[REQUEST] Make automatic 'Sorry for hitting you' possible

[Ragnos28]

I am friends with everyone (except CAB who for now are effectively dead until I get around to reviving them and restoring rep).

However I do expect my friends to behave!

I have carefully engineered things so that as a basis, all AI factions are trapped in their original sectors. Only exception is ZYA unification where I also gave them the ARG sectors in Eleventh Hour and Guiding Light.

Some unimportant, out of the way neutral/Xenon sectors have been taken by HOP/ZYA/TEL but I made sure to secure all the important ones with warring faction connections to create buffer zones between them, especially the ones added in recent patches since AI seems willing to claim those without hesitation if they are left neutral.

I don't necessarily blow up stations myself, with careful control of ship supplies you can get an AI faction to do it for you!

Working on BUC now to get a 3-way fight going on down there too so that I can sell more ships without the AI making any real progress in their wars...

I've used the diplomacy feature to get CUB from -28 to +11 , in part because I was tired of blowing up their stations while ZYA could not care less, and I was like...well, if you don't care about their stations, in YOUR sectors, then why should I care?

As for factions dinamics, don't really care who has the upper hand, in the paranid plot I took CUB side because they produce ships with mix argon/paranid tech and I wanted a lore excuse to mix tech, mainly argon flak on paranid ships. That because my self imposed rule of not mixing tech if the factions don't have acces to that tech, for example I don't field terran capitals with L plasma and M flak, because the terrans don't have acces to that tech and I consider it an unfair advantage that I the player, get to use such exclusive perks, while the factions are prohibited from using them, just for me to get to feel like the "chosen one".

[Ragnos28]

If you only kill their admin centers they will repair them and it will return to contested.

Best option is let them have no stations in your sectors. If they try to build a station, destroy it and the build storage. They will get the message and stop trying (does not apply to pirates or Xenon).

Also worth remembering that rep is exponential so if you are at 30 rep killing a couple of stations is no big deal. You have your reasons, a few more trades will get you back the one or two points you lost in no time.

I don't mind, like my screenshot of Savage Spur II shows, why should I lose my destroyers/ships defending the sector when I can have the terrans losing theirs, defending MY sector. , bonus the replacements were build at my shipyard in Getsu Fune.

[Shadow_rainbow]

One picture is better than a hundred words.

Time of Wonders, 1999, Technologies of the Ancient Ones.

Just yesterday a bunch of my trading and mining ships I've sent to Argon Prime Shipyard for refit (player owned shipyard is locked beyond a grind wall of considerable height) have caused some commotion of a kind I have no idea about (since I was in a sector far away). But the result was a destroyer and a whole bunch of Argon ships attacking them. The pains I had to go through to get them all out in time didn't even come to fruition! I literally had to manually kill off that fleet while baiting the destroyer. The number of time wasted on loading game to prevent that was huge -- and I still lost 2 whole points of standing (since I wasn't able to find action scenario where all of my ships escaped without destroying at least part of attackers).

Whatever the ruckus my ships have caused was not worth losing so many assets and possibly starting a war over. Even if some stray (or non-stray!) shots fired did hit someone's shield, that's clearly not casus belli.
And remember, all that while you can disable and capture faction ships with impunity, unless you blow up some surface element. Not that this exploit is not nice, but starting a war over some stray shot or station collision while this is a thing is not OK with me.



Why not implement a proper legal system? It doesn't have to be complex.
For example, if you have damaged someone's shield to some extent, it should not penalize you at all. Including drawing aggro from the victim. No harm == no foul.
Of course, if you are intentionally and continuously attacking some ship, it should warn you several times and then retaliate. But that should be way past a quarter of its shield and definitely not 2-5 salvos.
If you have caused said aggro, structural damage that has to be repaired, caused crew or cargo to eject or destroyed/captured a ship -- you should have to pay a corresponding fine in addition to relationship drop. Maybe pay 5 x value of damage caused, with 10% fee if paid remotely. Until then, any trading or other operation with faction would be blocked.

I don't know about anyone else, but I would gladly pay a fine of 550 credits for the trouble caused instead of losing an hour trying to untangle the situation described above (and still failing it, partially). If I didn't intervene, a bunch of my ships worth significantly more than 10 millions would have just been destroyed over something I didn't even order.

[jlehtone]

Just yesterday a bunch of my trading and mining ships I've sent to Argon Prime Shipyard for refit (player owned shipyard is locked beyond a grind wall of considerable height) have caused some commotion of a kind I have no idea about (since I was in a sector far away). But the result was a destroyer and a whole bunch of Argon ships attacking them.

