Possible 1.0.2 bugs...

After playing 1.0.2 some as well as looking at the new data files using the new Resourcer templates, I've found what appear to be several bugs...

  1. The Cargo Transporter doesn't recharge fuel like the changes sheet says it should. The Freighter seems to, however. I looked at the ship resources and found that the player fuel recharge bit is turned off; shouldn't this be on?

  2. The Zidagar Zidara is marked as having a 3 turret and 3 cannon limit, but the stock version has two turrets and two phased beams. Since a turret counts as both a cannon and a turret (due to a game "balancing"), the Zidara should really be set to 2 turrets and 4 cannon as it's limit. The upshot is if you sell a turret on this ship, you can't buy it back. (Also, shouldn't ships be limited to just one phased beam?)

  3. The data files are still marked "b3" (BTW, I used the upgrade installer, not the complete one.)

  4. I've noticed that the padding bits added to the ends of the resources aren't consistently applied... wouldn't this risk memory access errors if these bits are ever implemented?

  5. This was pre-existing from earlier versions... but the Voinian neutron turrets still fire at half the rate they're supposed to. The phase and blaze turrets fire at twice the rate of the standard cannon, which is suggested by the outfit graphic. However, the neutron turret is also show as having two cannons on a mount. Why do these turrets fire slow?

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Des Courtney - Mac Programmer, Game Hobbyist, Soft Drink Addict
<mailto: (url="http://"mailto:deslee@dacor.net")mailto:deslee@dacor.net(/url)deslee@dacor.net

I've also noticed that the Fuel Regeneration from the Solar Panels doesn't work as Advertised!
I've found 2 major problems so far :-

  1. The Needle Missiles, S.A.D.'s and the S.A.E. modules don't track properly - they don't home in on the specified target - they first do a couple of circles, loops and then a few figure of eight manouvres near or beside or around the ship that has fired them. I fired a Needle Missile at almost point blank range - less than an inch / approximately 2cm - and it did a series of repeated loops beside / over / around my ship and the target.
    I originally thought that this was only ocurring to my weapons, however I noticed that weapons being fired by Computer Controlled Ships / A.I. controlled such as Renegades were doing the same thing. This is really strange as I never ever had this problem in EVO 1.0.1!
    I fired off 50 S.A.D.'s at a Renegade ship and only 3 of them tracked properly and only 5 hit the ship. The 2 which didn't track properly did a series of loops and the Renegade must have collided with them.
    The SAD's, SAE's and the Needle Missiles are therefore useless.
  2. The Voinian ships don't fire their Rockets as accurately as they used to in EVO 1.0.1. The Voinian Cruiser doen't fire many rockets at my ship when I try to attack it and none of the rockets are anywhere near me.
    The Voinian ships used to be the most difficult to fight but now they are a push over - the Cruisers used to fire a wide fusillade of rockets at you when you moved away from them, but no more!
    Summary - Guided Missiles / SAD's etc DON"T WORK
    - the Voinian ships aren't able to fight back properly using their Rockets
    Hopefully these PROBLEMS / FAULTS / BUGS will br fixed QUICKLY!

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Originally posted by jm:
I've found 2 major problems so far :-

  1. The Needle Missiles, S.A.D.'s and the S.A.E. modules don't track properly

I believe this is supossed to be a feature... all the races have innate "jamming" technology. This seems fair to me, if you can get jamming for your ships, shouldn't the AI?

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  1. The Voinian ships don't fire their Rockets as accurately as they used to in EVO 1.0.1. The Voinian Cruiser doen't fire many rockets at my ship when I try to attack it and none of the rockets are anywhere near me.

This seems to be a side effect of the repaired turret tracking code, in 1.0.1, the fast shooting turrets constently overshot fast targets, now the opposite problem (slow turrets undershoot) is present for the Voinian rocket turrets... Hmmm...

Des

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Des "Wormwood" Courtney = Online before most of you were
<mailto: (url="http://"mailto:deslee@dacor.net")mailto:deslee@dacor.net(/url)deslee@dacor.net

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Originally posted by Wormwood:
1) The Cargo Transporter doesn't recharge fuel like the changes sheet says it should. The Freighter seems to, however. I looked at the ship resources and found that the player fuel recharge bit is turned off; shouldn't this be on?

mine is off too, how odd...

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Originally posted by Wormwood:
2) The Zidagar Zidara is marked as having a 3 turret and 3 cannon limit, but the stock version has two turrets and two phased beams. Since a turret counts as both a cannon and a turret (due to a game "balancing"), the Zidara should really be set to 2 turrets and 4 cannon as it's limit. The upshot is if you sell a turret on this ship, you can't buy it back.

