"Surrender" Can anyone tell me how to get this to work?

[thedavid]

Hi everyone.

I spent my week off from work playing X4 with a new character. I got myself a huge fleet of destroyers from boarding SCA. I got a bunch of Minotaur Raiders, also from SCA.

I know how to board. I know how to shoot and make an S or M size ship captain bail. I got both of those skills down.

What I want to know is how to get the "Surrender" thing to work. What I mean is, I can Comm a target and one thing I can say to them is "Surrender". They never do, but I can ask so long as they are not in combat with me. If they are in combat with me then they will always say "I'm not talking to you.".

So I spent three days testing all manner of situations to try to get the Surrender thing to work. It never worked so obviously I don't know what I'm doing.

I tried to comm big ships from a little ship. I tried same size ships. I tried little ships from a big ship. I tried ships with full hull and ships with only 2% hull left. I tried ships that were in combat and ships that were no longer in combat. I tried friendly ships and non friendly ships. I mostly tried Paranid and HOP ships because they were fighting but I also tried some ANT and ARG ships and of course SCA. The answer was always NO. Actually, the answer was "Are you joking? It's not funny."

I'm sorry, I have 26 destroyers and 200 fighters aiming at you and you think I'm joking. What?

Can anyone give me some tips? Is it supposed to not work? Do I have to actually attack ships when they don't surrender to build up a reputation that I will attack before this works?

Please some advice.

[LameFox]

If you spam it constantly eventually they respond, it's just that there appears to be a cooldown of some sort , and I think it shares it with shooting at the ship. So mostly they'll say "I'm not talking to you" because you've already triggered the response by shooting them.

Whether there's even any benefit to using it instead of shooting, I don't really know, except sometimes you can convince a ship you aren't personally fighting to surrender.

[stooper88]

I have never witnessed any Surrender communication resulting in any crew bailing, much less completely abandoning their ship. The best outcome I've seen is the ship dropping some of its cargo. But this only has a chance of succeeding if the ship actually has some cargo it can drop.

I too would like to know if the Surrender option actually can coerce any ship to be abandoned. As far as I know, bailing can only occur when a ship is actually fired upon.

[EGO_Aut]

You can spam it every 20-30s theres a tiny chance that he will bail. I had it vs a M Prometheus 1 time out of 25 when only the captain was left.

[vvvvvvvv]

Hi everyone.

I spent my week off from work playing X4 with a new character. I got myself a huge fleet of destroyers from boarding SCA. I got a bunch of Minotaur Raiders, also from SCA.

I know how to board. I know how to shoot and make an S or M size ship captain bail. I got both of those skills down.

What I want to know is how to get the "Surrender" thing to work. What I mean is, I can Comm a target and one thing I can say to them is "Surrender". They never do, but I can ask so long as they are not in combat with me. If they are in combat with me then they will always say "I'm not talking to you.".

So I spent three days testing all manner of situations to try to get the Surrender thing to work. It never worked so obviously I don't know what I'm doing.

I tried to comm big ships from a little ship. I tried same size ships. I tried little ships from a big ship. I tried ships with full hull and ships with only 2% hull left. I tried ships that were in combat and ships that were no longer in combat. I tried friendly ships and non friendly ships. I mostly tried Paranid and HOP ships because they were fighting but I also tried some ANT and ARG ships and of course SCA. The answer was always NO. Actually, the answer was "Are you joking? It's not funny."

I'm sorry, I have 26 destroyers and 200 fighters aiming at you and you think I'm joking. What?

Can anyone give me some tips? Is it supposed to not work? Do I have to actually attack ships when they don't surrender to build up a reputation that I will attack before this works?

Please some advice.

I've never see it do anything. Supposedly it has same effect as shooting the ship. Meaning it maybe impacts morale of the pilot a little. You sorta can also gauge attitude change, but this is not very useful.

Usually you make ships bail by shooting them with your weapon to keep ship hull and shiels low, but without blowing them up. Supposedly you need hull under 70% and shield under 20%. Supposedly the check is don every 30 seconds. Supposedly the bail chances are higher, if you have a weaker ship, but manage to bring enemy values down. That's a reason to use Dragon Raider and Chimera, for example, for capturing.

Also see explanations and formulas here:
viewtopic.php?t=449043

[taztaz502]

It does work, usually like bailing if you spam it and do enough damage to it.

You can't just fly up to something and ask for it's ship because you have a fleet, that's not how it works.

Maybe its % based so if they have marines etc they wont surrender, damage them enough and lower their crew and they might.

[Socratatus]

Surrendering used to be easy once, but they clearly nerfed it, which I think is good. Bailing should be relatively rare. How often do you bail? Not much I bet.

[LameFox]

Surrendering used to be easy once, but they clearly nerfed it, which I think is good. Bailing should be relatively rare. How often do you bail? Not much I bet.

