Confirm Surrender!!!!

[Ziggy Tomcich]

When you approach a ship in space, sometimes there's a button that says "Acknowledge". Other times, on the same location, the button appears as "Surrender". I was playing a level 26 pirate on crazy with 702 experience and over $685,000 credits, when i mistakenly pressed the "Surrender" button after an encounter with a bounty hunter from an opposing clan. One single misclick caused me to die and loose this character. Before surrendering your ship, there should be a warning. Also, the acknowledge and surrender buttons shouldn't be put in the same space. When you're travelling through space and constantly encountering ships, most of which are friendly, you get conditioned to just push the acknowledge button. It should take a little more work to surrender your craft.

[blackgauntlet]

Er... why would you, a pirate, EVER want to acknowledge (as that should be your initial intention) a Bounty Hunter? Especially one from an opposing faction?

Torpedoes should be the answer, wasn't it?

[Fenikso]

I thought there IS a warning when trying to surrender, especially if the enemy is going to execute the captain.

[slayernz]

Hey Ziggy, that's really bad news, sorry for the loss of your captain.

There definitely is a "confirm" option straight after you press surrender. There has been, from time to time, an anomaly whereby you have rank with a faction but a negative RP. In that anomaly, you do see an "Acknowledge" button with no confirm and if your RP is negative enough, they will execute you. I'm about 80% sure that Cory fixed that issue, but can't remember enough to confirm it.

How do you get in the situation of having rank but negative RP? The quickest way is by trading restricted goods in a shortage situation with a faction that has a Trade Embargo with the faction you have rank with. The RP goes down like a lead balloon, but if you lose rank, it'll only be by 1. This means that if you were rank 10 with Rychart and traded with Cadar under embargo, Rychart will rescind your trade permit and might pull a rank from you, but your RP will go down by a much higher rate.

[Cory Trese]

I believe that the issue with incorrect display of Surrender / Acknowledge has been fixed by pre-calculating the reputation loss of Cargo on board.

It is possible that some additional logical flaw exists but it would be an extreme edge case. I guess if you had passengers on board during a Solar War or a Package during a Trade War it might trigger enough Rep loss during Defeat that it would cause a change in status.

Really maybe the issue is that the Rank system should block execution in favor of prison in these cases. The Captain is stripped of Rank, tossed in the brig but not executed (until the next crime.)

[slayernz]

That could be an excellent fix Cory ... if you have a military rank, then no matter how negative your RP is, you are effectively courtmarshalled, stripped of all rank, then tossed out (dishonorable discharge). Once you're a civilian, you're fair game in terms of execution

[Ziggy Tomcich]

Nov 15, 2011 16:05:29 GMT -5 slayernz said:

Hey Ziggy, that's really bad news, sorry for the loss of your captain.

There definitely is a "confirm" option straight after you press surrender. There has been, from time to time, an anomaly whereby you have rank with a faction but a negative RP. In that anomaly, you do see an "Acknowledge" button with no confirm and if your RP is negative enough, they will execute you. I'm about 80% sure that Cory fixed that issue, but can't remember enough to confirm it.

How do you get in the situation of having rank but negative RP? The quickest way is by trading restricted goods in a shortage situation with a faction that has a Trade Embargo with the faction you have rank with. The RP goes down like a lead balloon, but if you lose rank, it'll only be by 1. This means that if you were rank 10 with Rychart and traded with Cadar under embargo, Rychart will rescind your trade permit and might pull a rank from you, but your RP will go down by a much higher rate.

I had rank with all 6 factions and had positive RP. Than i decided to ditch Clan Javat, and started destroying all of their merchant ships in order to gain RP with Rychart, who was in a trade war with them. For a while i was looting Javat merchant and smuggler ships, then selling the proceeds to Thulun who was in a trade alliance with Javat and my RP lose was minimal. Than the trade alliance ended and i figured it's time to cut my ties with Javat in order to gain hero status with Rychart, and then Cedar. I was already a hero with De Valtos. I was down to -50 RP with Javat at the time i accidentally surrendered to them, mostly due to me looting their merchant and smuggler ships.

In any event, it should be impossible to surrender a ship without confirming, regardless if you have rank with that clan or not. Please fix this so that future captains don't accidentally surrender. I can just see my captain now trying to tell the executioner that it was all just a misclick, that i didn't mean to surrender!

The sad thing is that i probably had at least 2 other awards that i accomplished but never unlocked at a hall of records. I was doing so well in that game. My character name was Zig85 (85th character i played with, certainly the longest surviving), pilot 27 tactics 28 stealth 27, 5083 turns played. I was playing that game for over 3 weeks. Bummer.

Oh well, at least i have some pretty cool unlocked ships to start with for my next character.

[Ziggy Tomcich]

Nov 15, 2011 4:30:05 GMT -5 blackgauntlet said:

Er... why would you, a pirate, EVER want to acknowledge (as that should be your initial intention) a Bounty Hunter? Especially one from an opposing faction?

Torpedoes should be the answer, wasn't it?

I meant to ignore, not acknowledge or surrender. It was a misclick. I was on a long distance mission of over 50AU, and this was the 20th ship i encountered. I was conditioned to just press acknowledge, but in fact i should have pressed ignore. It was a mistake, but there should've been a confirmation before surrendering my ship!

[blackgauntlet]

Once again, why didn't you loot the Bounty Hunter blind and set his ship on Torpedo-induced fire instead of ignoring him?

Aren't you from Cada... oh... sorry... my bad.

[slayernz]

Definitely look on the bright side. You've learned a lot from Zig85 ... and hopefully your next character will be even more successful. A couple of things I noticed
1) I'm surprised that you were only at $685k by level 26. If you follow the rumor-mill and sell on shortages, you will be able to double if not triple that amount with your next character

2) Once your stealth is up to 20, hold off on that and put your energy into Pilot/Tactics for a while. Only start boosting your stealth when you start getting hit by enemy weapons fire.

3) I'm guessing the accidental surrender was because you were either feverishly pressing "surveillance". That button is very close to the "Surrender" button when a ship encounter appears. If you are going to annoy a faction by blockading/surveillance type actions, it may help to eliminate your rank by doing violent acts to the citizens of that faction

[Ziggy Tomcich]

Nov 16, 2011 0:53:03 GMT -5 blackgauntlet said:

Once again, why didn't you loot the Bounty Hunter blind and set his ship on Torpedo-induced fire instead of ignoring him?

Aren't you from Cada... oh... sorry... my bad.

Because my ship had 45 sails and 33 engines, stacked with a pilot and my own pilot skill of 27 meant that i could outrun any threat. If i bothered to attack every ship that wouldn't acknowledge me, i wouldn't get anywhere. Looting ships only lowers my RP, increasing my presence. When i'm on a mission i don't like getting distracted by side-shows. Besides once i established hero status with Rychart and cedar, i was going to rebuild my RP with Javat, or at least that was my plan.

Because of this, Javat is now my sworn enemy. There should be a "slowly depressurize enemy hull" option for taking out enemies you really despise!

[blackgauntlet]

When you're a Cadar, things change. ;D