BugFest '05

uh... i think theres a problem in you're diagnosis. There is no distincion in EV between primary and secondary weapons for AI. The only difference is the way the player fires em... So how do missiles confuse AI? the following ships will never use ammo using weapons?

Anyway... AI changes are among the most complicated and testing-intensive there are.

NebuchadnezzaR, on May 12 2005, 07:07 PM, said:

uh... i think theres a problem in you're diagnosis. There is no distincion in EV between primary and secondary weapons for AI. The only difference is the way the player fires em... So how do missiles confuse AI? the following ships will never use ammo using weapons?

Anyway... AI changes are among the most complicated and testing-intensive there are.
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Well, really from what I've seen its missile weapons. For instance a Firebird uses its chaingun just fine, but Anacondas rarely use their IR missiles, but always use their blasters when in range...

But tehres no difference between missiles and other types, its not like theres a flag anywhere. Is it guidance? Ammo? Maybe the second fire flag really matters, though i doubt this. Since ive not seen evidence of this, I dont really believe you.

NebuchadnezzaR, on May 12 2005, 09:01 PM, said:

But tehres no difference between missiles and other types, its not like theres a flag anywhere. Is it guidance? Ammo? Maybe the second fire flag really matters, though i doubt this. Since ive not seen evidence of this, I dont really believe you.
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All I can do is tell what I've observed. The easy way to see a fighter swarm not using its missiles is to buy 3 thunderheads and tell them to attack a distant target. You'll see the first thunderhead start firing its Radar Missiles, run out, and come back to dock. As soon as the first one runs out, the second one will start firing its missiles, and so on.

I thought the homing type of a weapon will determine when the AI feels like firing it -- AI ships tend to avoid firing slow-homing guided weapons at fast ships, for instance.

Firebird, on May 12 2005, 07:34 PM, said:

I thought the homing type of a weapon will determine when the AI feels like firing it -- AI ships tend to avoid firing slow-homing guided weapons at fast ships, for instance.
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That's a specific flag that can be set in the wëap resource.

Now, about the swarming fighters argument, I have two comments:

1. I suspect that it may be a range issue. I have not tested anything, but try giving a swarming fighter some railguns, and see if the second one fires them at long range.
2. I've run into a nasty side-effect of the "swarming" behaviour when I have both a large group of fighters and a Rebel Valkyrie. When I tell all ships to attack, the Valkyrie is set to be the leader (it does have the "swarm" flag set. Unfortunately, it also has the "stand-off attacks" flag set, so it stays put, and the rest of the fighters "follow" it, buzzing around in a confused mess about half a screen in front of the Valk. None of the fighters fires any missiles, although this particular swam included both Pirate Thunderheads and Anacondas.

Edwards

Edwards, on May 12 2005, 09:55 PM, said:

That's a specific flag that can be set in the wëap resource.

Now, about the swarming fighters argument, I have two comments:

1. I suspect that it may be a range issue. I have not tested anything, but try giving a swarming fighter some railguns, and see if the second one fires them at long range.
2. I've run into a nasty side-effect of the "swarming" behaviour when I have both a large group of fighters and a Rebel Valkyrie. When I tell all ships to attack, the Valkyrie is set to be the leader (it does have the "swarm" flag set. Unfortunately, it also has the "stand-off attacks" flag set, so it stays put, and the rest of the fighters "follow" it, buzzing around in a confused mess about half a screen in front of the Valk. None of the fighters fires any missiles, although this particular swam included both Pirate Thunderheads and Anacondas.

Edwards
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I'd be willing to bet they'd fire railguns, though I've never thought to try that. Hehe, that Valk story is awesome by the way

Ragashingo/Weepul bugs are now being discussed on the internal nova beta list.

Thanks for your input! Remember, all, mail your bugs to me: pipeline@atmos.com.au

Dave @ ATMOS

Firebird, on May 13 2005, 02:34 AM, said:

I thought the homing type of a weapon will determine when the AI feels like firing it -- AI ships tend to avoid firing slow-homing guided weapons at fast ships, for instance.
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Would that be because the weapon is flagged to "not fire at fast ships"?
Hm, there's a mistake in the bible. What does a turn rate of 3 equate to in Nova ship turning values?

