[AP] Two new(?) bugs. (Incl turrets not retaliating + save. With advice from Gazz)

[Skeletal]

I’ve got two new problems with AP.

The first is that I’m destroyed leaving the Hammer Torpedo Fab Facility in Black Hole Sun. I now know about the “Idle” trick, but even that doesn’t work because although I can launch successfully, coming out of idle then causes me to be destroyed. I got out of it by the alternative “Dock at station” and making sure I was well away from the docking arm before switching to manual. I thought this bug had been fixed in the patch?

Next problem is that my turrets no longer work properly (Split Dragon). I’ve set them to “missile defence”, and I have set this to give priority to a missile, but then to attack anything that attacks me. The turrets no longer fire at an attacking craft. I then set them to attack anything that attacks me…they didn’t fire. Setting them to “attack all enemies” DOES make them fire, but they no longer try to hit missiles. This is a real pain.

Is this a new bug?

I used the Steam “verify files” trick which showed, that all my files are OK.

Skeletal

[Skeletal]

Well, well! I carried on and finished the mission where my turrets were not working as expected. Flew around a bit, went to another sector and picked up another mission.

Much to my surprise, the turrets started to work again.

So, whether it was the mission, or the sector, or Steam has secretly sent me a new patch, I don’t know; but I’m back to a working Dragon so I’m happy

This would be a difficult bug to track down, that’s for sure.

Skeletal

[Alan Phipps]

Glad to hear that. You will probably find that CBJ just gave your Dragon a good talking to while you were occupied elsewhere. You could always link a save made while the turrets were not working properly and see if a turret guru like Gazz wants to have a look at it.

[Skeletal]

Sorry about late reply…I got diverted to other things.

Thanks to CBJ for his supernatural abilites

I reloaded my dodgy file and confirmed the turrets are not working again. The dodgy file can be found here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/56377530/X11noturrets.sav

It would be good if the reason for this is found; perhaps it is a very rare bug?

Skeletal

[Alan Phipps]

Yes I tested that save and your turret does not fire on attacking enemy ships in-range and in-arc even after they have done damage to your ship when on missile defence or protect ship.

Attack my target, attack fighters and attack all enemies all work fine.

I went into gameplay, configure turret command priorities, and found the problem, well partly. If the protect ship command is anywhere in the priority list then the turret does not fire. In the missile defence priority list I replaced (2nd) protect ship with attack fighters leaving the other three command priorities as set. That worked fine with prioritising missiles and then enemy fighters. Later priorities in the list mean that it would engage capitals too if there were no missiles or fighters in range.

So, it is 'Protect my ship' that is currently not working in that save. Where's Gazz when you want him?

[Skeletal]

Oh, right! I’m pleased it’s not my imagination!

I think I’ve kept the command priorities the same for my more recent (working) turrets. Come to that, I think they are the same before that save game as well. So, my guess is that the “Protect my ship” went wonky for that part of the game.

The problem occurred all through that mission, including several saves.

I hope it doesn’t come back!

Skeletal

[cakes]

Where's Gazz when you want him?

I heard he was stuck down the barrel of a PPC, fixing the turret manually.

Then again, I also heard he was hiding in a Meatsteak Cahoona factory "testing" the stock

To cap it all, I also heard he'd managed to find Suzi's parents in the UFO base and was happlily reuniting them all.

So, he seems to have his fingers in lots of pies and gets around a fair bit

[Alan Phipps]

Hmm, cakes has been at the spaceweed again!

@ Skeletal: Thinking about it some more, I think the issue is not the protect ship turret script (since it worked before and after this) but that for a time the turrets were not registering that the ship had been attacked. Hence the 'retaliate' turret commands did nothing. Same effect, but slightly different reason.

I will amend the thread title if you don't mind to see if we can catch Gazz's attention.

[Gazz]

Where's Gazz when you want him?

I was off solving world hunger but noooo - you had to interrupt me!



It all boils down to this line:
$Target = [THIS] -> get attacker

The turret script asks the engine if it's own ship is under attack by some other ship.
Engine says no.

As far as the script engine is concerned, there are no attackers, so noone to shoot at.
I'll log it as a bug but there's nothing a script can do about it.

I realise that this isn't very helpful but... that's what's happening. =P


Using the turret configuration you can add "attack enemies" priorities of your choice but it's not ideal because with some ships, you don't want them to engage additional trouble.
After all, that's why the Protect one exists...