Bug Bug Thread: Discussion - Page 219

thejeff · #**2181** October 16th, 2008, 12:09 PM

I've got a Skratti thug refusing to cast Breath of Winter.
He's scripted to Quicken Self, Breath of Winter, attack
Several others cast it without problem.
He either casts something else or just closes to attack.
The main difference is that I've given him Lifelong Protection. Is it possible he's refusing to cast because of the imps?
I think there was a change in BoW behavior to avoid casting it unscripted, since it would often wipe out other nearby mages, but I'd hope that wouldn't override a scripted order.

Here's the relevant bits from the debug log:
com Fafner cast spell (favspell Breath of Winter) (mayusegems 1)
est. choices 15

BOW before 17
best Area10 cold dmg3 this far, 6 16 (-66 pnts)
spellscore, Area10 cold dmg3 score -66 (boost 104 scorat 0)
BOW after -49
spellscore, Breath of Winter score -49 (boost 115 scorat 0)
Eval: Breath of Winter score 0 (fat 20)
comp_castspell: eval Breath of Winter result 0

It gets a negative score, presumably due to hurting the imps?
It doesn't add in the favspell bonus, which seems wrong to me.

JimMorrison · #**2182** October 16th, 2008, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thejeff

I think there was a change in BoW behavior to avoid casting it unscripted, since it would often wipe out other nearby mages, but I'd hope that wouldn't override a scripted order.

Well, recently I had a mage kill another with BoW. And a couple of days ago, I had an idiot Spectre wipe out my entire communion by casting BoW as a Master.

thejeff · #**2183** October 16th, 2008, 01:11 PM

Actually a Communion Master casting BoW should work well. All the slaves should pick up the cold resistance as well as the Chill aura. Other mages or masters could be hurt, but the slaves should be fine. If not, that's a real bug.

Beyond that though, if they're still casting it unscripted, the AI certainly shouldn't overwrite my thug's script.

JimMorrison · #**2184** October 16th, 2008, 01:33 PM

The CR is not permanent, as per the spell description, they are resistant to cold "while casting". Regardless of whether one might hope that it was good for a communion, it really did kill all of my slaves very very quickly.

thejeff · #**2185** October 16th, 2008, 01:51 PM

Every time I've cast it, the caster has gotten +100% cold resistance for the battle. Puts my Frostbrand equipped Skratti up to 250%

If that's not happening in communions, it's a problem.

thejeff · #**2186** October 16th, 2008, 04:30 PM

I just tested this. Communion slaves picked up both Chill effect and Cold resistance for the entire battle, as I expected.
Is it possible your masters just cast enough high fatigue spells to kill the slaves? Or cast something else that lowers cold resistance? I know Stoneskin drops CR by 50.

thejeff · #**2187** October 16th, 2008, 04:44 PM

And back on my original problem, the debug output when one of the other thugs does cast Breath of Winter is:

com Oddvitner cast spell (favspell Breath of Winter) (mayusegems 1)
est. choices 23
BOW before 18
best Area10 cold dmg3 this far, 6 7 (0 pnts)
spellscore, Area10 cold dmg3 score 0 (boost 119 scorat 0)
BOW after 18
spellscore, Breath of Winter score 15 (boost 106 scorat 0)
Eval: Breath of Winter score 15 (fat 10)
comp_castspell: eval Breath of Winter result 15
best spell so far Breath of Winter (score100015)

I also tried it with a Starspawn next to illithids. He wouldn't cast it either.
I'm glad if it won't be cast unscripted, but if it's scripted I'd like to see it allowed.

Endoperez · #**2188** October 16th, 2008, 05:25 PM

Could it be that the spell won't be cast unless there's someone in the AoE? It seemed to do damage calculations when evaluating whether or not to cast the spell. Try adding some militia nearby and see if it works then.

I doubt it's that, because I'm sure people would've noticed if lone thugs couldn't cast Breath of Winter.

thejeff · #**2189** October 16th, 2008, 05:48 PM

No, the other thugs cast fine without anyone nearby. It seems it won't cast if there are (non cold immune?) friendlies in range.

chrispedersen · #**2190** October 16th, 2008, 10:15 PM

The spell selection kind of cheats.
It runs the spell - analyzes all possible results
and then selects the best results to figure out which spell to cast.

So, if you kill a bunch of friendsly, thats going to deprecate the spell.

So, with imps, usually what happens is they go and fly off and engage the enemy.

I bet if you script something like
X X X X BoW
After all the imps are gone, it will cast it just fine. (Presuming fatigue, no close by enemies etc.).

chris