Bug Discussion: Captain AI and Server Crashes

[huckletoon]

Good Evening, everyone.

 

After playing for approximately fourforty hours, I have run into few bugs, for which I commend koonschi and Qui_Sum.

However, what I have run into has been a mix of both minor and major issues.

 

I would first like to mention something that has been mentioned before in this thread: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php?topic=437.15. However, no offense to gn_leugim, it's a bit of a mess.

Behavior Experienced

-After attempting to jump to another sector, the server/client crashes and, upon reopening the game, brings the player to the closest allied safe haven in their drone, without their ship.

Actions Leading Up To Behavior

[*]Purchased a newly constructed ship from a shipyard

[*]Hired a captain and transferred that captain and some surplus crew onto the new ship

[*]Entered the new ship and equipped ship systems and turrets

[*]Switched back to my original ship and ordered the new ship to Escort me

[*]Jumped sectors 3-4 times

This happened quite a while ago, and as such I can not recall minor details. However, this happened a total of twice to me, and through a quick look at other posts, I believe this has to do with how the server handles player-owned ships and their AI. I have attached what I believe to be the correct server log, however I am unsure of the time of occurrence. For that, I am truly sorry, koonschi.

I could not find the correct one. Apologies.

 

The second odd behavior I have noticed may be my own fault, however I have found no information regarding it. Simply put, I cannot seem to get the Hangar/Fighter feature to actually work. I've built a hangar on my ship, I've created a squad, purchased fighters, hired pilots, and when I click on the little fighter icon for the squad and select "Attack", "Defend", or "Return", nothing happens. Unsure if this is because of something I have missed or due to a miscellaneous reason. I have attached the serverlog for when I had purchased the fighters. The repeated "Cannot assign Pilot" is because I had not hired any, and I had "Auto Assign Crew" enabled.

 

The last behavior I have frequently noticed is regarding interactions between NPC stations.

Behavior Experienced

-After jumping in to a sector inhabited by NPC stations, the only option given in the interaction menu is "Electronic Bulletin Board"

Actions Leading Up To Behavior

(I have found that this often occurs after a firefight)

[*]After defeating all malicious entities (pirates, Xsotan, etc.) I switched out a turret control system with a different one, usually a radar upgrade for deep scanning or a quantum hyperdrive upgrade for farther jump length

[*]Upon arrival to an NPC inhabited sector in which there are stations such as a resource depot, equipment dealer, etc. with which one may hire crew from, trade goods with, etc., and with all of my turrets attached that I had on during the previous fight (meaning more turrets than my ship should be able to have equipped), I only given the option "Electronic Bulletin Board"

Now, I have found a very simple workaround for this: unequipping all turrets seems to allow proper interaction with the stations.

 

Koonschi, if there is anything that needs more explanation or description I will do my best to supply it.

Thank you for your tremendous work with this game.

serverlog_Sun_Oct_09_21-35-26_2016.txt

[koonschi]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

 

First off: Thank you for the elaborate report. Super helpful, basically this is what a bug report should look like.

 

Behavior Experienced

-After attempting to jump to another sector, the server/client crashes and, upon reopening the game, brings the player to the closest allied safe haven in their drone, without their ship.

I have good news for you: Both the issue with the server crash and the missing turrets have been fixed. It was the escort AI that got some new features, but it crashed sometimes when it couldn't find the protected ship.

 

The second odd behavior I have noticed may be my own fault, however I have found no information regarding it. Simply put, I cannot seem to get the Hangar/Fighter feature to actually work. I've built a hangar on my ship, I've created a squad, purchased fighters, hired pilots, and when I click on the little fighter icon for the squad and select "Attack", "Defend", or "Return", nothing happens. Unsure if this is because of something I have missed or due to a miscellaneous reason. I have attached the serverlog for when I had purchased the fighters. The repeated "Cannot assign Pilot" is because I had not hired any, and I had "Auto Assign Crew" enabled.

Everything sounds right so far, but you should make sure that there is lots of space around (or mostly in front of) your hangar openings or otherwise your fighters won't start. It can't be obstructed by anything. Fighters don't need much space to start, but to land, and they won't start if they won't have it. Helpful error messages and a view for the building mode have yet to come, but are high up on the list!

 

Behavior Experienced

-After jumping in to a sector inhabited by NPC stations, the only option given in the interaction menu is "Electronic Bulletin Board"

Yes, I know of this one, and it's actually wanted, but unclear behaviour. It's because the faction doesn't trust you when you're too heavily armed. Probably your relations to them are ~neutral, and it gets better when you remove your turrets. There were error messages for all this with the last interaction system, which you can find in the demo, but they haven't yet made it into the new one, sorry!

[gn_leugim]

 

 

I would first like to mention something that has been mentioned before in this thread: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php?topic=437.15. However, no offense to gn_leugim, it's a bit of a mess.

