4.0b Bugs

[sloanjh]

The time/distance order for the "rescue survivors" order on life pods is wrong.  I suspect that the coordinates are being set to 0,0 for the calculation

John

[sloanjh]

Place-holder for a topic that came up in the "Crazy Civilians" chat thread:

It appears that NPRs are having multiple construction ships work on the same jump gate, which they're supposed to not be doing.

John

[Paul M]

I had a civillian exploration vessel destroyed by precurser, then after few game days a blue screen of death event occurs after rebooting the following error started showing up:

Error 3167 in DAO.Recordset
Record is deleted.

It seems to show up about 13 times then the rest of the turn processes.

I see no lost records in my empire, at least nothing obvious.
(edit: got the event sequence a bit better)

[Kurt]

Steve -

I noticed this bug in 3.11, but I checked and it appears to be a problem in 4.0b as well.  On the Combat Assignments screen, there is a bug in the missile assignment routine.  I typically hit the "assign all" button, to assign the same missile to all launchers, however, I noticed when trying to manually reassign missiles by hitting the "assign" button, that it doesn't always work.  It works on all launchers numbered 1-9, but any launcher numbered higher than 9 cannot have its missiles reassigned by anything aside from "assign all".  

Kurt

[sloanjh]

A problematic NPR behavior:

I've got an NPR that has already geo-surved a system adjacent to their home system (I killed all their warp survey ships, but left the geo-survey ships alone).  After they were done with the survey, the geo-survey ships went back into the home system, and weren't heard from for a while.  Now they've started hopping back and forth between the two systems with a 10 second interval (5 seconds if I update by hand).  I went into EMCON, so I'm pretty sure that they aren't seeing my surveilance ships.  I suspect that whats going on is that they're forgetting that they're forgetting that they've surveyed this system until they hop back in.  One reason this might be going on is that there's a binary component that's probably 20-40 travel days away; it's possible that the binary's planets haven't been surveyed but are "unreachable".

The problem is that this behavior limits updates to 10 seconds, since every time they transit in-system Aurora interrupts.

John

[Kurt]

Another bug from a recent battle.  This is in 3.11, but I suspect it is still in 4.0b.

In the aftermath of the battle, Aurora insists that three fire controls aboard two different russian ships are trying to target japanese destroyers, however, when I go to the battle control window, I cannot clear those targeting assignments because the firecontrols in question have been destroyed.  It seems that destroyed firecontrols retain their targeting assignments and, of course, they cannot be cleared.  

Kurt

[Andrew]

I have found another NPR who does not launch antimissiles. Looking at the combat view of the events in SM Mode you can get the messages the NPR is seeing and the message is that no missiles have been assigned to the launchers. The same NPR succesfully launched larger antishipping missiles earlier so I think that it has tried to load all laucnhers in the race with the antishipping missile neglected the fact that these are Size 1 launchers and need their own missiles.

[Steve Walmsley]

I have found another NPR who does not launch antimissiles. Looking at the combat view of the events in SM Mode you can get the messages the NPR is seeing and the message is that no missiles have been assigned to the launchers. The same NPR succesfully launched larger antishipping missiles earlier so I think that it has tried to load all laucnhers in the race with the antishipping missile neglected the fact that these are Size 1 launchers and need their own missiles.

There have been a few reports about NPRs not using anti-missiles so there is definitely something strange going on. I'll take a serious look at this area and all the other bugs after the all-consuming rewrite is done.

Steve

[Sotak246]

Just another report on NPC not using antimissile missiles.  In my recent battle I checked the SM notes and several times it said that size 1 anit-missles were not loaded so unable to fire, but shipkillers were fired.  The ships had size 1missle launchers as well as size 4.  I figured  to post this as every little bit of data we give you might help solve the problem( i hope ).

Mark

[sloanjh]

A "feature" I found: I recently jumped through a WP into an NPR home system.  The NPR had the WP picketed with active sensors on (I assume).  The pickets were able to hit me with plasma carronade fire on the same (5 second) update that I jumped.  In other words, before pushing the 5 second update button my ship was in one system.  After pushing it, my ship was in the other system in little tiny bits  I'm pretty sure that player races can't do this - they have to detect the target at the end of one update and fire in the next.

John

[Steve Walmsley]

A "feature" I found: I recently jumped through a WP into an NPR home system.  The NPR had the WP picketed with active sensors on (I assume).  The pickets were able to hit me with plasma carronade fire on the same (5 second) update that I jumped.  In other words, before pushing the 5 second update button my ship was in one system.  After pushing it, my ship was in the other system in little tiny bits . NPRs make some decisions in-between movement and combat, as do any player fire-controls set for automated fire. It's just that all NPR fire controls are automated whereas for players it is just those setup to defend against missiles. I am not sure how big a problem it is because your ships wouldn't have been able to return fire for a while anyway due to transit effects. I'll have to give this some thought.

