Imagine this scenario…you've spent hours upon hours building up relations with an NPC faction, to finally get it to “Admired” status. You've just finished fending off attack waves of both Xsotan and pirates from one of their sectors, so you call in your salvaging ship to clean up the mess. While that's being taken care of, you decide to do some business with some of the shops in the sector. After all, the faction loves you now, so you can get some good prices.
While perusing the wares, you notice a message that their relations toward you is dropping, FAST. In literally only a matter of seconds, all those hours of work have been completely destroyed.
This is what happens, frequently, as a result of accidental friendly fire. It can happen from any long-range weapon shooting at an enemy, and a friendly happens to be in the way. It can happen from a piece of wreckage that happens to be close-by to a friendly, as your salvage ship or fighters try to get to it…the really frustrating part of that one, is that the salvage lasers don't even do any damage to the friendly, as long as they have shields, so what the heck are they getting so angry about? On top of that, if the wreckage is so close to the friendly as to be within their shields (such that the salvage lasers couldn't possibly get to it, ever), the AI doesn't know that, and will continue to fire away, angering the NPC faction even more (despite that no damage is actually being done to them).
The frequency of these occurrences, and the amount of time destroyed with every occurrence, make for an absolutely infuriating experience. Because it is stupid, there's no good reason for it, and there is virtually nothing you can do to prevent it. Because even if you immediately do know what's causing it (and most often you don't), you still can't react fast enough to prevent a MASSIVE hit to your relations with the NPC faction.
This is so rage-inducing, as to cause people to stop playing entirely. I for one, on more than one occasion, have quit the game because of this…not permanently, because I still have faith in the future of this game…but when I've come back, I've started a new save-file rather than trying to repair the damage caused by such a stupid incident. I'm sure many people have actually perma-quit because of it, and you don't hear about it because why would they waste even more of their time coming here to complain about it?
There are such easy ways to fix this.
1. You can make it so that relations penalties only occur if a shot hits the INTENDED target. ie., if someone else is caught in the crossfire, they don't get pissed at you for it because you weren't actually shooting at THEM.
2. Only incur a relations hit if they actually take DAMAGE. ie., salvage and mining lasers do NOTHING to shields, so why would someone get mad at you for a mining laser doing absolutely nothing to them?? That's like someone getting angry at a declawed cat for swatting furiously at their steel-toed army boot.
3. I have suggested this SO many times before…improve the targeting AI, so that it checks the firing arc of a weapon BEFORE it fires, to see if the path is blocked by a friendly. If there's a friendly obstructing your shot, DON'T FIRE.
You have no idea how many times I've considered just not playing anymore, until this gets fixed.
Suggestion
Travis9x
Imagine this scenario…you've spent hours upon hours building up relations with an NPC faction, to finally get it to “Admired” status. You've just finished fending off attack waves of both Xsotan and pirates from one of their sectors, so you call in your salvaging ship to clean up the mess. While that's being taken care of, you decide to do some business with some of the shops in the sector. After all, the faction loves you now, so you can get some good prices.
While perusing the wares, you notice a message that their relations toward you is dropping, FAST. In literally only a matter of seconds, all those hours of work have been completely destroyed.
This is what happens, frequently, as a result of accidental friendly fire. It can happen from any long-range weapon shooting at an enemy, and a friendly happens to be in the way. It can happen from a piece of wreckage that happens to be close-by to a friendly, as your salvage ship or fighters try to get to it…the really frustrating part of that one, is that the salvage lasers don't even do any damage to the friendly, as long as they have shields, so what the heck are they getting so angry about? On top of that, if the wreckage is so close to the friendly as to be within their shields (such that the salvage lasers couldn't possibly get to it, ever), the AI doesn't know that, and will continue to fire away, angering the NPC faction even more (despite that no damage is actually being done to them).
The frequency of these occurrences, and the amount of time destroyed with every occurrence, make for an absolutely infuriating experience. Because it is stupid, there's no good reason for it, and there is virtually nothing you can do to prevent it. Because even if you immediately do know what's causing it (and most often you don't), you still can't react fast enough to prevent a MASSIVE hit to your relations with the NPC faction.
This is so rage-inducing, as to cause people to stop playing entirely. I for one, on more than one occasion, have quit the game because of this…not permanently, because I still have faith in the future of this game…but when I've come back, I've started a new save-file rather than trying to repair the damage caused by such a stupid incident. I'm sure many people have actually perma-quit because of it, and you don't hear about it because why would they waste even more of their time coming here to complain about it?
There are such easy ways to fix this.
1. You can make it so that relations penalties only occur if a shot hits the INTENDED target. ie., if someone else is caught in the crossfire, they don't get pissed at you for it because you weren't actually shooting at THEM.
2. Only incur a relations hit if they actually take DAMAGE. ie., salvage and mining lasers do NOTHING to shields, so why would someone get mad at you for a mining laser doing absolutely nothing to them?? That's like someone getting angry at a declawed cat for swatting furiously at their steel-toed army boot.
3. I have suggested this SO many times before…improve the targeting AI, so that it checks the firing arc of a weapon BEFORE it fires, to see if the path is blocked by a friendly. If there's a friendly obstructing your shot, DON'T FIRE.
You have no idea how many times I've considered just not playing anymore, until this gets fixed.
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