Yet another Invincible pirate ship.

[BDelacroix]

This one has made a nuisance of itself and I find it extremely frustrating. I have an invincible pirate ship stuck in Void of Opportunity. It parks itself along the path between the two gates and destroys my cargo ships. I have searched the web over for any solutions and tried them to no avail.

All except cheating and making my game a modded game with no chance to finish the achievements.

This is in Albion Prelude 3.0 from steam.

Things suggested:

Repair laser - no chance, only on the space suit and it gets holed if even I could try to catch up.

Ion disruptor off the weapons, tried it, nothing is getting shot off of that guy except his hull is 0.

I tried to capture it with marines but its a small fighter, so that doesn't work.

I tried allowing my ships to fire at it for a long period of time hoping he might bail, but he never does. Nor can I seem to intimidate him out with the comm option.

Spoiler

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It wouldn't be too much an issue if it was some out of the way place but it is right next to my home base now which means if I go out one gate, my supply ships get blasted by the terrans in the never ending war. If I go out the south gate they get blasted by this cheating pirate.

Are there any new suggestions that don't involve cheating it away?

I've seen the speculations on what I could do if I captured it, that doesn't actually help me since I can't (I also don't want to).

[Berserkenstein]

Have you tried station bombing it, or dragging an asteroid into it?

[Imgran]

I assume you've tried going out of sector? Since that uses a different combat calculator it might solve the problem.

[Alan Phipps]

The only way to clear it is to capture it, ie make it bail. I have captured a few indestructible fighters now in vanilla games, even when they are under heavy fire from a huge fleet - in fact that is better than from just the odd ship - see below.

Mount and select one or two very light fast weapons such as IRE or PRG on your ship. Get close to the target but not so close as to be in or near the fire of NPCs or the blast radius of their missiles. Hit SETA and wait for the NPC fire to tail off and for the target shields to regenerate to full - it will happen if there are lots of NPCs in the combat.

Now quickly eject and target the ship and hit it with the repair laser to build up hull a bit until the NPCs start firing again and start to reduce its shields. Quickly re-enter your ship and fire the light weapons at it before the shields are all gone. Hope for a bail as the shields fail and it starts to lose hull points.

If unsuccessful then rinse and repeat, it isn't going anywhere.

If successful then you have an indestructible ship and the fleet should lose interest in it .. BUT .. it is not that useful. In combat it still takes damage to shields and then hull down to zero again, losing any wares, equipment and tunings as more and more shots hit hull. You can still end up with an indestructible ship with nothing aboard, slow as hell and under constant fire with nothing you can do about it except eject (and die).

[BDelacroix]

One the issues with this guy is he isn't slowing down to near 0 even with all the damage. He's just some random paranoid pirate, otherwise I'd think he was part of some plot.

Yes, I tried out of sector, too. Lost the ships I sent. Most annoying. I reloaded obviously from that one.

[Imgran]

I had a Kha'ak Scout try to do that, I rammed it and it blew up. But it might not have been the exact same issue.

[darth_adversor]

Wow, this doesn't bode well for AP, as I've been looking forward to switching to it once I finish TC.

Is this situation possible in TC also, or is it unique to AP?

[nap_rz]

go modified, erase the ship from existence with cheat script, search and install shitloads of mods and scripts, enjoy the massively enhanced game the way it meant to be enjoyed, steam achievement can go to hell.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Darth_adversor: All my unintentional indestructible ships were from vanilla X3TC.

[darth_adversor]

Hmmm, I haven't encountered it yet. Of course, now that I've said that...

[Honved]

Can you plant a station on top of it? That's traditionally been a sure-fire way to "nuke" anything.

[ajax34i]

This would involve a lot of effort, but I wonder what would happen if you CIG-push it through gates, maybe into that nearby Xenon sector (if it works).

[Nanook]

Can you plant a station on top of it? That's traditionally been a sure-fire way to "nuke" anything.

It's indestructible. It would eventually destroy the station through collisions. A couple of the times I've encountered this problem it's been in well defended sectors. The pirate had a couple of destroyers, a carrier and it's full fighter complement, several M7's and numerous local fighters attacking it. If that can't kill it, no station is going to help.

[ThommoHawk]

Just musing: possible to to get them to bail (alan Phipps) ...

and if these invincible ships can have their weapons and engine/rudder tunings fried off when they are player-piloted (as described in one of the above posts), would it be possible to simply fry the pesky pirates weapons/missiles/internals off, and the hull to zero, which then would render the thing less threatening than a spacefly ... ?

maybe be an idea to scan the ship for cargo, then just fry it to a crisp with ion disruptors. afterwards there should be just about zero speed, zero weapons = equals pirate spacefly buzzing around but no threat to your complex or traders anymore ...

not sure though if invincible ships can have their weps and stuff fried off though ... just in case you can't get it to bail then it may be an option to try...

musing over...

edit: oops, just noticed OP already tried ID'ing off weps etc... but maybe still worthwhile to try again but scan ship first?

[Alan Phipps]

The problem with leaving them around as harmless wrecks is the effect of the massed fleets that spend the rest of eternity (and all your in-sector fps) doing nothing but trying to kill them.

I think the issue the OP saw with not being able to IonD weapons etc was that the hull was already at zero. I think you need to be able to take further hull point damage to lose more equipment, even with IonD which still do a small amount of hull point damage. These unintended indestructible ships in vanilla can certainly lose most of their stuff while the hull is on its way down.

[Nanook]

Actually, it sounds to me like the locals haven't attacked it yet, so it still has all its weapons and shields. If the locals started attacking it, it would be too busy to attack the OP's cargo ships.

Another possible alternative to capturing it would be to lure it far out into empty space, say 1000+ km from any other object, and leave it there. It may take a long time for it to 'idle' its way back to the center of the sector, especially if its hull was reduced to zero, minimizing its speed.

[BDelacroix]

Actually, it sounds to me like the locals haven't attacked it yet, so it still has all its weapons and shields. If the locals started attacking it, it would be too busy to attack the OP's cargo ships.

Another possible alternative to capturing it would be to lure it far out into empty space, say 1000+ km from any other object, and leave it there. It may take a long time for it to 'idle' its way back to the center of the sector, especially if its hull was reduced to zero, minimizing its speed.

That was my strategy for a while. He doesn't seem to be falling for it anymore. Tends to drift his way back to the highway of transports.

Something will come along surely.

[BDelacroix]

Update:

Hadn't gotten rid of him but an argon patrol found the rat and has been keeping him busy so my ships can get through. I hope it is going to just be the one colossus + escorts that stay there.

[Hemmingfish]

Since it's invincible it'll probably take out the Colossus and escorts eventually, so make the most of the time they're buying you

[Nanook]

Doubtful. While the ship itself can't be destroyed, everything on it can be with enough firepower and time. Most of those indestructible ships I've come across are already being attacked by hordes of military/police/others and are down to their last shield, zero hull and no guns/missiles. The only way attacking ships can get damaged or destroyed is if they ram one another while you're in the same sector.