[MOD] Better piracy

[Scoob]

Hi,

Liking the enhancements you've made to this mod, it does make the whole Bailing / prep for Boarding process feel more involved.

One query though: I'm finding ships with particularly large amounts of Crew (over 100 for example) tend to switch to the "Board target" phase a bit early, when there are still LOADS of crew left and the hull is well over 50% I took a look at the various setting, but I wasn't sure what might influence this behaviour.

When a L or XL-Class ship has lots of crew, the "keep up the pressure" stage needs to last longer. With my current target - a VRO Incaractura Raider (a Destroyer with lots of cargo and crew) the boarding resistance is still WAAAYYY above what my Marines can handle, yet the guidance says "Begin a boarding operation" which is way to premature. I know the Mod likely can't easily know what ships I plan to board with, so doesn't know my strength in that regard. However, having guidance say "keep up the pressure" OR "Begin boarding now (if you think you can handle it)" might be better.

Basically, with this particular target, I NEED to reduce that crew complement further, before I send in my Marines. Does the crew reduction logic still work the same, even though the "stage" of the operation has changed?

Edit: If I understand it right, there are a finite number of "Harass" attempts per operation, after which it switched to the "Board" stage. I wonder if this should be more dynamic, taking into account the number of crew. I.e. the number of attempts are ratio of Crew numbers / Marines aboard the target ship. So, one with a low crew and marine count would have few attempts for a given level (as set in the configuration) whereas a ship with a very high crew / marine count would allow more attempts for the same number perhaps.

Scoob.

[Alberto.Rota]

...
One query though: I'm finding ships with particularly large amounts of Crew (over 100 for example) tend to switch to the "Board target" phase a bit early, when there are still LOADS of crew left and the hull is well over 50% I took a look at the various setting, but I wasn't sure what might influence this behaviour.
...

The ones you one to adjust are "Harass L/XL min crew left - Base" and "Harass L/XL min crew left - Pilot".
When "Harassing" a capital ship (L/XL ship) the harass operation will advance to the "Board target" phase when the amount of crew left inside is equal or lower than those values.

Right now, by default, that's between 25% to 50% of the max crew that ship can carry (Depending on pilot morale).
If you set them to, for example, 10% and 5%, that will reduce it to between 10% to 15% of the max crew that ship can carry (Depending on pilot morale).
Or you can set it to something like 5% and 75%, that will change it to between 5% to 80% of the max crew that ship can carry (Depending on pilot morale), that way enemy pilot morale will be a HUGE factor to take into account before attempting any kind of piracy act.
Or you can put any other number you find enjoyable

Once you change that values, you need to "Abort" the current operation and start a new one vs the same target (The values are not updated for already running operations)

Enjoy!

[Scoob]

So that;s 25-50% of the MAX Crew rather than actual crew count at the start of the operation. Ok, got it. In my current boarding operation, the Captain is only 1 Star Morale and there were 120 Crew aboard. The operation switch to "Board target" while there were still 88 crew left out of a possible total of 226 for this ship. That does tie in with what you say of course.

I'm not really one for tweaking values per-encounter - feels a little cheesy lol - also just because a ship can carry more crew, I don't think values should be based on that number, rather the actual crew at the start. Perhaps that's a bit more tricky though, and open to exploit of course if the player effectively "resets" the operation after already getting a load of crew to bail.

In my current case, though the guidance say to Board when I'm no where near ready, continued shooting of the ship does make more crew bail, but at a much slower rate than before. I'll just need to get more marines

Scoob.

[Alberto.Rota]

In my current case, though the guidance say to Board when I'm no where near ready, continued shooting of the ship does make more crew bail, but at a much slower rate than before.

That's another perfectly valid approach, Vanilla bailing still applies, so you can push it that way (If you have enough patience).

[Scoob]

In my current case, though the guidance say to Board when I'm no where near ready, continued shooting of the ship does make more crew bail, but at a much slower rate than before.

That's another perfectly valid approach, Vanilla bailing still applies, so you can push it that way (If you have enough patience).

It's what I did, just to get resistance down a little more. I then sent in my Marines. Lost a load, but the target is mine....can always get more Marines lol.

Scoob.

[Drewgamer]

[...]

TLDR: This mod is awesome, and should be the way vanilla works

On another note, it was mentioned (in this thread or another) of making it so ships you have "harassed" (or maybe at least boarded) won't be attacked by NPCs, do you think this is doable?
This mod has already made boarding/pirating way more enjoyable, but the one major thing that bugs is being in the middle of a capture and some overzealous patrol force nukes my target into oblivion.