I did thought that there is no chance for friendly fire accidents in low attention. If so, then the Argon were not initially angered due to being hit, but for some other reason (like your ships carrying contraband).

[Shadow_rainbow]

Just yesterday a bunch of my trading and mining ships I've sent to Argon Prime Shipyard for refit (player owned shipyard is locked beyond a grind wall of considerable height) have caused some commotion of a kind I have no idea about (since I was in a sector far away). But the result was a destroyer and a whole bunch of Argon ships attacking them.

I did thought that there is no chance for friendly fire accidents in low attention. If so, then the Argon were not initially angered due to being hit, but for some other reason (like your ships carrying contraband).

No, none of them carries any picked up inventory (as I have verified through Property-Ships with inventory tab), and it is doubtful some ore, ice or silicon are prohibited in Argon space.

Besides, even if some cargo drone from one of them would scoop some Xenon leftover crate somewhere, it could have been an all-out war with allies over some Xenon chip, which definitely doesn't make it much better than a similar war over a stray shot or scratching the paint on some backwater station.
So contraband mechanic also needs something.

[Ragnos28]

Just yesterday a bunch of my trading and mining ships I've sent to Argon Prime Shipyard for refit (player owned shipyard is locked beyond a grind wall of considerable height) have caused some commotion of a kind I have no idea about (since I was in a sector far away). But the result was a destroyer and a whole bunch of Argon ships attacking them.

I did thought that there is no chance for friendly fire accidents in low attention. If so, then the Argon were not initially angered due to being hit, but for some other reason (like your ships carrying contraband).

Was not there a 8.0 bug with false contraband findings from NPC local police?

[Blaze1st]

Ironically after all my posting yesterday, ARG suddenly decided to send a fleet through Tharka's Cascade XV to Family Zhin so I stepped in to save the ZYA defense station there.

I'm now dealing with some hostile remains of that fleet harassing my traders in Hatikvah's Choice...

[jlehtone]

Besides, even if some cargo drone from one of them would scoop some Xenon leftover crate somewhere, it could have been an all-out war with allies over some Xenon chip, which definitely doesn't make it much better than a similar war over a stray shot or scratching the paint on some backwater station.

Not quite.

We can tell our ships to use "hand out offending material to authority" policy, to effectively say "sorry".
We cannot configure our ships to disable all their systems and broadcast "my bad" whenever they accidentally hit something.

[Ragnos28]

Besides, even if some cargo drone from one of them would scoop some Xenon leftover crate somewhere, it could have been an all-out war with allies over some Xenon chip, which definitely doesn't make it much better than a similar war over a stray shot or scratching the paint on some backwater station.

Not quite.

We can tell our ships to use "hand out offending material to authority" policy, to effectively say "sorry".
We cannot configure our ships to disable all their systems and broadcast "my bad" whenever they accidentally hit something.

Why not? The factions ships are already doing it...when the local ARG Behemoth L plasma is hitting our ships to get that elusive xenon N, and we get an automatic "Sorry, my bad", there must be something that "configured" that response Why does the "system" not recognize that our Eclipse interceptor had active "Attack xenon N" orders when it hit the same ARG Behemoth?

[jlehtone]

when the local ARG Behemoth L plasma is hitting our ships to get that elusive xenon N, and we get an automatic "Sorry, my bad"

Does that "sorry" come when any ship (of ours) is hit, or just when the playership is hit?


When we are hit, the player can decide what is "ethically justified" response; to let it go or go full berserk.
When NPC is hit, its "decision making process" is very simple.

[Ragnos28]

when the local ARG Behemoth L plasma is hitting our ships to get that elusive xenon N, and we get an automatic "Sorry, my bad"

Does that "sorry" come when any ship (of ours) is hit, or just when the playership is hit?


When we are hit, the player can decide what is "ethically justified" response; to let it go or go full berserk.
When NPC is hit, its "decision making process" is very simple.

As far as I can tell, the "sorry" comes for playerships , I did not payed enough attention during fleet combat to assert that this will happen to ships in our fleets as well.

The ships in our fleets on the other hand are notorios passive to any attack, direct or indirect, that does not match their roles at that moment...that why our interceptors will just sit by and eat turret fire from xenon Ks, w/o even trying to escape, because intercept role means that they will react just to hostile S/M ships, and our bombers will eat fire from interceptors, because bombard role is for engaging capitals.
That is why I keep my bombers and interceptors in the "belly" of the carrier until they are needed, and why when capitals and escorst are around I must launch all, so that all targets are engaged, before being attacked by targets that don't match their roles.

