[#2182]7 Beta - 3 Cerberus Drones Wont Lauch When Player Present

[Khugan]

Steps:
1. TP to Cerberus in SCII.
2. Set the Cerberus drones to Escort and Enabled.
3. Watch drone rise on dock and disappear, followed by drones rising pausing and lowering.
4. TP to another sector, wait a few seconds and note drones launching in map view.
5. TP back to Cerberus.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xdzw6als ... m5yq9&dl=0

[YorrickVander]

Confirming behaviour similar to the OPs decription. Initially, the drones set to escort (player piloting cerberus) behaved as expected, using a new game started today to test. Flying from argon prime and engaging some xenon at the Hat I gate all worked fine. Seeing some damage to the drones, I used the recall subordinates command to fix them up, then re-armed the drones in the ship actions menu. Again with player as cerberus pilot - 1 drone came up on the lift and remanied docked for some time. Changing the order to Defend caused the single drone to take of, stop and return to the bay over and over. Unfortunately on reloading the attached save, the behaviour reset to expected so I don't know if you will be able to use it without setting up the scenario from scratch.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kzrxJp ... drive_link

[YorrickVander]

additional - from the save, once deployed its repeatable to cause the bug by disarming the drones, allowing all to dock and rearming again.

[Scoob]

The "Escort" option for Defence Drones hasn't worked in any of the v7.0 Betas thus far. As of Beta 2, drones set to Defend or Attack All Enemies appeared to be working fine. I played a little yesterday in Beta 3, and my Cerberus and Gorgon Frigates appeared to be deploying their drones ok. As reported elsewhere though, my Frigates are constantly setting Defence Drones to disabled, meaning they won't launch until I turn them on again. This seemed to happen randomly, but does happen regularly given enough time. I've not played Beta 3 long enough yet to see if this issue still happens. I did have some Frigates with disabled Defence Drones, but they might have been disabled from Beta 2. I've activated them all again, so if they turn off again, I'll know the issue persists in beta 3. I mention this as this was another cause of Drones not launching.

[YorrickVander]

The "Escort" option for Defence Drones hasn't worked in any of the v7.0 Betas thus far.

It was working fine initially in my test - Budgeted custom start with a cerb. Jumped into the cerb, set drones to escort, all good if painfully slow as they launch 1 by 1. 6 drones out as my escort, I set off for hat I and the gate, all good, the drones keep up with the ship pretty well in travel drive and highway. park up 10km off gate, they go off and shoot stuff, turrets assisting. Pretty happy with the command itself, its just the terminal bug out when I recall to repair and cannot relaunch

[Scoob]

It was working fine initially in my test - Budgeted custom start with a cerb. Jumped into the cerb, set drones to escort, all good if painfully slow as they launch 1 by 1. 6 drones out as my escort, I set off for hat I and the gate, all good, the drones keep up with the ship pretty well in travel drive and highway. park up 10km off gate, they go off and shoot stuff, turrets assisting. Pretty happy with the command itself, its just the terminal bug out when I recall to repair and cannot relaunch

I'll test again. However, from Beta 1, setting Drones to Escort on my own Cerberus (and Gorgon) saw them come to the pad, start to take off then just vanish. That was true for all Drone modes I tested in Beta 1. By Beta 2, most Drone modes were working but not Escort - again, I could see the Drones leave the pad, but they'd then just vanish. They'd all show as Launched, but there were no where to be seen.

Not had that much time in Beta 3 yet, so I'll do some more testing. I've not seen one of my Frigates turn OFF Drone launching yet though, which is an improvement.

If I get some time over the weekend, I'll check Drone behaviours specifically.

[Scoob]

I tested the "Escort" setting again on a Cerberus of mine. Starting with all Drones docked - they were set to "Attack All Enemies" but no enemies near - I change it to "Escort". Right away the docking bay opens and a Defence Drone is lifted up from storage. As the Drone is still on the elevator coming up, I click on it (I was F3 view on the Cerberus) so I can quickly track it if launched. Once on the surface, the Drone just vanishes. It's not been deployed. I continue watching and the docking bay doors open again, and up comes the same Defence Drone - it's still selected - it reaches the surface, then after a moment is drawn back inside again. It's not deployed. I then lose my selection of this Drone. Moments later a different Defence Drone is brought to the surface. That Drone has remained sat on the pad, not launching after some time watching. All 10 Defence Drones were showing as "Active" in the Ship Information tab though.

Previously, Beta 1 and 2, The Drones would come to the surface then vanish right away - not launching - then the next Drone would come to the surface, then the next, each one vanishing as they got near the surface.

Egosoft Devs:

If you'd like to examine this for yourselves, please load this vanilla saved game. Once loaded, open the map and select "Frigate Group 01" in the same sector as you. Selecting the lead Cerberus, change its Drone from "Attack All Enemies" to "Escort" and you should see what I see. I literally just loaded this save, so I hope it'll play out the same for you as it does for me.

After I'd finished testing "Escort" I set the Drones back to "Attack All Enemies". When I did this, the Drone on the pad was brought back inside then, one after another, each Drone was brought to the surface, actually launched, only to return to dock right away. Upon docking it VANISHED, then the bay opened again to deploy the next Drone. This repeated for multiple (I think all) Defence Drones. There was no enemies near to trigger "Attack All Enemies" Drones to launch, it's almost like the "Escort" launch only triggered after changing back to "Attack All Enemies" but the Drones wanted to just dock at this point.

Note: While on "Escort" duty, despite it being broken, the ship UI showed all ten Defence Drones as in use.

[YorrickVander]

You're onto something there with the stuck command - retesting on a fresh start again:

Took command of the cerberus.
Set drones to Escort - didn't work this time, went into loop of rise to surface, hold, return to bottom. Drones did not take off. Drone some times blinked invisible when risen with no particular pattern apparent.
TP away and back, command stayed as Escort but the loop was unbroken.
Set drones to defend. As you saw; a drone took off stopped after rising from ship and immediately redocked. I started whistling the Laurel and Hardy theme again.
Set drones back to escort - success, all 8 def drones launched and took up position around my ship.
To keep it on par with the last test, back out to Hat I gate and let them engage for a bit, all working as expected.
Recalled via 'disarm' to repair. Saw small, odd bug with 2 drones entering in one 'doors open cycle. The second drone entered apparently normally, then teleported to the surface once the doors finished closing and vanished again.
Set back to escort to redeploy - back to the loop; rise to surface, immediately go back down.
This time it took several cycles off Defend > Escort switching to get them to launch as expected, so there is clearly some RNG to the bug. Eventually all 8 were out and ready to go.

[Khugan]

I've had lots of trouble with stuck autopilot. I TP to a given ship and take over controls, but the ship is unresponsive due to NPC pilot-autopilot still in control. Sometimes turning off auto pilot works, but other times I must get out of pilot seat and retake control to actually get control. I've also took control of a docked ship, lifted off, and instantly start boosting away with no input from me. I can never get a save that can demonstrate this behavior.

Another time I TP to Pegasus in flight with my map open and then discovered the cockpit was slid open as if docked. I'm starting to suspect the problem lies with various flight configurations getting stuck, including the docked configuration.

I wonder if similarly the drones get stuck in some mode, 'docked' for example.

[Khugan]

I didn't see this problem specifically mentioned in the Beta 4 patch notes, but I can say that after two false starts (rise in dock and disappear) the drones launched in Escort mode, when I TP to Cerberus. Definite progress on this problem. Thank you Egosoft Devs.