Strange Ship Sudden Undocking Issue.

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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Doktor Teufel
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Post by Doktor Teufel » Mon, 6. Mar 17, 18:08

Bjazz68 wrote:Hi guys,

Thank you for telling me that, I just assumed that once you docked any number of ships somewhere they would just stay there forever or until you sold them.
I now have 5 ships, two of which I gained through capping and they are all at the argon federal shipyard, so I guess I will have to sell them off, I was hoping to slowly build my trading fleet for auto trading, and a wingman small starter fleet for capping. But if this undocking issue keeps happening then it will make it really hard to monitor things throughout each session.

That's a shame, I guess I'll have to figure something else out.
Thanks for letting me know what the deal is,

cheers,
bjazz :)
You don't need to sell them off. As long as you are OOS most of the time, the odds of your ships being harmed due to getting booted from a dock are quite low. I've left my extremely rare Kha'ak Corvette at an NPC shipyard for now, and I'm not losing any sleep over it.

You can mitigate or eliminate the (already small) risk by just parking each of them at different stations. I know it's a hassle, but it's a small one compared to most of the hassles in this game. I'm fairly sure the "player reserved slot" in each station is untouchable by NPCs, but I could be mistaken.

Each race has at least one "super shipyard" (they're not particularly well documented) which I believe can hold far more ships, so those should also be safer. You can find out where each super shipyard is located by checking the Wiki page for each race: http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Races

That said, the only way to truly be safe when docking is to build your own HQ/station... but in that case, you'll need to make sure it's defended from enemies.

Honved
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Post by Honved » Mon, 6. Mar 17, 18:10

Equipment docks have something like 12-18 docking collars, and I've only ever seen a ship of mine kicked out once. Trade Stations are limited for TS class and up, but can hold an infinite number of fighters.

I often spread my "surplus" ships out among several sectors, generally 2-4 per Equipment Dock. As long as you have any asset in the sector, you can see prices, and a fighter works as well as a satellite, except that a docked fighter won't include scanner info. In the early main quest of TC, in Terran space, I often send any bailed "N" class Xenon to the nearest sector patrol base, since I rarely have enough satellites with me to cover it at that point in the game.

Unless it's a unique ship, or I intend to use it myself for something specific, I generally fix it up a bit (depending on how long it takes) and sell it. For a TS in really bad shape, the time generally isn't worth the effort (although there's one mission where you WILL need to put a certain TS back into decent shape, regardless of how banged up it is when you get it), but an M3 fighter can usually be patched up to full condition in a matter of a few minutes, and sold for somewhere around a million credits. That's pretty good money in the early stages of the game.

Bjazz68
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Post by Bjazz68 » Mon, 6. Mar 17, 21:49

Thanks Doktor Teufel and honved and jlehtone,

I appreciate that info, I guess it will be easy to spread this amount of ships out in argon prime, and then other sectors later on, I know it is a bit of a fuss and that cannot be avoided.

All part of the process is guess!

Thanks again
bjazz :)

Cursed Ghost
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Post by Cursed Ghost » Mon, 6. Mar 17, 22:16

hi

I've run in to this very irritating problem on countless occasions and its down to some short sighted design by Ego see stations used to have unlimited internal docking but when Ego re-did the stations in later games that unlimited internal docking was removed from most stations as a consequence when all the docking clamps are full your ships will be automatically un-docked

Unfortunately there isn't really much you can do about it that's why when i want to store ships i now store them on either Argon or Teladi trading stations because both of these still have unlimited internal docking, or the Aran as that can dock any ship in the game and has room for 30 ships m6 and smaller and 1 capital class ship m7 and bigger and its huge cargo hold makes a grate warehouse or the Player HQ as that also has unlimited internal docking for smaller ships

personally I'm of the opinion that the players ships should never be automatically undocked, because I've lost countless ships due to this issue before i worked out what the hell was going on.

Then again I'm of the opinion that the unlimited internal docking should never of been removed in the first place and Ego need to issue a patch that restores unlimited internal docking to all stations for all ships smaller than an m7 and the external clamps should only be for m7, m7m, TL, M1 and M2 that would largely solve this issue and a whole bunch of other extremely irritating issues like having to hang around for years waiting for the computer to get out the way so you can dock god i really hate the way the computer just idles in the space dock preventing player ships from landing, so annoying i just wish the player had a way to forcibly eject stubborn npc ships when they are being obnoxious and refuse to un-dock.

Nanook
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Post by Nanook » Tue, 7. Mar 17, 01:08

Bjazz68 wrote:Thanks Doktor Teufel and honved and jlehtone,

I appreciate that info, I guess it will be easy to spread this amount of ships out in argon prime, and then other sectors later on, I know it is a bit of a fuss and that cannot be avoided.

