Suddenly Sentient Ships

[Erth Paradine]

I'm accustomed to seeing Pirates and Trade Guild ships, with their respective faction tags. Although occasionally some randomly-named NPC ship will fly in, approach/touch another ship that doesn't have a pilot, and then BOTH ships start moving around, eventually BOTH flying off.

What is this?

Is there any way for admins to trigger unattended faction ships to do this? This would be quite a creative way to cleanup crowded protected sectors, where pilots couldn't be bothered to dock before leaving their ship.

 

[Reilly Reese]

I'm accustomed to seeing Pirates and Trade Guild ships, with their respective faction tags. Although occasionally some randomly-named NPC ship will fly in, approach/touch another ship that doesn't have a pilot, and then BOTH ships start moving around, eventually BOTH flying off.

What is this?

Is there any way for admins to trigger unattended faction ships to do this? This would be quite a creative way to cleanup crowded protected sectors, where pilots couldn't be bothered to dock before leaving their ship.

Wut

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I'm accustomed to seeing Pirates and Trade Guild ships, with their respective faction tags. Although occasionally some randomly-named NPC ship will fly in, approach/touch another ship that doesn't have a pilot, and then BOTH ships start moving around, eventually BOTH flying off.

What is this?

Is there any way for admins to trigger unattended faction ships to do this? This would be quite a creative way to cleanup crowded protected sectors, where pilots couldn't be bothered to dock before leaving their ship.

Doubtful.

Here's what probably happened. Either some randomly-named PLAYER ship flew in, approached/touched another ship that didn't have a pilot, DROPPED OFF A PILOT and then BOTH ships started moving around, and eventually BOTH flew off.

...or an ADMIN flew in pressed TAB+F8 and took control of BOTH ships and flew BOTH of them off.

 

[Erth Paradine]

Doubtful.

Here's what probably happened. Either some randomly-named PLAYER ship flew in, approached/touched another ship that didn't have a pilot, DROPPED OFF A PILOT and then BOTH ships started moving around, and eventually BOTH flew off.

...or an ADMIN flew in pressed TAB+F8 and took control of BOTH ships and flew BOTH of them off.

Nope.

I'm the admin on the server I observed this on, and no other pilots were online at the time.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Nope.

I'm the admin on the server I observed this on, and no other pilots were online at the time.

Well, that's definitely different. Sorry about that.

Could they have been bobby AI attacking a distant target? A malfunctioning fleet perhaps?

 

[StarWars1981]

Did the 2nd ship take fire from the first? If its shields dropped and it took hull damage, even unfactioned, neutral ships will begin assaulting the attacking vessel, immediately. Other than that, Idk.

 

[Erth Paradine]

I never saw either ship fire upon the other, and the sector was protected.

Considering comments on this observation, I'm now wondering if this is a simple as both ships already being an NPC wave, but one was simply sitting idle for an extended period of time.

 

[Awdred]

The first was probably just idle, then went with the second. Possibly a wave glitch.