Still no workable player-station Piracy counter?

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Scoob
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Still no workable player-station Piracy counter?

Post by Scoob » Mon, 27. Jun 22, 17:53

Hey all,

I think I've done everything I can, but I still struggle to counter SCA Piracy at times. I'm very pro-active, with Alerts set if SCA ships are spotted near my stations, I have Police Patrolling as well as regular patrols and station-assigned combat ships. I regularly just zoom to my stations on the Map to see if there are any suspicious ships lurking around.

Last night I had an UNDISGUISED SCA ship able to approach one of my stations - no alerts triggered, despite the ship meeting the criteria. I'd just gone to look at the sector remotely and the SCA ship had already caused my station to ejected hundreds of thousands of units of cargo. The SCA Ship wasn't under cover of another faction, it wasn't even showing as hostile, so my patrols - which were right bloody next to it lol - ignored it entirely. Where were my police at this time? Wandering off hundreds of kilometres away, that's where. Must have been a dohnut shop or something...

Anyway, there still appears to be no workable solution to Station Piracy. Police wander off (useless) patrols don't see a thing (useless) and the Pirates are able to get stations to eject ridiculous amounts of cargo - that hundreds of thousands of units wasn't an exaggeration! Also, they could never collect all that cargo, but nor can I gather it back up as it despawns incredibly quickly.

This just gets very frustrating to lose so much cargo when there's no counter. Police ships were supposed to be the key, but they *still* just wander off and not stick near the station at they should. This has been reported many times, often during Betas (so I'm 100% vanilla for testing) but things don't change.

This has always been irksome, but as my in-game Empire expands I'm constantly scanning remote sectors for threats as my only tools - Alerts, Police and Patrols - fail me.

If Police just worked better and stuck near the station, that'd be good. I'd suggest an improve Police command that actually involves being assigned to the station, and the ship(s) assigned would automatically intercept ANY vessel approaching within say 20km of the station. Police could then identify the ship, flag it as hostile and have local forces take care of it. Currently, I do this *manually* via "Mark as Hostile" which is exceedingly valuable, but my Police ships should be doing this for me.

How are others countering this? Do you just ignore it? I can't do that as it's my stuff they're wasting - I would say taking, but most of it despawns. It'd be easier if SCA were a proper faction and able to be made "shoot on sight" enemies, doesn't really help with disguised ships. That said, I basically never see a disguised SCA in a neutral or one of my sectors, they only do that in the space of other Factions it seems.

Raevyan
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Re: Still no workable player-station Piracy counter?

Post by Raevyan » Mon, 27. Jun 22, 19:42

You could just do the SCA terraforming which gets you to +20 rep and they won’t harass you anymore. You don’t even need to complete the whole terraforming mission to unlock their rep.

Scoob
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Re: Still no workable player-station Piracy counter?

Post by Scoob » Mon, 27. Jun 22, 21:51

rene6740 wrote:
Mon, 27. Jun 22, 19:42
You could just do the SCA terraforming which gets you to +20 rep and they won’t harass you anymore. You don’t even need to complete the whole terraforming mission to unlock their rep.
Good tip, and perhaps a long-term goal, but that's quite a ways off for me currently. I just wish the "Police" command was fit for purpose.

sh1pman
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Re: Still no workable player-station Piracy counter?

Post by sh1pman » Tue, 28. Jun 22, 07:30

Have you set the fire authorisation override for SCA in global orders? If you set it to max aggression, all of your patrols should attack every undisguised SCA ship they see.

No idea what to do with disguised ships, though. Terraforming their planet seems to be the only permanent solution.
Last edited by sh1pman on Tue, 28. Jun 22, 07:43, edited 1 time in total.

LameFox
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Re: Still no workable player-station Piracy counter?

Post by LameFox » Tue, 28. Jun 22, 07:40

Sadly no, the official mechanics for this remain lacking. One possible work around I've found is that SCA only seem to disguise themselves in claimed territory. I notice this often while boarding them in Nopileos. Also, I don't think factions claim empty sectors unless it's adjacent to their own space at the time.

So hypothetically, if you used some naturally unclaimed sectors, or engineered an unclaimed sector nobody would take, and put all your non-shipyard buildings in there, they might remain undisguised and be killed according to your fire settings.
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