i think i killed the queen

[mindloss]

So they're launching a CPA and rolling on through my systems, get to my wall of turrets and FFs, big ol' battle. I forget about the EMP I had inbound, it comes into system and gets shot up, all my turrets shut down and then the Mk5s are free to keep pillaging, and eventually my ships and turrets are all rubble... but then...

...nothing happens. The hundreds of AI ships (mostly Mk5 frigs) just sit there. As we speak I'm rebuilding some of my turrets and slowly eating through their forces. Their ships will fire back if I come in range, but they're not moving at all, and there are no FFs up or any likely culprit other than the EMP that went off a good five minutes ago now.

Alternate subject lines for this post:

"I found a bugger."

"I think their commander has fled; there seems to be no-one in charge."

[x4000]

Sounds like possibly the AI thread shut down.  Very, very rare.  You might hit F3 and see if it says it's running, and you might look for AILoopErrors.txt in your RuntimeData folder.

[keith.lamothe]

The AI got distracted and didn't click the "Postpone" button on the automatic updates prompt fast enough

[mindloss]

Hmm. F3 said "AI running?" is True, which is I assume what you meant...

There was no AILoopErrors.txt in top level of RuntimeData, but in AIWar_Data there's an output_log.txt is up to 9MB and counting full of

Code: [Select]

Skipped rendering frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost)
 
(Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/6bc5f79e0a4296d6/Runtime/Misc/Player.cpp Line: 1571)
after starting off with some normal-looking stuff about AI loops in the beginning.


Oh yeah, incidentally, after that shipfreeze happened, I got a wave of fighters that came through acting normally. 20 minutes later or so now, another wave of fighters, and this one started normally, and then all froze bit by bit in that one trouble system.

[x4000]

Okay, then there is definitely not a crash or related on the AI thread.  There's just something that is making the AI hang out like that.  They may be wanting to retreat but unable to do so because of something like a black hole machine, or they might be intimidated by whatever is on the other side and clustering there, too.

If you hit F3, then hover over the ships in question, you should see little codes in the main ship tooltips saying things like "WAIT" or "WRM" or "ATK [shipname]," etc.  Most of them probably have the same sort of thing.  What does it say?

[mindloss]

I think they were reading WAIT and something like WH 10->9... but I'd have to go load the save to be sure.

[x4000]

Okay -- if that's the case, then that means that they were planning to go through the wormholes, but they decided to wait because there were other ships not yet ready to go through the wormhole, and/or the danger level on the other side was too high.

Question: did you say that most of the AI ships were still frozen by the EMP while this was going on?  As in, the paralyzed ships caused the unparalzyed ships to just sit around near the wormhole?  That would actually make sense based on the normal wait logic, as the mark V ships were waiting for the other ships to arrive, not realizing they were paralyzed.  This one warrants a mantis report and a savegame with the issue happening, I think.  There's an addition to the AI logic that will have to be made to have them consider the paralysis state when going through their WAIT motions.  I'm not even sure it considers engine damage, but I could be wrong.

Good find!  That's a pretty unusual one.

[Fleet]

Tss and I may have had similar experience. In our current game, I know at least once instance of a rather large force sat at an enemy wormhole in our system. I can't remember if they resulted from a warp or if they moved in, but I recognized what OP is describing here, as the AI ships sat at the wormhole for a long time being blasted away.

[keith.lamothe]

My guess is on the waiting logic having an emergent effect combined with paralyzed/engine-damaged stuff.  If it's a black hole machine there's logic I put in there (last year, I think) to have them go try to kill it.  Of course, every once in an occaisional blue moon logic I write doesn't work exactly as intended *ahem*

[mindloss]

In my case there was no black hole machine, no engine damage (I'm pretty sure, anyway)... ships just acted straight up WEIRD in that system. Some would do the slow down and stop forever thing, some would act totally normal, and I had one or two groups that ran up to a wormhole as though they were going to enter, and just squatted there in an un-AI-like way - they obviously intended to go through.

From what Chris said (x4000 IS chris, right?), my guess is that on some level some of the ships were waiting in odd situations for ghosts that they didn't recognize were dead, possibly as a result of a serious overload of turrets and shields and fighting in that system, or as a result of my updating to .16 right in the middle of all that madness.

But whatever, I'll leave it to the experts. Which save do you want on mantis? I assume the first save after the first frozen ships... but I'm anal and keep 5-minute autosaves, so you're welcome to any of those weird scenarios I mentioned.

[x4000]

Yep, I'm chris.  Can you check the save and make sure the issue actually persists?  In a lot of cases, if the AI was chasing phantom ships that won't persist because AI thinking data doesn't go into savegames.  In which case we'd need a save and steps to repro, or it's just a dead-end sort of issue for the time being.

[mindloss]

It's reproducible, at least on my setup.

Submitted: http://arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3825

Edit: ...on second thought, don't bother fixing it. This one bug (if it is a bug) was the turning point that bought me a little time and led me eventually from the jaws of defeat to victory.

[PhillipDonner88]

In my case, too, there was no black machine. If there is,  there is a reson I put in there  to have them go try to kill it.