[Request] Mission to recover rep after accidental kill

[user1679]

Request:

When you accidentally kill a friendly, a mission appears that allows you to carry out a task and the reward is the exact amount of rep. you lost

Detail:

I was assisting ANT in holding a gate from a XEN invasion when my pilot fell asleep at the helm and destroyed a bunch of their drones with her L Flak AA gun. I went from 20 rep to 9 in less than 30 seconds. Apparently the ANT captain was really attached to those drones, maybe he and his dad built them together, because he filed a complaint and I lost my licenses and they were pretty mad.

So as I looked for missions that would rebuild my reputation, I thought would be nice if there was a mission that would allow me to regain all the lost rep at once.

Example Mission:

Hello pilot. While it is unfortunate that our relationship has diminished, we do understand that in the heat of battle things don't always go as planned. Your actions have caused the loss of the following property:

list of ships destroyed

If there were any crew lost, we will include an amount of credits below that we will distribute to the families of the fallen.

Required:

1. $$ - the amount of credits required for lost crew (if any)

Required (pick one):

1. $$ - the amount of credits required to meet the cost of the destroyed ships
2. The ship(s) themselves (with "minimal" fittings)

Timer:

24 hours

Reward:

+ ### reputation on completion
-5 reputation on failure

* The credits for lost crew would be a simple calculation: (100 * (total_max_crew_all_ships * .60)) + (500 * (total_max_crew_all_ships * .30)) + (1000 * (total_max_crew_all_ships * .10)). Essentially it is 100 credits for all crew under 3 stars (we assume 60%), 500 credits for 3 to 4 star crew (we assume 30%) and 1000 credits for 5 star crew (we assume 10%).

* The credits for destroyed ships would simply be: (ship_cost_minimal_fitting * .80). The 20% discount is to assume that the ship had been in service for some time. If they were only drones then it's simply the full cost of the drone.

* If there is money under "required", the player must supply this along with one of the other options.

* ### reputation would equal how much you lost

And finally, if you accept the mission but don't complete it in 24 hours (this keeps ticking even if you deactivate the mission), you lose additional 5 rep (as long as it won't make the faction hostile to you).

[TroubledRabbit]

there is simpler, less elaborated option from the series #thereismodforthat, namely: apologize for attack. Mod changing the logic of recognizing accidental friendly fire (so the station won't get instantly mad because some of your shotgun pelets aimed for some xenon landed on their shields) also is there in the wild.

WIsh that for something that trivial no one would need a mod (the problem persist in each X-x game, IIRC)

[user1679]

there is simpler, less elaborated option from the series #thereismodforthat, namely: apologize for attack. Mod changing the logic of recognizing accidental friendly fire (so the station won't get instantly mad because some of your shotgun pelets aimed for some xenon landed on their shields) also is there in the wild.

WIsh that for something that trivial no one would need a mod (the problem persist in each X-x game, IIRC)

I have that mod but in my case it didn't help. I think that is only for when you accidentally shoot a station, you can comm it and apologize. In my case I immediately lost rep due to destroyed drones during firefight. And yes, my mission was a bit elaborate, probably more than necessary. I was just trying to create an example that would be difficult enough to warrant a +15 rep gain because currently doing the regular missions would take far too long, some of them only give fractions of rep.

[Koizuki]

This might be a decent idea in some form, or at least a revamp of how the game considers friendly fire (if shots hitting them were clearly aimed at something else vs shots hitting them with no other targets in the way.)
Heck, NPC's accidentally hitting you have them comm your ship going "Sorry, but you were in the way," after all.

That said, as of currently, I simply have a Reputation Grinder squad of 10 or so Pegasus Vanguards repeat-selling 1 energy cell to a target faction. It takes some time to recover, especially from +29 back to +30, but it's fairly passive if I'm not constantly killing their stuff accidentally.

[user1679]

This might be a decent idea in some form, or at least a revamp of how the game considers friendly fire (if shots hitting them were clearly aimed at something else vs shots hitting them with no other targets in the way.)
Heck, NPC's accidentally hitting you have them comm your ship going "Sorry, but you were in the way," after all.

That said, as of currently, I simply have a Reputation Grinder squad of 10 or so Pegasus Vanguards repeat-selling 1 energy cell to a target faction. It takes some time to recover, especially from +29 back to +30, but it's fairly passive if I'm not constantly killing their stuff accidentally.

Interesting idea. I do wish the rep loss was different between an actual "attack" order vs. accidental Flak AOE. Even if it was temporary, like after a week if you don't destroy more property you get the rep back.

[BitByte]

This might be a decent idea in some form, or at least a revamp of how the game considers friendly fire (if shots hitting them were clearly aimed at something else vs shots hitting them with no other targets in the way.)
Heck, NPC's accidentally hitting you have them comm your ship going "Sorry, but you were in the way," after all.

That said, as of currently, I simply have a Reputation Grinder squad of 10 or so Pegasus Vanguards repeat-selling 1 energy cell to a target faction. It takes some time to recover, especially from +29 back to +30, but it's fairly passive if I'm not constantly killing their stuff accidentally.

