Fleeing behavior.

[xcompilot]

Hello guys.
Preface this by I love this game and much of it is great, and it's only gotten better over the years.
BUT. I have a huge annoyance.
Every time my freighters get bothered by pirates, they contact me and ask me what to do.
I want them to just continue their flight path as this has the highest likelihood of survival.
However, here is what they do.

Trader: "call" Hey boss im being pestered by pirates.
Me: okay, then flee
Trader: understood, I'll make a dead stop so the pirate can catch up to me aaaaaaaaand now I'm dead.

If I had a possibility to tell them to "ignore" the pirate and move along their way they'd be fine, I know because this is how I solve it.
I pause the game, tell them to flee, then manually remove the flee command because then they won't drop out of travel mode and probably survive.

TLDR: Flee command is suicidal, please fix or add "ignore" option.

P.s. I've seen on other forums that this was done to make pirates dangerous, but I don't think forcing me to pause the game and remove an overwrite command adds "difficulty", it's just frustrating to deal with if it happens 3 times in a row.

[Buzz2005]

you have that option under one of the player icon tabs, there are other things you can set to ignore and also option so they dont ask you as well as many others under the same tab

[xcompilot]

I've found the options to not contact me, but the basic few options still seem to be attack, use judgement, or flee. You can't "ignore" like other events though you can set it to not contact you, but it results in the same suicidal behavior requiring micromanaging every time it happens.
What im basically asking for is a standard behavior where they just "ignore" automatically and don't drop out of travel mode.
Dropping travel mode for an AI M transporter just means suicide in most cases. And it happens often enough to become frustrating in midgame.
Ideally I would just want to set this behavior and never have to pause the game to micromanage my transporters to safety, if I lose one once in a while due to it being interdicted or something, so be it, but now it feels like every time an M ship pesters them I need to stop whatever I'm doing and manually micromanage their orders to get them to survive, because the flee behavior just is illogical and suicidal.
If a robber is after you, you'd run away, not stand still for 10 seconds for them to catch up to you and then attempt to flee while they're already stabbing you.
It's not difficult, it's just unnecessary busywork that breaks the flow of whatever else I was doing.

[GCU Grey Area]

Reckon they should add EMP missiles & appropriate launchers/turrets to the standard loadouts for pirate ships. It's just the sort of thing pirates should be using, highly useful tool in their line of work. Would provide justification for how they can knock their targets out of travel mode & also make them more interesting to fight. Have occasionally fought ships armed with EMP missiles & it does add an interesting element to the fight when boost & travel mode can't be relied upon.

[xcompilot]

Reckon they should add EMP missiles & appropriate launchers/turrets to the standard loadouts for pirate ships. It's just the sort of thing pirates should be using, highly useful tool in their line of work. Would provide justification for how they can knock their targets out of travel mode & also make them more interesting to fight. Have occasionally fought ships armed with EMP missiles & it does add an interesting element to the fight when boost & travel mode can't be relied upon.

Eve online style interdiction bubbles would be cool.
Basically anything would be a better solution to giving pirates a bigger threat level than just my pilots being suicidal idiots.

[stooper88]

With a few exceptions, I've basically given up using M traders and miners for anything that isn't restricted to staying within a single sector that I have heavy military presence in. The escort mechanics in X4 are just too unreliable once jump gates and accelerators are involved. With nothing to defend them, it's inevitable that M traders and miners will be continuously lost over time. Some players have sufficient infrastructure to absorb these losses without care. But I personally can't accept needless attrition as part of my playstyle.

This leaves my fleet as mostly L ships which are able to safely flee the majority of attacks without my intervention.

I do remember once seeing a thread where someone claimed an "Ignore" mechanic could be fabricated by setting the default Response to Attack to "Retaliate" while ensuring that *NO WEAPONS* were equipped on the ship(s) in question. Supposedly. this would cause the AI to attempt but immediately fail the "attack" order and revert to its previous order (i.e. continue on its original course without any alteration). I don't know if this strategy still works or if it even ever worked.

[xcompilot]

With a few exceptions, I've basically given up using M traders and miners for anything that isn't restricted to staying within a single sector that I have heavy military presence in. The escort mechanics in X4 are just too unreliable once jump gates and accelerators are involved. With nothing to defend them, it's inevitable that M traders and miners will be continuously lost over time. Some players have sufficient infrastructure to absorb these losses without care. But I personally can't accept needless attrition as part of my playstyle.

