Reputation Loss when fighting pirates?

[Varlis21]

Hi guys,

lost my old account info, loyal X-Fan and old-timer since X2 times.
Despite the horrible experience with Rebirth, I still went with buying X4 right on release day to support Egosoft.

So far quite happy with many aspects of X4, but the reputation loss management seems to be broken.

I have observed the following:

You get scanned and then attacked by a pirate. Even if you have a police license, if you fight back you loose massive reputation.

This even gets worse. Assume you scan a Behemoth. Find out - ok Scale Plate Pact. The Argons start shooting at him. The moment you do the same or even start boarding, you get flagged as enemy and half the sector turns red.
Also I noted sometimes the ships start out as SCP / SCA but then in a longer fight it turns to Teladi-30 or HAT -30... random...

Honestly, the current system basically ruins my entire playmode, which is hunting pirates to build rep and cap ships. I love the way how you lure them with cargo, need to identify them first (by checking which ones say e.g. Argon -5 rep or have the marauder names) and all that. But that all gets ruined if the system is then broken reg. the reputation management.

Is this really a bug? Or wrong design? Or am I missing something?

(Posted in spoiler forum as I am not sure everyone knows about the rep. check approach)

Any recommendations welcome...

[theslay]

It's either a bug or horrible implementation.

I have several groups of scale plate/ministry of finance ships attacking in that sector where the HQ is.
They open up fire on me but I get huge teladi rep hit if I return fire, and soon after I get tons of defense drones coming after me (from the stations ? they seem to be coming from nowhere).
I've tried scanning the attackers (which in itself is a huge pain as there is no scan shortcut) but this didn't change anything.

So basically I'm in a situation where I can't defend myself without having everything in the sector turns red, and can't let them alone as they keep attacking my ships.
Even worse, I take the reputation hit even when it's one of my AI ships going after them. I mean, really, taking faction hits because one of my ship is atempting to defend the base it has been assigned to ? Even the AI is confused by the situation.
This is a game breaking issue, and quite a frustrating one.

[Varlis21]

Yes had this too in my PHQ sector. Annoying. Also they keep chasing you across the universe.
I can't believe this is a design choice, as it makes no logical sense.

[globule711]

It can't be a design choice.

My savegame is totally unplayable after I defended myself against MIN and TEL pirates and faction reputation began to decrease, now I'm red against 2
factions I cant defend myself...

[Snafu_X3]

It's either a bug or horrible implementation.

Agreed. Currently behaviour seems to be

• Pirates of any faction fly under a false flag. Fairynuff
  • Upon scanning (by police scanner, or maybe a lower chance for basic scanner), that false flag should be revealed. An innocent ship scanned by <player> not owning a police licence for that sector's controlling faction /may/ turn hostile, at a low chance (higher for combat ships maybe?)
  • Discovered pirate may or may not turn hostile due to scan
  • <pirate> decides to make demand. <player> refuses to comply
  • At this point, IMO, <pirate> should be permanently (or at least within local <player> scan range) flagged as <pirate_faction> & flagged red (hostile to <player>); instead it seems that a scan is required
  • Pirate makes attack on <player> asset upon refusal to comply with demand
• At this point things go squirrely. As <pirate> is not permanently flagged as such, their faction status flickers (alternates v quickly) between their pirate & cover IDs, leading to the loss of rep & local anger of their cover faction if <player> fights back
• ..eventually leading to a 'death spiral' of rep loss as all factions hate <player>

Have I got that right? I want to check before I post the above surmise as an official bugrep..

[theslay]

It's actually worse than that, in my game in any case.
First, they are red and attacking everything from the start -I found them first when was somewhere else, I randomly lost rep and I've seen that my PHQ defense ships were engaged in combat and needed some support.
Once there I could see that my ships were engaged in a fight between several (red) Scale Plate ships, some Xenons, a group of Kha'aks, and some (blue) local Teladi ships (I have around +15 rep with the locals).

