Do VIG ships sometimes just SPAWN in, outside their space?

[Scoob]

Hi,

I've been noticing something a bit odd of late with VIG. I might see an invasion fleet consisting of say three Barbarossa Destroyers and subordinate Fighters preparing to invade Silent Witness I to cause havok. Next thing I know there are FIVE Destroyer led fleets in the system. I initially assumed they were flying in fast from out of Satellite coverage and I was simply missing them. However, an incident just now pretty much proves that's not the case.

I was parked in Silent Witness I, near the gate to Windfall I Union Summit. I have satellite coverage so I can clearly see both side of the gate - no sign of any VIG fleets preparing to invade. I save the game, and the moment the save process is finished, a VIG Destroyer is present, just emerging from the gate, and some subordinate fighters follow. However, there was nothing on the other side of the gate just a couple of seconds earlier.

My ships attack the VIG Destroyer but, being close to the gate, it just jumps away. However, I was intrigued at this point, wondering where it came from. As I'd saved no more than five seconds before the VIG Barbarossa appeared, loading my save should see it just the other side of the gate - well within Satellite coverage, even if it was going at full travel speeds. So, I load that save...

To my surprise, no VIG group appeared, nothing on the other side of the gate. Letting the game run for several minutes, still nothing. That VIG Destroyer and Fighters did indeed seem to spawn in from no where. It did NOT travel in, it just spawned this side of the gate as if it'd travelled through it, but it never was the other side of the gate. Reloading that (coincidentally) well-timed save, yielded NO such VIG fleet being present.

Now, VIG seem to like to field quite large fleets - I guess they're just coded that way - and they will legitimately send several Destroyer-led groups to cause havoc in other sectors. However, ships spawning in like this seems a little too much!

We know SCA Cheat (spawn seemingly wherever they like, NOT just near gates), as do BUC. I wasn't aware VIG did too. They're already a bit of a challenge when they invade en-mass like this, but add insta-spawning of fleets and it becomes somewhat excessive. During my last couple of games, I made a point of raising my rep with them to 10+ quite early on, so they'd not hassle my assets. This game, they pretty much left me alone for dozens of hours, before they finally started attacking (Pirating) my ships and relations dropped rapidly at that point. So, now they're enemies, I've been much more mindful of their ship movements, and have a constant presence camped near that gate to protect my shipping. Squaring up to three Destroyer groups is one thing, but when that magically turns into FIVE after all ships have passed through the gate - none visible in VIG space the other side - and when lone fleets just magically appear at a gate, that's a bit much.

Don't get me wrong, I'm up for the fight, but unless I gain the ability to magically spawn in my own Destroyer + Fighters Fleet, then it's not an entirely fair fight.

Perhaps VIG Spawning isn't news, I've just never noticed it before like I have with SCA and BUC for example. Do you see this behaviour too?

[Koizuki]

I can't say I've ever noticed VIG spawning things "unnaturally," but on the point of the fleet not appearing post-reload, unless that fleet was already en route to an existing order, ships will generally redo the "check" for something to do on loading, which may mean they decided to do something different next time (you can see this if you reload a save right before someone gets harrassed by a pirate, and if there are multiple eligible targets in range, they might pick a different target after reload, or decide not to plunder anyone and go somewhere else entirely.)

That said, it seemed like it might be fairly simple to check this behavior, so I just extracted and looked through the ToA expansion's libraries/jobs.xml file for you.
As far as I can tell, every single job entry for VIG, RIP, and MIN defined in there use the following:

Code: Select all

    <environment buildatshipyard="true"/>

MIN specifically uses a slightly altered line for the Ravens, it looks like:

Code: Select all

    <environment buildatshipyard="true" preferbuilding="true"/>

This suggests that none of these factions should be spawning anything, as they should all be explicitly built somewhere.
For comparison, here is what is used for the SCA jobs:

Code: Select all

    <environment buildatshipyard="false" gate="true"/>

Edit:
Forgot to mention that I'm not in the beta, so this is v7.00 release. If you are running the beta and want to doublecheck, simply extract that file I mentioned (should be in ext_03.cat in the ToA folder) and look through the jobs entries to see if any of those lines got changed.

[Scoob]

I'm playing my v7.0 release save currently, though I do have a separate v7.1 Beta game going on. Thanks for digging a little deeper into this one, I thought all VIG ships were built legitimately, but this anomaly in particular, as well as the other "where did they come from?" moments got me wondering. For a ship to be there, yet simply not exist when loading a save from no more than a few seconds earlier, does seem really odd. I don't think a ship can ever move that fast to not have already been on its way when passing through a gate, yet no trace of it upon reloading.