I do remember once seeing a thread where someone claimed an "Ignore" mechanic could be fabricated by setting the default response to Attack to "Retaliate" while ensuring that *NO WEAPONS* were equipped on the ship(s) in question. Supposedly. this would cause the AI to attempt but immediately fail the "attack" order and revert to its previous order (i.e. continue on its original course without any alteration). I don't know if this strategy still works or if it even ever worked.

I will give this a try in the morning, thank you very much!
If all else fails I'll move on to L ships ASAP but I still think an "ignore" function would improve the early midgame a ton.
Cheers!

[GCU Grey Area]

Using L ships also has the fringe benefit that they are only targeted by pirate destroyers. If you enjoy boarding such targets for fun & profit it essentially turns such an encounter from "On no, there's a pirate who's going to kill me" to "found one boss, send in the marines..." I'm usually happy when a foolhardy pirate goes after one of my freighters - ex-pirate destroyers are worth quite a bit & it's good live fire training for my marines.

[Ragnos28]

Using L ships also has the fringe benefit that they are only targeted by pirate destroyers. If you enjoy boarding such targets for fun & profit it essentially turns such an encounter from "On no, there's a pirate who's going to kill me" to "found one boss, send in the marines..." I'm usually happy when a foolhardy pirate goes after one of my freighters - ex-pirate destroyers are worth quite a bit & it's good live fire training for my marines.

My favorite are pirates that ask me to drop my cargo, while I'm onboard my heavily armed Syn: https://youtu.be/wvYGBTi8mGw

[MakerLinux]

As I understand it, the whole gameplay loop of dealing with pirates attacking your trading ships (and also Kha'ak attacking your miners) is as expected. You are not supposed to feel 100% safe, otherwise X4 would be boring. I wouldn't want my complex space sim management game to be a clicker/idle game, where I'd just set up my routes and rules and go to sleep, and 10 hours later I am richer and have faced no loss of ships.

And regarding the trading ships stopping, it makes a lot of sense that pirates have the tools to create some disruption on the target ship's navigation computer that makes it go for a full stop, if only for a moment when it would try and change direction to accelerate again and flee. I don't really see a problem with that, do you expect pirates to be incompetent as to show their intention to the victim just to see them flee from their current trajectory and speed?

Also, I feel that escorts are not meant to be efficient for realistic reasons. The escorts and the escorted have very different speeds, mass and accelerations, so to keep close they would have to use the speed of the slowest ship of the fleet. And every time they traverse an accelerator or gate they have to change direction and re-accelerate. And also, you could have 200 trading ships, would you really waste, say, 400 military ships with them just so they are a little bit safer when traveling? They'd rather be doing actual combat or maybe guarding sectors.

I think as of now the only loophole against pirates is using a military ship with good cargo capacity and the best ship for that is the Barbarossa. Pirates won't approach military ships.

[stooper88]

(...) You are not supposed to feel 100% safe, otherwise X4 would be boring. I wouldn't want my complex space sim management game to be a clicker/idle game, where I'd just set up my routes and rules and go to sleep, and 10 hours later I am richer and have faced no loss of ships.

And regarding the trading ships stopping, (...) if only for a moment when it would try and change direction to accelerate again and flee. I don't really see a problem with that, do you expect pirates to be incompetent as to show their intention to the victim just to see them flee from their current trajectory and speed?

Also, I feel that escorts are not meant to be efficient for realistic reasons. (...)

I don't think anyone really expects pirates (and kha'ak and xenon) to be completely impotent and threatless. Indeed, it would be immersive if pirate encounters played out in realistic and sensible manners which added meaningfully to the gameplay.

But the truth is there are so many aspects that are immersion shattering and intolerable. Pilots of assaulted ships "flee" in random directions, often towards harm's way instead of away from it. Ships equipped with weapons and laser towers make poor combined use of them, often dropping towers but rapidly exiting their range while simultaneously trying to engage attackers. Escorts systematically fly hundreds or thousands of km *AHEAD* of their wards into adjacent sectors, completely removing all protection.

Should players simply accept this faulty behavior as the forgone conclusion of not being "100% safe"? Why not just have random odds of ships exploding due to poor maintenance or unfortunate mishaps? Either way robs players of their agency, as nothing the player does decides the ultimate outcome. Hence, the grievances frequently voiced about pirate assaults and the efforts to find workarounds are all valid.

I think as of now the only loophole against pirates is using a military ship with good cargo capacity and the best ship for that is the Barbarossa. Pirates won't approach military ships.

In a way, this contradicts your own position regarding "idle" gaming. Why is it valid to fly Barbarossas and thereby avoid pirates altogether while flying anything else should result in losses?

