to below 87,5%. You don't know if it happened or not (unless the ship bailed) but it's pretty safe to assume that if you landed a couple of shots past 87,5% and the ship is still red, the bail check failed, and you have to wait for one minute. Damage the ship until low % (sub-2.5% does best), leave SETA on for couple of seconds to make sure 1 minute has passed and then strip the shield

[Ripskar]

Excellent work nponoBegHuk, cheers.

[deca.death]

Damage the ship until low % (sub-2.5% does best), leave SETA on for couple of seconds to make sure 1 minute has passed and then strip the shield

Only shield strip to 0%? No hull damage is needeed then? And if pilot refuses to bail again, you sould again wait for 2 minutes this time and strip shields again? How many seconds shoul SETA button be pressed (including "warming up" period) minute to pass? Anyone?

[A5PECT]

If you're running SETA at 10x, then 8 minutes of game time become 50 seconds of real time. I'm guessing SETA takes around 2 seconds to wind up to 1000%, so just wait 60 seconds after pressing the button before attacking again.

Damage the ship until low % (sub-2.5% does best), leave SETA on for couple of seconds to make sure 1 minute has passed and then strip the shield

2.5% hull? Isn't that kind of low?

[nponoBegHuk]

A ship with 20 morale has 30-20-2= 8% chance to bail on first bail check (over 25% hull), and 30-20+10-4=16% on second bail check with hull at <2.5% Usually it's not worth my time playing with his hull % if the morale is 20 or less - it's easier to just reload and burst him down again, attempting to get him to bail on first attempt.

ships with high morale is another story, 28% morale ship can't bail on high hull %: 30-28-2=0 so you must either pre-damage his hull with mass driver and then strip the shield (in this case you have 10% of bail chance) or just blast him down until 2.5%, wait 1 minute and go again (8% bail chance)

By stripping the shield I mean attacking with low-damaging weapon until the shield goes sub-1%. If you manage to leave your target at 2.5% his speed will be pretty low and you will be able to easily remove shield in a controlled way without killing your target.

[Triaxx2]

I play with the Bailing-Add-On, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've seen at least one ship bail only with mass drivers, while it still had shielding.

The other thing is that it was while I was flying a Dragon, so...

[perkint]

Here's a question which I don't know if anyone'll be able to answer - where there is a penalty for IonDs - does that apply if any weapon hitting the enemy ship is IonD or only if all weapons are? ie do you still get the penalty if you are using a mix of IonD & FLAK?

Tim

[deca.death]

does that apply if any weapon hitting the enemy ship is IonD or only if all weapons are? ie do you still get the penalty if you are using a mix of IonD & FLAK?

Not sure but I would guess that each weapon gets separate values.