[Scoob]

On another note, it was mentioned (in this thread or another) of making it so ships you have "harassed" (or maybe at least boarded) won't be attacked by NPCs, do you think this is doable?
This mod has already made boarding/pirating way more enjoyable, but the one major thing that bugs is being in the middle of a capture and some overzealous patrol force nukes my target into oblivion.

I second this. If it's at all possible for "harass" to basically set a flag saying "this one's MINE!" to any friendly NPC's around would be perfect. I'd suggest that it should perhaps be dependant on player standing. I.e. If I'm trying to capture a ship that's enemy to Faction A, and Faction A and I are on very good terms - say +10 and above - then they'd break off. If I were +20 or higher with them, perhaps they'd target surface elements only - helping me out (nice!). If however I were only 0-9 with Faction A they might deem the threat too high, and not trust me to deal with it. Of course, if Faction A dislike me 0 to -9 standing, then they'd not consider me at all.

However, once the player has Marines on a target, Faction A should consider more carefully perhaps NOT killing them, weighting their response a little more in the player's favour.

This does link to something else actually, I was suggesting being able to set a "do not engage" flag on a target vessel. I.e. I want to capture that SCA Phoenix, and I don't want my AI-piloted ships to shoot it - I'm dealing with it personally - however, the other SCA ships that are harassing me during the operation, I want my fleet to freely engage. Basically, my fleet will "attack all enemies" while defending me, but they will ignore my flagged target...just as we propose other Factions do. Makes sense?

I don't know if this is possible, but it'd be great if it was. It depends if it's considered in-scape for Better Piracy by the author or not, personally, I think it'd be a great fit

Scoob.

[Alberto.Rota]

...

...

Regarding Harass/Boarding target protection, that's something I've been thinking about for some time.
Sadly, I haven't found any reasonable way to implement it.

Having an "Un-targetable" ship dispensing death and horror across the whole galaxy just because YOU said you wanted to harass/board it is a huge problem, even more, if you remember that boarding operations can NOT be aborted.

The easiest/quickest/dirtiest way to achieve this is just to make them immortal (Hull can never go below 5%) for a given amount of time after the operation started (5 minutes should be enough) so that you have a reasonable time window to pick your target, but that opens the problem that you no longer need to be careful/precise about it nor plan ahead, with makes the whole process a bit... disappointing.

Changing how ships/factions pick their targets will be a huge development since the IsBeingHarassed/IsBeingBoarded flags will need to be added to absolutely all the ai scripts (Witch is much more than I'm willing to change), and that left us with the problem of having an "Un-targetable" ship that will shoot back with everything.

Adding it to only your own ships for Harass operations, the same way they do in boarding, is something doable, will require a lot of effort, but is doable, the problem is that it will not solve the root problem witch is AI-controlled ships killing their enemies (Which is exactly what they should do)

As you can see, I'm not against it, but making the ship immortal will be a fun-killer, and implementing some kind of "This is my target, stay away" needs to be done very very carefully.

If you have some idea/example/mod that will solve this problem in an elegant low-effort way, I'm open to it.

[Drewgamer]

...

...

Regarding Harass/Boarding target protection, that's something I've been thinking about for some time.
Sadly, I haven't found any reasonable way to implement it.

Having an "Un-targetable" ship dispensing death and horror across the whole galaxy just because YOU said you wanted to harass/board it is a huge problem, even more, if you remember that boarding operations can NOT be aborted.

The easiest/quickest/dirtiest way to achieve this is just to make them immortal (Hull can never go below 5%) for a given amount of time after the operation started (5 minutes should be enough) so that you have a reasonable time window to pick your target, but that opens the problem that you no longer need to be careful/precise about it nor plan ahead, with makes the whole process a bit... disappointing.

Changing how ships/factions pick their targets will be a huge development since the IsBeingHarassed/IsBeingBoarded flags will need to be added to absolutely all the ai scripts (Witch is much more than I'm willing to change), and that left us with the problem of having an "Un-targetable" ship that will shoot back with everything.

Adding it to only your own ships for Harass operations, the same way they do in boarding, is something doable, will require a lot of effort, but is doable, the problem is that it will not solve the root problem witch is AI-controlled ships killing their enemies (Which is exactly what they should do)

As you can see, I'm not against it, but making the ship immortal will be a fun-killer, and implementing some kind of "This is my target, stay away" needs to be done very very carefully.