Many poeple (like me) think the fact that turrets take up cannon spots aswell as turret spots is stupid, thats why we make plugins to fix this (my plugin "Extra Outfits" has a turret fix goodie in it (also has a fighter bay goodie with cool graphics, to bad it's not up yet))

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Originally posted by Wormwood:
(Also, shouldn't ships be limited to just one phased beam?)

No, the phased beamer has a reload of 2, so two of them fire twice as fast, and thus, do twice as much damage in the same amount of time (course they also drain fuel twice as fast :eek: )

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Originally posted by Wormwood:
3) The data files are still marked "b3" (BTW, I used the upgrade installer, not the complete one.)

Well i just took a look at my data files and they are also marked b3 (probably just forgot to change 'em) (I used the complete one)

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Originally posted by Wormwood:
5) This was pre-existing from earlier versions... but the Voinian neutron turrets still fire at half the rate they're supposed to. The phase and blaze turrets fire at twice the rate of the standard cannon, which is suggested by the outfit graphic. However, the neutron turret is also show as having two cannons on a mount. Why do these turrets fire slow?

Because if the nuetron turret fired any faster it would unbalance the game

P.S. There's another bug with the Cargo Transportor, the flag for there to be a blind spot on the back is on, however, if you look closely in the shipyard, you see the blaze turret is on the bottum ๐Ÿ˜›

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Originally posted by Mordon:

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Many poeple (like me) think the fact that turrets take up cannon spots aswell as turret spots is stupid, thats why we make plugins to fix this (my plugin "Extra Outfits" has a turret fix goodie in it (also has a fighter bay goodie with cool graphics, to bad it's not up yet))

I personally have no problem with this reckoning, since a turret is supposed to contain, not one, but two turrets in the mount. (This concept was also used in the original, with one of the turrets actually containing three mounted cannons)

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No, the phased beamer has a reload of 2, so two of them fire twice as fast, and thus, do twice as much damage in the same amount of time (course they also drain fuel twice as fast

Yes, but the weapon outfit is desiginated as having a "one per ship" limit.

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Because if the nuetron turret fired any faster it would unbalance the game

This can be easily reblanced by reducing the number of turrets on stock Voinian craft (and possibly doubling the Emalgia's turret fire rate as well) Since a turret simply contains two cannons on a swivel mount (which is also suggested by the cannon/turret double counting), this strikes me as making perfect sense.
And for players that use this turret, the 30 ton mass and slow shot speed (not fire rate) would still make the weapon harder to use on and in small, fast vessels. Remember, the game text itself says that this weapon is supposed to represent the Voinian's "weapons superiority." For 30 tons, I'd expect the weapon to be half-again better than the blaze or phase turrets. Right now, it's a wash. :frown:

If you are concerned about play balance, do you forsake Dospect armor? That stuff makes you almost immortal in Crescent space. (I've never tried to befriend the Voinians and get the Bresnev(sp?) armor; I'd shudder to think how out of whack that can make things.)

BTW, I'm defending certain aspects of EVO's design because I believe what I pointed out are real bugs, not design decisions. (Though the turret firing rate is more of a "storyline/constency" bug more than one of the software variety.)

Des

(This message has been edited by Wormwood (edited 06-11-2000).)

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Originally posted by Wormwood:
4) I've noticed that the padding bits added to the ends of the resources aren't consistently applied... wouldn't this risk memory access errors if these bits are ever implemented?
(/B)

Nope, EVO is smart enough to recognize resources that are too short and do the Right Thingย™ automagically. ๐Ÿ™‚

mcb

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Matt Burch
(url="http://"mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com")mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com(/url)mburch@ambrosiasw.com

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Originally posted by Wormwood:
**After playing 1.0.2 some as well as looking at the new data files using the new Resourcer templates, I've found what appear to be several bugs...

  1. The Cargo Transporter doesn't recharge fuel like the changes sheet says it should. The Freighter seems to, however. I looked at the ship resources and found that the player fuel recharge bit is turned off; shouldn't this be on?

**

Yeah, but what about the Cargo Transporter bug, Matt Burch?
Jude

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There is another problem in EVO 1.0.2, even if I don't know if it's normal or not. When playing a plug-in made for an earlier version of EVO (like F-25), you don't get any cash for your missions, which, with time, becomes quite a problem. I had 7 millions when starting, I'm down to 5, and it's not becoming any better. Anything to do to fix that, or do you have to port plug-ins from 1.0.x to 1.0.2 ?

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One problem that I've encountered so far is that at times EVO won't acknowledge that I've finished certain missions. This has happened twice so far: first was with an attack on a Voinian battle group at Ylinn (from outpost Alpha), second was the initial trade run from Blaga to New Taranto. In both cases I'd completed the missions (i.e. returned to Alpha/landed on New Taranto), but no dialog box popped up upon landing. The mission wasn't removed from my list, either.

