Prerelease 3.160 (Bugfixes, minor performance improvements)

[Weapon Master]

Hey people, first post here, now on to the business:

Ever since the one prerelease that had changed the way engineers find targets to repair I have been experiencing some problems with them switching targets after they have been fully healed. If you open my attached save and go to Geoilkin and go to the Leavold wormhole you can see 15 engineers struggling to repair ~100 injured fighters. They seem to all repair the same ship at once and they all stick on that ship for another 1-2 seconds after it is fully healed. It would be nice if the next prerelease fixed the lag time, and also made the engineers pick different targets to heal if there are large amounts of slightly damaged ships, with priority to repairing majorly damaged ships of course.

[Signata]

Okay, I did wonder if it was intended behaviour, and it would make sense in most situations to create a limiter like that. I just seemed to hit a bad case of variables with my tugs prioritising extremely distant resistance ships and effectively getting stuck in the hinterlands for the duration of the battle. Even if I could have produced more tugs than the cap, there were around 400 resistance ships out there in various states of disrepair so I wouldn't have been able to overcome that factor with numbers.

Given that the Zone of Thought out there turns to molasses, perhaps tugs should be given a sane limit to how far they will travel.

[Fleet]

Hey people, first post here, now on to the business:

Ever since the one prerelease that had changed the way engineers find targets to repair I have been experiencing some problems with them switching targets after they have been fully healed. If you open my attached save and go to Geoilkin and go to the Leavold wormhole you can see 15 engineers struggling to repair ~100 injured fighters. They seem to all repair the same ship at once and they all stick on that ship for another 1-2 seconds after it is fully healed. It would be nice if the next prerelease fixed the lag time, and also made the engineers pick different targets to heal if there are large amounts of slightly damaged ships, with priority to repairing majorly damaged ships of course.

It could be that the lag was introduced because sometimes checking for new targets every cycle can be very cpu demanding, and by updating only so often, performance can improve.

No idea if this is actually the case, just throwing it out there. Similar issues have been fixed this way before.

[Amonchakad]

Hello, I just noticed a somewhat serious bug in my latest game: all of my ships can fire directly through Core force field generators. They still can't enter in them, and will attack them if ordered to, but obviously this makes AI force fields totally pointless
I haven't tested it with other force fields, and I don't know in which prerelease it was introduced.

While you're at it, could we please have ships who have a force field directly between their route not get stuck on one side of it, but simply fly on its side?


EDIT: On further testing, this happens on all AI force fields, and with different AI types/difficulties on different maps.

[Winter Born]

Hello, I just noticed a somewhat serious bug in my latest game: all of my ships can fire directly through Core force field generators. They still can't enter in them, and will attack them if ordered to, but obviously this makes AI force fields totally pointless
I haven't tested it with other force fields, and I don't know in which prerelease it was introduced.

While you're at it, could we please have ships who have a force field directly between their route not get stuck on one side of it, but simply fly on its side?


EDIT: On further testing, this happens on all AI force fields, and with different AI types/difficulties on different maps.

Better to post this in the bug reports forum - BTW there are at least one other bug reports there on this issue -- you are not alone 

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I tested the forcefield thing and couldn't reproduce the main bug (being able to fire as if they were not there), but still looking into it.

[x4000]

New version: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,5717.0.html

[x4000]

Weapon Master, regarding your report, I'm not really seeing an issue there.  The engineers do stay on each fighter a bit longer than they have to, but that's just the throttling and they are pretty quickly moving to a new target right after.  Engineer logic is something that we should look at soon though, thanks for the save -- Keith, can you take that one?  Also, actually, Keith can you make it so that space tugs don't go and capture minor faction ally ships (regular human allies are still okay)?

[x4000]

Weapon Master, just FYI, in 3.162 the clumping issue is fixed.  They'll still take a bit of time when switching targets because of the throttling, but the overall effect is vastly more effective with this change.  Thanks for the report!