Any more bug reports?

[Dragonlord]

Another bug I think, I don't know why I haven't posted this before since its been bothering me a long time. This is in 1.41, simultaneous PBW game, : Messages get lost. (intel is disabled). Happened to me in my Last 3 games, at random. I sometimes had to propose a treaty 3 times in a row to a human player before he got it. Or I propose it, he confirms via email he got it and accepted it, then the acceptance message never reaches me, hence no treaty. Same for trades. This happened with different humans in different games, so it's not like my opponent was being dishonest or anything like that...

[CW]

Fleets in simulator, please fix!

The other thing in the sim that needs fixing is, sometimes a ship shoots at something off the screen (in auto tactical combat) and you don't know what's going on, since the player has no control over the screen.

One more thing that I want to mention, can't really call this a bug but currently seekers self-destruct as soon as the target ship is destoryed. In my opinion that's not very logical. Self-destructing them would do you no good, if I'm the weapon designer I'd make them keep flying straight for no purpose other than to distract PD fire.

[Q]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
Really? I'll have to test/confirm this one. My understanding was that it only stopped you from launching fighters in non-combat strategic mode, but that during combat figters would launch/be recovered as normal.

However, the new patch addresses the mines/sat's not self destructiong when ordered. This was the number one cause of hitting the units in space limit, so that alone should make this problem less serious.

Geoschmo[/b]

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Yes, I've seen it in a very large game where my AI opponent is crippled by the fact that he can't launch his fighters during combat, because he reached the maximum units in space limit. And as far as I saw it, the AI never self-destructs mines or sats.

[Atrocities]

quote:

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Regarding 7: It does for me. No problem here.
Regarding 9: That's because a black hole system is not per se a "avoid system". You have to manually set it to be so (and the Ai, of course, never does).
Regarding 10: It's not a bug, it's a feature.

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Thanks Mephisto if 10 is a feature, would it be possible to (oops about to break the rule of this thread)*WARNING* possible to make it so that this feature and others like it can be editied easily for those of us who lack the fine skill of AI editing? In other words a "Out of Game Settings and Other Editor."

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New Age Ship Yards

"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Captain Picard STNG

Borg Breen Species 8472 Cardassian Dominion STNG Ferengi Klingon Romulan
Trek Movie era TOS Illuminati Starwolf

[Mephisto]

quote:

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Originally posted by Atrocities:
Thanks Mephisto if 10 is a feature, would it be possible to (oops about to break the rule of this thread)*WARNING* possible to make it so that this feature and others like it can be editied easily for those of us who lack the fine skill of AI editing? In other words a "Out of Game Settings and Other Editor."

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It would be great to call ship names instead of ship classes. But I think we have to wait for SE5 for this to happen.

[Sinapus]

quote:

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Originally posted by CW:
Fleets in simulator, please fix!

One more thing that I want to mention, can't really call this a bug but currently seekers self-destruct as soon as the target ship is destoryed. In my opinion that's not very logical. Self-destructing them would do you no good, if I'm the weapon designer I'd make them keep flying straight for no purpose other than to distract PD fire.

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No, make them lock onto the nearest enemy target. (eg, the Dauntless Guidance System from MOO2.)

[Mephisto]

Hi all, here comes my bug list. I already sent them to Aaron.

1.) Problem with the counting of produced units

Assume 20 Planets are present and colonized. This line should therefore produce 4 "Recon Satellites"
Entry 1 Type := Recon Satellite
Entry 1 Planet Per Item := 50
Entry 1 Must Have At Least := 0

In fact it will produce 4 "Recon Satellites" and puts them in the cargo bay. Everything is fine up to now. The moment the AI launches one satellite, it will forget all launched ones (i.e. here one) and will produce another one for the cargo hold. The problem is that the AI almost always launches all satellites and lays all available mines so there is a steady "drain" of the units out of the cargo. The AI will now try to meet the Entry 1 Planet Per Item:= 50 line again and starts to produce more of the units. This leads to 2 problems:
I.) The AI will not produce any items that are further down in the build list as it is always trying to meet this build line first.
II.) The AI will produce insane amounts of launched satellites and mines. My AI-Narn-Empire now has over 500 recon satellites for about 25 systems. Further the AI will hit the "Max Unit line" of the setting.txt. If so, it can't even launch fighters in a combat.
Solution: Count the spaceborn units just as the units in cargo.


2.) Boarding ships
Boarding ships will not actively engage an enemy ship even when armed with a "real" weapon like a depleted uranium cannon. The boarding ship (BS) will run for the battle field corner until any of the enemy ships lose all of it's shields. If enemy shields are down, the BS will board the enemy. Solution: Make the BS check if enemy shields are down. If not, close in and fire a weapon upon it. Recheck shield status and proceed until successful or destroyed.


3.) Multiplayer
In a multiplayer battle the topmost player of the player list will always move and fire first in a battle. To be added Last to a game (and therefore be at the bottom of the list) is a huge disadvantage in a multiplayer warp point battle.
Solution: A solution would be to make the defenders (i.e. all ships already present in the sector) always move and fire first. If more then one “defender” is present, let the first “mover” be chosen randomly.