I could engage the Xenons/Kha'aks fine, but I would take a rep hit as soon as I fire at a Scale Plate ships. During one of my runs trying to fix the situation I managed to scan one of them mid-battle, and it seems I didn't take the reputation hit when I killed it. But is it reasonnable to expect from the player to pause mid-combat to scan each ship before blowing it up ? I don't think so. Anything red should be open to engagement, or I don't see the point of having it appear red in the first place.
Anyway I though I could manage this impractical way... until this new group appeared.

It was a (red) Ministry of Finance M ship, escorted by some (red) Scale plates fighters (!), that immediatly opened fire on me. This time, even scanning the M ship didn't change anything, I got the rep hit although I scanned it (and it didn't change its ID either).
So I really don't know what's going there. There is something messed up with the whole 'camouflaging as another faction" thing, the engagement rules, how it interacts with the local faction when you engage them and the color coding of ships in the HUD.

[Varlis21]

So I did some further testing (sorry in case this is obvious)

In neutral sectors you do not loose rep when fighting and killing pirates. However, sometimes you might if another ship or station is close (haven't fully figured that out)

SCA relations (scale plate pact) is locked hard at -5, which I think is good for the spaceless and factionless pirates and makes sense.
HAT relations moves like any other rep scale, so killing this pirate type (even in neutral space) will lower your relations with HAT.

Conclusion:
I think the rep-loss for killing SCA ships in Argon/Antigone etc. space is bugged and not intended. The balance with HAT and SCA pirates in the neutral sectors works as intended I think and is fine.

So EGO please fix the rep-loss bug for killing SCA or HAT in Argon / Teladi / Paranid / Antigone space!

[venus65535]

It seems this issue applies to AI faction as well. I quit engaging pirates long ago because of this wired behavior and always run away when they're poking around and scanning my cargo hold. But last time after I jumped IS and ordered a trader to stay docked in a station to avoid a SCA Behemoth covered itself as ARG, I saw an ANT station was exchanging fire and missiles with it. Location was Second Contact Flash Point, HOP war front, so both ANT and ARG had some military presence there. It didn't take long before patrolling fighters and frigates to swarm that behemoth and put it down.

After that I saw some fight broke out around the south gate. I thought it was another HOP attack, but there were no HOP ships. It was ANT ships fighting ARG ships. I didn't see which side fired the first shot, but soon both sides took losses. They even attacked freighters of other side. It was strange to see allied factions fighting with each other in front line.

[Snafu_X3]

It was strange to see allied factions fighting with each other in front line.

It's my current understanding that the 'sub-factions' of all races are all regarded as 'pirates' by their dominating race, so it wouldn't be unusual to see ARG vs ANT combat etc. Better to describe them as 'pirates' rather than provoke a civil war, yes?

[RainerPrem]

...

So EGO please fix the rep-loss bug for killing SCA or HAT in Argon / Teladi / Paranid / Antigone space!

is apparently fixed in 1.5B4

[Varlis21]

Yes confirmed fixed in 1.50 I believe. Just capped a Behemoth in Argon space

Thanks so much Egosoft - Greatly enjoying the game!

[Rayman2200]

Sry for bumping this old thread up.

The issue is still present in update 2.2.

1 of 10 pirates cause the reputation drop, even if I scan the ship. It get even worse around pirat bases.

My reputation to all pirates are neutral but there are always and everywhere red pirates. Even if I don't have any cargo, they just attacking.

Nearly finished building up a drug station in "Grand Exchange III" near a pirate base to sell some stuff. Hopping it will not getting worse.

[Dirk-Jan]

You should not be sanctioned for defending yourself. I consider this a bug in the game.

