Communications hail #53982 (questions etc)

[Zanasj]

Yes, have now seen a Nav Buoy get shot by NPC ship (as well as crashing into it)

That reminds me... the thargoids attack and destroy witchspace nav buoys. This may give the player some time to prepare for an attack. It happened while I was playing the native mission where you have to transport some plans to a station, and the thargoids jump in near witchspace buoys.

[Cmdr James]

Right. In my local copy, I changed the code that looks for things for thargoids to attack, to exclude nav buoys a month or so back, and it seems to be ok.

If most people agree, I will commit the change.

[another_commander]

How about making this a probability based decision? Nav buoys could be considered a strategic target, so I would not completely exclude the possibility of an attack against them.

[Cmdr James]

I was going to rework the way thargoid scanning works. Currently the scan chooses the closest target, whatever it may be. The only exception is that it tries to select the player in preference to anything else.

I was considering changing nav buoys to be only selected if there were no other targets around, but it is a little clumsy. I was wondering if it might be better to have some AI changes, so that a thargoid with nothing to do, instead of just flying to the station, will look for secondary targets.

Do any OXPs make any assumptions about this behaviour? I am not aware of any thargoid/buoy attack OXPs.

[Screet]

Hi,

I guess buoys are a strategic target, however they should have lowest consideration value, so that the thargoids would first try to destroy any ships around them before they go for a buoy.

Screet