Updates v6.2.011, 18 Feb 2024: -Tweak: When in a battle area, friendly NPCs skip the shield test (i.e. less than 25%) in determining on whether to respond to friendly fire from your NPCs. i.e. In battles, friendly NPCs will not respond to friendly fire unless they are actually targeted by your NPCs. Note that this doesn't apply to player's attacks on NPCs. Player's attacks are tested as normal. -Tweak: Prevented player-owned ships getting aggressive on friendly fire hits. From this version on, all NPCs ship do not react to friendly fire. Previously, only NPC-owned ships didn't aggro, while player-owned ships did - which can still lead to escalating aggro that is difficult to stop.
Hi. I don't understand which settings must I set to NPC-ships ignore friendly damage from my AI-ships and my defense platforms Please tell. Should I turn on all 3 settings or specific ones? All I tried causes not ignoring of friendly fire and I become an enemy to friendly factions when a big battle with enemy while cooperation between my and friendly fleets
I added this mod due to getting annoyed by allied ship agro after getting caught in a crossfire but now suddenly I have allied stations going red on me from ships on auto trade and it doesn't really make any sense as to why this is happening.
Can you attack a station without targeting it as much as you can, please? If they don't turn aggro on you until their shields are less 25% then the mod is working - at least for the player. It's more difficult to test this on AI, as they need to attacking enemies near friendlies. Let me know how you go.
Stations are going red on you because your auto traders will prioritise collecting dropped cargo after they drop off their wares IF the cargo is in their ware list. A situation that triggers this is if another trader was destroyed near a dock or the dock was hacked and dropped wares. I had a save file where this issue occurred and I did extensive testing to determine the cause. I was unable to find any way to prevent the wares from being collected other than banning all civilians until the offending cargo disappeared. There wasn't anything in the UI to say picking up the cargo would result in a penalty.
Had something very similar happen except that the station went aggressive after an NPC ship attacked another faction NPC ship near it and dropped a laser tower. All of my ships in sector at the time had explicit trade orders running on repeat, so they were not trying to pick up dropped crates. Can't really send a save file because it happens quite randomly and is near impossible to predict. If it helps, its always the Hatikvah trade station going aggro when a Zyarth scout attacks something.
Hello Kuertee! Would it be possible for you to outline if any of your mods have been made redundant in the 7.0 update? I assume some of your ideas are getting put into the official patches now and I see a few change notes regarding friendly fire specifically. Thanks in advance.
Hey Axeface! Yes, I'll be updating my mods (removing any features that have become obsolete) in the next week or two.
Friendly Fire Tweaks (FFT) may no longer be necessary. I'm not sure yet. The changes to friendly fire that came with 7.0 beta is the increased tolerance of neutral/friendly ships/stations in retaliating to your friendly fire. Pre 7.0 this tolerance was a lower value. With the new higher value, they'll tolerate your friendly fires more.
So it works differently from FFT - which (more or less) prevents them from retaliating unless their shields are low or you/your ships intended the attack.
Did you notice if the HOP ships attacking you had low shields? Did they attack you soon after the battle started? Or when it was far along and they had already sustained some damage from the Xenon?
Hi! I am still having the npc vs npc problem too I was in the "War of intervention" mission, my destroyers fleet was haed of the spear of odin in the tharka cascade, the one with regional damage, intercepting fighters, the terran fleet was way back the asgard and i don't remember terran fighters involved (but then one of the terran carrier was in red) . I noticed the asgard and one of my cruisers with no shield, the asgard was firing with beams at that cruiser but it wasn't even in red (enemy) and my cruiser was not firing with plasmas against it. Both were also engaging xenon fighters.
My game is almost entirely vanilla, I have your mods and some treybor ones to add more vanilla ships and economy for ai. I also have deadair dynamicwars but it was disabled (i mainly use it for the statics part and to use it in the late game when all stories are completed)
Hope we can find the issue here, I love your mods man!
Now I just need to get other factions ships to stop having battles right on my stations doorstep when I'm not involved and stop them from hanging out searching for trades so close to my stations that they should be scuffing their ships paintjobs on the stations walls.
Is it possible tell *MY* ships not to take revenge? This would stop a cascade reaction I can handle stray shots or the occasional destroy ship but i dont' want my entire fleet to engage the culprit. In my ship overirde reaction list I have every single faction i'm friendly with on defense only but it doesnt help at all. What I need is extra category in the ship attack override list called "passive" where it wont fire on the any enemy even if relations are lower than -25
I love that mod. It prevents a lot of friendly fire issues. And yet any sufficiently large battle with an allied fleet will always produce enough friendly fire incidents, you will lose reputation fast enough to turn an ally (25) to a foe (-25) within that very same battle.
I'm using VRO and Ossian Raiders plus tons of other mods to make the game more challenging. Currently Matrix #9 is secured by a Teladi battle fleet, one of my fleets and two defense stations. The Ossian Raiders always come in force and soon after the first minutes of combat, the Teladi turn hostile due friendly fire. Main cause are certain weapons, I'm sure, but also the rule set of this mod.
