[#4759][8.0HF3] Blueprint theft though Diplomacy issue (Unable to steal Asgard and Syn Blueprints)

[aradapilot]

Attempting a very hard theft of terran capitals, after hours of trying and losing tens of millions in agent fees and materials, with normal failure messages (search log in save for fails), it bugged out and I got the following response. Attached a screenshot from the faction representative proving it is false. Extremely frustrating after so much time invested.
if for some reason this is intentional behavior, it needs to stop the player before the agent is sent, to avoid this whole loop. but it looks like it's just a bug.

screenshots:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F_edK9 ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16SlgwR ... sp=sharing

save game:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pMib0E ... sp=sharing

[Alan Phipps]

Both screenshots are correct in a way. Both the Syn and Asgard BP ownerships are hard-locked from the player so that the only way to get more of them is through capture.

It's like diplomatic agent missions to make peace or improve the locked rep with VIG during the plot segment where you have to earn back their respect through specific actions. That diplomacy will always fail too.

These diplomacy missions do not have the necessary prior 'possibility of success' checks, such as are made evident in the situation where you try to board a mission-critical ship. That omission is agreed.

[BlueGreen]

Both the Syn and Asgard BP ownerships are hard-locked from the player so that the only way to get more of them is through capture.

Capture isn't the only way to get more Syn and Asgard ships. I just tried it on my 8.0HF3 vanilla file. If you have 20+ Terran rep (I currently have 27) and enough credits, they let you buy the blueprints. I was then able to go to my shipyard and set up builds using the blueprints. It's a huge investment in resources to be at the point to afford blueprints costing into the hundreds of millions, so it makes sense that many players prefer obtaining these ships by capture, but it's not the only way to get them. The reason the buy buttons are disabled in the OP's screenshot is simply that the OP only has about 99 million credits, which is not quite enough for either BP. I usually find ways of investing my credits, so I'm usually under 100 million myself, so to test this I had to liquidate a huge number of ships, but easily reached the almost 400 million needed to buy the Asgard BP as well as the ATF XL main battery BP and begin setting up a build in personal my shipyard.

Additionally, it's also not about the BP price, either. The build modules that the player normally can't obtain using spacesuit EMPs and scanning signal leaks can be obtained through agent actions. I've stolen all the build BPs except for the ones from the Boron, and that's simply because I haven't yet engaged in the story to unlock access to their sectors yet meaning I can't access a Boron station with a faction representative in order to target them to steal the Boron versions of the build modules. The Terran XL fabrication BPs cost more than the Syn BP and , so why should we be able to have agents steal the XL fabrication bay BP but not the Syn BP? Keeping in mind that each L/XL ship BP theft attempt costs 15 million credits as well as 3 security bypass systems and failure has a high chance of killing your agent, this alternative is a calculated risk. If you fail to get the BP after about dozen attempts or so, you've wasted so many credits that you would likely have been better off buying the BP outright than sending all those agents to their deaths. Of course, if you send only max-trained agents on the mission, it shouldn't take anywhere near 12 attempts for a success from what I've observed (probably about 4 attempts on average), but failures still kill the agents and means investing in training up another agent, which takes considerable time. On the other hand, with some luck, it means getting these very expensive BPs at a significant discount.

I agree with OP, this is a bug as it partially negates the reward for investing in agents.

[Alan Phipps]

You are correct about eventually being able to buy expensive Asgard/Syn BPs when at top rep, but I was really talking about diplomatic efforts to secure their BPs 'for peanuts' when not at top rep and it never working and being effectively locked out. You can capture such ships though at any rep, and you can use diplomacy to gradually improve your rep with the faction.

I think the issue is more that you are not warned before committal when plot/rep conditions mean that a selected diplomatic mission cannot *possibly* succeed; like the 'impossible' warning that happens before you send pods to board a mission-critical ship.

In my analogy about locked VIG rep some diplomacy efforts only work on them when their rep is freely unlocked, but there is no warning about that so the analogy also holds.