4.) “Do not move through minefield”-line
The line is working very good – in fact too good sometimes. If this line is activated, even the AI minesweepers will avoid the mined sector. Therefore it is never cleared and you can even trap the Ai in it’s systems if you mine all there warp points.
1. Solution: Make Minesweepers ignore this line.
2. Solution: Alternatively you can split this line into to: “ALL ships avoid minefields” and “Ships avoid minefields EXCEPT Minesweepers”.


5.) Minesweepers will not enter a mined sector that has enemy units like satellites and mines present. This is good in general but bad if the sector contains mines. In this case, the Minesweeper will stay in an adjacent sector and wait for a warship to destroy the enemy units. Unfortunately the warship will wait in an adjacent sector and wait for a Minesweeper to clear the mines before entering the sector. This way the AI will stack large forces in front of a combo minefield/satellitefield but will never do anything about it.
Solution: Minesweeping is a suicide mission anyway so let the minesweeper enter mined sectors if they contain only satellites or planets. These units/planets can’t even harm a Minesweeper as it will stay out of range in a battle (“Don’t get hurt “ strategy). If the planet contains fighters and destroys the Minesweeper – so be it, at least he has swept the mines and cleared the path for the warships.


6.) Ships will sometimes sit in a enemy minefield (without critical damage) but will never move out of the field. Worse, for some reason the AI will initiate combat with the minefield (don’t know how he is doing this), that take a lot of processor time to process it (of course without a result) and in a simultaneous game he will even attack multiple times.


7.) The population transport minister will often load his cargo ships with population but will not bring it anywhere.
Solution: The Ai should either load and move them or don’t load them (bad because of lost bonuses on “loading” planet, no population growth for loaded population).


8.) The population transport minister will never move population to a planet with 0 population but >0 facilities. As the Ai will not give up planets these 0 population planets are effectively lost for the AI.
Solution: Make the minister move population to 0 population worlds.


9.) Space Yard Ship Production
The AI will try to produce units (like troops) even if the SYS is in deep space.
Solution: Make the Ai check available cargo space in the sector before assigning unit production to a yard. If there is enough space for at least one unit, let it produce it. If not, proceed to a non-unit-item in the scripted build list.
This will also address another production problem. At the moment, the AI will assign an item to a production queue. If it was not successful with the production (i.e. not enough cargo), it will delete the item from the queue and will fill the queue again following the orders from the scripted build list. But there is problem with this: If there is not enough space in the whole empire to create a unit, the Ai will go on and delete it from it’s build queue (not enough space) and add it again (because the script file says so). A nice vicious circle that can stall the production of a whole empire.


10.) The Afterburner item description does not state: “Only one item effective per unit” but in fact only one Afterburner is effective.
Solution: Change the item description.


11.) Experience points for shooting down missiles/fighters
You can earn very much experience point by only shooting down missiles and fighters. Your ships and fleets can read legendary status in only one to two battles.
Solution: Reward fewer experience point for shooting down a missile/fighter. 1/10 would be a good choice IMHO.


12.) In “ship/fleet transfer” menu the ship list will always jump back to the top when you transfer a ship. This can be very annoying when many ships are present and the ships you want to transfer are at the bottom of the list.
Solution: Make the menu stay at the same “height” even if you move a ship.

[Puke]

okay, to steer this back on topic from the wishlist, i have another actual bug.

there are still integer overflows in large combats. perticularly sphereworlds. Load a sphereworld with weapon platforms packing (1) nothing but phased shields OR (2) nothing but crystal armor and one P.S. per plat OR (3) nothing but organic armor

and you will get an error when it takes damage. when i tried number 1, i got the error before combat had even begun. me thinks this needs fixing. even if most people dont build sphereworlds or ringworlds, people might want to use them for starting positions in a scenario game or a max tech game.

edit: not to insinuate that my bugs are better than anyone elses, or anything like that.. to expand on the above, i get the same integer overflow error when stationing 1000 fighters on a sphereworld too.. im sitting here with the simulator trying to figure out how to maximize the defenses on one, and i cant seem to do it without crashing the game. I have basically given up and im trying to figure out how to use all of the cargo space, if even on suboptimal defenses, and i cant seem to do that without causing a crash either.
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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 10 October 2001).]

[Alpha Kodiak]

I just encountered a bug that I don't think has been posted before. (Either that or I need to get more sleep at night.)

If a computer controlled race does not have a design name file specified, the designs that are generated are "Design nn". This works fine. However, if there are two computer controlled races without a design name file specified, the designs for both get the same "Design nn" names and show up in the design lists for both races.

You can test this be starting a new game with 3 races. The first is your human controlled race. Create the second and third races using Add New and set them to computer control but do not specify a design file. Run a turn, then set the computer races to human control and look at the designs they have created. You will see some of the other race's ships in each race's design lists.

[capnq]

Dragonlord's comments made me review my test map more closely. He's right, putting multiple start points in one system doesn't work. I thought it had because I only looked at my own starting system, and not the AIs'. (And had misremembered which worlds I'd marked in my start system, too) Not only doesn't it work, but the multiple start points will override the "Can't start in same system" setting in the Set-Up screen, as well.

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Cap'n Q
My first mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"