If a friendly ship gets hit by a stray shot and said ship has low shields (like 25% or below) already, it'll turn hostile and return fire. Of course, the now hostile ship is a valid target and will get destroyed, resulting in an "unauthorized kill" penalty. As long only one or two ships get killed that way, not much happens. However, if there's a full fleet present, it'll soon start to escalate: more and more ships turn hostile and get destroyed. It takes less than five minutes of intense combat to turn a former ally to a fierce enemy - just because of a few unlucky hits.
I wonder if the rule set can be expanded in some way:
* "Total Damage Done To Shields" Instead of a fixed threshold, the damage done to shields should be considered. All ships are considered, so it's not based on individual ships. The amount should be a setting: 25%, 50%, 75%. If you set it to 75%, the combined friendly fire of your fleet needs to exceed 75% of the ship's max shield hitpoints before it turns hostile. I also love to see different settings for Fighters (S, M) and Capitals (L, XL) here.
* 'Total Damage Done To Hull" Similar solution. The combined friendly fire of your fleet needs to exceed a set amount of hull points from max value. Again, needs to be set up: 25%, 50%, 75% and Fighters (S, M) and Capitals (L, XL).
I believe both options could be enough to actually avoid a lot of friendly fire issues. You'll still get the penalty for destruction of a friendly target, even if you didn't exceed the damage thresholds. Yet I think some issues could be fixed that way.
* "Ignore Friendly Destruction In Large Battles" I'm actually not sure if that's even possible. However, the game tracks a lot of stuff, so the info is there. I just don't know if the faction AI can be altered so they ignore a certain amount of "unauthorized kills" before the penalty kicks in. Again, if that option is possible, there should be a threshold, how many friendly destructions will be ignored, either based on a total number (0, 5, 10, ...) or hitpoints destroyed (a fighter is less worth than a capital ship) or crewmen lost (again: a single fighter only has 1 to 4 crewmembers, a capital ship may have a crew of at least 30).
All three options may expand the ruleset to the point, where friendly fire incidents are based roughly on the scenario at hand. If you keep firing at a friendly target with your main weapons, it'll turn hostile much sooner. If stray shots in a large scale battle hit friendlies, you may even get away if an already heavily damaged fighter blows up without a penalty.
Hey CptData, thanks for your comments and assessment of the mod.
Yes, it is unfortunate that the test for whether FF is ignored doesn't take into account received damage to hull and shield. Although somewhat possible (i.e. indirect damage from direct missile hits or splash damage cannot be tracked back to the particular ship that caused them), tracking a lot of that data is inefficient in regards to the scope of this mod.
But I think what I can do is identify if the ships are in a large battle - but only if they are in a fleet. And if they are, I can simply set the mod to ignore all friendly fire. I think.
I have the mod active in my game, but despite having all extension options on, I still get friendly fire issues, even in out of sight, so im wondering if the mod is working at all. :I
If you're fighting near friendly stations, and they're not turning red as your turrets hit the station, then it is working.
The mod doesn't remove all friendly-fire aggressions. It minimises them.
And yeah, turning off friendly-fire aggressions on NPCs isn't that easy. The mod still minises those incidents. I think if an NPC friendly accidently hits one of your NPCs, your NPC may react aggressively and attack them. The mod only makes non-player-faction AI ignore "friendly-fire" (with how the mod is coded to determine friendly-fire) from player-faction AI. Not the other way around. I don't know yet if I could fix this. I'll need to investigate the code again.
There was a bug in detecting friendly fire from player-owned NPCs.
Also, here are tests to check if the mod is working: TEST 1: 1. Make sure you don't have the station targeted. 2. Fire your main guns at it several times. 3. They shouldn't react to your attack until their shields drop to 25% or less.
TEST 2: 1. Target the station. 2. Fire your main guns. 3. They should react immediately.
126 comments
v6.2.011, 18 Feb 2024:
-Tweak: When in a battle area, friendly NPCs skip the shield test (i.e. less than 25%) in determining on whether to respond to friendly fire from your NPCs. i.e. In battles, friendly NPCs will not respond to friendly fire unless they are actually targeted by your NPCs. Note that this doesn't apply to player's attacks on NPCs. Player's attacks are tested as normal.
-Tweak: Prevented player-owned ships getting aggressive on friendly fire hits. From this version on, all NPCs ship do not react to friendly fire. Previously, only NPC-owned ships didn't aggro, while player-owned ships did - which can still lead to escalating aggro that is difficult to stop.
If they don't turn aggro on you until their shields are less 25% then the mod is working - at least for the player.
It's more difficult to test this on AI, as they need to attacking enemies near friendlies.
Let me know how you go.
could you share that save file with me, please?
send a link to [email protected].
thank you for the bug report and reporting this finding.
Yes, I'll be updating my mods (removing any features that have become obsolete) in the next week or two.
Friendly Fire Tweaks (FFT) may no longer be necessary. I'm not sure yet. The changes to friendly fire that came with 7.0 beta is the increased tolerance of neutral/friendly ships/stations in retaliating to your friendly fire. Pre 7.0 this tolerance was a lower value. With the new higher value, they'll tolerate your friendly fires more.
