repaired ships ownership

[Kayoz]

First off, it's not clear what the "correct behaviour" is, or at least I've seen no "official" response answering the question... which is:

When derelict ships are repaired - who claims ownership?

In vanilla DW and 1.502, I'm pretty sure whomever had the biggest, baddest ships in the area (undefined what that meant - system?) ended up with the ships. So, if you're busily cleaning up a debris field, you'd better put some heavy hitters there to make sure that the work you put into repairing the ships doesn't simply go towards arming whomever happens to send a spare fleet there. Annoying, but that's the way it seemed to work.

However....

1.505 - and I suspected this in 1.504 but wasn't really looking for it... the behaviour is different. It seems that firepower is rather ignored - if you're the one that's repairing a derelict, you generally end up with it... generally.

My last night's insomnia entertainment saw a capital ship blink over to another race's colour for no explicable reason - I had repaired it, I dominated the debris field (a swarm of capital ships) - yet somehow I saw it flying off with the colours of another race. What gives? Individual and/or cumulative firepower doesn't seem to count any more.

As well, I ended up claiming a destroyer repaired by someone else (rather crappy trade if you ask me) - which was locked on auto and unable to move till the AI re-tasked the offending construction ship.

So, my issue is this:
The criteria for claiming derelict ships has changed - but without (as far as I can tell) any release note documentation.

Anyone else experience this?

[feygan]

I've noticed this also and as far as I can see it seems to be whoever has the closest ship. If you are trying to steal one from an AI repair vessel then it shifts to military over rules civilian, however I haven't seen any hierarchy among military ships. In general I just CTRL click on the ship being repaired and order a destroyer to move on top of it and it generally lets me claim them.

[Data]

yes, proximity is the deciding factor afaik

[Bingeling]

This mechanism really needs some love. Debris feels are probably the one feature I want to disable as they are so silly and cheesy, and scare me away from the storylines.

Stealing a capital ship being repaired by another empire should surely be viewed as more aggressive than blasting a mining base outside of war. In particular if the ship is advanced compared to what the repairing empire can build. This should mean an empire should have to take a very deliberate decision to grab the ship, in similar ways like it is a proper decision to shoot up a mining base.

In general the game could need some love on the war and peace business in general. Some past version of EU had the nice casus belli, I have not played any EU for a long, long time, so I don't really remember the details. There are ways to start a war that seem less evil than others. Like, starting just after they stole your fresh, new capital ship. And also some info to help the player (and AI) know the limits of what they can do in war without being seen as an enemy of the galaxy in general. The limits depend on reason for war, and who your are shooting up...

[Wreck]

Agreed: an EU2-like casus belli system would be a nice addition to DW.  Not all wars are created equal.  Also, DW ought to consider stealing EU2's badboy system as a bolt-on for reputation.  As it is, it is all to easy to expand militarily.  (Having better war-fighting AI would help this too, but that is a much harder thing to program.)

(There is a nice page about EU2's CB system here: http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/CB.)

[Lord_Astraios]

I dont know what script is using in the programming,  but ive been having this since the Original Distant Worlds and also here in the expansion.   And i can leave one ship of mine,  destroyer or any ship there can be like 5 AI players repairing and this once did happened to me,  i left my ship and i forgot about the graveyard and all of the sudden same situation having many AI players and like months and years later in the game all ships that the allied players that repaired the ships,  all ships ended on my possession.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Lord_Astraios

ive been having this since the Original Distant Worlds and also here in the expansion.

It seems the method for determining the ultimate owner of a repaired ship has undergone some tweaking in the last few patches - hence my query. It USED to be based on firepower of ship(s) in the area - though NOW (1.505) it seems to be proximity of the nearest ship - regardless of firepower. So, you might find the AI sailing off with "your" ships due to the random movements of a fleet in the area bringing one of his ships "closer" at the right moment.

How anything can be closer than the construction ship doing the repair, is however, a question that can only be answered by Elliot.