I'm going to try downloading and installing the full version of 1.0.2, but wondered if anyone else had had this problem.

Tom C.

More bugs:
1. When I hit the after burner, and then try to accelerate, I slow down
2. When I get hit (from any direction!), I slow down

Has anyone else noticed any of these problems? Did you guys e-mail andrew and also help@ambrosiasw.com about them? The "no money for completing missions while using older plug-ins" bug sounds horrible!
Andrew, Matt, 1.0.2 beta testers? There are a lot of questions about possible bugs in this string. Any replies from you guys?
Jude

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Sorry, I was maybe a little too quick. I don't know what happened. i didn't get any money doing the first missions of F-25, but now that I'm further in, I'm getting it. Don't know what happened. But it sure was horrible, as in the beginning of F-25 you need to get fuel frequently in a near F-25 planet, and the nearest is North Tip Station. I had to bribe them a lot, then I tributed them, which quite solved the money problem, by the way Nevertheless, I'm sure in the beginning I didn't get any money, while the files say I should have, but as now I am, it's a smaller bug than it seemed

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I've noticed a couple of bugs as well, but most have been mentioned here. They are the fuel regeneration bug on the cargo transporter and one that causes the shield upgrades to not drain fuel like they say they do. I have 4 shield capacitors (I don't know what they're called in EVO) and I don't experience any fuel drain. By the way, regarding the 'turretspace/gunspace' thing, I think that there should be a set number of 'energy weapon spaces.' You'd be able to determine how many any given turret or gun takes up. For example, a lightweight laser/blaze/phase turret would only use 2, but a heavy Voinian/Emalgha/proton turret would use 3. Then heavy cannons like neutrons would take 2 spaces each, while lighter cannons use only 1. It would need to have a flag though, to prevent fighters from carrying turrets. That would solve the gun and turret space problem, and it's simpler too.

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Luca Rescigno
"And may not every one of the stars or suns have as great a retinue of planets with moons to wait upon them as has our own Sun?"
-Christiaan Huygens

We noticed another strange thing the other day. There were yellow flashes from light beam weapons (we were in the north east) flashing down the left side of the info box. There were ships just off the screen to the right fighting each other but they weren't under the border of the info / radar etc box. The bright yellow flashes kept to the border even though the ships firing them were further away.
Thanks
jmj & friends.

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What? I didn't understand that. Could you possibly write a little more clearly? What I think you said is that there was a Zidagar ship (light beam=phased beam) fighting some other ship, and although the ships were well off the screen, you still saw weapon flashes. That's weird. I know that SADs flash periodically.

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Luca Rescigno
"And may not every one of the stars or suns have as great a retinue of planets with moons to wait upon them as has our own Sun?"
-Christiaan Huygens

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Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
**What? I didn't understand that. Could you possibly write a little more clearly? What I think you said is that there was a Zidagar ship (light beam=phased beam) fighting some other ship, and although the ships were well off the screen, you still saw weapon flashes. That's weird. I know that SADs flash periodically.
**

I also get "ghost beams" from off-screen ships sometimes. Just another bug of 1.0.2. (I'm considering to switch back to 1.0.1... the drawbacks of 1.0.2 just seem to outweigh the improvements.)

-- Cinga

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Originally posted by BSmith:
More bugs:
2. When I get hit (from any direction!), I slow down

This is in some ways realistic if something hit you it would likely shuder the ship and possibly cause power failures and that would make up for the fact that you slow down.
This is kind of strnge though.

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Exsplane
Grand Admiral Thraw

Should I get otu and puch?
Leia Organa

Yub, Yub Commander
Major Wes Janson

Wes has only got the maturaty of a 2 year old
General Wedge Antilles

Here comes the welcome wagon
Han Solo

That's not a bug, that was already this way in 1.0.1. When you get hit by a rocket or by thousands of plasma particles, it kinds of affect your momentum, don't you think ?

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Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
**I've noticed a couple of bugs as well, but most have been mentioned here. They are the fuel regeneration bug on the cargo transporter and one that causes the shield upgrades to not drain fuel like they say they do.
**

I'm not aware of any problem with the fuel regeneration; if there is, it's an error in the scenario file and not the game engine, since I've tested the fuel regeneration code and I know it works.

As for the shield upgrades draining fuel, that feature was removed in the release version but the documentation apparently didn't get changed.

mcb

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Matt Burch
(url="http://"mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com")mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com(/url)mburch@ambrosiasw.com

I noticed another, more serious bug. I have EVO 1.0.0, 1.0.1, and 1.0.2 on my Mac. 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 perfectly, but when I downloaded 1.0.2, my saved games from 1.0.0, and 1.0.1, which are incompatible with 1.0.2, were replaced with older saves. I had completed 2/3 of the central missions, and had an Ultimate combat. Now, I am only Deadly, and none of the central missions are complete.