To be fair I don't need to. It happens automatically for a player, and if it didn't, we can reload a save anyway.

The AI are representing a person in the game world, who dies when their ship blows up with them in it. If ejecting was critical to your ability to survive the death of your ship, and you were soundly losing as the AI typically are for a long time before they bother to eject, it would make perfect sense to.

[Raptor34]

Surrendering used to be easy once, but they clearly nerfed it, which I think is good. Bailing should be relatively rare. How often do you bail? Not much I bet.

To be fair I don't need to. It happens automatically for a player, and if it didn't, we can reload a save anyway.

The AI are representing a person in the game world, who dies when their ship blows up with them in it. If ejecting was critical to your ability to survive the death of your ship, and you were soundly losing as the AI typically are for a long time before they bother to eject, it would make perfect sense to.

I assume they bail at the last minute like all your ships now do.

[DanKara]

I assume they bail at the last minute like all your ships now do.

... that's not what I see in my game(s).
Getting a (S- or) M-ship for free means to remove its crew. The conventional way is to damage the hull down to 80%-75%. After that its some light fire to repeatedly reduce its shield back to 0 (and stop shooting while its shield recharges back to 10-20% on M). Crew will occasionaly bail in groups of 1-4 (seems to be governed by pilots Moral). Same for S-ships (but usually shield gets up to 100%)
Aside of this / During this you can try for Communication (spam [C]). Mid-fight you will mostly get some "No"-oneliner ... but sometimes a dialog will start with the options of 1-"Surrender", 2-"Drop freight" (only if some aboard). The "Surrender" can happen with 100%-hull or full-crew or even pre-fight (seems to be governed by pilots Moral, too).

It happens (still) fairly often, when I'm taking somemore Bountyhunter-Nemesis's, Freelance-Katanas or the regular Cobra/Aspis/Mamba-Trios... (mostly in an Aspis myself).
Most of my M's come with 50-70%-hull left. S's are lower - but I'm not a good shooter...

[LameFox]

Surrendering used to be easy once, but they clearly nerfed it, which I think is good. Bailing should be relatively rare. How often do you bail? Not much I bet.

To be fair I don't need to. It happens automatically for a player, and if it didn't, we can reload a save anyway.

The AI are representing a person in the game world, who dies when their ship blows up with them in it. If ejecting was critical to your ability to survive the death of your ship, and you were soundly losing as the AI typically are for a long time before they bother to eject, it would make perfect sense to.

I assume they bail at the last minute like all your ships now do.

Well, apparently not. For them it's do it in advance or not at all.

I am not much a fan of it personally. For immersion purposes I'd much rather the player and NPC used the same mechanism to save their crews, rather than inexplicably having two parallel systems.

[Raptor34]

To be fair I don't need to. It happens automatically for a player, and if it didn't, we can reload a save anyway.

The AI are representing a person in the game world, who dies when their ship blows up with them in it. If ejecting was critical to your ability to survive the death of your ship, and you were soundly losing as the AI typically are for a long time before they bother to eject, it would make perfect sense to.

I assume they bail at the last minute like all your ships now do.

Well, apparently not. For them it's do it in advance or not at all.

I am not much a fan of it personally. For immersion purposes I'd much rather the player and NPC used the same mechanism to save their crews, rather than inexplicably having two parallel systems.

I mean it's not shown but practically speaking they do that. We do not want even more clutter to keep track of, hell, people are already complaining that their own ship crew jettisons, imagine the complaints if after every battle the map becomes unusable.
Also for immersion purposes they would self-destruct the ship after bailing so...

[LameFox]

I assume they bail at the last minute like all your ships now do.

Well, apparently not. For them it's do it in advance or not at all.

I am not much a fan of it personally. For immersion purposes I'd much rather the player and NPC used the same mechanism to save their crews, rather than inexplicably having two parallel systems.

I mean it's not shown but practically speaking they do that. We do not want even more clutter to keep track of, hell, people are already complaining that their own ship crew jettisons, imagine the complaints if after every battle the map becomes unusable.
Also for immersion purposes they would self-destruct the ship after bailing so...

I'm not sure what you mean, practically speaking? As far as I know in any practical sense those crew are dead, they cease to exist in the game. If there is even the thematic implication they survived I've not encountered it.

As far as self destructing goes, how? We can't do that except with consumables like a satellite. Before it can be immersive you've got to set up some expectation that it's even an option they have.

[Mookau]

I did a write up on it a while ago.

Look for the section titled "Crew Skills - Misc: Bail/Abandon Ship" - in particular the part where it says "If the check was triggered by the player requesting the ship to surrender, then [...]"

[thedavid]

Thank you everyone for your responses. Also, thank you to the moderator who did the write up.

I put in another 16 hours to test this some more on different kind of ships.

For Combat ships (fighters and destroyers), once you start combat they always respond to a Comm with "I'm not talking to you."

