Faction response against pirates need to be reworked.

[Pesanur]

I know that this has been discussed before, but it really annoying that the factions police and patrols ignore plunderers for most of the time except for when the player is trying to capture those pirate ships, that then most of the times the sector patrols come and destroy the player objective.

One can think that the local administrators have some kind of deal with the pirates and are trying to destroy any evidence before the player put him hands on the ship.

[Scoob]

One pattern I've noticed is that even a revealed Pirate can...well, Pirate with impunity a lot of the time. However, the moment *I* scan it - perhaps in preparation for boarding - then local forces converge on it, or perhaps a station that's ignore it until now actually starts shooting. I've had SCA Destroyers that have been totally ignored by sector forces for ages, yet the moment I neuter the target, they converge. Smart, let ME do all the work, but equally a little frustrating.

Faction response to any hostile is a bit of a mixed bag. I was always impressed, and somewhat jealous, when I'd see a Faction fleet seemingly respond to hostilities well outside their detection range. My Patrols can't do that. However, that response is far from guaranteed, it's just not consistent. I've seen Factions respond to distress drones sometimes, often long after the incident is over, depending on where the drone flew to. They seem to more reliably report when the player is the one stirring up trouble - strangely, even if ALL distress drones are promptly destroyed - but said distress drones, even if they make it to a station, don't seem to trigger the same response. It's funny at times, having a view of the entire sector, seeing a pirate or other enemy causing havoc, while a local sector patrol is oblivious. If *I* - or my ships / turrets - dare accidentally shoot a friendly though... the response is suspiciously swift...

I've touched on this numerous times before over the years, but gate traversal should disrupt travel drive. Police should effectively camp the gate, to better scan any ships entering the sector, particularly border sectors and especially pilots who choose to name their ships "Plunderer" or something along those lines... guys, really? lol.

Pirates should be preying on shipping lanes through neutral or sparsely-populated border sectors. They should be using hit-and-run tactics, before retreating into a sensor-obscuring nebula. Their bases should be hidden, perhaps with Pirates finding a way to stabilise anomalies, using those to appear and disappear... let's have a bit (a lot perhaps) more nuance to them.

Note: I'm glad that stationing player-owned ships / fleets near stations now reliably deters pirates. I've had huge murder fleets (aka, total, insane, sector-destroying overkill) patrolling (protect position / station) near my Stations in the past, only to have pirates fly past them totally ignored. I've had MILLIONS of credits worth of cargo ejected, far more than the ENTIRE universe of Pirate ships could carry added together, and my stations even then wouldn't react most of the time. Still, as I said, things have been MUCH improved with v7.5 and v7.6 games having very few issues with regards to pirates at a station level.

[oddgit]

Response to attacks in general needs to be reworked.
Super frustrating to watch a patrol just wander around on the opposite side of the sector, while khk raiders are attacking my miners, or pirates are messing with people. Epically if the ships are assigned to a defense station with an admin center (also admin centers should do more than just claim a sector, i think it would be cool if they had more functionality) and the large radar. Manually sending patrols after pirates and khk and to a lesser extent xenon is super tedious.
It is nice that the Hyperion and Sapporo have really big radar range so they make good patrol ships, easier for them to wander into range of an enemy.
I remember in X3AP you could set up patrol routes, a series of waypoints, which would be awesome, for X4, set waypoints to where miners tend to cluster up and attract the Khk. You could even have them patrol multiple sectors, i think the range and waypoints were based on pilot level.

[Pesanur]

I remember in X3AP you could set up patrol routes, a series of waypoints, which would be awesome, for X4, set waypoints to where miners tend to cluster up and attract the Khk. You could even have them patrol multiple sectors, i think the range and waypoints were based on pilot level.

Isn't ideal, is more, is tedious to set, but if you combine multiple "Attack targets in range" with repeat orders, you can set patrols routes.