 

 

not taken. I am glad (in someway) you also reported this and was not only my who experienced this ;)

[huckletoon]

 

First off: Thank you for the elaborate report. Super helpful, basically this is what a bug report should look like.

 

 

Not a problem, as a programmer myself I understand the importance of precise reports.

 

It's good to hear that the escort AI has been fixed; now I can have a mining dork again :)

The fighter issue is interesting; I will test out some different ship structures to see if I can get it to work.

It's because the faction doesn't trust you when you're too heavily armed.

The last problem I had makes sense; that was my first assumption about the behavior, but, as you mentioned, it was unclear.

 

Thank you for your feedback on these issues; a communicative developer is a monumental thing. We'll keep looking for anything that seems to be broken.

 

not taken. I am glad (in someway)

Sounds good, man. Let's keep at it to help keep this game as amazing as it is.

[gn_leugim]

Similar thing just happned to me now, regarding the AI-port over sectors thing, but:

 

Actions Leading Up To Behavior

 

Purchased a newly constructed ship from a shipyard

Hired a captain and transferred that captain and some surplus crew onto the new ship

Entered the new ship and equipped ship systems and turrets

 

I had these ships before, equiped, with systems and turrets, crew and captain. They were doing mining services for a long time (some days ago) already on 2 sectors, no issue.

 

I deicide to move sector, to the newly fresh founded station sector.  So:

    Switched back to my original ship and ordered the new other ships to Escort me

    Jumped sectors 3-4 times

 

at the last jump, 2 of the 3 ships that I had following me started to behave very strangely, namely, started to spin very fast and uncontrollable. this only happened when they had to move to get close to me. the third one didn't move and was ok.

 

After a brief moment, they turned into balls of light (like a small light on ship +/-, should have taken a Screenshot :\). Then I tried to move into one of the ships to used the Build command and see if I could fix it. game froze then and I could not do anything else. Now when I try to lead that galaxy, game freezes too.

 

I attached the logs of the gameplay, maybe they present better clues too.

 

 

 

serverlog_Fri_Oct_14_19-43-42_2016.txt

clientlog_Fri_Oct_14_22-10-26_2016.txt

[gn_leugim]

"EDIT":

 

After trying two time, I finaly got the galaxy to load again, but the behavior was wierd at best.

 

First I loaded the galaxy. I load at the command of the ship from which I said the others to escort me. All other ship look ok.

Secondly, there are Xsotan on the sector, so, I open the build menu, place turrets for combat, and go for them. But, as soon one of my shots hit the enenmy ship, a cascade of error windows pop down (but closing almost immediately) and the Xsotan ships not only ignore me, but my weapons do no damage to them. 

 

So, I decide to exit galaxy, and enter again. did all the same, and the result was the same.

 

On the third time I loaded the galaxy, I just ignored the xsotans and said all the other ships to escort me. they did not move, but, hyperdrived to the sector I hyperdrived with my main ship.

Once I got there, the same phenomena as described above happened, and this time I got a pic of the "star/light" ships:

 

 

I ignored this and hyperdrived again. Once in the new sector, all ships were "ok". I say "ok" because had the right shape, but were not complying with the orders (mining). also, when Transferred control to one of these ships, and by using the mouse steering, they would not move. looked more as if they were moving the view only (even the keys)

 

To have them re-using the mouse steering properly I had to:

 

Enter ship > Shift to keyboard steering > press shift to reset view > shift back to mouse steering.

 

It would then work well. Also, as soon I leave the ship (to drone for example) they would resume the orders I gave them earlier. Did this with 3 ships, all successfully.

 

Right now, all looks ok and I've resumed playing with no further incidents.

 

Ships

 

[koonschi]

This sounds like something is wrong with the server. You can probably work around this by just not going into that sector any longer.

 

Sadly the logfiles don't contain any information that could help find this. The next time this problem appears, exit the game immediately and send me the galaxy.

 

Send it to koonschi@avorion.net. I have never managed to reproduce this bug, and so far it has never happened on my machine before. Therefore I need your save.

[gn_leugim]

when I have the time, i'll create a new galaxy and on it try to recreate the error. it looks like a issue with hyperdriving to many times with a fleet. if I can do it, I'll send you the galaxy

 

[RandomCommander]

I am actually having this same problem, though never found a way around it. I have managed to get a save file of a galaxy JUST BEFORE one of my ships imploded into the light/orb thing, though I was pretty far into the game at that point.

 

I will try to get a save file of this bug in action as close to the starting sector as possible, I believe this will be easier on Koonschi.

 

EDIT: Booyah! Ship going haywire about ENE from the starting sector - about two gate hops! The file is too big to attach here, so I'm e-mailing it to Koonschi himself.

[koonschi]

Thanks, I'll have a look!