Lasertowers making friends unhappy

[S1nged]

Hey, I'm somewhat new to X3. Got a question which keeps ruining my repu and game:

I placed a ton of lasertowers around the map at gates to Xenon sectors, because I noticed them overrunning the other AI races. 50-60 per gate so far do the trick without losing a LT. I'm cheesy and friendly with all major races, so I can block off all gates but the pirate gate to Xenon 101.
The LTs do what they are supposed to do for a while, but at some point they suddenly become hostile towards the sector owner. Repu with that race drops from +6 to -2 in seconds, since the LTs wreak havoc on the former friends. Happened to all races at some point or the other. Black Hole Sun is the most prominent of all though.

Cannot find anything about this topic via the search on here or google. Is it from friendly fire, the LTs accidentally shooting friendlies? Or because the LTs sometimes shoot down the friends of my friends, like killing hostile OTAS in a friendly Argon sector?

[iXenon]

I placed a ton of lasertowers around the map at gates to Xenon sectors, because I noticed them overrunning the other AI races. 50-60 per gate so far do the trick without losing a LT.

Hi,
Would it work if you put them within xenon sectors, i.e. form other side of the gates?

[DanKara]

...because I noticed them overrunning the other AI races.

Such never happened to me in all of my games. Sure, there might be a lot of red in a sector at time, that sector might loose a station or two - but thats about the impact - and thats only short termed (afaik). Factions never get 'doomed'. Its not like X4...

'Friendly Fire' does only happen with you in the same sector (IS), never when you are Out-Of-Sector (OOS).
Killing allys of the sector owner will always reduce your rep with that faction and the sector owner. In X3FL this extents to affect all their allys too.
Both things together can cascade into hell pretty quickly ... After the first accidents you can still apologize to the captain of the aggro'ed ships (or the captain of the next capital ship to calm down all quickly...)

For your lasertowers (or ships) I would suggest to set all factions (aside Xenon and Kha'ak) to 'friends' in Global Settings (and broadcast!) and then stay OOS.
You might have to refresh that setting everytime you visit those sectors yourself (because of stray bullets and other accidents...). You can also set this IFF in the console of each ship/lasertower individually, but seeing your numbers ...
(I never saw the need for any of the like. A single M6 Hyperion, M7 Aggamemnon (or any M8 / M7M, don't like the ammo-need) is usually enough to deal with actual troublemakers, M2 Boreas would be my recommendation in other X3-games but not in FL).

[S1nged]

Thanks for your info on how things work in X3, much appreciated! I am still a little overwhelmed with the game, especially how to equip ships effectively (last X I played was X1 a looong time ago). Thats why I went with LTs blockading the gates.

I noticed the small repu losses I take, when shooting friends of the sector owner. But that will only slowly turn them hostile. But with regard to my problem, that's not the case. The sector owners turn hostile suddenly, even though they are at +6 or whatever.
I was never in sector as well. Do advanced satellites count as in sector maybe?

[BrigandPhantos77]

Hey, I'm somewhat new to X3. Got a question which keeps ruining my repu and game:

I placed a ton of lasertowers around the map at gates to Xenon sectors, because I noticed them overrunning the other AI races. 50-60 per gate so far do the trick without losing a LT. I'm cheesy and friendly with all major races, so I can block off all gates but the pirate gate to Xenon 101.
The LTs do what they are supposed to do for a while, but at some point they suddenly become hostile towards the sector owner. Repu with that race drops from +6 to -2 in seconds, since the LTs wreak havoc on the former friends. Happened to all races at some point or the other. Black Hole Sun is the most prominent of all though.

Cannot find anything about this topic via the search on here or google. Is it from friendly fire, the LTs accidentally shooting friendlies? Or because the LTs sometimes shoot down the friends of my friends, like killing hostile OTAS in a friendly Argon sector?

This sounds like a linger of a bug from Version 1.1. The system owners would at some point consider them enemy targets and start attacking them. This would in turn cause the turrets to defend against those sector owners. Happened a lot to me in Void Epsilon before they "I thought" fixed it. I haven't had that problem since. If your on version 1.1, please double check and update to 1.3 asap. If your on 1.3, then I guess post it as a bug in the technical section.

50 to 60 eh? A bit over-kill. That many can reduce capitals in seconds. I used that many to clear out

Spoiler

Show

Sanctuary of Darkness. It was very effective, but required a distracted Xenon setup time.