I happened to see a M size cargo ships owned by SCA called a Tern. I scanned it and the pilot had no skill and no moral. It had 8 crew. I did a comm and asked them to surrender. They said no. I attacked the ship. I was in an Eclipse Vanguard, 2 beam emitters, 1 burst ray, 1 ion canon. I used the ion to take away shields and then I used the beam emitters to take the hull down to 4 percent. I called them again, assuming that they would say "I'm not talking to you". HOWEVER, I had the option to ask them to drop cargo or surrender. I actually had the option to say that. Wow. So I asked them to surrender, hopeful that something might happen. Nothing happened. They said no just like last time.

I was following the ship as it slowly tried to escape. I kept their shields down and was careful not to destroy them. I called them at least 50 times. None of the crew bailed. This seemed odd to me because I can get crew from fighters, S size marauders, M size raiders, L size destroyers, and L size traders to bail. However, the crew of this M size SCA Tern did not bail. The Pilot refused to surrender even after I asked him half a hundred times.

Eventually a Ministry Frigate passed by, noticed the SCA ship and blasted them.

So, on the one hand I finally found a ship that will let me talk to them during a fight. On the other hand, why did the crew of this ship refuse to bail even as I was shooting at them? That is odd. Maybe it was because I did a comm and asked them to surrender. Or maybe it is because an M size cargo ship just had different rules. I usually never attack those except for the random prometheus. Come to think of it, I've never gotten the crew of a prometheus to bail either. I thought it was just bad luck but maybe there's something more to this.

I'll have to got to Trinity Sanctum and test this some more.

[DanKara]

... I used the ion to take away shields and then I used the beam emitters to take the hull down to 4 percent.

I think you are pushing this fight too fast too hard. Try to keep targets hull up (near 70%) for you to have more chances to reduce targets shield back down (for the crew to bail from shooting/constant harassment). Bring shields down to 0 and tickle the hull (lightly). Pause fire to let targets shield regenerate. Rinse and repeat. Be patient about it.

I actually had the option to say that. Wow. So I asked them to surrender, hopeful that something might happen. Nothing happened. They said no just like last time.

Don't expect a bail from the first or every "Surrender"-dialog. It's RNG on two levels (getting the dialog, getting the bail from "Surrender"). But with time you will get one first try.
Afaik there a no dependencies for the dialog to appear on targets hull/shield/moral (but I can't remember a succesful "Surrender" from a 3*-Moral-Pilot).

I was following the ship as it slowly tried to escape. I kept their shields down and was careful not to destroy them. I called them at least 50 times. None of the crew bailed. This seemed odd to me because I can get crew from fighters, S size marauders, M size raiders, L size destroyers, and L size traders to bail. However, the crew of this M size SCA Tern did not bail. The Pilot refused to surrender even after I asked him half a hundred times.

50 calls? Constant shield-suprressing? ..and no regular crew-leavings? ... odd
Did you pause fire to let shields regenerate back up to 15-20%?
... oh, on another note: ships used in any minefield-mission don't bail (anti-measure for long-past mission-exploits)
... and what where targets current order? "Attacking any/you" or "Fleeing fight" should be fine ... but "searching trades", "docking" "recall drones" may interfere with bailing (not sure myself, but wastet lots of time in such situations).

[thedavid]

For the M size SCA Tern their orders were first "searching for trades" but later in the fight it changed to "dock at the TEL shipyard". So maybe that was the reason I couldn't get anything to happen.

[thedavid]

Small update: I found a Prometheus and tried to get it to surrender. They said no. I attacked and during the fight when I tried to call them it was "I'm not talking to you." I was able to get the crew and eventually the pilot to bail. Now I have their ship but more questions about how to get "surrender" to work.

[Nanook]

... Now I have their ship but more questions about how to get "surrender" to work.

'Surrender' is subject to RNG, with the chance being rather low to start with. And they will never surrender if there's even the tiniest amount of shield on their ship. So you need to comm them and get a reply before their shields can start regenerating.

In short, to get a pilot to respond favorably to the surrender command (from my extensive ingame observations), the shields need to be at zero, the pilot morale needs to be low, any crew (with the exception of maybe one) needs to have already bailed, the hull needs to be sufficiently damaged, and the RNG needs a very favorable roll. These, at least, are the conditions I've had for successful bailouts using 'surrender'. It may also help if you have a high 'fight' rating (look in your player stats) as well as a certain rep level with that faction (although this I'm not too sure about - requires more research).

So good luck with the surrender command.

[DanKara]

...the shields need to be at zero

Does this come from knowing or reading scripts? Because I think I saw it differently ... but will be on the watch in the future.

It may also help if you have a high 'fight' rating (look in your player stats)

Really? Last weekend I started a new Game (gamestart from 6.0, not the boron one) and getting bails/surrender where as straightforward as in my 600h-save. I've collected some Bountyhunter-Nems before my first Kill...