If you have some idea/example/mod that will solve this problem in an elegant low-effort way, I'm open to it.

The only thing I can think of off-hand is changing it's faction to to one that is neutral with every race.
Maybe this would only be done when you have the target "under control" (turrets/engines all destroyed)?

[DeadAirRT]

You could set a temporary relation for the ship only. Similar to how you only turn a couple ships red when you do something bad.

This prevents the ship being captured from attacking ai factions and from being attacked by ai ships if done correctly.

[Sirilius]

Yes, people are asking for that on the Steam page too, which is quite sad, since I am very proud of how they sound.

Any particular thing you dislike about it? Maybe I'm able to improve it instead of disabling it altogether.

Sorry for the late reply. It is nice and I’m not sure how you are doing them but either having more options (different voices) or being able to edit the frequency would be nice.

I find them a bit loud and sometimes jarring. As someone who likes to roleplay, having a voice sometimes doesn’t fit the type of character I want. Whether the voice is male or female or if you want to sound teladi/Paranid/split.

[Scoob]

Erm, perhaps I miss-understood the prior post, but should I be hearing the comments my player character says when Harassing a target? I get the text at the bottom of the screen, but not voice. I did a Split start this time, so perhaps there aren't any lines for Split characters?

Scoob.

[Alberto.Rota]

Erm, perhaps I miss-understood the prior post, but should I be hearing the comments my player character says when Harassing a target? I get the text at the bottom of the screen, but not voice. I did a Split start this time, so perhaps there aren't any lines for Split characters?

Scoob.

Make sure you have the latest version of the mod.
Betty (On-Board AI) should tell them, not your character.

[Scoob]

Erm, perhaps I miss-understood the prior post, but should I be hearing the comments my player character says when Harassing a target? I get the text at the bottom of the screen, but not voice. I did a Split start this time, so perhaps there aren't any lines for Split characters?

Scoob.

Make sure you have the latest version of the mod.
Betty (On-Board AI) should tell them, not your character.

Mod it the latest version, but I get no audio. I'll re-downoad it in case something is broken. That said, while I like the dialogue, I'm not sure I want it in Betty's voice...being a male Split and all lol.

Scoob.

[Alberto.Rota]

I've just updated the mod!
- Removed boarding pods orbiting ship when using marines to claim a ship
- Added German translation
- Added French translation

As always, feedback is welcome.

[BigGreenThugs]

Nice work! Will this make NPC ships also bail in their own fights without player involvement?

No changes there (Yet), that will end up with the whole universe full of abandoned ships if no clean-up mechanism is provided.

Would it though?
I would personally love a mod that did this. If I knew how to make mods I would change it.

Also, regarding having your ships claim abandoned vessels while you are OOS: Only ships with small docks can claim other ships. It was not this way in the beginning but at some point your ai controlled ships without a small dock can't claim ships. At least that's my experience.

[Alberto.Rota]

I've just updated the mod!
- When using marines to claim a ship, the boarding pod will use the travel drive
- Improved logic to avoid having boarding pods orbiting ship when using marines to claim a ship

I'm very interested in your opinion of the new behavior/navigation of the boarding pods when used to claim an abandoned ship.
Are they more useful now?
Are they more reliable now?

I wanted them to feel more like this:
https://youtu.be/huBXVQ9JS5g?t=52
https://youtu.be/ZnYLwcnGIMM?t=52
https://youtu.be/DhiJtotZNWk?t=44
https://youtu.be/mfGPMJ8A0QY

The new behavior/navigation does NOT apply to pods used in boarding operations.

[Eukatae]

wrong thread

[Alberto.Rota]

I've just updated the mod!
- Improved logic to avoid having boarding pods orbiting ship when using marines to claim a ship

As always, feedback and bug reports are welcome.

[Drewgamer]

I've just updated the mod!
- Improved logic to avoid having boarding pods orbiting ship when using marines to claim a ship

As always, feedback and bug reports are welcome.

Thanks for more updates!
Have you looked into preventing other factions from interfering with boarding actions? (assuming you still want to do this)

I'm thinking temporary rep boost would be the best (least invasive) way of accomplishing this, but I'm far from an expert on scripting

Code: Select all

<do_if value="$Target.owner != faction.argon and $Target.owner.relationto{faction.argon} lt faction.argon.friend.min and faction.argon.relationto.{faction.player} ge faction.argon.friend.min">
	<set_relation_boost object="$Target" faction="faction.argon" value="faction.argon.friend.min"/>
</do_if>