Author Topic: espionage, espionage teams, spy points - and a possible bug?  (Read 1750 times)

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Offline Deoxy (OP)

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OK, you can get spy points at least 2 ways that I know of: use espionage teams, or "rescue" enemy life pods.

So, I have espionage teams on the enemy's home planet.  They've been there a while... then, when I "rescue" some pods, I gain knowledge of a system* (see below for the possible bug here).  The espionage team gets bupkis - no increase in their skill, even though they seem to have done the lion's share of the work.

Shortly after that, I recover a LOT of enemy life pods, and a few turns later, the espionage team gains gravitational survey knowledge of a system and gets their skill increased.

So, it seems it all just gets pooled, and the espionage team only gets their skill increased if they are the ones who happen to put the total over 100?  That seems... poorly done.

* possible bug: the system I gained knowledge of shared a name with one I already knew... but it was a different system.  Also, the Galatic map errored when I tried to look at it, then loaded, but attached that new system somewhere it obviously wasn't... conveniently, when I got grav survey from espionage later, it was of the system that dopple-ganger system properly attached to, and the problem went away.  Should I mention this in the bugs forum, or is it too small/already known?
 

Offline Narmio

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Re: espionage, espionage teams, spy points - and a possible bug?
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2011, 07:56:25 PM »
You should definitely mention that last part on the bugs forum, it sounds like the system generation code for intelligence gains isn't performing some sanity checks. Even if it's a duplicate report (which I don't think it is) it's good to put it in the bugs thread anyway. And no bug is too small - I noticed someone reported that one of the "Gliese" systems was spelt "Gleise". :D
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: espionage, espionage teams, spy points - and a possible bug?
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2011, 09:56:15 PM »
* possible bug: the system I gained knowledge of shared a name with one I already knew... but it was a different system.  Also, the Galatic map errored when I tried to look at it, then loaded, but attached that new system somewhere it obviously wasn't... conveniently, when I got grav survey from espionage later, it was of the system that dopple-ganger system properly attached to, and the problem went away.  Should I mention this in the bugs forum, or is it too small/already known?

Yep, sounds like a good thing to mention.  I assume that the NPR is using the same name theme that you are, and the duplication occurred when importing the name into your namespace :)  Normally each race has its own name for each system, so this isn't usually a problem.  There's a good chance the same bug will show up in other situations where intel about a previously-unknown system is given to another race.  I'm a little surprised Steve hasn't run into it yet in his games....

John

PS - For Narmio - I'm 99% certain that new systems are not generated as a part of espionage.  Instead, this is almost certainly a system that the NPR had previously explored.
 

Offline Narmio

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Re: espionage, espionage teams, spy points - and a possible bug?
« Reply #3 on: May 12, 2011, 12:01:41 AM »
Yep, sounds like a good thing to mention.  I assume that the NPR is using the same name theme that you are, and the duplication occurred when importing the name into your namespace :)  Normally each race has its own name for each system, so this isn't usually a problem.  There's a good chance the same bug will show up in other situations where intel about a previously-unknown system is given to another race.  I'm a little surprised Steve hasn't run into it yet in his games....

John

PS - For Narmio - I'm 99% certain that new systems are not generated as a part of espionage.  Instead, this is almost certainly a system that the NPR had previously explored.
Good point.  Theme duplication makes much more sense than the espionage generating a new system.
 

Offline Deoxy (OP)

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Re: espionage, espionage teams, spy points - and a possible bug?
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2011, 12:52:07 PM »
Yep, sounds like a good thing to mention.  I assume that the NPR is using the same name theme that you are, and the duplication occurred when importing the name into your namespace :)  Normally each race has its own name for each system, so this isn't usually a problem.  There's a good chance the same bug will show up in other situations where intel about a previously-unknown system is given to another race.  I'm a little surprised Steve hasn't run into it yet in his games....

John

PS - For Narmio - I'm 99% certain that new systems are not generated as a part of espionage.  Instead, this is almost certainly a system that the NPR had previously explored.

Yes, each race CAN have it's own name for a system (it's in the "RaceSysSurvey" table), but the system has it's own name (called FixedName, no less), too (as best I can tell, the only time the name in the Survey record is ever different is a) your home system is named for your race, and b) the human player manually changes it - the NPRs go with the "real" name) - that's in the System table.  The records in the System table (which is not race specific) are both "Gliese 505".  Actually, I checked, and there's also a duplicate Gliese 615, as well (and I haven't found either of those yet).

I'm 100% certain systems aren't generated with espionage - you can only gain knowledge of a system the other race knows of.

And no bug is too small - I noticed someone reported that one of the "Gliese" systems was spelt "Gleise". :D

Looking through the database, there are several systems with "Gleise" in the name and a LOT of systems with "Gliese" in the name... it looks to me like his name generation code uses a look up table of some kind, and "Gliese" and "Gleise" are both in it... but there doesn't seem to be such a table in the database.  That's really odd, since he's used database tables to hold lots of other, smaller things... strange.  Can't find any supporting structure for "realistic" system generation versus random, either (one of those starting game options).
 

Offline Deoxy (OP)

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Re: espionage, espionage teams, spy points - and a possible bug?
« Reply #5 on: May 17, 2011, 11:35:55 AM »
Back onto the main topic, I just added another espionage team to the same planet with my "main" team (the one with decent esp skills)... shortly after, there's an espionage success, and the new, dinky team (total skill: 50) gets all the credit (and improved skill... up to 12% each, wow).

Yeah, the whole "only improve espionage skill when your team is successful even though all spy points are tossed in a pile" thing is a really poor mechanic.