Prerelease 3.082 (Heavy beam cannons, targeting+, balance+, fixed 3.080 crash)

[orzelek]

I seen some effects of the target grouping code. It is useful for things like bombardments since they are actually killing turrets now instead of tickling all of them around guard post. To observe this with close range fighters will be a bit difficult due to amount of action that usually happens then

[keith.lamothe]

Is that just from the aggregate targeting code, or from the focus fire nodes?  The aggregation thing is entirely for performance purposes, any differences in actual results are unintentional side effects (though not necessarily undesirable).

[vonduus]

3.082

It's probably the ultra-rare invisi-trains.  They move along the asteroid belts absorbing space dust, to one day, millions of years from now, return with power and rule the universe.  Maybe I should take that out, not enough players play for a million years of gametime to make that mechanic very interesting.

lol   - as a matter of fact, they are still gone. I have seen train stations but no trains.

Another  thing: I have befriended a Dyson Golem, so his gatlings are all over the place, helping out. When my tugs see a wounded dyson gatling, they grab him and bring him to the nearest MRS, where they DISMANTLE HIM!!!! Yes, instead of counting up, its health are counting down to zero, then gatling explode ?!?!?

And an intermittent problem: Sometimes the tugs stop with their cargo in midspace. I don't know what they do, or what caused it, and it is on and off, not regular behavior. In this game I have seen it twice, in my last game (3.081) it was once or twice.

I really don't see any difference with the new targeting on. I bought the two new targeting nodes, I am supposed to do that, right?

The heavy turret seems to fire some big holes in nothing. As if it was firing on an invisible unit, but there is nothing where it hits.

Finally, my counter spies, I don't see them fire, they just sit there and presumably do nothing.    Except attract hordes of enemies.

I have attached a save. It is probably no good, and I guess this game is lost anyway. You might be able to catch a dyson gatling with an MRS on Sevent Galaxy of etc.

PS I almost forgot: I had the ? ? ? alert (X planes wil attack you on planet ? ? ? in Y minutes)

[keith.lamothe]

Another  thing: I have befriended a Dyson Golem, so his gatlings are all over the place, helping out. When my tugs see a wounded dyson gatling, they grab him and bring him to the nearest MRS, where they DISMANTLE HIM!!!! Yes, instead of counting up, its health are counting down to zero, then gatling explode ?!?!?

Haha, the Dyson Gatlings now have an automatic self-damage rate when not in the same system as a Dyson Sphere, to prevent them from clearing the AI out of large chunks of the map (a hop or two away, perhaps, but not entire regions of the map).  So the self-damage rate is probably outpacing the repair rate.  If the tugs are going after the gatlings that would be a bit of a bug considering the new self-damage thing, since there's not a lot of point if you're not in the Dyson's system.

I really don't see any difference with the new targeting on. I bought the two new targeting nodes, I am supposed to do that, right?

Well, if you want them to focus fire, or to test the algorithm, then yes   The sniper-focus one should work pretty well with high numbers of snipers and sniper-turrets as it will make them aggressively try to all shoot at the thing that will take the fewest shots to kill and to all shoot at the same thing until there's enough shots in the air to finish the job, then switch to the next, the next, etc.  Tends to clear out the "low hanging fruit" REAL fast with enough snipers.  The non-sniper-focus tries to do the same thing but it's trickier with finite-range stuff so the behavior may be highly non-optimal in some cases.  Not that I've seen those bad cases, but fair warning

The heavy turret seems to fire some big holes in nothing. As if it was firing on an invisible unit, but there is nothing where it hits.

Hmm, at one phase of development they were trying to target a certain point on a circle past the target and due to the limited precision of the math they would sometimes miss, which was pretty hilarious, but I don't remember them just shooting thin air.  Note that they use an alternate beam weapon logic that will fire *through* a target if it has enough strength to destroy it, and try to hit something behind it.  Is this behavior exhibited in the attached save?

Finally, my counter spies, I don't see them fire, they just sit there and presumably do nothing.

Are there cloaked enemy ships to shoot (as in fully cloaked, not just cloakable)?

Thanks for testing
Keith

[Echo35]

Another  thing: I have befriended a Dyson Golem, so his gatlings are all over the place, helping out. When my tugs see a wounded dyson gatling, they grab him and bring him to the nearest MRS, where they DISMANTLE HIM!!!! Yes, instead of counting up, its health are counting down to zero, then gatling explode ?!?!?

I'M HELPING!!

[vonduus]

If the tugs are going after the gatlings that would be a bit of a bug considering the new self-damage thing, since there's not a lot of point if you're not in the Dyson's system.

Thought it was bit of a waste, I didn't even get the scrap.

Note that they use an alternate beam weapon logic that will fire *through* a target if it has enough strength to destroy it, and try to hit something behind it.  Is this behavior exhibited in the attached save?

I am not sure, perhaps. I'll keep looking and post a save if I see it again.

Are there cloaked enemy ships to shoot (as in fully cloaked, not just cloakable)?

Yep, hundreds of autocannons attacking periodically. How does the counter spy look when it fires?

[keith.lamothe]

Yep, hundreds of autocannons attacking periodically. How does the counter spy look when it fires?

There's no special animation, but the shots are visible, you should see an ion-cannon-like stream of them heading off somewhere if there are eligible ships to kill.  If you have a save of this not happening when it should, I should be able to figure it out pretty fast.  Or would the save you posted earlier work for that?

[vonduus]

Yep, hundreds of autocannons attacking periodically. How does the counter spy look when it fires?

There's no special animation, but the shots are visible, you should see an ion-cannon-like stream of them heading off somewhere if there are eligible ships to kill.  If you have a save of this not happening when it should, I should be able to figure it out pretty fast.  Or would the save you posted earlier work for that?

I don't know with that save. I am fighting on from there, and I shall save when it happens next.

[vonduus]

Okay, the Counter Spy is firing all right. But there are still no trains. Not that I miss them.....

[keith.lamothe]

If you start a game with the same seed and settings and full visibility (or just send scouts all over the place), are there trains?  I guess it could be a map gen thing.

[vonduus]

If you start a game with the same seed and settings and full visibility (or just send scouts all over the place), are there trains?  I guess it could be a map gen thing.

Seed no. 1033691406 - I put the game on full visibility and checked all worlds (!), but no trains.

And btw, the turrets seems to fire okay. I wasn't aware of the go-through beam, so I thought they were only hitting empty space.

But this game is lost. The map is interesting, so I'll probably play it again tomorrow.

[keith.lamothe]

Weird, I try the exact same seed and the trains are there just fine.  So it's not some sweeping mapgen bug, perhaps related to another setting.

[vonduus]

Weird, I try the exact same seed and the trains are there just fine.  So it's not some sweeping mapgen bug, perhaps related to another setting.

All settings are on, except ai  progress, this is set to zero. I will do a new take on the the same map again today, and see if it is better this  time  around.

[vonduus]

I found a train after 12 hours play. One train in the entire galaxy!!!

And I found out what makes my FF accidentally move: I always have the engineer/RR nodes turned on, the ones that automatically rebuild units when they are lost. When the nodes decide that they want to place a new engineer right where my FF is located, then the FF moves away. Please fix, I just lost my home planet before I could get the FF back in place.

[keith.lamothe]

Gah, yea, the auto placement might not be properly checking; this isn't an easy fix (at least not without messing up all the other cases), but I'll keep trying.  The main difficulty is that I can't reproduce it except by a very remote chance even when I pack 1000s of units under that forcefield.