Steve

[sloanjh]

A "feature" I found: I recently jumped through a WP into an NPR home system.  The NPR had the WP picketed with active sensors on (I assume).  The pickets were able to hit me with plasma carronade fire on the same (5 second) update that I jumped.  In other words, before pushing the 5 second update button my ship was in one system.  After pushing it, my ship was in the other system in little tiny bits . NPRs make some decisions in-between movement and combat, as do any player fire-controls set for automated fire. It's just that all NPR fire controls are automated whereas for players it is just those setup to defend against missiles. I am not sure how big a problem it is because your ships wouldn't have been able to return fire for a while anyway due to transit effects. I'll have to give this some thought.

Not a huge problem - as you say, they would have popped me next increment anyway.  It's actually more of a reaction time/plausibility thing for me - after years of sitting on picket duty, they're able to fire on a target that came through the WP in less than 5 seconds?  Especially since they have their own ships on the far side of the WP - you'd think they'd have a Remusian in the loop to make sure they didn't have an "oopsie" incident on a returning survey ship :-)  The second transited out before its active sensors went live (seeing your companion blown to dust bunnies is a big motivator to not stick around while the capacitors recharge).  The NPR picket followed it through within about 20 seconds and blew it away once their weapons came online - they then started chasing the tugs that had helped the jump ships get there.  Fortunately the tugs and my newly up-engined "Hawkeye" long-range active sensor scout both could make 6K km/s (compared to the NPR 5773) - the NPR picket, along with what looks like the rest of the NPR fleet (which came through a day or two later), is now playing "follow the leader" around my Hawkeye in the outer system, which can go on indefinitely since the Hawkeye has a speed advantage and the NPR won't give up the pursuit.  My geo-survey ship snuck out through the jump gate (picking up survivors along the way) and is now on its way home after ~5 years behind enemy lines - makes me glad I put lots of engineering space on my designs

A couple of NPR AI suggestions for when you get back to it:

1)  (Mentioned before in another thread) have NPR WP pickets start out at the WP during setup, rather than moving to the WP from the home world.  From a role-playing point of view in a future game, after my first jump ship probe failed to return (or managed to return after a close call with NPR pickets who couldn't get their weapons online in time), I would have my player race go to a much more cautious probe strategy, where specialized probe ships jump through with hopes that their armor would be heavy enough to get back if the pickets are hostile.

2)  I can see two types of pickets - armed and unarmed.  An unarmed picket should probably be lying doggo (speed = 1) 100k or so off the WP, where they can only be seen by active sensors.  Armed pickets should probably be at speed = 1 as well (unless their active sensors are on), so that they aren't spotted unless the "enemy" goes active.  I usually transit at speed 1 and return to the jump point fairly slowly (depending on what the system looks like) so my jump ships would be hard to spot unless the picket is active.  I guess this means there's a different axis of categorization for pickets - active or EMCON.

3)  (Very important) - Have NPR classify contacts as "uncatchable" if the contact shows it has higher speed than the NPR.  Also, NPR should have positions (e.g. a WP, a planet, survey ship, etc) that they're trying to defend - if a contact is deemed uncatchable, the NPR should return to whatever it's protecting.  For the case above, it seems like the NPR should give up and go picket my side of the WP.

4)  Have NPR warships escort NPR non-combatants (e.g. survey ships).  I've picked off ~15 NPR warp survey ships in this system - the NPR keeps building them and sending them through.  Proposal:  If a NPR non-combatant runs away from something or is blown up, the next one assigned that task gets an escort.  If that one gets blown up too, the next time the escort is doubled.  If the NPR had been sending warships through and escorting its survey (and jump construction) ships, I wouldn't have been able to park in this system for 5 years unopposed.

5)  Have NPR ships throttle back to speed 1 when they aren't moving, or when probing a WP.  This makes them much harder to detect.

I realize AI coding is hard and nasty (I'm realizing it even more thinking about how I might code up the above suggestions), so please take this as ideas for things to make the AI more clever.

John

[sloanjh]

Active Grav Sensor Strength 48 appears to have a "40" rather than a "48" in the database - it's only a hair stronger than the "36" version.

John

[Paul M]

I would look at a number of the racial abilities the names no longer agree with reality.

I have found a display event bug.  If I have it off, then click on it once the events display properly.  If I then click it off, they vanish again properly.  If I turn them back on again I get the events plus a listing of the contancts with the civillian fleet (not combined but for each one) regardless of which system I happen to be in.  So even in a system with absolutely no ships in it, turning events on and off and on will result in a the listing of all known contancts.  It might well be only known contacts in my home system but I am not sure (as most of my civillian fleet is in the home system it would look much the same).

[Charlie Beeler]

I don't know if this is really a bug or me just not understanding something.  I thought that designing a turret that is faster than the researched speed would add additional mass.  This does not seem to be the case.