If you hit the ship and it does not contact local authorities it's only "temporary" reputation loss against that specific ship. This does not affect the faction reputation. If you attack against ship (e.g. FAF) which flies in their enemy territory (ARG) ship won't launch distress call or local authority can ignore their request and at that point temporary reputation loss is affecting that ship and not to whole faction until you destroy the ship (then it affects to the FAF faction reputation).
When you have +30 rep and lots of trading / sales (performed by your own ships) and destroy ship reputation loss can at that point be as short as few seconds (you see message about rep loss and next message is rep gain to +30). Destroying little bit larger station can also drop rep from +30 to +29 but gaining that back takes longer. But in this case same thing helps - plenty of trading using your own ships.

If NPC factions buy from your station (use their own ships) player won't gain reputation.

[TroubledRabbit]

I have that mod but in my case it didn't help. I think that is only for when you accidentally shoot a station, you can comm it and apologize. In my case I immediately lost rep due to destroyed drones during firefight. And yes, my mission was a bit elaborate, probably more than necessary. I was just trying to create an example that would be difficult enough to warrant a +15 rep gain because currently doing the regular missions would take far too long, some of them only give fractions of rep.

You need to communicate the aggravated ship - there is some usually, it may be even 'police' in civ ship* not the station (you cannot comm the station in X4 anyway) hit 'T' for nearest target until you find communicable (sentient) one. If there are only drones, just run and wait out the timer, but *do not shoot back*. In such case I start with pausing, disabling the turrets and then trying to sort out the issue.

*these small 'traffic stuff' which are on the map marked the same as space-suit

[Koizuki]

If you hit the ship and it does not contact local authorities it's only "temporary" reputation loss against that specific ship. This does not affect the faction reputation. If you attack against ship (e.g. FAF) which flies in their enemy territory (ARG) ship won't launch distress call or local authority can ignore their request and at that point temporary reputation loss is affecting that ship and not to whole faction until you destroy the ship (then it affects to the FAF faction reputation).

In isolation, you are correct; Accidental friendly fire would normally begin as only a temporary reputation loss with the affected target (and any subordinates.) However, when this happens, that temporary loss does still result in the target + subordinates temporarily turning hostile. Again, in isolation, this is not a problem -- just fly away and wait it out until they give up and return to normal relations.

The problem is that it is usually not in isolation when this occurs. Once they turn even temporarily hostile, they will act as normal hostile ships do -- that is, attack all valid enemy targets in range. This usually means these temporarily hostile entities will now be targeting my traders that are zipping by minding their own business, or my patrol fleets stationed along my traderoutes meant to discourage the SCA and protect against KHK/XEN raids which will destroy these temporarily hostile targets and turn it into a permanent reputation loss (often multiple losses if they come with subordinates) which then need to be made up via trade.

Additionally, even if I were to be quick enough to recall the entirety of that sector's patrols, they may still aggro onto any stations I have in their vicinity, and begin trying to destroy those. Of course, there's not a great solution to this because either my stations respond with their hundreds of turrets, or I turn them off and these hostile entities have a field day wrecking my station because it seems they won't return to normal standing if they are near a 'hostile' target.

There's simply a variety of ways this can spiral out of control without a simple way to say "Sorry, I didn't mean to" and get them to stop being hostile immediately, or prevent them from going hostile in the first place if the game can tell that the shots were never meant for them.

[BitByte]

I have seen quite well during X4 what kind of war it will trigger when Teladi & Ministry decided to fly in Hewa 2 between my large defence platform and gate to Company Regard (which was that time owned by Xenon).
It wasn't 1 or 2 times when huge quantity of TEL ships got destroyed just because they valuenteerly were in wrong place right time while Xenon wave pushed through. And there was nothing what I could do nor I could prevent that.
So just let them die and continue do business with them to regen reputation.

About military ships (mostly S and M but also L and XL) - they quite rarely launch distress or contact local authorities so you can quite "peacefully" fight with them even in civilized sectors and make them bail without loosing reputation.
Civilian ships like builders, traders and miners are the ones whom trigger alerts with locals.

But like you said it's important to check if ship have subordinates in case you plan to attack against them.

[Koizuki]

Yeah, that spiraling is the main issue that I'd like a way to prevent. Yes, we can try to patch things up afterward, but it's kind of silly that we have to do that instead of being able to apologize for accidents.

I've had a similar deal with MIN, except in Grand Exchange, which resulted in me having to reload to avoid it. I have production stations in that cluster, right by the Super Accelerators, and at one point I caught an SCA Phoenix right in front of it.
As I was bringing my sector defense fleet over to deal with it (after disabling its engines,) a TEL Freighter rammed right into it at travel speed, getting stuck/entangled with it. As soon as my destroyers opened fire on the SCA ship, the TEL freighter got caught up in the AoE, went hostile, MIN responded, my fleet responded in kind, MIN started going after my stations, my stations's turrets said "Nope," and now everything was red. Ugh.