Be a stowaway - this turned out to be more realistic than i expected.

[ardbeg74]

Was waiting at the spacelab in Segaris after sending my ship to go map a sector. Had become tired of listening to autopilot and engine sounds, so was just chilling dockside issuing orders when i thought... would one of those other ships take off with me onboard.

A frog had just landed and i quickly sprinted up the landing ramp and made my way to the bridge. The captain announced that the ship would be taking off shortly, and it did!

But it just seemed to fly around the station and go nowhere.. so i used the transporter to switch to my spacesuit and docked with the station. I did check up on the frog though and it was now in another sector.

So i thought, ok lets try that again but this time with an M class.

Very shortly i found myself running towards the open ramp to an ides trader. They don't hang around for long so timing is important and having a ramp near the front helps.

Just made it in time, the ramp starts closing and im in the lift. This is where it went sideways... see i couldn't actutally use the lift, it made the sound but nothing happened. The ramp was closed effectively leaving me trapped with no access to the transporter and spacesuit. I could see a large gap at the bottom of the ramp.. and what i saw rapidly turned to the black of space. I thought i would surely die without a space suit. But all was well.

The ship parked outside the station and did nothing. Not a thing. I was trapped. I tried comms with the ship but it appears egosoft forgot to code an option for "Terribly sorry but i seem to be trapped in your landing bay, could you possibly drop me off at the nearest station please, i'll make sure you are well compensated for the bother."

So there i was, trapped in the landing bay, no way to get off... totally at the mercy of the game engine. In my haste to get onboard before it took off.. i totally forgot to put down a quicksave.

Well after about 15 min i heard the order for "navigation" and it flew into Antigone Memorial... fantastic, i'm not going to be stuck for hours... but then i had horrible thought.. what if its going through the void and gets killed by one of those roids... it was heading for that gate!

Yep it was and it took the gate... but kept straight for the Second Contact gate, phew! Now all i have to worry about is xenon and pirates. Some xenon did show up at the gate to True Sight but the argon forces made short work of them.

I ended up in Pious Mists.. which i hadn't visited yet and thus the map stayed completely black not even a sector outline. Ironically i did fly by one of my scouts that was mapping HOP space.. so i quickly re-tasked it to head in my direction.

I was totally fixated on my only view of the outside, the gap in the ramp. We were moving... were we docking?? A call to Navigation and yes, i can see a station!! We are docking!!

I hurriedly got off. It had only been around 30 min but it felt alot longer.

But wait.. this is a HOP station and my reputation is -15 so i dont have permission to dock!

Where is my scout now... ah its in system and im at... 'unknown station' ok lets get the scout in sensor range. Ah ok its a field coil factory and my scout can dock?

Oh right i forgot Pious Mists is Paranid all fine, I took the elevator to the correct dock, got on my ship and made it to freedom!

I wonder what would have happened if my rep was too low to dock... would it have let me use the space suit... hmm perhaps something for my next attempt.

Well there we go, so the answer to "can you be a stowaway" is yes indeed even though i think it wasn't an intended mechanic.

Big shout out to Egosoft for creating a game where i could do something so silly. That was strangely fun and terrifying at the same time.

[Zefnoly]

Hint! As someone who has done a lot of stowawaying...

Use the fast travel teleport keybind to reset your position if you are stuck somewhere, outside or inside... Once a ship takes off and you are stuck on it, be it on it's exterior or somewhere on its inside, the fast travel button that (normally gets you back to your ship) will instead teleport you to the cockpit of the ship you are stuck on. Even if it is not yours, it just has to have undocked your last station.

This method I have used to stoway easily on certain ships. Especially hostile ones (yes you can do that). I would basically climb ontop of landing legs or hull. And ride the ship away from station, then use that keybind to reset/teleport myself inside the ship (you wont die on the outside without a suit, kinda funny)



Another hint:

If an NPC ship is flying around not doing anything, it is not because of you being onboard, it is them waiting for orders, or available trades to return.

Additional hint:

You can kinda "force" a stowaway situation, by pretending you lost your ship and get stuck in space suit in middle of space without a ship. In some cases this allows you to request "help" from nearby vessels, who will proceed to pick you up. You can then decide to tag along, or ask them to drop you off somewhere (even funnier if said request is in their enemy territory, as then you get to be in someone elses ship during combat. But also, you can even make large ships do this)

[ardbeg74]

Ah nice one, thanks for the tips. I didn't know about the teleport, I assume that is a different mechanic to the one you get at the HQ? Will check it out.

Need to try a crouch jump and see what i can get on to then. Didn't know you could jump on ships.

Deffo going to start a custom game as segaris, then set everybody else to -15 and get docked at a station that i don't have docking rights for. Gotta see what happens with that.

Best thing is, even if it wont let me use the spacesuit there, i can just jump on another ship... literally :D

Had a weird thing the other night, one of my miners got destroyed and i had what looked like one spacesuit that couldn't be rescued. Turned out it was an escape pod. I could order it around just like a ship. I had it dock and then put it in internal storage. I might be able to jump on that too... gotta be worth a try.

[PeaceMaker]

Originally posted by ardbeg74:

Big shout out to Egosoft for creating a game where i could do something so silly. That was strangely fun and terrifying at the same time.

You have discovered one of the unwritten joys of X4- Becoming a stowaway or kidnapped!

I remember doing this, "Ooooh that's a nice big ship! Let's have a look inside! There's the pilot, cockpit looks great, wish I had this ship- Agh! He's taken off! How do I get off?"

I sat there in the cockpit with the pilot for abut 45 minutes before he actually landed somewhere.

I still think it's a really cool mechanic, although it would be nice to ask him to drop you off for a fee. Although if you have good relations with his Faction or just felt kind he might do it for free with maybe you owe him an IOU for the detour if you don't have enough cash.

[ardbeg74]

Im actually wondering how mod-able this would be. Some of the logic might exist already due to the lost ship mechanic that Zefnoly mentioned. As to checking faction standings, calculating a suitable price based on location.. im not sure. Would depend on how much of the game logic is exposed by whatever modding api the game has. Not tried any modding for this game at all, though i did see it contained alot of xml with properties that could be tweaked.

I think the game could do with more open world immersion things, but is hard to justify dev time on fluff when there are other things that could improve the core loop. So modding would probably be the answer.

I should probably check incase someone has already made a mod for this.

[Geist]

When i was at war with VIG and had a high standing with TEL and could see their ships orders, I entered one of their ships that was heading to VIG Warf to sell some supplies. That way I could get on the station and hack their ship production :-D

[conrado.lacerda]

Be a stowaway - this turned out to be more realistic than i expected.

Does this mean you've been a stowaway IRL?

[Zefnoly]

Originally posted by Geist:

When i was at war with VIG and had a high standing with TEL and could see their ships orders, I entered one of their ships that was heading to VIG Warf to sell some supplies. That way I could get on the station and hack their ship production :-D

Yeah... I hope this remains a valid tactic...

[Kankaku]

Being able to take ships during these interactions would be cool.

[Zefnoly]

Originally posted by Geist:

When i was at war with VIG and had a high standing with TEL and could see their ships orders, I entered one of their ships that was heading to VIG Warf to sell some supplies. That way I could get on the station and hack their ship production :-D

I went to war with VIG and eradicated them to take their space as my own. But once I learned you can never really "eliminate" other empires I kinda re-loaded my save and gave up. Because even tho I filled their space with my stations and ships. They kept rebuilding their stuff. It broke my immersion and got annoying.