So, our ships will just sit an take the L plasma from the ARG Behemoth, until they go boom, while the NPC ships will blow up our Eclipse for firing M bolt in the direction of the same ARG Behemoth, w/o any direct attack orders to engage the said Behemoth...so the NPC got the "agrro by anything" scrips, while our ships get the "let it go no matter what" scripts.

And that goes back to my question, why NPC ships cannot determin that I did not issued any attack orders againts its assets, for any ship in my fleets? Me firing the beam of my Asgard is one thing, the AI does not know that I just wanted to hit the fly behind the admin center , but the orders for the Eclipse interceptors in my fleet are quite clear.

[jlehtone]

And that goes back to my question, why NPC ships cannot determin that I did not issued any attack orders againts its assets, for any ship in my fleets?

Good point. They (the program) definitely does have the data.

Then again, we can set turrets of our fleet to "Attack my target". Then we simply target a fly behind the Admin center and the turrets totally do not have order to shoot at the module ...

[Ragnos28]

And that goes back to my question, why NPC ships cannot determin that I did not issued any attack orders againts its assets, for any ship in my fleets?

Good point. They (the program) definitely does have the data.

Then again, we can set turrets of our fleet to "Attack my target". Then we simply target a fly behind the Admin center and the turrets totally do not have order to shoot at the module ...

Would be rather tricky to have a xenon N stand still right behind the Admin center, those buggers tend to...fly...all over the place.

[Mr.Killer]

I have been toying around with some things, at one point I accidently send a dozen or so S-ships to MIN instead of BUC, because of the colors getting vague if zoomed out (Devs did not notice this I guess) and I lost all my credits with this branch of Teladi, but then the TEL got into the fight too! YIPPY!!!! (NOT) So, why this still is an issue is a mystery to me, knowing that accidental shooting on a friendly you hear "Why are you shooting at me?" Or something similar.
The events only went from bad to worse, I had to kill the game and restart with previous saved game. That is the result of making one little mistake, no shipwide communication to tell every fighter I just ordered to the accidentally wrong ship to stop attacking, nope.

Do something about this misbehavior, let us get the control back to 'undo' the accidental given order.

Why BUC are still flying around and no defending ship of mine is seeing it as a threat, is also weird, these BUC creep up onto a satellite and shoot it down, all the time, my ships should know that anyone of them is bad news, so ATTACK!!!

[Retrox]

There definitely should be a way for this to work, because its easy to hit NPC ships by mistake in sector, when you fight alongside them with your own fleet. When i was invading a xenon sector bordering ZYA, they tried the same shortly afterwards. For this reason there were many small ZYA ships around, that occationally were hit by my flaks, that targeted the xenon. Thus, some turned red and were swiftly destroyed by my turrets, which caused other ships to turn red as well, till my +27 rep was around -20. Thats not as it should be, i guess. It would help if the AI would at least recognise that the area around my ships is dangerous for them, but nope.

[vvvvvvvv]

There definitely should be a way for this to work,

"When the ship is not the target, it causes less anger". It would PROBABLY be possible to exploit this, but it would be difficult, because ships do line of sight check, except sometimes it is not enough.

Also would make sense to have ships avoid firing lines of ships like Erlking. "Oh, there's a rain of bullets, I'll be definitely fine flying through!".

[GCU Grey Area]

there were many small ZYA ships around, that occationally were hit by my flaks...

This is the main reason my ships generally don't use flak turrets. They're horrifically indiscriminate weapons, as likely to hit their intended target as they are to hit an interceptor that's also trying to shoot the same target. Furthermore, quite apart from rep consequences for friendly fire hitting ships belonging to NPC factions, I don't particularly want my own interceptors being shot by my own capital ships either. For the most part my ships use beam turrets (both L & M) as their anti-fighter defence system. Beam turret's exceptional accuracy means friendly fire is a very rare occurrence.

[Mr.Killer]

there were many small ZYA ships around, that occationally were hit by my flaks...

This is the main reason my ships generally don't use flak turrets. They're horrifically indiscriminate weapons, as likely to hit their intended target as they are to hit an interceptor that's also trying to shoot the same target. Furthermore, quite apart from rep consequences for friendly fire hitting ships belonging to NPC factions, I don't particularly want my own interceptors being shot by my own capital ships either. For the most part my ships use beam turrets (both L & M) as their anti-fighter defence system. Beam turret's exceptional accuracy means friendly fire is a very rare occurrence.

I'm going to review all ship turrets and see to it that THAT doesn't happen, my Asgard I beefed up has only beam weapons, very effective against a few small fighters yes, but I tried to start the Astrid sequence, to see if they ask me to kill off a VIC station, but they only sold me a ship, namely the Astrid. So no way I can test the over whelming little fighters against my Asgard. (just see if it can handle and fend off this amount of violence)