[Suggestion] Unauthorized kill destroys rep and ship too fast

[user1679]

*rant*

The unauthorized kill mechanic kinda sucks. Not that I think I should be able to destroy anyting I want but the way it is implemented makes it almost more frightening to assist a friendly faction than to fly my spacesuit up to a Xenon Q and punch it in the antenna. Earlier today I was assisting a TER Carrier that was wandering around XEN space. It was easy at first because I was in my new Odysseus that I found. Every now and then a XEN miner or a few interceptors would fly near and we'd destroy them and I'd gain a small bit of rep. Things were good.

I decided to purchase an Elite Sentinel and have it come down and "collect drops" because why would I want those processing panels and other assorted items to go to waste. I allowed this to continue for about 60 IRL minutes. Things were very good.

Then, all of a sudden, while I was looking at another sector I started hearing that dreaded sound that I accidentally killed a friendly ship. I frantically (mis)clicked on my ship only to find the sector empty (of course). I clicked again, this time on the correct ship and HOLY CRAP THAT"S A LOT OF DRONES. Apparently a XEN Q decided to lumber into the firing solution of the TER ship which vomited about a billion drones into space. Things were bad.

Of course, my Odysseus pilot being the 1-star-super-eager-employee-of-the-month decided to make a name for herself by firing her giant flak cannons at everything and anything that beeped, whirred and vroomed. I mean if it wasn't an asteroid it was getting shot. Things were very bad.

Before I could even see what was happening, my Odysseus was rapidly expanding into a bunch of small little shards (if my captain's escape pod had a weapong she probably would have shot those too) because I went from +15 to -20 rep in a matter of seconds. I literally had zero time to do anything. The Odysseus is slower than a snail crawling against the wind, so even if I didn't misclick a few seconds ago, there was no way I could get out of range of the TER carrier and billion drones that now hated me. Things are quiet (game over).


Suggestion

In all seriousness, the rep loss from accidental kills is a good mechanic. It's simply implemented poorly. Drones fly into your firing solution and get killed, enemy gets mad but your ship is too slow to escape. There is literally nohing that can be done and destroying 2 hours worth of rep over 4 $8,000 Cr drones is a little imbalanced.

When an otherwise friendly faction becomes hostile due to accidentally destroying their drones, limit that faction to only surface damage (weapons, shields, engines). This will still cost the player time and $$ by having to wait for repair drones or spend credits but won't cost them their multi-million-credit ship in 3 seconds. I think limiting this to accidental drone kills or S ships less than $500,000 Cr would be a fair tradeoff given how the AI keeps leaving its machine learning at the station.

[BitByte]

As far as I know in previous X series games player was able to say sorry about misfire same way as NPCs do in X4.
It might be reasonable have such feature in X4 too.
On the other hand player should not be punished from NPC faction own mistake IF they decide suicidefly their fighter / destroyer / carrier between enemy and player's defence platform.

I haven't recently let my fleet patrol around FRF Wharf but in 5.10hf3b still had some issues NPC tried kill enemy through S/M fab bay roof.

[LameFox]

This is IMO one of the last significant high/low attention differences they really need to solve. A player should not have to fear being present for combat assisting allies in case the game's Artificial Idiots cause a death spiral of faction relations.

It's not even hard to cause it. Realistically if you have a modestly sized player fleet and some NPC faction ships engaging the same enemies there's a very high chance that some fighter is going to fly too close to a station or a K that capital ships are shooting and get taken out by conventional projectiles—not even AOE—causing the other fighters in its wing to suicide into the fleet, and then it's down to luck whether killing all of those is enough to spiral out of control. There really needs to be some way to break this cycle that makes sense within the game world, not relying on reloading or teleporting away to turn off physics.

And fighters really, really need to learn not to ram the things they're attacking.

[humility925]

This is why I was very careful with allied ship, even I want to help Allied ship, sometime I think avoid help Allied ship to save reputation, not to risk my reputation, ironically, in real life, you should lose reputation for not helping with Allied ship, they would look you badly, and see you as traitors and unfaithful, but didn't meant to do friendly fire is bad, it's lose-lose situation, unless you are very powerful, very highy skill and very highly accuracy and precision together skill (both do not had same meaning, but similar yet difference definition of accuracy and precision), not only that but ability to knew when to shoot and when not to shoot, if allied ship or station come in range where I was shoot at enemies, I quick stop fire, and had to wait till Allied out of range, then start shoot when I chase enemies.

But problem is your A.I under your name/faction, that is painful, I know, is why I had to careful to command it, if I see something like Allied getting close to enemies large ship, I try command all a.i under my command withdraw battle, and wait till allied got blow up or allied able to sink enemies or allied ship get far away from station or large ship, then I send back in, but if too many allied ship all over along many enemies ship, I think it's not worth it, I withdraw all my force under my command to stay out of battle, even although real life I'm not good allied, but in this game, I don't want lost my reputation, not worth it.

However, I can personal help allied myself into battle because it's more safe and I know what to do, when stop shoot and when start shooting, but I had to be careful, depend on ship and layout (M Class, not large ship, I do like fly large ship but it's slow and painful, if large ship fly like fast ship, I had no issues or little issues), if I had argon flak, I rather not risk it, but if I had beam, yes, I would felt safe to risk, and it's should hurt my reputation. Argon flak is very useful, but not good risk for reputation, so beam is best, but it's not get job done in short of time, due not highest dps.

