[X-Tension] Cannot anymore capture a ship after 5:00 - RNG at work.

[UnknownObject]

Version 2.2. I started the game and captured many pirate ships, but after some moment (appr. 5:00), as it seems, ships became impossible to capture.
Tens of reloads, and no effect.

To moderators: sorry, I should have created this topic in the Technical Support forum. Please, move it.

[Alan Phipps]

I think I'll leave this here as it may still be a gameplay question rather than Tech Sp. I hope one of the XT capture experts such as pjknibbs replies for you.

If this is a Steam game, have you verified your XT gamefile cache?

[UnknownObject]

If this is a Steam game, have you verified your XT gamefile cache?

No, it's Russian X-Gold with 2.2 English exe, unpacked.

[Cpt.Jericho]

For how long (ingame) have you been unable to capture ships? I remember that there are time where no matter what you do that you can take a ship. And other times where you hardly look at them and they bail. Maybe you're just on the unlucky side of the bailing routine.
Also, if you use fat guns like HEPTs, your chances not to destroy a ship are lower than, let's say, with PACs. As there is no seperate counter for hull percentage you might just deal too much damage to get the pilot to bail before his bucket blows.

[UnknownObject]

For how long (ingame) have you been unable to capture ships? I remember that there are time where no matter what you do that you can take a ship. And other times where you hardly look at them and they bail. Maybe you're just on the unlucky side of the bailing routine.
Also, if you use fat guns like HEPTs, your chances not to destroy a ship are lower than, let's say, with PACs. As there is no seperate counter for hull percentage you might just deal too much damage to get the pilot to bail before his bucket blows.

It started at 5:12 and lasts for 25 minutes. I was trying to capture a Pirate Lifter. After many attempts I got bored.
Then I captured bypassing Mandalay, Bayamon, Orinoco.
Another Pirate Ship, and no result.
Provoked a Pirate Base to launch fighters, and still no result. I didn't even notice an astronaut near the debris, so it's not because of overdoing shooting.
The difference between "capturable" and "non-capturable" ships is so obvious, and I'm afraid that all of them will become "non-capturable"
I'm in a Discoverer (named "EGOSOFT") and use GIRE or missiles (rarely).

I've just made 20 more attempts to capture a ship, and no success.

I've uploaded the sav file - maybe, anyone would try it in a pure English/German version and find out if the savegame is buggy.

[Cpt.Jericho]

I think, renaming your ship to EGOSOFT to capture more ships is a myth.
But what say now seem like you're still able capture ships - just the pirate lifter is a bit elusive; I remember those being a bit tricky to get. Not that they're really worth the effort.

[RAVEN.myst]

I played very little of X:BtF and even less X-T, but if it's anything similar to the later games, then the pilot will have a morale rating, and at some point/s during combat morale gets checked, if the check is failed the pilot ditches. It's possible (again, IF in this game it works similarly to future games) that you're simply getting high-morale opponents (and if this is the case, maybe pirates get a higher average morale than others.) Once again, IF it's similar to future games, you may do better to keep trying against different opponents and not spend too much time reloading the same enemy - I found that if a particular pilot is refusing to bail, chances are it's got a high morale and it's better to simply move on to the next one, and hope for lower morale.

[DISCLAIMER: As stated above, I'm surmising based on my knowledge of the later games in the series - if the mechanics are too dissimilar, then my info/advice may well be invalid, and in that case you have my apple-orgies. ]

[UnknownObject]

I think, renaming your ship to EGOSOFT to capture more ships is a myth.
But what say now seem like you're still able capture ships - just the pirate lifter is a bit elusive; I remember those being a bit tricky to get. Not that they're really worth the effort.

I've already captured 2 Pirate Lifters, and it wasn't hard. Moreover, I repeated capturing until I got 2 AHEPTs with each of them - the probability of bailing seemed high enough. But the third one didn't even bail.

And I have the problem not only with the Pirate Lifter. When I provoked a pirate base last time, all Orinocos were captured without much efforts. And now I cannot capture a single Orinoco from the Pirate Base.

It was somewhere written that the probability of bailing is 20% if the player's ship is stronger, 30% if the player's ship is weaker, 35% if it's named "EGOSOFT", independently of the target's pilot's race. It seems that there wasn't the "morale" parameter in X-T.

[Cpt.Jericho]

It was also written numberous times that there was a secret UFO base somewhere hidden in Black Hole Sun. I've fallen to that myth to rename the players ship just to have some lucky bails and after that I was unable to capture anything.
Half an hour without bail means nothing. You might as well try to re-rename your ship again and suddenly get some more bails. But I still will call it luck.

[UnknownObject]

You were right! Having idled until 10:00 (using SETA) in a neighboring sector, I returned and captured a bypassing Orinoco and a Bayamon + an Orinoco among the same defenders of the Pirate Base. There are times of bad luck. So, how long are they actually and is there a way to shorten them? to avoid them? to predict them? I don't wish the Perseus Mission to happen in the unlucky time.

[UniTrader]

to my knowlegde capturing ships checks if the hull is below a certain percentage when hit (80% iirc) and if it is the RNG is asked if the Ship shuld bail taking the morale into account (blocked for a moment after a check, i would guess a second)
this check can happen 3 times, and if you fail every time the ship is set as uncapturable (the pilot will never bail) - so constantly trying to get a certain ship is pointless. just kill it and move on to the next one.