[xcompilot]

As I understand it, the whole gameplay loop of dealing with pirates attacking your trading ships (and also Kha'ak attacking your miners) is as expected. You are not supposed to feel 100% safe, otherwise X4 would be boring. I wouldn't want my complex space sim management game to be a clicker/idle game, where I'd just set up my routes and rules and go to sleep, and 10 hours later I am richer and have faced no loss of ships.

And regarding the trading ships stopping, it makes a lot of sense that pirates have the tools to create some disruption on the target ship's navigation computer that makes it go for a full stop, if only for a moment when it would try and change direction to accelerate again and flee. I don't really see a problem with that, do you expect pirates to be incompetent as to show their intention to the victim just to see them flee from their current trajectory and speed?

Also, I feel that escorts are not meant to be efficient for realistic reasons. The escorts and the escorted have very different speeds, mass and accelerations, so to keep close they would have to use the speed of the slowest ship of the fleet. And every time they traverse an accelerator or gate they have to change direction and re-accelerate. And also, you could have 200 trading ships, would you really waste, say, 400 military ships with them just so they are a little bit safer when traveling? They'd rather be doing actual combat or maybe guarding sectors.

I think as of now the only loophole against pirates is using a military ship with good cargo capacity and the best ship for that is the Barbarossa. Pirates won't approach military ships.

While I definitely agree trading should not always be perfectly safe, and you should lose a ship now and then, the method I've outlined in my original post solves that mostly, meaning that any difficulty added by this illogical behavior is truly artificial in that sense of going in to pause mode and removing the flee overwrite.
So it's not really difficult or risky at all, it just forces the player to pause the game and get out of their flow. Too often it will happen like 3-4 times in a row and that becomes frustrating.
I had been considering maybe using military ships instead but honestly, by the time the cost for that is justified the playthrough is probably almost over considering the profit per run with the smaller cargo is maybe 60-80k at best.

[surferx]

When the freighter is close to a station dock or a jumpgate it should take that option. Instead mine usually try to outrun the pirate, who is usually in a faster Minotaur.

[MakerLinux]

I think as of now the only loophole against pirates is using a military ship with good cargo capacity and the best ship for that is the Barbarossa. Pirates won't approach military ships.

In a way, this contradicts your own position regarding "idle" gaming. Why is it valid to fly Barbarossas and thereby avoid pirates altogether while flying anything else should result in losses?

Being safe against pirates doesn't mean being 100% safe. And besides, you'd have to know about the Barbarossa in advance to increase reputation with the Vigor Syndicate (which is not straightforward) to be able to get the Barbarossa blueprints.

[xcompilot]

I think as of now the only loophole against pirates is using a military ship with good cargo capacity and the best ship for that is the Barbarossa. Pirates won't approach military ships.

In a way, this contradicts your own position regarding "idle" gaming. Why is it valid to fly Barbarossas and thereby avoid pirates altogether while flying anything else should result in losses?

Being safe against pirates doesn't mean being 100% safe. And besides, you'd have to know about the Barbarossa in advance to increase reputation with the Vigor Syndicate (which is not straightforward) to be able to get the Barbarossa blueprints.

Still don't know about these I was about to just make a fleet of hyperions that will never pay themselves back lol
Also considering many stations don't have an L dock I might just set myself up for failure.

[flywlyx]

As I understand it, the whole gameplay loop of dealing with pirates attacking your trading ships (and also Kha'ak attacking your miners) is as expected. You are not supposed to feel 100% safe, otherwise X4 would be boring. I wouldn't want my complex space sim management game to be a clicker/idle game, where I'd just set up my routes and rules and go to sleep, and 10 hours later I am richer and have faced no loss of ships.

And regarding the trading ships stopping, it makes a lot of sense that pirates have the tools to create some disruption on the target ship's navigation computer that makes it go for a full stop, if only for a moment when it would try and change direction to accelerate again and flee. I don't really see a problem with that, do you expect pirates to be incompetent as to show their intention to the victim just to see them flee from their current trajectory and speed?

Also, I feel that escorts are not meant to be efficient for realistic reasons. The escorts and the escorted have very different speeds, mass and accelerations, so to keep close they would have to use the speed of the slowest ship of the fleet. And every time they traverse an accelerator or gate they have to change direction and re-accelerate. And also, you could have 200 trading ships, would you really waste, say, 400 military ships with them just so they are a little bit safer when traveling? They'd rather be doing actual combat or maybe guarding sectors.

I think as of now the only loophole against pirates is using a military ship with good cargo capacity and the best ship for that is the Barbarossa. Pirates won't approach military ships.

