[7.0 Beta 5][Feedback] M-sized Xenons are way to often abandoning their ships

[stillsuit]

My guess is in crew numbers: looks like M-sized Xenons only have 1 'pilot' on board and the first check for abandoning will result in success, while other races ships need to deplete their crew first.
When you attacking them with low-damage weapons (e.g. from a fighter) they, in most cases, just abandoning their ships instead of fighting to the end.

Not sure if its intended but feels strange. My log is filled with "forced to abandon their ship" messages from a few laser traps I put on some XEN gates.
I think XEN needs a much lower base chance for abandoning their ship. Or maybe some new Boso Ta/Dal research from PHQ to unlock that feature.

[LameFox]

Hm... I did not really notice them doing this when bailing them in a fighter. I still had to follow a target XEN ship around and intentionally avoid killing it. Maybe not as long as with other ships, but frankly, following something around tapping it after it is functionally defeated is not very interesting to do so I do not really mind that.

Surprised you got so many with laser towers though. My fleet defending the Hatikvah's Choice gate did not get any, so I wonder if it's the towers specifically that are very good at triggering it.

[Scoob]

I've had dozens of Xenon M-Class ships bail, and it's not me forcing them to do so. The Fighters assigned to Defence on my main Xenon-facing Defence Platform are causing bails every few minutes. It does seem a little excessive.

[SpaceCadet11864]

I wonder if it's because xenon have a crew of 1? So the same action that triggers crew to bail for other factions would cause xenon to be abandoned really fast. Can devs confirm if they use the same logic here? I hate to speculate...

I know it's anecdotal, but, I find it much easier to get PE's then to get minotaur raiders. With raiders, I have to do the thing of counting a few seconds and shooting once, then counting again and shooting again, to prevent the minotaur from being destroyed. So it takes patience to wait for their crew to all bail. Xenon PE's just bail. Also back in BETA 2, there is a thread somewhere where someone posted about hating that they couldn't capture xenon ships with military, and shared a screenshot littered with tons and tons of abandoned xenon ships.

One thing I think works very well in getting lots of bailed xenon ships is having a carrier strapped with fighters and bombers to guard a gate. that will farm them better than anything else, especially with OOS.

IS is different, but I personally caused 2 PE's to bail (one bailed at 50% health) while fighting them - I don't have a save of the fight but I do have a save where I have them both in my fleet now.

[LameFox]

Now I wonder what was up with my gate fleet not collecting these. Can ships overkill in low attention? I know when I'm nearby that tends to be the fate of anything I don't bail personally.

[stillsuit]

Can ships overkill in low attention?

They definitely can overkill. You can check if bail happens in your player journal. For me it's full with Xenon bailing out messages.
Well, tbh 'full' is a bit of exaggeration, but for putting a couple of cheap laser tower on 3 gates it way more than I expected.

[CBJ]

Just to point out that, much like the "Xenon are too weak" thread, there is very little we can do in response to threads full of anecdotal impressions with no supporting data points such as savegames.

[stillsuit]

Just to point out that, much like the "Xenon are too weak" thread, there is very little we can do in response to threads full of anecdotal impressions with no supporting data points such as savegames.

Anecdotal or not, preparing a full scale data analysis between XEN and other races bail chances is a little beyond me.
In fact, after the 'nerf' of respawning asteroid spots, I'm thinking that stealing XEN ships now is the best way to start and get some money, as the shittier your ship are the easier it is to steal XENs.
If you think it's works as intended I'm totally ok with it.

But if you wanted the save, here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13eHS_Z ... sp=sharing
Freshest start. You can check statistics, literally 2 minutes into the game. First enemy I saw on my way to the Hatikva was some random XEN corvette harassing a station. I shot it for 5 seconds and after their shields were gone I instantly got a fully fitted M class ship. What is funnier, half of this 2 minutes took my trip in a spacesuit to the ship and back to claim it.

[SpaceCadet11864]

Just to point out that, much like the "Xenon are too weak" thread, there is very little we can do in response to threads full of anecdotal impressions with no supporting data points such as savegames.

Here is a save that has a handful of PE's that have decent HP left (at least 50% if not more) which were abandoned after I had a carrier camp the hatvikah gate for several hours. These PE's were abandoned OOS.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hzjj3psg ... vbd2x&dl=0

I guess I dont really know if this is excessive or not? What is the stance of EGOSOFT regarding how the xenon abandoning ships should work?