[Koizuki]

I don't know how your satellite coverage looks there, but depending on how it is placed, if the gate was near the extremity of the satellite's coverage radius, it's possible that the fleet was somewhat above/below the ecliptic, rendering them out of range of the satellite since the radius is a 3D sphere.
If the satellite was basically right on top of the gate, then I'm not sure honestly.

[TheDeliveryMan]

If you have the ID of the ship you could try to find it in older saves.

[PV_]

VIG fleets adore to fly significantly above or below ecliptic. So it may be your specific case. And as was said before reloading save may assign them another goal so the fleet didn't pop up.

As for respawn. I blocked their ship production facilities and destroyed like 95+% of their former fleet. And I didn't notice any ship increase in their possession for ages.

[Captain_Canard]

Do VIG ships sometimes just SPAWN in, outside their space?

I've lately wondered this about ships in general. When I go out in deep, deep space (exploring or hunting a Kha'ak hive), I'll encounter random ships from the local faction out there doing nothing of significance. I'm not talking pirates, but mining ships (with no asteroids in sight) or trading ships or random fighters, etc. I've thought, "Is this a ship that was built at a wharf and just got lost, and it's always just sitting out here, or was this randomly spawned in so I don't feel lonely as a player?"

I still don't know the answer to that question..

[Scoob]

I think the fact that a ship appeared five seconds after Saving the game, but did not reappear (no where visible) after reloading that save is suspicious. I mean, after loading things don't always pan out the same way as before, but in a small 5 second Window, if that ship was about to traverse the gate, it certainly should be there upon reloading. It wasn't. If there has been a larger time gap between me saving and the ship originally arriving, say several minutes, then I can see how a ship wouldn't be visible (still outside detection range) and might make different choices, i.e. not invade the sector.

I've lately wondered this about ships in general. When I go out in deep, deep space (exploring or hunting a Kha'ak hive), I'll encounter random ships from the local faction out there doing nothing of significance. I'm not talking pirates, but mining ships (with no asteroids in sight) or trading ships or random fighters, etc. I've thought, "Is this a ship that was built at a wharf and just got lost, and it's always just sitting out here, or was this randomly spawned in so I don't feel lonely as a player?"

I still don't know the answer to that question..

What you're likely seeing is the "Encounters" system. Basically, if you fly far enough away from the centre of the sector, the game will teleport existing ships to near your location for your benefit alone. You might noticed that when you encounter a ship, it's immediately trying to turn around and get back to what it was doing before being so rudely interrupted lol.

[Koizuki]

I think the fact that a ship appeared five seconds after Saving the game, but did not reappear (no where visible) after reloading that save is suspicious. I mean, after loading things don't always pan out the same way as before, but in a small 5 second Window, if that ship was about to traverse the gate, it certainly should be there upon reloading. It wasn't. If there has been a larger time gap between me saving and the ship originally arriving, say several minutes, then I can see how a ship wouldn't be visible (still outside detection range) and might make different choices, i.e. not invade the sector.

You're right that 5 seconds isn't a lot of time for big changes in fleet behavior to occur, but I still don't know how your satellite coverage looks in this respect; again, they could have simply been out of range far above/below the ecliptic, and in one instance they decided right after the save occurred to move toward the gate, but upon reload, decided to tun around instead and remained off satellite visibility as a result. It really depends on how large a radius around the gate itself you have vision around, but if it's truly bugging you, then as TheDeliveryMan suggested, you could unpack the save file and look for the ID of one of the ships to tell if it is actually in existence or not around that time. If you don't have the ID, then unfortunately I'm not sure how else to help if pasting code straight from jobs.xml isn't enough to convince you. I can't imagine there's any major logic-changes internally that end up not respecting that line since that would mean that every job from every faction would be impacted, unless for some reason the devs decided to use those words in that line for something that doesn't actually mean what I think it means, and then I'd have to go see what else it could be instead.

For the other poster, I agree it is the deep space encounter system at work to make things less "empty" while you're out there. I'm not under the impression that this is what ended up "spawning" the VIG group that Scoob is wondering about, though.

