Need help urgently

Hi guys,

My brother just found a major bug in ARPIA2

While trying to board any fighter belonging to the "@ ARPIA" bonus government, Nova freezes. Completely.

Now, I guess this is a gövt resource problem, but has anyone ever encountered this before?

Gövt details:

all flags unchecked except:

- roadside assistance
- cargo scan mask : 2
- government's warships will take bribes
- government's freighters will take bribes
- government's planets and stations will take bribes
- demands larger bribes, and planets always accept bribes
- prefers hypergate travel
- prefers wormhole travel
- retreats if shields drop below 25%

This post has been edited by Pace : 04 October 2006 - 02:28 PM

Is it a carrier-borne fighter or a normal ship with the fighter AI?

Does the fighter have an infinite amount of ammo at its disposal? Energy, credits, etc? Is a mission offered when you board it? If so, are you sure that you have the fighter properly linked to the mission? (If mission 1120 is offered when you board the ship but mission 1120 does not exist, theoretically Nova will die)

Change one thing at a time (eg, remove flags) until works. Or do it binary search style...

@rmx256, on Oct 4 2006, 10:08 PM, said in Freeze on boarding?:

Is it a carrier-borne fighter or a normal ship with the fighter AI?

Normal ship with fighter AI.

@jacabyte, on Oct 4 2006, 11:01 PM, said in Freeze on boarding?:

Does the fighter have an infinite amount of ammo at its disposal? Energy, credits, etc? Is a mission offered when you board it? If so, are you sure that you have the fighter properly linked to the mission? (If mission 1120 is offered when you board the ship but mission 1120 does not exist, theoretically Nova will die)

No mission offered, enough energy, no credits for the düde.

@guy, on Oct 5 2006, 01:37 AM, said in Freeze on boarding?:

Change one thing at a time (eg, remove flags) until works. Or do it binary search style...

I'll be working on it this afternoon, and I'll let you know what comes of it.

Still, I find it rather disturbing

Edit: and the düde resource is interceptor class, "never attacks the player, safe from player's fire". Could this be the problem (making pacific ships unboardable)? I'll let you know.

This post has been edited by Pace : 05 October 2006 - 12:04 AM

After a tiny bit of testing, it is indeed the "never attacks the player, safe from player's fire" flag that causes the problem

But I want to use it for that instance.

So what do I do? Make almost invincible shďp duplicates for this one, thus avoiding the need for the "never attacks the player, safe from player's fire" flag, or leaving it as it stands, thus leaving the option for Nova to freeze in a specific bonus place if the player thinks of boarding a ship?

If this ship is created by a düde, what happens if you check the "can't hit or be hit by the player" flag in the düde resource? Also, how likely is it that the player will see this ship disabled?

Edwards

Does the ship need armor?

Very queer problem.

You can't even disable a ship if it has no armour.

@guy, on Oct 6 2006, 12:14 AM, said in Freeze on boarding?:

You can't even disable a ship if it has no armour.

If a ship has no armor, it blows up...

Basically, it's for a space game (:p), and what happens is that, often, the other ships manage to damage themselves (missile damage, or a beam that hits an allied ship, …), so apparently (my brother's been playing that space game a lot lately) they do get disabled quite easily.

So, 1 armour ships then? Or is there a way (except by giving them X000 shields & armour) of making them un-"disablable"

And by the way, Edwards, the "can't hit or be hit by the player" flag in the düde resource is exactly what was causing the problem (but in MC, it's "never attacks the player, safe from player's fire").

This post has been edited by Pace : 06 October 2006 - 12:31 AM

There's an extremely similar flag in the govt resource: Never attack player and can't be hit by player's shots. I'm not sure whether or not it means the AI's shots can't hit the player though.

Guy's suggestion seems to be the next to check -- but if that fails and you need to make custom ships, can't you make them unboardable by setting their crew sizes to zero?

Aye, I can do that.

I'll see if the gövt flag helps.

Strange… The gövt flag seems to only affect standard shots, but not beams, so basically, it works to some extent, but it doesn't work as well as the düde flag. And it lets the player board without Nova freezing.

I've now tested with 0 crews & the düde flag, to re-check the behaviour, and it works now just as I'd want it to.
(otherwise, this special place could become a "disable & plunder" place, I'm sure :D)

So, note to other developers: the gövt flags aren't as good as the düde one, and the düde one causes Nova to freeze upon boarding the ship.

Thanks for the help, guys.

This post has been edited by Pace : 07 October 2006 - 01:07 AM

Special ships should always be capturable. Dammit what would Override have been without player-flown Voinian Dreadnoughts, Enhanced Aradas, Strange Asteroids, and The Nadir, just to name a few?

I'm assuming you're doing something where the player has to kill a ship that he or she can't touch directly. Meh. If you decide to 0-crew this one you'd darn well better have at least three other special ships that can be captured!

If I'm slightly understanding what Pace is doing here these are just variants of other (capturable) ships with possibly no other difference than the crew count. Or at least no differences that would be of interest to the player.

You guys will see, but Guy is far closer than Qaanol