If you are referring to the type of behaviour I outlined previously (see below), this is probably a bug, possibly solved in Anisotropic.
If you are referring to other kinds of sudden attacks, I would be happy to learn more from you. Basically, if you are warned in advance, every kind of attack is manageable in FFE. You either need a fast ship or a well equipped one.
Edit:
Sorry I never played FE2, so I cannot comment :x. But I learned that pirates in FFE are also traveling towards you (you cannot track them in advance, but you can track them if you manage to escape). There is a catchment area used by the program to decide if an encounter occurs. The size of this area depends on your stardreamer settings (the higher, the larger). For example, in the saved game above use a stardreamer setting of x100, and you get to the startport without troubles. Do not dock, but stay nearby. The pirates will eventually arrive at high speeds, they will turn back and you have a battle there. Isn't this wonderful?
Although FFE doesn't display other ships on the system map like FE2 does, it
does still show hyperspace entry / exit clouds... if an assassin's after you, they'll spawn from such a cloud, hence by carrying a hyperspace cloud analyser you can get an idea of what type of ship is inbound towards you, and hence what your options may be to evade or engage.
NPC's
do have to fly through space to get to you - they're not simply randomly spawned - however a degree of pseudo-randomness is effected by the way 'time acceleration' actually works - essentially dropping simulation frames by whole orders of magnitude as stardreamer levels are increased. This also causes rubber-banding of NPC's chasing you down - at level 4 you'll often see them zipping back and forth around you as if unable to quite home in on your position - the game has to make an assumption at some point as to whether a time-accelerated interdiction effort was 'successful' or not.
Hence if you hit max stardreamer upon arrival in a system, any assassins or pirates who would've been attracted by your hyperspace arrival cloud (which might've preceded you by several days) would've already been in the vicinity, and since you hadn't started moving yet an imminent attack was only inevitable. Whereas, if you start accelerating first, then that acceleration get projected 'forwards in time' and hence you gain distance from your pursuers over successive simulation frames.
In any situation in which avoiding interception is an absolute priority, you have a variety of options:
- Begin by building up a high velocity tangential to your nav target, then select AP and you'll follow a tightening spiral trajectory through the system into your destination, throwing off many adversaries. Max level 3, increasing gradually.
You can make this spiralling trajectory in any plane, relative to the system plane (ie. in the vertical as well as in the axial plane)
- Make a bee-line to the nearest planet upon entry into a system - either get into a low orbit around a high-mass body, or else hover above the ground on a low-mass body (ie. minimising fuel waste), and wait for the attackers to either crash into the planet or engage at low altitude, where you have the upper hand (a horizon or terrain to seek cover behind, land in a crater or whatever). Can be a long detour but
because NPC's aren't generally spawned randomly, once they're all dead you have safe passage into your intended destination.
- Apply max thrust for the entire journey, and max level 3 stardreamer, increasing in gradual increments: Upon selecting your nav target, do a quick "divide by two" of its range - so if it's 313.37 AU away, the magic number's 156.685 (i keep a calculator shortcut on my quicklaunch bar!); so floor it towards the target until you're 156.685 AU away then spin it round 180° and keep flooring it in reverse, all the way into the destination (the way ships fly in
The Expanse). You're still vulnerable and likely to be attacked, unless you have a faster ship, in which case even if they momentarily catch up with you during your deceleration burn, they'll harmlessly whoosh past at silly speeds.
You're absolutely right though - every type of attack
is manageable, there's
always some strategy or tactic you can fall back on, an alternative route forwards. That's the great thing about it - that you can limp into port in a smoking wreck with only two thrusters still working. That you can still put up a
fight in that state, with enough grit. What NASA calls 'the right stuff'. Can you pilot and fight in
and land a ship with only a left thruster and a pulse laser, no atmospheric shielding, no autopilot, no missiles and only 5% hull? Technically, yes. The game's not over till the tombstone spins..