[Scoob]

You're right that 5 seconds isn't a lot of time for big changes in fleet behavior to occur, but I still don't know how your satellite coverage looks in this respect; again, they could have simply been out of range far above/below the ecliptic, and in one instance they decided right after the save occurred to move toward the gate, but upon reload, decided to tun around instead and remained off satellite visibility as a result. It really depends on how large a radius around the gate itself you have vision around, but if it's truly bugging you, then as TheDeliveryMan suggested, you could unpack the save file and look for the ID of one of the ships to tell if it is actually in existence or not around that time. If you don't have the ID, then unfortunately I'm not sure how else to help if pasting code straight from jobs.xml isn't enough to convince you. I can't imagine there's any major logic-changes internally that end up not respecting that line since that would mean that every job from every faction would be impacted, unless for some reason the devs decided to use those words in that line for something that doesn't actually mean what I think it means, and then I'd have to go see what else it could be instead.

For the other poster, I agree it is the deep space encounter system at work to make things less "empty" while you're out there. I'm not under the impression that this is what ended up "spawning" the VIG group that Scoob is wondering about, though.

I have an Advanced Satellite revealing the area around the gate fairly clearly. It's not placed high enough to lose too much horizontal visibility.

As it didn't happen again on reload, I just moved on with my game at that point, so any opportunity to dissect the save is gone. VIG does have a habit of suddenly launching really quite large invasions, so perhaps it'll happen again.

[Captain_Canard]

What you're likely seeing is the "Encounters" system. Basically, if you fly far enough away from the centre of the sector, the game will teleport existing ships to near your location for your benefit alone. You might noticed that when you encounter a ship, it's immediately trying to turn around and get back to what it was doing before being so rudely interrupted lol.

I've heard of this, but I didn't know it worked this way. I thought it would just spawn in some SCA pirates. I don't think I like it.. Not that I go "out into the deep" that often. I wonder if there is a mod or setting to turn that off. I don't mind SCA pirates, or even a scout ship, but finding transports and miners in the middle of nowhere is kinda immersion-breaking.

[Scoob]

I've heard of this, but I didn't know it worked this way. I thought it would just spawn in some SCA pirates. I don't think I like it.. Not that I go "out into the deep" that often. I wonder if there is a mod or setting to turn that off. I don't mind SCA pirates, or even a scout ship, but finding transports and miners in the middle of nowhere is kinda immersion-breaking.

I don't like this feature either, and turn it off in my modded game* using the Disable Encounters mod: Nexus Link

* I also run a totally vanilla game for Beta testing.

[Manawydn]

What you're likely seeing is the "Encounters" system. Basically, if you fly far enough away from the centre of the sector, the game will teleport existing ships to near your location for your benefit alone. You might noticed that when you encounter a ship, it's immediately trying to turn around and get back to what it was doing before being so rudely interrupted lol.

I've heard of this, but I didn't know it worked this way. I thought it would just spawn in some SCA pirates. I don't think I like it.. Not that I go "out into the deep" that often. I wonder if there is a mod or setting to turn that off. I don't mind SCA pirates, or even a scout ship, but finding transports and miners in the middle of nowhere is kinda immersion-breaking.

It's a really bad mechanic that will teleport in mining ships to an empty location with zero mineable wares. It slightly affects the NPC economy as well, because even if you leave them alone, which is likely the case, they will still have to fly all the way back to their faction territory to continue their orders. I think a large number of players want the mechanic outright removed - myself included, and many others want some sort of fix/overhaul to somehow make it better.

[Tilen]

The Encounter mechanic should just be removed, or at least only affect XEN, KHK and pirates.

[Alan Phipps]

A bit off thread topic but anyway. The encounter mechanism is only seen by the player when they are flying well away from sector centre and where there *usually* is nothing else of interest to be found. A few plot missions and the odd station or special datavault (or Easter egg) may be exceptions to this general rule.

So if you don't like the mechanism much then just don't fly out there much. Personally I like it as a fairly reliable source of SCA and Kha'ak fighters for use in target faction ship type kill missions - I don't get Xenon now as they are all but destroyed in my game and the encounters mechanism recognises that situation. The other NPC miners etc really need to be there too to make the hostile fighters being there seem more credible.

[Captain_Canard]

I don't like this feature either, and turn it off in my modded game* using the Disable Encounters mod: Nexus Link

Thanks for the mod link, I'll check it out!

[Scoob]

So if you don't like the mechanism much then just don't fly out there much. Personally I like it as a fairly reliable source of SCA and Kha'ak fighters for use in target faction ship type kill missions - I don't get Xenon now as they are all but destroyed in my game and the encounters mechanism recognises that situation. The other NPC miners etc really need to be there too to make the hostile fighters being there seem more credible.