All part of the process is guess!

Thanks again
bjazz :)
Why do you have 'surplus' ships? If you have ships, put them to work doing something. Otherwise, you might just as well sell them and use the proceeds for other things. The only ship types I generally keep idle are various types of fighting ships that I use for different purposes. None of my freighters ever sit idle. And if I don't have an immediate use for a given fighter, it gets sold.
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

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Doktor Teufel
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Post by Doktor Teufel » Tue, 7. Mar 17, 01:13

Nanook wrote:Why do you have 'surplus' ships? If you have ships, put them to work doing something. Otherwise, you might just as well sell them and use the proceeds for other things. The only ship types I generally keep idle are various types of fighting ships that I use for different purposes. None of my freighters ever sit idle. And if I don't have an immediate use for a given fighter, it gets sold.
You're an old veteran of X. You're so familiar with the game that finding a use for anything at any time comes completely naturally to you.

To others who haven't fully mastered every aspect of the game and are still overwhelmed with some aspect of it or another, effortless multitasking may not come nearly as easily or as quickly and there's bound to be a lot more tunnel vision.

As a player gains familiarity, he can more easily have his credits and ships always put to work doing something useful and/or profitable.

Nanook
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Post by Nanook » Tue, 7. Mar 17, 01:45

I wasn't saying he needed to be using his surplus ships, just advising him that if he isn't, it's better to sell them and use the credits for something he currently needs. Just a little advice from "an old veteran of X". :wink:
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

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Post by Doktor Teufel » Tue, 7. Mar 17, 06:19

Nanook wrote:I wasn't saying he needed to be using his surplus ships, just advising him that if he isn't, it's better to sell them and use the credits for something he currently needs. Just a little advice from "an old veteran of X". :wink:
It applies to both, really.

I still have 90m sitting around because I need to figure out what to do with it.

Well, it's more like I'm putting off building some complexes due to expert procrastination... but uh... yeah, you know what I mean.

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jorganos
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Post by jorganos » Tue, 7. Mar 17, 06:31

In my currrent, military game I was in the situation where I could not afford to equip all the ships I have captured (or just made to bail in tomahawk-rich environments). I have taken two days off off killing every Argon in sight to consolidate a little, but money still remains tight.

Selling off badly damaged ships feels like making a huge loss to me. I have to clean them up to get a decent price, or find an afficionado paying extra for getting something to work on himself.

Doktor Teufel
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Post by Doktor Teufel » Tue, 7. Mar 17, 13:48

If it's something that I can buy in a shipyard in acceptable quantities and I have no immediate use for it, then as Nanook suggests, I'll sell it off. This also helps to keep the property list compact and tidy.

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jorganos
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Post by jorganos » Fri, 10. Mar 17, 18:59

Doktor Teufel wrote:If it's something that I can buy in a shipyard in acceptable quantities and I have no immediate use for it, then as Nanook suggests, I'll sell it off. This also helps to keep the property list compact and tidy.
It's mostly Argon hulls, and no, I won't be able to buy those in shipyards until hell has frozen over or I can get positive rep from Argon missions (and as things stand, hell freezing over probably has bigger chances to come first).

Once I have them in Terran space beyond Saturn or Mars, I can put them to use, if only as storage for loot or as buyers in hard to get to stations (Aldrin....). Getting them there is more work than getting mines perfectly aligned for complexes.

Bjazz68
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Post by Bjazz68 » Fri, 10. Mar 17, 20:46

Thank you very much Nanook and Doktor Teufel for your advice and comments. The idea of selling off surplus ships, you guys have it perfectly right in my case, plus I am new and it is really difficult to know what to do with every single ship I have, Only just learnt how to capture a ship and only done it twice so far.
Not to mention the cost of fitting all of these new ships out for whatever intended purpose.

I still need to learn how to approach different money making processes and also what extra equipment is needed and where to put it to make these processes possible.

So naturally the end result is that you have a few ships just sitting around.

I might sell most of them off and keep one trader and one fighter for now and then concentrate on what extras I could buy to enhance both of these ship's money making processes.

Thanks guys,
bjazz :)

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zooze
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Post by zooze » Fri, 8. Sep 17, 13:11

I keep any surplus ships at my player HQ. Docking clamps are used for M6+ so these are limited however you get plenty. Internal docking for M3 and smaller ships so you should be fine. But ultimately put the ships to use. Nearly all of my M7s and up are patrolling and keeping my core worlds safe.

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Post by Nanook » Fri, 8. Sep 17, 20:37

Please do not dredge up old threads. Bumping such threads is against forum rules. You've been around long enough and should know better!
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

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