I did use Agron flak, but mostly for OOS, still risk, although. independent is great for argon flak but if you patrol in heavy allied sector where lot of allied ship, don't use Argon flak, you better off layout beam turret, not agron flak, or better not patrol there if you are not personal there to help. Depend.

Yes, I feel it's very unreasonable here. accident fire should not bring reputation down and should turn allied into enemies because of that, I think keep shooting at allied till ship destroy, then yes it's should be reputation loss, but accident shooting, it's should not lose reputation, it's should not turn allied into enemies red ship, it's not reasonable, it's not fun to play like that, where there is accident number of time often, I think if player or A.I (shouldn't be, accident fire, it's should not turn allied into enemies in few shot and lose reputation). Something wrong or error A.I that confused, Allied got confused, think you are enemies, when your A.I is accident shoot them, then in turn Allied turn into enemies, then your A.I think allied is now bad guy, enemies, all hell loose that main player had no desire that happen but busy somewhere, only find out all thing mess up due rule of code/program/A.I design.

[user1679]

I've been thinking more about this, and thanks for replying everyone. I think this might be an interesting solution:

• Accidental kills for S ships or greater (no drones)
  • Faction can shoot to disable the player's attacking ship but not destroy it
    • To prevent escallation, player's AI ships should not retaliate
  • Rep can fall for each kill to the point where player is disliked but not far enough the faction attacks on sight
  • Rep gain is locked with this faction for 24 hours
• Once rep reaches the lowest (disliked), player is charged the cost of any additional property destroyed (including drones) for 24 hours
  • Player's empire Cr balance can go negative so player will be forced to pay the penalty from any new profits
  • Yes, it can cripple player's empire if there isn't enough Cr to keep stations running. After 24 hours player can comm the faction rep (see below)
• After 24 hours one of two things happens
  • If you haven't destroyed any additional property, faction is still angry but the rep gain lock is removed
    • Player can comm the faction rep and ask for a mission to pay back the debt owed if they don't want to wait
      • This might be transferring one of your stations to the faction, hauling a bunch of goods, whatever...
      • Mission difficulty depends on how much Cr is owed
    • Player can comm the faction rep and ask for percentage of debt reduction based on the palyer's rep prior to the initial conflict (eg: old rep)
    • Only one option can be used each time you make a faction angry. Players can't ask for debt reduction in order to try to get an easier mission too
  • If you have destroyed additional property, faction is now fully hostile and can attack you but the rep gain lock is removed

[Techedge]

Always convoluted and utterly complicated solutions to a simple problem.

Just make no rep loss for friendly fire between AI piloted ships when NOT targeting the friendly ship (AI ships will always target an enemy, unless commanded by the player, so the system already knows that is unwanted friendly fire).

That won't be the case for player piloted ship, obviously (unless for a bit of fire from the turrets, but that's already implemented).

To avoid exploitation (and in this case I see very difficult to exploit moving ships in a way that they will cause heavy friendly fire in a useful manner) maybe consider as aggression when friendly fire is sustained for xx seconds/xx% damage to the same ship.

The system is already there and it bugs me why it hasn't been implemented this way from the beginning, and why many other people ask for much more complicated implementations (sanctions, negative credits... geez) instead of this simple, immediate and easily implementable solution.

[LameFox]

Always convoluted and utterly complicated solutions to a simple problem.

Just make no rep loss for friendly fire between AI piloted ships when NOT targeting the friendly ship (AI ships will always target an enemy, unless commanded by the player, so the system already knows that is unwanted friendly fire).

That won't be the case for player piloted ship, obviously (unless for a bit of fire from the turrets, but that's already implemented).

To avoid exploitation (and in this case I see very difficult to exploit moving ships in a way that they will cause heavy friendly fire in a useful manner) maybe consider as aggression when friendly fire is sustained for xx seconds/xx% damage to the same ship.

The system is already there and it bugs me why it hasn't been implemented this way from the beginning, and why many other people ask for much more complicated implementations (sanctions, negative credits... geez) instead of this simple, immediate and easily implementable solution.

A percentage of damage won't help when, in a lot of cases, it can be some fighter or drone that gets obliterated by plasma or similar high damage fire convening at a large target the ship is strafing. But I do agree that is very hard to exploit to any meaningful gain, and making the AI simply ignore non-targeted kills by other AI is probably the most straightforward approach. Let us just pretend they have the common sense not to start a war because one of their comrades saw an area being lit up by a fleet and decided to fly directly into it.

[Techedge]

A percentage of damage won't help when, in a lot of cases, it can be some fighter or drone that gets obliterated by plasma or similar high damage fire convening at a large target the ship is strafing. But I do agree that is very hard to exploit to any meaningful gain, and making the AI simply ignore non-targeted kills by other AI is probably the most straightforward approach. Let us just pretend they have the common sense not to start a war because one of their comrades saw an area being lit up by a fleet and decided to fly directly into it.

Yes, you're right, I missed that (fighters/drones being one shotted). To mantain my "solution" simple and straightforward, we could just pretend they have that common sense.