Not flying out there much generally means leaving Kha'ak installation undiscovered though, which can cause problems. Sometimes a kha'ak installation will be within render distance of some object in the sector, with a quite 360 camera rotation revealing it. If the area is cloudy though, that won't work, plus these installations can spawn in outside of render range - even with it turned all the way up. In the past, it's been during such scouting missions - where I'm flying myself to see the installation early, rather than wait for it to just be revealed on the map - that the constant barrage of teleported-in ships start to feel more than a little silly. I reckon if I flew around long enough, I could decimate the local faction economy as all their mining ships seem to be being teleported for my content lol. If encounters were much more rare, then I think few people would complain, but encountering dozens and dozens of random ships when flying far from the core area of a sector is a bit too much in my view.

So, yeah, I get it, they're trying to make something more interesting, but that's assuming just flying through the black, all alone isn't fun for people. I quite like it as I know when I DO encounter a ship, it's for a very good reason - aka station nearby - and not just because the game thought I looked lonely so teleport in some company.

Thanks for the mod link, I'll check it out!

No worries, I've used it for ages at this point. Seems to still be working fine.

[Captain_Canard]

So, yeah, I get it, they're trying to make something more interesting, but that's assuming just flying through the black, all alone isn't fun for people. I quite like it as I know when I DO encounter a ship, it's for a very good reason - aka station nearby - and not just because the game thought I looked lonely so teleport in some company.

That's my opinion, too. That's why I'm cool with pirates being out there, especially in sectors that have random pirate bases (not stations, those asteroid bases) out in deep space, along with Kha'ak and maybe a random Xenon. I'd also be cool if there are sector-faction scouts and even fighter wings out there, especially if there is a Kha'ak hive base - after all, if that's why I'm out there, why not those who own the sector?

However, regardless what we find out there (and this goes to the OP's concern), "spawning them in", either out of nothing or magically teleporting them in from another part of space, goes against the ethos of X4 IMO. The beauty of X4 is that all ships are supposed to be "real" - they are built at a ship yard, and then they FLY from point A to point B. Only the Kha'ak have the ability to pop in and out of space using hyperspace, or whatever the X4 lore equivalent is. Any non-Kha'ak ship we encounter out in the black of space should fly there without any spawn gimmicks, though I'm willing to overlook pirates because I can see them "living" out there to begin with. It would be nice if there was a mod that, instead of totally removing encounters, just limited encounters to pirates and Kha'ak (and even then, limit those to sectors with kha'ak hives and pirate asteroid bases), and non-teleporting sector scout ships and fighter wings hunting said pirates and kha'ak.

[Scoob]

I'm a firm believer in a solid set of rules for all. No just spawning in, and no teleporting unless it's Kha'ak with their point-to-point jump drives. Pirates should "lurk" more, and have hidden (sensor obscuring clouds) bases in remote sectors. They should employ hit and run tactics, not their current "wander around and maybe Pirate something" logic. They need to be a little bit more unique in my view.

VIG are still being...interesting. Their ability to churn out vast fleets of ships is very impressive, if they're genuinely doing that. They have relatively few sectors, and I'm keeping them blockaded at all three locations. Currently, as I type, all three locations, so, Silent Witness I, Black Hole Sun IV and Eighteen Billion are under a massive assault by VIG forces. I've been teleporting between locations and observing the action. My forces have destroyed dozens of VIG Destroyers and hundreds of fighters at this point, yet they keep coming! I have full satellite coverage of their Shipyard and Wharf, but I'm NOT seeing them churning out ships.

I'm hoping this epic battle weakens then, but it's been going on for a while now with no end it sight. As mentioned, I'm monitoring their Shipyard and Wharf, but I'm seeing no ship building activity there at all.

[Koizuki]

I'm hoping this epic battle weakens then, but it's been going on for a while now with no end it sight. As mentioned, I'm monitoring their Shipyard and Wharf, but I'm seeing no ship building activity there at all.

Do you see their storage levels going down periodically? In my experience they absolutely do build ships from their wharves and shipyards. I believe TEL also regularly supplies them with Hull Parts and other stuff, since they're basically neutral with everyone unless you're also just killing every form of supply transport bound for the VIG sectors regardless of faction. Post-VIG plot, I believe MIN will also be sending Ravens over to supply them.

It's honestly mildly baffling how despite your game being vanilla, every post appears to be your game performing things completely differently from everyone else's.