Death when hitting Acknowledge

[zyrain]

I saw that there was a thread a while ago: "Hitting Acknowledge gets you surrendered" has this been fixed?

Three times now, I've had my captain die unexpectedly after hitting "Acknowledge" to a merchant/smuggler.

I think it was with a faction that I had a large negative rep with because I get the "Executed for your crimes" page, but I couldn't go back and see what I did.

There was no confirmation dialog about surrender.

I'm running Elite v4.4.7

[BlastGT1]

Acknowledge means you shut down engines, etc, check the text at the bottom of the combat screen the next time you press it. I don't remember all of it offhand, but it basically says you're stopping in order not to appear as if you're running or hiding. If the ship you acknowledge is of a faction you have bad rep with, then its captain might turn you in for a nice reward.

Launched from Torpedo Bay 1 of my MetroFLASHed HTC Droid Incredible

[shallowthought]

Acknowledge and surrender are the same thing. Acknowledge is shown when you have +ve rep with that faction and generally means that you'll get away with it; surrender is shown when you have -ve rep and generally means that you'll end up in prison or be executed. The problem is that the action taken by the other captain is based on the reputation AFTER the encounter, so if you are carrying restricted goods with no trade permit, or are carrying contracts, etc, you could have +ve rep before the incident but -ve after, resulting in prison or death. Also, the ack/surrender sometimes doesn't update immediately - if you've just been blockading a planet, bringing your rep from + to - then it may still show acknowledge rather than surrender (this may have been fixed, not sure). So in general, try to run if you're carrying anything that might piss off the other ship's faction.

[Cory Trese]

I will investigate. It is a rare, but possible still it seems.

[zyrain]

I believe I carefully read the text each time, and I'm aware of the history (and spaghetti code around the feature).

Still, when moving around (Especially at low levels) you run into a lot of ships and if you have good rep with most factions, most of the time you can 'safely' hit acknowledge. Especially considering that you lose rep sometimes if you don't acknowledge (Correct me if I'm wrong), this is the default option, if it's available.

I guess what I'm saying is that the options don't make much sense. "Ignore" really only makes sense as an option when the other ships is NOT a threat. So, given that you have two buttons on each encounter, how about this:

1) If the ship is potentially hostile (i.e. something 'bad' can happen to you, your cargo, your reputation, etc.): The options should be "Fight" and "Run"

2) If the ship is non-hostile (nothing bad can happen to you by the other captain): The options should be "Attack" or "Ignore"

I think the game is not distinguishing these two cases, even though the text takes great attempts to make it seem like a merchant or smuggler will NEVER do anything bad to you.

Thanks.

[shallowthought]

Merchants and smugglers only do anything if you have a wanted flag already, and don't search your ship if you acknowledge so you can't really go wrong with them. The only problem is military and bounty ships where the search might push your rep low enough to get a wanted flag, at which point you end up in prison or executed. Possible solution would be to calculate the rep change at the point of encounter and display surrender/acknowledge based on that. Seems like it would be simple to implement, but that's without knowing anything about the actual code involved.

[Cory Trese]

Jun 26, 2012 17:47:04 GMT -5 shallowthought said:

Merchants and smugglers only do anything if you have a wanted flag already, and don't search your ship if you acknowledge so you can't really go wrong with them. The only problem is military and bounty ships where the search might push your rep low enough to get a wanted flag, at which point you end up in prison or executed. Possible solution would be to calculate the rep change at the point of encounter and display surrender/acknowledge based on that. Seems like it would be simple to implement, but that's without knowing anything about the actual code involved.

That may be one way to fix it -- this was also suggested in our work planning system. It was logged ages ago, just never got around to finding a solution that was a overall improvement.

[Cory Trese]

ST-335

[Cory Trese]

Still working on this.

Very dangerous part of the application to modify at this point because there are so many devices and existing games out there.

Have to go very, very slow to avoid any additional one-star reviews (a few of those will pretty much ruin my day / stop all forward progress coding.)

One change I made for upcoming release is to raise the minimum reputation required to see the Acknowledge button to slightly more than you can loose in cargo search. That might help.

[Cory Trese]

If it does not help tho, the worst case side effect is you'll see about 2.4% less Acknowledge buttons which isn't going to cause too much heart ache for players.