NOTE: this is based on what i know about this mechanic in X2 / X3 (and it has been years since i touched them) so my info may not be entirely accurate - but i am pretty sure it was taken straight from X-T

[RAVEN.myst]

UO: I think you may be overthinking the whole issue - I seriously doubt there are specific "periods" when the RNG is friendlier or not, but rather the rolls are checked at the time they are relevant. People mistakenly assume that a random distribution is even, but that is not the case (in fact, that would be close to the OPPOSITE of randomness) - in reality, random events can and do (in fact, they often tend to) cluster - so it's not unusual to have moderately long streaks of one result or another. Picture this: let's say you flipped a coin and it came up 'heads' 5 times in a row. Do you think it's more likely to come up 'tails' next time? No - the odds are still 50/50, the coin has no "memory" nor bias based on previous results. The odds of 6 consecutive heads rolls ARE quite low - to predict, to have coincide with a desire or expectation. But to simply happen at random? In a large enough sample set, not only are the odds for that 6-heads streak high, they are practically guaranteed - at *some indeterminate, unpredictable point*. I think this is what you are experiencing - and the fact that you contrast other periods when you make multiple easy captures supports this, as those are the "hot" streaks, regressing the overall result to the mean.

[Cpt.Jericho]

As for getting the Perseus: Save before you enter the sector in which it is and reload if you can't capture it.

[Killjaeden]

in X3 there was the pilot morale stat (or something like that) - which would vary for different types of NPC. If the morale stat was too high you would baiscally never be able to board it basically. If it was real low, there was a very high chance to capture. Those stats varied randomly within a certain range, but also dependant on NPC type. Military ships had very high morale usually (around 40-50) whereas civilans had around 5-10 Morale and jumped out very often.

They only jump out when the hull damage is at a certain amount (70% iirc). If they didnt jump out around 70-60% hull i just gave up and destroyed them, because at that point it was unlikely they would jump out.

Idk when this morale thing and hull condition was introduced, but perhaps its the same for XT.

[Cpt.Jericho]

Idk when this morale thing and hull condition was introduced, but perhaps its the same for XT.

The hull condition was certainly not introduced in XT as there is no seperate value for hull.

[UnknownObject]

RAVEN.myst: it may be probable that this "bad luck" is just a normal work of RNG. Writing a phrase from "Hamlet" by a monkey, randomly tapping a key of the typewriter, is also probable. But if you see a phrase from "Hamlet" as a result of the experiment, you will rather agree that someone helped the monkey than that monkey did randomly type it. And if I tried 50 times with no success, I consider the hypothesis of something going wrong worthy of attention. A good way to refute my opinion is to finally capture that pitiful Orinoco, but I could not did that. Maybe, someone else can do that? I've posted the link to the savegame above.

[RAVEN.myst]

The most hunted Orinoco in the X-verse. You may want to put up 'wanted' posters (I picture it with an eye-patch [of course], but also with a thick black handlebar mustache and a sombrero. Given the ship is named after a South American river, I guess a parrot would also not be out of place...) Oh, as for the theory about a million monkeys with typewriters eventually churning out the collected works of Shakespeare - I've heard it said that since the Internet explosion (and the advent of blogging and other forms of "democratisation of information"), we now have growing evidence to the contrary, heheheh

[Nanook]

Why are you so set on getting that one Orinoco? Just kill it and go on to the next one. There's plenty more where that one came from.

An FYI: each ship has a hidden morale, and if that morale is high enough, it's almost impossible to make it bail. In the later games which included a script editor, you could actually see what the morale was and avoid trying to capture those ships. X-T doesn't have a script editor, so you don't have that option.

So I repeat, kill it and move on. You'll be a lot happier, and richer.

[UnknownObject]

Sorry, you didn't understand me.
I don't really need THAT Orinoco. But I tried an Argon Lifter, a Paranid Ganymede, a Split Scorpion, another Scorpion - the result is the same: no successfull bails.

The point is that my hypothesis is there are some time intervals when capturing seems broken. You doubted and said: no, it's just a normal work of RNG. I hoped that someone, if wants, would try my savegame and capture that ship just for the REFUTATION of my hypothesis. Or not that ship, but another Orinoco from the "flock" or something else - it would be fine too.

[Nanook]

There are no 'intervals' as such. It's just the randomness of the events, which can, as stated above, cluster at times. Has nothing to do with timing. In my experience, and I've captured tens of thousands of ships over my many years of playing X games, a good average is around 1 in 10 ships will bail. During that time, I've sometimes had to kill as many as a hundred or more between some bailouts, and then have periods where I'll get several in short order. Other times, they're more evenly spaced.

So I repeat, it's completely random, with a few modifiers such as the pilot's morale, your combat rank, and the size of your ship versus the opponents (the larger your ship and the smaller theirs, the more likely they are to bail). Capturing is never 'broken'. It's simply random, with modifiers.

You say you're using a Disco to attack Pirate freighters and Orinocos. Get yourself a bigger ship and you'll probably get better bailing percentages.