[X3TC] Station defense + complex bug

[donzi]

Each of my two complexes has been attacked by pirates. Both times they targeted, specifically a station within the complex. These are far from traffic lanes..

Apparently this does not trigger response from defense ships. WTF?!

Oddly enough it DOES however (1) trigger a red station box in sector display, (2) does trigger a red sector box in the sector map and eventually will (3) trigger a verbal warning of station attack.

Twice no response by a ship set to defend the complex and I have to quit what I am doing to take over.. sigh.

Pouring over the forum it seems that unless the complex hub is attacked, station defense will stay brain dead.. and that the popular work-arounds are to manually deal with the problem or patrol the system.

My scrappy fleet is representative of my poor starting factory choices.. hehe

- Space Jewelry L
- Soyery L

I've since mutated one into a ADV Sat complex and made an additional complex to produce Soya Husk (so far) from E-Cells.

Anyhow, station defense worked with complexes in X3R as best I can recall.. In any event, in X3TC vanilla it seems this is another long standing bug. Especially if this was actaully the same as in X3R.

I see no solution in the BP so, in vanilla, is this simply:

- manually do complex defense

or

- patrol the sector

or

- hope for the best and let station defense handle it

My fleet is mostly M5 and M4, and eventhough I have a fair number of them I don't really think they're up to patrol duty. I'd think they would do better to stick with complex defense -- 10-15 ships even with IRE/PAC should take care of most small pirate groups that attack the complexes.

It's a bummer that a vanilla *player* needs to divert undivided attention to this task because of the station defense not being suitable/working for complex defense.

Q: Is this problem exist in vanilla X3AP?

[Alan Phipps]

Yes this is a known issue that exists in vanilla X3AP and X3TC. If you homebase and/or set a fighter to defend a complex, it only intervenes if the hub itself is attacked, and not if any other station in the complex is the target. The defence ships also use up complex docking slots.

That is why many players use defend position guardships set around the complex on the access routes instead and perhaps a few LTs scattered around mainly as early-warning devices. You can also have a sector patrol back-up. A nice touch is an M5 on scout for enemies in sector or the SEWN satellite warning system from the BP to give the player the notice to be able to intervene if wanted.

You obviously need to have the ships/LTs/satellites etc and can afford to have them tied up in such defences though.

[donzi]

Rats.

I suppose that in time I'll do what others also have and forget about complexes and adopt a factory only approach.

Somewhat trying to refrain from enhancing vanilla for painless save game portability. I'm waffling on the BP. So far I'm just trying to get a handle on all the (early) pitfalls of the base game. Eventually I'll have the 2 additioanl M6 for 1/ea at my 3 station sectors.

The SEWN system is AP BP only it seems..

However to work around this and other TC issues I am still investigating CAG and CLS possibilities and go to plain factories.

Hope one of these days the core scripts will get some attention. Seems to be a fair amount of obvious failings because of them.

PS: just looked at this bug... whoa! I can see why I shouldn't hold my breath on these script issues that I am dealing with. Thats a while lot of ships in 1 sector!