The Black Market is a little trigger-happy.

[Song]

Many a constellation pilot has noticed this: The Black market treats accidental stray hits on them as a license to kill you (or your autons. Or you AND your autons) like no other station (except, perhaps, the commonwealth fortress which is about as evil only it has better guards which make things worse). However I've now noticed that NPCs are not immune either: I just saw an Antares V on approach attack a hostile target, accidentally aggravate the guards, who then waited for it to undock (presumably smiling and waving to the pilot as they headed for their ship), then flew after it and nuked the hell out of it. This is in response to a single AK15 hit which at this point in the game (early Ares/Luminous space) is like attacking someone with a feather, tripping over, and accidentally dropping it on someone's foot. Not exactly grounds for the poor feather-struck person breaking out the artillery and shelling the entire neighbourhood.

It's likely that this is because the "go hostile" code runs on armor damage, and several BM guards (Manticore, IAV) have no shield. It might be worth seeing if there's an alternative system (maybe a % of armor damage?) that could be used. This would make it so that a stray hit wouldn't cause issues until it actually hurt something. It'd make auton runs far easier, and result in fewer dead NPC freighters. Or give us the option to pay them to stop shooting us (it's in character for the BM, after all). Autons are particularly an issue because 1: They're rubbish shots & 2. It's impossible to make them stop shooting, or to get them to disengage from a fight properly.....as a result you basically cannot use them at all around BM station, Tempus Labs, or any other important or heavily armed station that has shieldless guards.

It's also worth noticing that NPC ships will not return fire when attacked by an aggravated station/guards. In the interests of hilarit-*cough* balance and fairness, it might be worth adding go-hostile code to ships as well to liven things up. It'd also make it so that piracy by the player is actively defended against by "victims".

[Atarlost]

I wouldn't mind so much if they were properly classed as hostile when trying to kill you.

[Song]

I wouldn't mind so much if they were properly classed as hostile when trying to kill you.

Things being hostile (and treated as hostile. And giving score as hostile) when they're trying to kill you would also be nice.

[pixelfck]

I think 'multihulled' stations only go offensive if hit by a WMD weapon (that is: if they are ctually taking damage).

Apart from the stations, I actually use the trigger happy Black Market defenders as a feature: if I'm engaged in a fight that is more than my match, I lure the ships towards a Back Market station and tease them into accidentally hitting one of the docked ships (preferably one of the Molotoks) and wait till the Black Market goons have done the heavy lifting.

However, this may be less useful if you normally don't go hostile on neutral or friendly ships.


Oh, I really do like the idea of paying a sum at the nearest Black Market station to call their bloodhounds off.

~Pixelfck