Removal of random abandoned ships in 2.5

[R0land]

event that a capitalship got abandoned and you just had to pick it up - ruining any early game gameplay just like that

Which is exactly what happened in my game. Found an abandoned Odysseus in Faulty Logic (the one with mines). No fun in that, felt like cheating.

The nice thing about a sand box game is that you don't have to take it. For me, I took it because I'd already done a ton of the early game stuff and wanted a boost up the ranks. If I wasn't ready for it I might have taken it then parked it somewhere until I was ready for it.

[spankahontis]

So, I know this is a bug fix (and I think it's definitely a good thing in the long run...otherwise systems will be flooded with mine fields and abandoned ships!).

HOWEVER, I would really like to suggest (and campaign for) randomly added abandoned ships being an actual feature (not necessarily with mine fields but maybe sometimes?). And not just small/medium classed ships (yes, I know about that one in you know where).

With the battles that get waged between factions (well, in my game it's HoP vs everyone else so it's boring as hell), the AI usually just goes for total destruction (or the receiving party basically never abandons their ships). Why not have either a mix of battle wrecks that are salvageable (maybe tweaking the AI so there's a higher chance the AI will abandon a ship when they're way out gunned or their engines go) and just random abandoned ships or just have random abandoned ships of all classes?

I'm sure there are still rare ships out there to confiscate, I found an Odysseus in Faulty Logic where the minefield is and a Perseus Vanguard in that Sector full of Friend/Foe Mines and that Kha'ak Installation North West of the map.

The ships they got rid of were spawned mission ships that were supposed to despawn anyway but they weren't despawning, worse that that, they kept on spawning until Sectors were filled with them.
It was fun at first to find these abandoned ships but it soon became boring when you realised that they just kept coming and after a long playthrough they would continue coming until the main highway circle was littered with over a dozen of these spawned ships.
Egosoft took the right steps to fix this obvious bug and in the end, it was easy money as you could exploit it, abandoned Corvettes especially, they're worth over a million credits.

I agree that finding an abandoned ship gives you a sense of accomplishment, but dozens upon dozens of them given to you just made the game too easy to exploit and ruins it for everyone once they've had their fill of easy money.

Moreover, making small ships bail is also significantly easier than it was in previous games, so that's always an option. Now, if only boarding wasn't a complete mess...

The free ship fest has to go.

I just so happen to try a boarding operation for the first time the other day, MY GAWD it was a piece of piss, only hard bit was understanding the UI for the boarding operation and of course, getting all my marines back into their ships which took me half the day to do. (EGOSOFT PLEASE!! make it faster to get your marines back on their ships, Rebirth's method of people pods was superior to what we have now with X4!)


As for small/medium ships? Yes! it's piss-easy to exploit as well, you just need to have 1 gun on your ship, scan the ship you want and hammer at it's shields and you eventually see the weaker stomached crewman abandon ship which eventually increases your chances of the pilot bailing with minimal damage to the ship.

[Lazerath]

I personally liked that there were ships being abandoned by NPC vs NPC fighting before. It made the game feel more immersive to me although I do NOT think that every ship that is bailed should be claimable. They should still blow up (the pilot and crew are simply trying to stay alive and jump ship, you would do that wouldn't you?) just not 100% of the time, some should be claimable. Make the rate at which the NPC ships that have crew who bail and the ship survives be very low (5%-7% ship survival rate for S & M, 2%-4% Ship survival rate for L & XL).

For L & XL Ships - Leave only badly damaged engines and NO Weapons or Shields, Cargo destroyed, software destroyed except whatever is mandatory minimum to work in game.

For S & M Ships - Same thing except possibly leave a little of the cargo for example.

I agree completely with them fixing the claimable ships that were the result of a bug! But removing the Bailing NPC's from NPC vs NPC battles completely is a bad choice.

I would rather they added an option in "Game Settings" to turn off NPC bailing for those who don't like it.

After several hundred hours testing Beta 2.50 (starting at B3) and not once during that entire time have I come across a bailed ship (during any play through's) it just feels wrong!
Ships get into fights, ships blow up and everyone dies... I thought only the Split thought Escape Pods were for Cowards!
Very BIG Design mistake to remove it from the game in my opinion.

If I am remembering wrong as I stopped playing during version 1.5 or 1.6 and came back to test out Beta 2.5 and see how the games development has gone. Then I think it should be added LoL!