[SPiDER]

If it was just reputation to the pirate faction that was lost I would not have a problem with that sanction however it isnt..getting reputation increases with HAT and MIN is not easy to achieve but when you then kill a pirate that has STARTED the fight accepting the loss is clearly wrong.it is obviusoly a bug that has still not been fixed....the message thtat reports it as "AN ATTACK AGAINST THIS STATION" is also a clear indication that it is a bug that needs addressing it is depressing because to avoid the BUGGED encounter ( s ) you need to stay clear of border sectors. this was mentioned in a thread about encounters but looks like it has been lost hopefully with this thread active it may garner some fresh atention.

[Dirk-Jan]

i wouldn't call grand exchange one a border sector but I'm glad you agree it's a bug

Besides that: I have all the police licences you can buy and I'm still not allowed to chase pirates! WTF

[-ITA-]

After several updates this nasty Bug is still not fixed, can´t play anymore since February!
The situation: SCA Pirates herassing my Traders in HQ sector, the number of Pirates is increasing and attacks are really common now, and no Police cares about them if they are SCA. Only randomly ejected Lasertowers from attacked npc frighters, wich kill one SCA pirate, because the pirate is nuts and want to fight this tower, and not want to go after the bounty? OK, at least one way the SCA pirates get decimated! But it seems to be the only way. If my Ships, Lasertowers etc. are shooting and killing a SCA pirate I get a reputation loss if they destroy this before reaching the gate and jumping into another sector. I have all Police Licenses, including the one of Ministry of Finance, i saw the problems with the SCA Pirates and raised the reputation by killing smugglers and criminals in station traffic of Ministry stations, wich is a horrible and boring grind! I was hoping to get a license to kill those SCA in HQ Sector. But now if I shooting a SCA pirate I get a reputation loss and loosing my Ministry police license, unscanned and scanned there is no difference. The pirates tag of the enemy says definitly Scale Pact before and after scanning him, but I´m getting a reputation loss. By the way scanning in Fight is horrible because there is no keyboard shortcut and if you are playing with mouse and keyboard in alternate mode, the one which is activated by Shift and Space button, scanning is one of the lower functions in mouse drop down menu, wich means that you will steering away while you select the scanning function. If you reach it to activate the scanner, and turn back to the enemy, mostly the enemy is passed or out of scanner range. And sometimes the scanner bugs and then the enemy is unscannable. I think that is the main problem with this pirate wich herasses me at the moment, because scanning him a second time isn´t possible. I´m glad that Update 2.6 lowered the chance that small ships use torpedos, wich is great because often I was killed by rockets in my Nemesis by trying to scan the enemies. I hope this will help.

But at all this is so annoying, please Egosoft fix this reputation loss things in those engagements, implement a scanner shortcut to scan blue marauder ships, make sure that the scanner works with no bugs and let the Ministry or Teladi Police kill more pirates wich were herassing ships at least in their main sectors. And let me defend my frighters and mysself from SCA attackers or other pirates without scanning them first, because attacking a civil ship and going for their cargo is an pirate act. So there is no question if he is a pirate or not. If someone ask for bounty and attack, he is a criminal and should be free to engage. As long he is hostile there should be no Reputation loss for shooting pirate ships.

[Imperial Good]

Use bait Nemesis ships and fight the pirates in low attention / out of sector. Nemesis with 5 x Ion Blaster Mk2. Should 1-2 shot any S and M pirate in low attention combat due to a logic bug. Fill the Nemesis with valuables so that pirates try to force them to drop cargo (yes they are that stupid...). Since there are no pirate Nemesis the only pirate ship that might stand a chance at killing the bait ships is the Behemoth Vanguard, which the Nemesis might still win against and can easily out speed in worst case.

[Stu Austin]

Hello all. Since 2.6 release (and even doing the general public testing), I have not had anymore rep losses, in fact my rep went up, especially with Ministry of Finance. I double checked this by going to the area's of stations in Grand Exchange and Eighteen Billion and the shipyard and wharf area of MOF, kilt a bunch of bad guys and had no problems. Even my freighters are able now to take out bad guys. The Lizards would come up and say I did a criminal act and report it, then someone else would come up and say "Negative" right away.
stu