It would probably be 1/3 of ten, but 3 is not exactly 1/3 of ton, because 10 does not have a 1/3 (in whole numbers anyway)...

I do think that there is a "do not fire at slow ships" flag, but I have had my Viper EMPed and HellHounded a ton... Of course, that may only be AI firing at other AI.

The swarming fighters bug may be why one of my Mantas is always faster than the rest. That would also explain why one of my Mantas ever (if rarely, because mantas are awesome ) dies... Of course, once they figure out what they are doing, the target diies very fast... It is weird to see them get there on the radar, but then only see the sheilds go down a little bit until it suddenly dies...

Just think of it this way. The lead Manta was the first one to get your order so it allready locked on to the target and accelerated towards it. Then he relayed it to everyone else but because of the lag of sublight communication it takes the others a little bit to find the ship thus them going slower.

My $0.02
-The Cheat

I dont know if this has been said before or even if anyone has actually occured it but a rank can grant you a discount and ships and outfits but currently this discount isnt working on outfits. Maybe Im just dumb like hell but I tried everything to let it work probably and I cant figure out why it isn`t working since the discount works great on ships.

Ahhhheeee gravedig! Er, anyway:

So as part of Aftermath we're using larger sized planet spirtes. Not the stupidly massive multi spob ones like Nick showed off a while back, but as big or a bit bigger than say Jupiter in Nova. The problem is that the planet sprite gets too big in the hail dialog and is spilling out of the "window" thats it normally sits in and is overlapping the buttons and text display area. Here is an example of what I'm talking about: Oops

This message has also been sent on to pipeline just in case.

Possible solutions to this bug that I see are:

1. Make Nova display the interface above the planet, so you only see a little bit of the center, but that'd be better than it is now...
2. Make Nova scale images down if they're too large (possibly hard)
3. Edit the hail interface and dialog resource to make the display area larger, and include that in the plugin. (Not a Nova bug fix solution.)

Weepul 884, on Sep 10 2005, 09:15 PM, said:

2. Make Nova scale images down if they're too large (possibly hard)

Actually, that probably wouldn't be too difficult. I'd imagine Matt has a function for scaling images. If not, he's breaking fundamental programming rules.

Well, not really. But it's common advice to, should the same code be used more than once, put it in a function/subroutine/whatever (name depends on the language being used; in the case of C, I believe they're called functions, but maybe I'm wrong) and call that every time rather than waste space.

Ragashingo, on Sep 10 2005, 08:53 PM, said:

Ahhhheeee gravedig! Er, anyway:

Here is an example of what I'm talking about: Oops

This message has also been sent on to pipeline just in case.
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I think that actually looks kind of cool.
But it would be bad with a planet bigger than the one shown. There should be some way to scale images...

Yeah, scaling would be best. You don't really want to have a huge window just to view a planet.

Here's something that never got noticed because it's not a feature used in the Nova scenario -- when you destroy a planet, there's no damage shockwave like there is with ships.

The damage shockwave is proportional to a ships mass. Remember the leviathan armageddon? Yeah, planets are millions of times heavier.

Generally, i wouldnt suspect you actually "destroy" the planet anyway, you just dig a crater so deep the fallout kills everything and starts a nuclear winter, or something of the sort. If you really do destroy it, then its actually the shockwave of the weapon itself that does all the damage. Planets dont like to release their energy (at least not in the same way a fusion reactor in a ship would).

Do <PRK***> and its counterpart really not work? That sucks... They seemed awesome -.-

Well, in theory you can set the "spöb regenerates" field to never restore the planet, so yes, you could, theoretically, "destroy" the spöb. Odds are, though, that gravitational pull would result in a big cloud of radioactive dust rather than the "obliterated, with chunks of asteroidal rock" image we have thanks to the destruction of Krypton or Alderaan.

But what about destroying space stations?

There should be a shockwave of damage when spöbs get "destroyed."