How do ambushes work?

[Richard]

I am confident my ships are very powerful. I destroyed pirate boss and their fleed twice with my ship and got purple turret item. What does ambush on mining mission means? Do I have to care at all?

[rickcarson]

The ambush % is an approximation of the percentage chance that you'll get ambushed.

If you click the button and submit the mission it will decide at that point whether you'll get ambushed, and at what point during the mission that you'll get ambushed.

In order to determine ambush chances, the game does a micro-simulation. Essentially, does the average pirate for the region think they can last N rounds in the ring with your ship?

So it starts off by comparing (mainly) your HP* and (to a lesser extent) firepower** versus the values for the average pirate in the area.

Except it's not really comparing your individual ship, it's comparing the aggregate of your stack of ships. It then performs the same calculation on a per-ship basis (so that individual captain perks can be incorporated) and munges the results together.

The salient point being that if you have an escorting ship which is beefy, then it effectively counts _twice_.***

For determining how risky various areas are, the game classifies each sector as belonging to one of a bunch of different options - e.g. inner area of factions you are at war with, outer area of factions you are at war with, -> hate your guts -> indifferent -> friendly -> etc. Or it might be uncontrolled space.

Ambushes are more likely in uncontrolled space or if you're unpopular.

It's been a while since I read the code, but there might also be a malus for being close to a rift. (Pretty sure there is a rift-adjacency malus for the travel missions)

I think one of the things I did was mod my scout missions to be 31x31 instead of 21x21 and that basically more than doubled the area - which means my scouts have to be about as beefy as my front-line ships, if not actually more so. (Because of the increased area driving up ambush chances)

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*Including shield, obviously

**doesn't care about range or weapon placement, just raw DPS, so short range weapons are perfectly good for deterring pirates from attacking, even though the pirate might _actually_ be able to stand back and pound you from range with impunity.

***hence you should never have two (or more) ships mining the same (or similar) areas with two different mining missions, you should always stack them up.

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IIRC some activities are designed to not have a 0% chance of ambush, and so the calculation for them has a kind of built in lower limit. I think it can still be pushed lower with captain perks though, or ridiculously large escorting fleets.

E.g. trading is inherently risky because the pirate is deliberately targeting trade vessels (quel surpris)

[Richard]

Originally posted by rickcarson:

The ambush % is an approximation of the percentage chance that you'll get ambushed.

If you click the button and submit the mission it will decide at that point whether you'll get ambushed, and at what point during the mission that you'll get ambushed.

In order to determine ambush chances, the game does a micro-simulation. Essentially, does the average pirate for the region think they can last N rounds in the ring with your ship?

So it starts off by comparing (mainly) your HP* and (to a lesser extent) firepower** versus the values for the average pirate in the area.

Except it's not really comparing your individual ship, it's comparing the aggregate of your stack of ships. It then performs the same calculation on a per-ship basis (so that individual captain perks can be incorporated) and munges the results together.

The salient point being that if you have an escorting ship which is beefy, then it effectively counts _twice_.***

For determining how risky various areas are, the game classifies each sector as belonging to one of a bunch of different options - e.g. inner area of factions you are at war with, outer area of factions you are at war with, -> hate your guts -> indifferent -> friendly -> etc. Or it might be uncontrolled space.

Ambushes are more likely in uncontrolled space or if you're unpopular.

It's been a while since I read the code, but there might also be a malus for being close to a rift. (Pretty sure there is a rift-adjacency malus for the travel missions)

I think one of the things I did was mod my scout missions to be 31x31 instead of 21x21 and that basically more than doubled the area - which means my scouts have to be about as beefy as my front-line ships, if not actually more so. (Because of the increased area driving up ambush chances)

-------

*Including shield, obviously

**doesn't care about range or weapon placement, just raw DPS, so short range weapons are perfectly good for deterring pirates from attacking, even though the pirate might _actually_ be able to stand back and pound you from range with impunity.

***hence you should never have two (or more) ships mining the same (or similar) areas with two different mining missions, you should always stack them up.

--------

IIRC some activities are designed to not have a 0% chance of ambush, and so the calculation for them has a kind of built in lower limit. I think it can still be pushed lower with captain perks though, or ridiculously large escorting fleets.

E.g. trading is inherently risky because the pirate is deliberately targeting trade vessels (quel surpris)

But what happens when you get ambushed? Do you have option to fight it out or simply lose your vessel how I have red? I mean it would be easy to just warp out and wait it out.

[Lucifer]

It shows a message that your ship is under attack, at which point you have an option to intervene and pull it out or let the game auto battle.

[Riasrock]

Maby a little outdated, but now i'm also confused with later on actions.
Let say that my miner/trader/scrapper ship is gonna be ambushed.
And i don't intervene to this battle becouse i'm shure that my ships will win.

What with the rest of mission. Do they come back and finish it or it stops it?
What with trader missions when you procuring goods?
After ambush that goods % stays depends of time of procuring that was consumed or those goods won't be procured at all ?

[Bobucles]

Bit of a necro.

An ambush kicks the ship out of mission magic space and into a map square, with enemy spawns. There should be an alert when this happens, with a notification to come save the ship.

Ambushes are mostly an annoyance, especially if the ship has incredibly fast engines or jump drive because it won't make a good effort to escape. Teleport inside the ship, take command, and run away manually.

Ambush chance is mostly determined by your ship's combat rating vs. the danger rating of enemy space. In general you want fairly powerful and beefy ships, and fleets can protect each other as well. Commodores also have ambush reduction as a perk, making them an ideal hybrid class.

I don't really remember but I'm pretty sure an ambush makes the mission fail. Very annoying with trade missions, who may end up with a pile of items in their inventory that they didn't sell.

[Ethonal]

An ambush "fails" the mission, even if they win the fight during auto resolve, you will get resources based on where they are in the mission. As a trader if its near the start you will get all your money back, if its near middle onwards you get back any money they didnt spend + the goods in that ships cargo hold. After winning/fleeing you can use the sell command mission to get "finish" the mission just make sure your getting a good deal as you cant reshape the sell command.