[Worilio]

Reproduction workflow:

1) Load the relevant save file (https://file.kiwi/20067386#Yv-HSm043VbqjDKPrv572Q), go to the agents menu and wait for the agent "Meili Bolton" to complete the steal blieprint assignment from a KDH shipyard.
2) The mission will complete suceffully stating that you already have all available blueprints.
3) This is wrong, since the KDH specific blueprint for "Prometheus" and the pirate specific bluepring for "Chiffre" are not known to you.

This is a bug. Both faction specific blueprints must be obtainable by the agent mission supposed to do so from the faction possessing them.

[BlueGreen]

You are correct about eventually being able to buy expensive Asgard/Syn BPs when at top rep, but I was really talking about diplomatic efforts to secure their BPs 'for peanuts' when not at top rep and it never working and being effectively locked out. You can capture such ships though at any rep, and you can use diplomacy to gradually improve your rep with the faction.

I think the issue is more that you are not warned before committal when plot/rep conditions mean that a selected diplomatic mission cannot *possibly* succeed; like the 'impossible' warning that happens before you send pods to board a mission-critical ship.

In my analogy about locked VIG rep some diplomacy efforts only work on them when their rep is freely unlocked, but there is no warning about that so the analogy also holds.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that having an agent steal the Syn and Asgard BPs should be possible, but only if you meet the requirements to be able to purchase them? Doesn't aradapilot's screenshot show ownership of other BP's that also require 20+ rep with Terran, though (I can't remember if you need 10 or 20 rep to buy destroyer BPs)? I haven't yet tried to steal them myself as I have other priorities, but I do eventually plan to make an attempt at it.

Your analogy also makes a bit more sense if we're talking negotiation or even interference, but espionage is really more about obtaining things you normally wouldn't have access to which is precisely why you can execute those actions on faction stations and ships you can't even normally dock at and possibly even hostile (as long as they have a government). For instance, you might be RPing as an Argon trying to take on the Split. If you're at war with them, you're obviously not going to have the reputation to negotiate a purchase of BPs for their ships and equipment, but a spy on the other hand could be sent in to hack their systems, steal the BPs and return to you with them if they're skilled and lucky enough to survive. And yes, if it works, the cost should be "for peanuts" because you're either betting countless untrained spies at about 15 million each or a few spymasters for 15 million + whatever it cost to train them that high.

I do get that certain actions will auto fail or be locked out for story or common sense reasons. You can't start a war between MIN and TEL since MIN is basically the police force of TEL. Likewise, you can't have ARG/ANT go to war or become allies with TER until certain story events have happened as it would turn the plot into nonsense if they had any other diplomatic stance with each other beyond the default (I'm assuming that's also the same case with the VIG situation you linked, but I haven't ever done that plot yet). That said, unlike any of these other cases described, "Initiate Diplomatic Interference" does prevent you from event starting an attempt to alter diplomatic relations when common sense or story reasons wouldn't allow for a change. That said, if all the plots were resolved, I'd love it if there were a way to interfere between RIP and VIG to get RIP to declare independence especially since VIG doesn't really function like a police force in the way MIN does for TEL and VIG and RIP both have the ability to claim sector ownership unlike MIN.

Anyway, I think the risk/reward ratio as far as the Syn/Asgard go would be just fine if this were allowed to work. After all, the XL ship fabrication bay BP costs more than the Syn BP yet each attempt to steal that is a paltry 350k and 5 security slicers. Assuming you have a solid source for security slicers and didn't care about the time taken for all the attempts, you could easily afford to send untrained agents for the off chance they'd succeed and come out way ahead because of the lost cost per attempt vs. the BP value. That's probably not going to work for the XL ship blueprints, though, since 20 attempts would cost you 300 million + agent hiring fees and ships especially since I'm guessing the odds an unskilled agent would succeed at that mission is probably less than 5%. Seriously, if you're not willing to risk the time and resource investment in agents for this, it makes a great deal of sense to just buy the Syn BP at least and while the Asgard would still be considerably pricey, just outright buying it is lower stress if you really dislike the gambling side of the agent actions.

[Alan Phipps]

TER may be another mission/plot related rep case because you can start off locked out of some TER sectors and having to do some mission stuff to get access and rep. All I can go by are the reports here of it repeatedly not working despite successful diplomacy missions.