Lots of goods around my big station

[Kosta88]

I noticed today that I have lots of grey boxes with wares from my station laying around it?? And it's a lot really... One Demeter got filled very quickly, one two boxes. And there are at least 100. I have a lot of storage in the station, but it's all filled up, as a buffer for building ships of course, and it's not being sold so quickly.

[Gavrushka]

Sounds like your station got hacked by pirates. - They force some storage to unload, but I'm not sure how often they collect it. - Watch out for Marauders and Pillagers (they will likely still be blue, but they are pirates in disguise.)

Or it could simply be one faction killed a rival faction trader.

[Kosta88]

I didn't spot a single pirate. I wouldn't really care if they would collect it. The production is so high that I wouldn't really miss it.
But it's annoying, those boxes really kill the immersion.
I can collect them as I said, with my own traders, but the downside is they don't unload automatically, so it would be a very long and tedious grind...

[MHDriver]

Yes it is a silly ass mechanic tbh. Pirate hacks your station remotely and your station kicks out hundreds of ware containers. Most often than not the pirate ship will just fly off to do the same thing to another station and leave all those containers to just despawn in time and you are right it is immersion breaking as hell. I don't know why ES put so little effort into it like actually making the pirate ship dock and have to hack then only carry off what they have room for but what we got was this nonsense. To top it off the pirate ship doesn't even go red after the hack to top it all off so your defenses do nothing. Next to the Kha'ak the pirate mechanic is the least developed and least contributing mechanic in the game.

[jlehtone]

I've seen SCA to dock to trade (sell loot).

Then I saw Phoenix head to another station. Thought that it docks, but no, it did stop some clicks "below" station and did send Cargo Drones. That was a clear "remote hack and collect". I did wait (what a thrill: Can the drone dock to ship?) and then followed the ship as it ventured far from stations. We had a marine party.

[Alan Phipps]

@ jlehtone: As a responsible citizen, you did of course return any stolen cargo left on the ship to the previous owners. You did, didn't you?

[Y-llian]

@ jlehtone: As a responsible citizen, you did of course return any stolen cargo left on the ship to the previous owners. You did, didn't you?

My guess is @jlehtone was too drunk on spacerum and "forgot".

[jlehtone]

Gosh, that was it! I had an eerie feeling that something was amiss.

You see, two K's were at the other side of the same sector and a valiant, selfless knight just had to dash to the rescue.
(I long for the days of old, when Teladi were cut off from Ianamus Zura, and thus were all damsels in distress.)


To get somewhat back to topic:
Is the Pirate thievery limited to Station storage? I'm thinking of all the build sites.
I did even purchase a mining ship in case the Xenon build sites feel charitable.

[Y-llian]

Is the Pirate thievery limited to Station storage? I'm thinking of all the build sites.
I did even purchase a mining ship in case the Xenon build sites feel charitable.

My understanding is that pirates don't go after build storage. Xenon build storage is useful if you're after easily available silicon, ore or energy cells. Shoot the cargo pods and have your freighter collect the cargo while happily enjoying that spacerum!

[terodil]

An extremely annoying 'feature'.
This (together with a few notorious AI annoyances) has actually killed my desire to play X4, and I'm back to X3AP for the time being. [1]

Pirates go after station storage only, not build storage. While they fly towards the station, they're disguised (e.g. TEL instead of SCA), so as you say, station defenses won't ever intercept them (last time I played, giving fleets the express order to intercept while OOS would have them roll out the red carpet for pirates instead of shooting at them, but I think that might have been fixed some time post 3.0). After the hack, they drop the false flag, though, so defensive forces will blow them to bits, but by then it's too late, the damage is done.

I've been campaigning for solutions to this issue... even just one of them would help tremendously.
- Allow stations/ships to identify approaching pirates. In player-owned sectors you can (apparently) establish police patrols, but during early/mid game, at the very least, we build in faction space, and we need to combat piracy then. Make it costly, if deemed necessary for 'balance' (extra module on stations or ships, or expensive satellites).
- Allow station managers to send out drones or dedicated ships to collect ejected wares (possibly only after the pirate has left the vicinity or got blown to bits).
- Allow station managers to alert the player to hacking attempts/successes so they can intervene or at least manually gather up the containers before they despawn.

Is Egosoft even aware of this issue?

Edit:
[1] The reasons I find this so aggravating are essentially twofold:
- I'm the sort of player that enjoys perfecting supply chains. This completely random and unpreventable element can mess up supply chains severely, potentially leading to production hiccups ('bullwhip effect') across the empire and requiring significant effort to fix.
- This 'feature' does absolutely nothing for gameplay. A challenge is defined as a difficulty you can overcome with clever thinking, effort, or expense. If the game offers you no way whatsoever to tackle a problem, it's no longer a challenge, but just an annoyance, a tax, and serves no gameplay purpose.