So it works differently from FFT - which (more or less) prevents them from retaliating unless their shields are low or you/your ships intended the attack.
Did they attack you soon after the battle started? Or when it was far along and they had already sustained some damage from the Xenon?
I was in the "War of intervention" mission, my destroyers fleet was haed of the spear of odin in the tharka cascade, the one with regional damage, intercepting fighters, the terran fleet was way back the asgard and i don't remember terran fighters involved (but then one of the terran carrier was in red) . I noticed the asgard and one of my cruisers with no shield, the asgard was firing with beams at that cruiser but it wasn't even in red (enemy) and my cruiser was not firing with plasmas against it. Both were also engaging xenon fighters.
My game is almost entirely vanilla, I have your mods and some treybor ones to add more vanilla ships and economy for ai. I also have deadair dynamicwars but it was disabled (i mainly use it for the statics part and to use it in the late game when all stories are completed)
Hope we can find the issue here, I love your mods man!
Now I just need to get other factions ships to stop having battles right on my stations doorstep when I'm not involved and stop them from hanging out searching for trades so close to my stations that they should be scuffing their ships paintjobs on the stations walls.
I'm using VRO and Ossian Raiders plus tons of other mods to make the game more challenging. Currently Matrix #9 is secured by a Teladi battle fleet, one of my fleets and two defense stations. The Ossian Raiders always come in force and soon after the first minutes of combat, the Teladi turn hostile due friendly fire. Main cause are certain weapons, I'm sure, but also the rule set of this mod.
If a friendly ship gets hit by a stray shot and said ship has low shields (like 25% or below) already, it'll turn hostile and return fire. Of course, the now hostile ship is a valid target and will get destroyed, resulting in an "unauthorized kill" penalty. As long only one or two ships get killed that way, not much happens. However, if there's a full fleet present, it'll soon start to escalate: more and more ships turn hostile and get destroyed. It takes less than five minutes of intense combat to turn a former ally to a fierce enemy - just because of a few unlucky hits.
I wonder if the rule set can be expanded in some way:
* "Total Damage Done To Shields"
Instead of a fixed threshold, the damage done to shields should be considered.
All ships are considered, so it's not based on individual ships. The amount should be a setting: 25%, 50%, 75%. If you set it to 75%, the combined friendly fire of your fleet needs to exceed 75% of the ship's max shield hitpoints before it turns hostile.
I also love to see different settings for Fighters (S, M) and Capitals (L, XL) here.
* 'Total Damage Done To Hull"
Similar solution. The combined friendly fire of your fleet needs to exceed a set amount of hull points from max value. Again, needs to be set up: 25%, 50%, 75% and Fighters (S, M) and Capitals (L, XL).
I believe both options could be enough to actually avoid a lot of friendly fire issues. You'll still get the penalty for destruction of a friendly target, even if you didn't exceed the damage thresholds. Yet I think some issues could be fixed that way.
* "Ignore Friendly Destruction In Large Battles"
I'm actually not sure if that's even possible. However, the game tracks a lot of stuff, so the info is there. I just don't know if the faction AI can be altered so they ignore a certain amount of "unauthorized kills" before the penalty kicks in. Again, if that option is possible, there should be a threshold, how many friendly destructions will be ignored, either based on a total number (0, 5, 10, ...) or hitpoints destroyed (a fighter is less worth than a capital ship) or crewmen lost (again: a single fighter only has 1 to 4 crewmembers, a capital ship may have a crew of at least 30).
All three options may expand the ruleset to the point, where friendly fire incidents are based roughly on the scenario at hand. If you keep firing at a friendly target with your main weapons, it'll turn hostile much sooner. If stray shots in a large scale battle hit friendlies, you may even get away if an already heavily damaged fighter blows up without a penalty.
Thank you and kind regards,
Michael
Yes, it is unfortunate that the test for whether FF is ignored doesn't take into account received damage to hull and shield. Although somewhat possible (i.e. indirect damage from direct missile hits or splash damage cannot be tracked back to the particular ship that caused them), tracking a lot of that data is inefficient in regards to the scope of this mod.
But I think what I can do is identify if the ships are in a large battle - but only if they are in a fleet. And if they are, I can simply set the mod to ignore all friendly fire. I think.
The mod doesn't remove all friendly-fire aggressions. It minimises them.
And yeah, turning off friendly-fire aggressions on NPCs isn't that easy. The mod still minises those incidents. I think if an NPC friendly accidently hits one of your NPCs, your NPC may react aggressively and attack them. The mod only makes non-player-faction AI ignore "friendly-fire" (with how the mod is coded to determine friendly-fire) from player-faction AI. Not the other way around. I don't know yet if I could fix this. I'll need to investigate the code again.
There was a bug in detecting friendly fire from player-owned NPCs.
Also, here are tests to check if the mod is working:
TEST 1:
1. Make sure you don't have the station targeted.
2. Fire your main guns at it several times.
3. They shouldn't react to your attack until their shields drop to 25% or less.
TEST 2:
1. Target the station.
2. Fire your main guns.
3. They should react immediately.