As expected from a developer’s perspective, but not as a player’s.

The tool exists—the EMP missile—but the issue is that AI lacks the capability to use it effectively. As a result, players are essentially punished for the AI's shortcomings.

Escort mechanics are another example. In theory, patrol forces should be the most efficient approach, but once again, the AI fails to execute it properly.

It’s almost comical that players keep debating these issues over and over, when the real problem is that the developers haven’t made the AI function correctly. Instead of demanding a proper fix, players end up arguing with each other.

[xcompilot]

As I understand it, the whole gameplay loop of dealing with pirates attacking your trading ships (and also Kha'ak attacking your miners) is as expected. You are not supposed to feel 100% safe, otherwise X4 would be boring. I wouldn't want my complex space sim management game to be a clicker/idle game, where I'd just set up my routes and rules and go to sleep, and 10 hours later I am richer and have faced no loss of ships.

And regarding the trading ships stopping, it makes a lot of sense that pirates have the tools to create some disruption on the target ship's navigation computer that makes it go for a full stop, if only for a moment when it would try and change direction to accelerate again and flee. I don't really see a problem with that, do you expect pirates to be incompetent as to show their intention to the victim just to see them flee from their current trajectory and speed?

Also, I feel that escorts are not meant to be efficient for realistic reasons. The escorts and the escorted have very different speeds, mass and accelerations, so to keep close they would have to use the speed of the slowest ship of the fleet. And every time they traverse an accelerator or gate they have to change direction and re-accelerate. And also, you could have 200 trading ships, would you really waste, say, 400 military ships with them just so they are a little bit safer when traveling? They'd rather be doing actual combat or maybe guarding sectors.

I think as of now the only loophole against pirates is using a military ship with good cargo capacity and the best ship for that is the Barbarossa. Pirates won't approach military ships.

As expected from a developer’s perspective, but not as a player’s.

The tool exists—the EMP missile—but the issue is that AI lacks the capability to use it effectively. As a result, players are essentially punished for the AI's shortcomings.

Escort mechanics are another example. In theory, patrol forces should be the most efficient approach, but once again, the AI fails to execute it properly.

It’s almost comical that players keep debating these issues over and over, when the real problem is that the developers haven’t made the AI function correctly. Instead of demanding a proper fix, players end up arguing with each other.

This is true and I understand it's an extremely complex game and they've made incredible strides in improving the AI from launch.
But yes in some situations, such as this example you almost feel punished for the parts of the AI that are still implemented poorly.
Not to shit on the developers because either way this is one of the best space games out there.

[flywlyx]

This is true and I understand it's an extremely complex game and they've made incredible strides in improving the AI from launch.
But yes in some situations, such as this example you almost feel punished for the parts of the AI that are still implemented poorly.
Not to shit on the developers because either way this is one of the best space games out there.

There's no point in shit on the devs—the issue is how to get the problem fixed.
Egosoft follows some strange design rules that prevent these functions from working properly.
A good example is the police function—after years of complaints, they finally broke their own rule, and now the police "cheat" to perform their duties.
What players should do is submit more complaints and reports on the forum, pushing Egosoft to remove these limitations and make the features work as intended.

[xcompilot]

This is true and I understand it's an extremely complex game and they've made incredible strides in improving the AI from launch.
But yes in some situations, such as this example you almost feel punished for the parts of the AI that are still implemented poorly.
Not to shit on the developers because either way this is one of the best space games out there.

There's no point in shit on the devs—the issue is how to get the problem fixed.
Egosoft follows some strange design rules that prevent these functions from working properly.
A good example is the police function—after years of complaints, they finally broke their own rule, and now the police "cheat" to perform their duties.
What players should do is submit more complaints and reports on the forum, pushing Egosoft to remove these limitations and make the features work as intended.

Exactly why I am here to bring attention to this specific problem, my pilot friend

[Falcrack]

I really would like an "ignore" option as a response to pirate harassment. Either that, or make it so the "flee" response is to basically ignore the pirate unless the ship receives fire and travel drive is temporarily knocked out.

The best solution I've found is to give my traders no weapons, and set them to "attack" in response to pirate harassment. When they are harassed, they will get an attack order, which will immediately fail due to no weapons. They will continue on their way just as if they ignored the pirate.

If the pirate knocks them out of travel drive while they are ignoring them, that it the time they should use the "flee" bahavior, making liberal use of their boost until they can get travel drive reenabled. Not the moment the pirate hails them and asks them to drop their cargo.