One thing to point out.... any area effect weapon used while you are "in system" may hit the laser tower. Those towers "will" react at some point. And many groups use area effect weapons. For this reason the only system I place them in like that, or my systems. Once they flip and start firing back, it may trigger police or rapid response ships to destroy the tower. I had Strong Arms attack my Cerberus in New Income. It defended itself. Seconds later a Rapid Response Osprey jumped in, ignored my coms, then preceded to fire on one of my Ozias Transports sitting idle. Needless to say thankfully my TL was set to jump out. I immediately brought a bomber in and popped that Osprey. I took minimal rep loss and didn't lose my police license either.

I left system by the way to reset the hostility, it worked, but the Osprey still attacked my Ozias. Oh, I am director level rep with the Teladi. That's max rep.

[S1nged]

This sounds like a linger of a bug from Version 1.1. The system owners would at some point consider them enemy targets and start attacking them. This would in turn cause the turrets to defend against those sector owners. Happened a lot to me in Void Epsilon before they "I thought" fixed it. I haven't had that problem since. If your on version 1.1, please double check and update to 1.3 asap. If your on 1.3, then I guess post it as a bug in the technical section.

50 to 60 eh? A bit over-kill. That many can reduce capitals in seconds. I used that many to clear out

Spoiler

Show

Sanctuary of Darkness. It was very effective, but required a distracted Xenon setup time.

One thing to point out.... any area effect weapon used while you are "in system" may hit the laser tower. Those towers "will" react at some point. And many groups use area effect weapons. For this reason the only system I place them in like that, or my systems. Once they flip and start firing back, it may trigger police or rapid response ships to destroy the tower. I had Strong Arms attack my Cerberus in New Income. It defended itself. Seconds later a Rapid Response Osprey jumped in, ignored my coms, then preceded to fire on one of my Ozias Transports sitting idle. Needless to say thankfully my TL was set to jump out. I immediately brought a bomber in and popped that Osprey. I took minimal rep loss and didn't lose my police license either.

I left system by the way to reset the hostility, it worked, but the Osprey still attacked my Ozias. Oh, I am director level rep with the Teladi. That's max rep.

Thanks for your reply. I am on 1.3. Unfortunately, I don't have the time atm to play at all. Need to check and do some research on the exact moment it happens in regard to is/oos.

I placed ~30 lasertowers at start, which was enough for a Q + fighters and usually not a single lasertower getting destroyed. Until Ks started to appear. Actually, 2 Ks appeared just minutes apart in Black Hole Sun. Just 4 of the ~30 lasertowers survived. Then I upped all gates to 50-60. But I am prepared to tear them all down now and let the Xenons do their stuff.

[radgoat]

I placed a ton of lasertowers around the map at gates to Xenon sectors, because I noticed them overrunning the other AI races. 50-60 per gate so far do the trick without losing a LT.

Hi,
Would it work if you put them within xenon sectors, i.e. form other side of the gates?

I tried this and stupid AI transporter(especially Duke) or raid party(argon, paranid) across the xenon sector 347 sometimes.
Duke doesn't matter because they are loner.
But Corporation ships matter becaus of Dynamic Reputation...

My relationship with split and paranid wasn't that bad +4.
LT enemy setting for only for xenon, pirates, yaki.

But somehow my LT shoot down Ai ship and now I'm enemy of Profit Guild.

I loaded saved file and never install them again.

[Hwitvlf]

I've seen a few things that can cause this:

1 - With FL dynamic relations, the rep changes are based on the size of the ship you destroy. Destroying a Xenon I with M2 escorts will get opposing factions hostile pretty quick.

2 - The "show as enemy if enemy to me" setting (bottom of the control panel) for a laser tower set to yes. If any hostile ship comes around a tower, the tower flips its 'friend-foe' setting to foe for that ship's entire faction. For example, an enemy OTAS freighter flies near the towers, they incinerate it, the local Argon police target the towers in retaliation, and the towers start frying all Argon ships within range.

3 - This happened in other X3 games, but not sure about FL: A pirate ship is being escorted by fighters which are masked as commonwealth races. Your towers blast the pirate ship;,its masked escorts engage the towers causing them to flip their friend-foe settings for the races the pirate escorts were imitating.

Best bet is to do dump them on the xenon side of the gate and set "show as enemy if enemy to me" to "no" for each tower.

[Mr.Killer]

... After the first accidents you can still apologize to the captain of the aggro'ed ships (or the captain of the next capital ship to calm down all quickly...)

What I do not understand is why we as player always have to show our good side, just accidently shooting an ally could end up become their target and that is annoying when you have ships supporting you, the too start to shoot at allies that turned red. Why does the other parties never apologies to you? Why do other factions not use diplomacy on our station? Why does every thing depend on our actions?

It is a nice game, but handling so much at some point, it becomes annoying and I want to leave.
It also seems that doing good with faction x, faction y goes down, why is that? and I do mean the big factions, not the small groups.