Battles before upgrades...

[Amzolt]

OK, so I've ended the honeymoon of extended trips between Serenity and Atlantis racking-up cash. Running into many more battles suddenly--even after logging out and back in...

Q#1: Are there "Battle-Seasons" and can they be predicted from the News?

Also, the ReadMe file says early on you have to be careful of the "intentions" of the ships showing up when the [h] key is used. But...

Q#2: [h] is for hostiles and they may not be hostile???

Q#3: Are Jump Points more prone to having attackers??

[pheonixstorm]

1. dont know
2. for hostiles spam friendly messages to turn them blue (doesn't always work)
3. With the addition of the pirate hackers quest I believe so. I think it was toned down a good bit. It should have been.. it was set to always happen (for testing) but was supposed to have been reset for inclusion.

Hope that can hold you over till a better answer shows up. As much as I love the game I don't play much because i can't stand SPEC. It takes too long. That and I seem to get stuck poking around in the code too much to get a chance to play.

[TBeholder]

Even aside of the missions. Jumps are small choke points prone to have something coming in and out all the time. And since they are completely open and SPEC-suppressing, the traffic from variety of factions has a lot of time to interact. Locating salvage not made by yourself confirms this - you rarely see floating containers anywhere else even despite landfalling NPC bug makes big ships stick firmly in no-SPEC area for a long, long time.

[Amzolt]

2. for hostiles spam friendly messages to turn them blue (doesn't always work)

Have to try that for the ones over a couple hundred klicks away--it's the one comin' in fast at 6000 meters I don't think I want to talk to

3. With the addition of the pirate hackers quest I believe so. I think it was toned down a good bit. It should have been.. it was set to always happen (for testing) but was supposed to have been reset for inclusion.

You seem to know enough about the Dev side to maybe let someone know if that wasn't reset...

I'll get back to ya if jump-points continue to be nasty places

[Amzolt]

Even aside of the missions. Jumps are small choke points prone to have something coming in and out all the time. And since they are completely open and SPEC-suppressing, the traffic from variety of factions has a lot of time to interact.

Yep, "choke points"--but, didn't know they're "SPEC-suppressing---I s'poz' I could use the [y] key after SPEC shuts down??

'Course, I've been shutting SPEC off early lately to get my shields up during approach.

Can I invoke [y] in jump-point approach? Need to practice how to slow down, too, though--read about velocity when entering jump.........

Locating salvage not made by yourself confirms this - you rarely see floating containers anywhere else even despite landfalling NPC bug makes big ships stick firmly in no-SPEC area for a long, long time.

Maybe that debris I create (that I'm learning how to maneuver better to avoid ) when I kill attackers is retrievable (once I get a tractor beam)?

I didn't quite understand this part of what you wrote:
"... landfalling NPC bug makes big ships stick firmly in no-SPEC area for a long, long time."

[Gungnir]

I didn't quite understand this part of what you wrote:
"... landfalling NPC bug makes big ships stick firmly in no-SPEC area for a long, long time."

I think he's referring to the bug that causes ships (usually Oxen or Yeomen, I've found) to sit light-hours out of a system, and just stay there for no reason. Not sure though.

[Amzolt]

I didn't quite understand this part of what you wrote:
"... landfalling NPC bug makes big ships stick firmly in no-SPEC area for a long, long time."

I think he's referring to the bug that causes ships (usually Oxen or Yeomen, I've found) to sit light-hours out of a system, and just stay there for no reason. Not sure though.

Thanks, Hunter

[CLoneWolf]

On the SPEC/y topic, yes, you can freely toggle your governor settings in SPEC-locked areas, because all that it changes is your speed cap, but you'll notice that your acceleration in travel mode is the same as the one in combat mode.
Beware tho: even when you're able to SPEC again, you can't use it to come to a full stop from a high non-SPEC speed; when you switch SPEC off you'll still have the same vector you had when you switched it on.
So if you use travel mode to reach very high normal speeds, the only help to quicken your stop is the best afterburner you can find; it might still take a lot of planning ahead, especially if your ship is extremely loaded with cargo.

About sweet talking hostiles back to at least neutral, as pheonixstorm said, it won't always work: if your relationship with a faction hits -100, that's the point of no return.
And even when it works, every F1 will affect the relationship so little (usually less than 1%, you can find those values in the faction xml files in data/communications) that you will soon wish you had a tiny robot finger tapping your F1 key for you a few times per second

[Amzolt]

CLoneWolf

Thanks for all that info

[TBeholder]

Even aside of the missions. Jumps are small choke points prone to have something coming in and out all the time. And since they are completely open and SPEC-suppressing, the traffic from variety of factions has a lot of time to interact.

Yep, "choke points"--but, didn't know they're "SPEC-suppressing---I s'poz' I could use the [y] key after SPEC shuts down?? [...] Can I invoke [y] in jump-point approach? Need to practice how to slow down, too, though--read about velocity when entering jump.........

Ugh. Deceleration takes time and both phases eat fuel constantly. I only do excessive acceleration when fighting on fly-by, running from raging capships or escaping a very deep gravity well.

Maybe that debris I create (that I'm learning how to maneuver better to avoid ) when I kill attackers is retrievable (once I get a tractor beam)?

Continers selectable as targets are pickable (if there's enough of space in hold, of course). The rest is just junk.

I think he's referring to the bug that causes ships (usually Oxen or Yeomen, I've found) to sit light-hours out of a system, and just stay there for no reason. Not sure though.

No, it's rather mild - they're still accessible with some timed clicking.
Now the really bad one is inescapable evil tantalizing (o-o-oh! Clydesdale! trade! really good upgrades! ...wait, crap). All too frequently most detectable capships in the system pass most of their time (because without SPEC they are torturously slow) descending to planets so low that you can't dock with them because you're in the planet's dock range. And then slowly go on much, much lower. Not sure for the current, but in old versions you could see them ending up INSIDE the planet.