Loosing trade ships

terrannz · Post by **terrannz** » Sat, 31. Jan 15, 02:03

So I'm back from summer holidays and I'm play Rebirth again. My problem is any trade ships I own I loose to enemy fire.
I've just lost a captured pirate ship with lots of guns and it was destroyed seconds after I got a distress call from the captain.

is anyone else experiencing the same or have some tips?

Post by **euclid** » Sat, 31. Jan 15, 02:32

Hi terrannz,

Yes, you are not alone on this one and it has been reported already. I'm confident that this issue will be addressed in a future patch.

Cheers Euclid

GCU Grey Area · Post by **GCU Grey Area** » Sat, 31. Jan 15, 02:44

Universe is now quite a bit more dangerous than it once was (a good change IMO - previously was a bit too tame for my tastes). Expect to lose ships every now & then.

Also, not a fan of Titurels myself - universal cargo & lots of guns might make them tempting, but they are also comparatively slow & have poor manoeuverability. This makes them vulnerable because it means they spend longer at slow speeds flying round stations to dock & load/unload cargo, where they can get jumped by swarms of fighters.

Prefer faster, more agile freighters myself, even if they have fewer guns. Getting reasonable results in my current game with Styrvoks. Still lose the occasional ship but not all that often (1 every few days) & they're not horrendously expensive to replace. Currently have a fleet of around 40 Styrvoks working for my stations & have lost maybe 3 or 4 of them over the course of a game which has been running for a bit over 16 days (game time).

terrannz · Post by **terrannz** » Sat, 31. Jan 15, 02:50

Thanks Euclid

I've lost every ship

Post by **Nanook** » Sat, 31. Jan 15, 02:52

terrannz wrote:So I'm back from summer holidays and I'm play Rebirth again. My problem is any trade ships I own I loose to enemy fire.
I've just lost a captured pirate ship with lots of guns and it was destroyed seconds after I got a distress call from the captain.

is anyone else experiencing the same or have some tips?

This has something to do with the weirdness of OOZ combat. Virtually every one of my losses like yours showed up in the log as a kill at exactly the same time as the distress message. So these are insta-kills, something that simply doesn't happen if you're in the zone. It really does need to be fixed, giving the player at least a reasonable chance of intervening once the freighter reports it's being attacked.

pref · Post by **pref** » Sat, 31. Jan 15, 03:58

Sometimes a handful of fighters can instakill a titurel. Hopefully gets fixed soon.

Len5 · Post by **Len5** » Sat, 31. Jan 15, 15:05

Nanook wrote:It really does need to be fixed, giving the player at least a reasonable chance of intervening once the freighter reports it's being attacked.

That would only help íf you'd get a distress-call at all. In my game, I think, less than 5% of the destroyed ships gave me a call.
Once I was taking care of business near the shipyard in Gemstone Manufacture and behind my back, near Cell Recharge, my Taranis was destroyed without warning.
It must have been a short fight and I didn't notice it at all. I think it was destroyed by the Cell Recharge, it was hostile, which it wasn't before. So also for no known reason.
So XL's get destroyed without a warning, but I did get a distress-call from a Construction URV being under attack.
To me this issue is the most annoying one.

pref · Post by **pref** » Sun, 1. Feb 15, 21:26

Was it a drostan?

3 of my ships were killed in one hit by a drostan now. 2 titurels and a construction vessel.

Sam L.R. Griffiths · Post by **Sam L.R. Griffiths** » Sun, 1. Feb 15, 21:46

In v3.20 RC4, it looks like there are some improvements to the logs wrt ship attack/destruction reporting in addition the reported issue wrt failure of ships to respond to attacks by neutral vessels seems to have been addressed. Whether these changes will help with either resolving or investigated the case highlighted by the OP is unknown.

OOZ calcs are almost certainly part of the problem but there are probably other concerns too.

@OP: What size/type of trade ships are you using? If they have drone capability (e.g. L/XL freighters), do you allocate them defence drones (if so which ones and how many)? If they do not have drone capability (e.g. Gigurnum), do you allocate them fighter escorts (or give the station's defence officer fighters to allocate to traders as they see fit)?

pref · Post by **pref** » Sun, 1. Feb 15, 21:52

Forgot to mention, the construction vessel was attached to a station with 216 weapons on it.

All kills are from the same second as the distress call anyway - dont think any amount of escort can help this.

Sam L.R. Griffiths · Post by **Sam L.R. Griffiths** » Sun, 1. Feb 15, 23:37

A deployed construction vessel is basically a special case, it is a sitting duck. As for it sitting next to a station with 216 guns on it, if they are not pointing in the right direction or not close enough then they may as well be ignored as being not present.

I have not yet (touch wood) lost a single trade ship or SCODA personally but then the defence officers are set to attack stance and most have been equipped with over 20 combat drones. Even my stations have combat drones for defence and are set to an aggressive stance.

In addition, I typically make sure my stations have at least one destroyer allocated to the station's DO.

Admittedly, most of my building is in Glaring Truth but I do use MORTs in my squad which do travel in OL and AL as well.

I am not saying there is an easy answer to all asset losses, but there is almost certainly more to it than any single issue.

pref · Post by **pref** » Mon, 2. Feb 15, 00:03

One of these issues is most likely the drostan's ooz behaviour.
It's missiles cannot kill any ship that quickly, the way its damage is calculated is probably flawed.

I assume all 3 ships were killed by the same one, as it happened in an Albion zone (liquid metal) where SS spawns are not that frequent.

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Mon, 2. Feb 15, 07:56

Station Defense Officers set to defend do not currently react to aggression against their CV despite their integral relationships. This is being worked on by Devs.

pref · Post by **pref** » Mon, 2. Feb 15, 13:37

Still that ship can't kill a CV nor a titurel in one hit. Just does not have the damage output. No defences can react if there is no time to do so.

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Mon, 2. Feb 15, 13:43

The Drostan has a high alpha strike if all of it's missiles are assumed to hit. I am not sure if it is enough to kill the 2.6 million HP of a CV or not (probably not but cannot check at the moment) but I am also not sure we know ships are being one-shoted.

During the 3.0 or 3.1 beta, someone did some in-zone tests and the time between starting to get attacked and the "help!" message varied. OOZ, the messages may not be being generated when ships are first hit. Anyone know for sure?

pref · Post by **pref** » Mon, 2. Feb 15, 14:38

The distress call (which normally happens at substantial shield damage - around 30-50% iirc) and the message about the destruction of ships was in the same second in every case i could check.

I got distress calls from ships that i was watching on map for shield/hull OOZ.

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Mon, 2. Feb 15, 15:39

Thanks for the info Pref.

Do shield and hull values update in real time when we watch ships OOZ?

pref · Post by **pref** » Mon, 2. Feb 15, 18:11

It seems so - or close to it.
I watched ships get in range of stations and suffering damage. After 1-2 secs the shield regenerated, which more or less matched IZ shield regen delay after getting hit.

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Mon, 2. Feb 15, 18:14

Ah, cool. Thanks again.

pref · Post by **pref** » Mon, 2. Feb 15, 18:27

Hope it helps to get rid of this issue. So frustrating to loose ships like this.

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Loosing trade ships

Loosing trade ships

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