I noticed today that while I'm hanging out in Itani space, strike forces seem to only come after me when I'm at a wormhole sectors. When I jump around to lose them and head off to a station, however, the only bots that bother me are the station guards. Even then, it's not all of them all of the time.

What's more, breaking the no fire zone rules doesn't even spawn a strike force for me, no matter how hard I try. The itani trying to chase me away, however, aren't quite as lucky and get a nice strike force chasing after them.

Firing my weapons near the station, before I hit anything/anyone, does bring up the "you're ina no fire zone" message on my hud, but that doesn't come back afterwards. Hitting an itani bot or player again brings up the "you'll be penalized!" message on the hud, but since I already have itani KOS, nothing really happens if I do end up killing the player.

In case it helps, my character name is teeth, and the two times I've noticed this happening and had a time recorded were today at around 16:58 GMT and 17:15 GMT, both times in divinia m-14. The second time, an itani player named Spedy hit me with some flares, and had a strike force come after him, while I limped away from the station guards.

Sorry if this is a well-known and expected behavior, but it surprised me and I hadn't heard anyone mention this sort of thing before.

Edit: jallik m-6 managed to launch a strike force when I got there, the bastards.
So did the other stations, though D-4 didn't the first time I came through there.

Yeah, that happens for no real reason at all, I've tried to work out why in the past on production, and the SF on test never act the same for me, guess I'm as stumped as you genka.

Oh yeah, if you try to work this out, you should be banned, or something.

itani sf seems to work for me, untill i fly through a hole in an iceyo and they fall several kilometers behind

It can't be that they just hang behind a lot? I've noticed that they sometimes take a while to catch up.

Nope, sometimes, for no apparent reason, they just don't show, not even if you goto a station. The Station Guards will attack you, but even if you violate the NFZ (kind of impossible, as you are already KOS) no strikeforce will launch.

I've been reporting this bug since Beta, it has gotten better (used to be per faction, not per system, as it is now - ie, if they break in Dau, they will still work in Nyrius), and the bug is so random, and hard to re-produce, that well, I gave up trying to work it out a couple of years ago.

oh that's cool

looks like the station guards softened 'em up.

It almost sounds like the game's getting confused, and thinks it's already sent a SF after you. The stations don't just sit there and spew out endless numbers of SF- they send out groups. Maybe your SF was launched at some earlier point, then got caught up in an ion storm. Since you've already got your SF group out there, VO might think you're getting properly pursued and won't send out another. I've seen SF launch without any hostiles in a sector, so I'm fairly sure they trigger once you wormhole into a system where you trigger aggro from the monitoring nation. That would leave a window for the SF to get lost in a storm with hive bots while you jump around (or over, you lucky bastard) the storm sector and into the station they had launched from- they wind up going on to the WH, then hit the storm again, and you're left with a few minutes to do whatever at the originating station.

The circumstances for this to happen are rare (proper storm/station/WH/jump locations), the timing impossible to plan without considerable coordination with more players (due to random elements involving SF travel time leaving stations and transversing storms), and it's flat out impossible to do in many systems (due to differences in station/WH faction control, or a lack of WH monitoring. It could be the cause. I could also be full of, ahem, "used food". The latter is more likely.

Used food IRS, I tried all that, and more. At one point I thought it was because an Aerna Seeker had issued on me as I warped...

...So I spent about a month working out a way to issue em as I warped...

...Then the old jump effect was removed, but yet the bug remains :P

yeah, I thought I'd heard something like this, but wasn't sure.
Anyway, I managed to reproduce the effect just now, again in Divinia. I think it might've had something to do with the strike force from Jallik following me closely as I warped to divinia, and then I think they even managed to follow me for a jump to an empty sector.

I've had some odd SF behavior too recently.

1) Aerna seekers spawned with Strike Force (human) names and no weapons, which will pursue you to your grave but back up whenever you attempt to engage.

2) Strike forces and the above 'strike seekers' pursuing across borders; UIT to Latos and Serco to Deneb.

Both end up giving you a VERY interesting effect, as sitting in Latos H-2 granted Azumi the special power to, every few minutes, summon a new single SF bot (presumably coming to help out the strike seeker what was as of yet not destroyed).

The end result is, the SF is basically so broken that it is useless against anyone who doesn't sit in the NFZ and wait for them.

This is all Niki's fault actually, for making the SF in beta follow him around in squares and declare to the sector *I am not hostile... ...Yet" so ner ner.

D: