When we are told "we were told to drop our cargo" we need to know who

[crua9]

I'm running into a big problem where I'm getting the "we were told to droup our cargo", but I don't know who told them. If it was local security, then I'm OK. If it's a pirate, then I want them to fight them.

I told them to fight and my standing with Argo went from +5 to -5 within a few min since they killed them all

[strask]

One point of reference that MIGHT help, is legality of cargo. Bugs notwithstanding, the police will never tell your ships to drop cargo, unless that cargo is illegal. Whereas pirates will do it for no good reason at all. So if you don't typically have illegal cargo on your ships, you can assume any such message you get is about pirates.

If you are quick, you can pop into the message log and it says the name of the ship that requested the cargo drop. But usually that takes enough time that you cannot reply to the request for orders promptly and it goes away.

Of course, you can just set your global standing orders to comply with police, flee from pirates, and don't com me about these things. That's probably the easiest but on those occasions that a pirate successfully chases down and kills one of your ships (doesn't happen often) you don't know anything is wrong until you get the death message, so that can be kind of a bummer.

[crua9]

Originally posted by strask:

So if you don't typically have illegal cargo on your ships, you can assume any such message you get is about pirates.

Of course, you can just set your global standing orders to comply with police, flee from pirates, and don't com me about these things. That's probably the easiest but on those occasions that a pirate successfully chases down and kills one of your ships (doesn't happen often) you don't know anything is wrong until you get the death message, so that can be kind of a bummer.

The problem is, I'm not sure what is and isn't legal yet. And I'm not in the ship, so I don't know who is telling them to do what

But I didn't know about the global standing orders.

[strask]

Originally posted by crua9:

The problem is, I'm not sure what is and isn't legal yet.

Aha, ok. You are aware of the distinction between INVENTORY and CARGO, right? Cool.

So whenever you are buying/selling ANYTHING, be it inventory or cargo, if it's illegal in the current sector, it will be yellow on the list of wares. Otherwise it is shown in white.

That only tells you about current sector. In the encyclopedia entries of the illegal wares you can learn about which items are illegal to which governments.

But as a quick reference, among the INVENTORY items that are always with you and not stored on your ship, there are a lot of illegal wares. And enough of them are useful and/or valuable that you don't want to just discard them because they are illegal. So the default rule I personally follow is to just ALWAYS assume that I am personally carrying illegal inventory, and boost into travel mode at the first sign of police scanning me, or intending to.

On the other hand, there are only 3 wares that are both illegal(in some places) and CARGO, which your ships carry and might have inside when they com you about being accosted. The 3 illegal cargo items are:

SpaceWeed
SpaceFuel
Maja Dust.

SpaceWeed is illegal to most governments, but not Teladi.
SpaceFuel is illegal to most governments, but not Teladi.
Maja Dust is illegal to most governments, but not Teladi. (And actually maybe not Argon either?)

See a pattern here? Ok so the point is that if you don't tell your traders to trade in these three specific types of cargo, then you can always ignore police and focus only on pirate threats.

But I didn't know about the global standing orders.

The UI for finding how to change Global Standing Orders is in a bit of a weird place, here's a screenshot:

https://i.imgur.com/PER2g2C.jpg

[PeaceMaker]

Originally posted by crua9:

I'm running into a big problem where I'm getting the "we were told to droup our cargo", but I don't know who told them. If it was local security, then I'm OK. If it's a pirate, then I want them to fight them.

I told them to fight and my standing with Argo went from +5 to -5 within a few min since they killed them all

He usually says audibly a cop told him if it`s a cop, but nothing if it isn`t. At least whenever he tells me its a cop I tell him to obey (sometimes run) and if anyone else I usually say run or fight.

[Ketraar]

You can set up default behaviour for both scenarios, when promted to drop cargo by authorities or pirates. You can even set if you want to be notified, so I have set mine to comply with authority and escape for pirates and removed the notification in global settings.

One can still change this on a per ship baisis if required in the comands tab under default behaviour if wanted.

MFG

Ketraar

[crua9]

Originally posted by Ketraar:

You can set up default behaviour for both scenarios, when promted to drop cargo by authorities or pirates. You can even set if you want to be notified, so I have set mine to comply with authority and escape for pirates and removed the notification in global settings.

One can still change this on a per ship baisis if required in the comands tab under default behaviour if wanted.

MFG

Ketraar

Thanks for the heads up.

What does MFG stand for?

[Tilen]

It's an ancient Aztec curse that makes men's hair fall out.

Also, it's an acronym for "Mit freundlichen Grüßen", meaning "With friendly regards" in the language of our overlords.

I'm European.

[|$m0k!n| - El Novato -]

Originally posted by Tilen:

It's an ancient Aztec curse that makes men's hair fall out.

Also, it's an acronym for "Mit freundlichen Grüßen", meaning "With friendly regards" in the language of our overlords.

I'm European.

I thought they were the sohnen or the ancients themselves. Now this is starting to seem an episode of "The outer Limits".

[Papasaurus Rex]

if you look at the windo that generally pops up or on the bottom left of the screen it will say if it is pirates or police.

[Blueheaven]

Originally posted by Papasaurus Rex:

if you look at the windo that generally pops up or on the bottom left of the screen it will say if it is pirates or police.

My pilots always say ' the request came from a policemen' so if the didnt say that then its pirates.

[Blueheaven]

Originally posted by Ketraar:

You can set up default behaviour for both scenarios, when promted to drop cargo by authorities or pirates. You can even set if you want to be notified, so I have set mine to comply with authority and escape for pirates and removed the notification in global settings.

One can still change this on a per ship baisis if required in the comands tab under default behaviour if wanted.

MFG

Ketraar

Thats good information but how do you do that exactly ?

[Ketraar]

https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence/display/X4WIKI/NPC+Behaviours

MFG

Ketraar

[Defektiv]

I have global behavior set to escape pirate ransom requests and to notify me. I don't respond to the notifications or they would stop in front of the pirate and wait for me to give them an order. But I use the notification to quickly see the name of the ship, find it on my properties list and double click it to go right to where it is on the map. More often than not my pilot has already kept moving on and left the pirate behind. But if the pirate is a big enough threat and/or in a system my ships regularly fly through then I'll hop in a fighter and go take care of them.. and then lose MIN faction because pirate spoofing logic is messed up.

[strask]

Originally posted by blueheaven:

Thats good information but how do you do that exactly ?

Originally posted by Ketraar:

https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence/display/X4WIKI/NPC+Behaviours

That page in the manual does not (yet) have detailed instructions on how to set GLOBAL default behaviors. Here's an image someone made on imgur highlighting where to find the globals.
https://i.imgur.com/PER2g2C.jpg

[Ketraar]

Yes but its the same procedure for the GLOBAL settings. ;-)

MFG

Ketraar