Signal Attacked not firing when Pirate is attacker?

[Litcube]

I've noticed some escort ships recently not responding or helping their flight leaders. I traced the issue down to "protect ship" and ran a couple scenarios.


After many tests, I've come to the conclusion that signal attacked doesn't fire if the attacker is a Pirate. If the hidden state is NOT removed, the signal works fine.

Can someone else confirm this?

[LV]

can't confirm but my knowledge of s.a is that it does not always fire on every attack

have you tried building in a 1 line logging script for testing, e.g. sec signal script , write to log book attacker/or play sound 945

i used this method when banging my head against the desk with that signal

[Litcube]

When I was banging my ahead against my desk, I just used player logging for this one, showing the attacker and the defender in a single line. I tried every race against each other, and everything works as expected except when an unhidden pirate attacks any other race. The signal doesn't fire. I know for sure it doesn't fire. I just don't know why, or if I've somehow created an environment that's causing it.

[Sartorie]

interesting, just tried it against a few player ships and pirate fighters with their coverstate removed did not trigger the primary signal attacked at all e.g. ships did not even try to fight back

however if you spawn the ships as another race and change ownership to pirate race the signal fires as it should, need to change some spawn scripts now -.-

thanks for stumbling across this one

[LV]

does this mean that someone with a slightly dark orientation could use this "feature" to get them to attack ships without them fighting back?

[Sartorie]

would only work if the attacked ship does not scan for enemies itself and has no turrets / is oos I think

[Litcube]

The problem is, as most wings are set to protect rather than attack same, most wings will not respond when attacked by a pirate. Even if the lead ship is engaged in full combat with a pirate, a whole wing of 20 ships will do nothing but follow.

As for my own fix, I'm going to be switching all wings to attack same.

[Sartorie]

could be worth patching the fight.attack.object scripts to occasionally send a signal_attacked when run on pirate owned fighter ships too

[Vayde]

does this mean that someone with a slightly dark orientation could use this "feature" to get them to attack ships without them fighting back?

Feature???

[wyvern11]

gazz' and my oos-tests of yore showed, that this is the main reason for poor sectorpatrol-performance. afaik this has not changed in 3.1

I'm pretty sure this is not race-related but I will not rule out the possibility that it is worse for pirates.

most of the Q-renown stems from the fact that the victim simply ignores being shot to pieces

There exists a patched fight-script by gazz (see oos-rebalance-thread) doing massive logging and checking if signal attack was seen, iirc the "D"-flag

[Sartorie]

no, thats something different - the uncovered pirates never trigger signal_attacked (which is a bug)

the Q kills stuff before signal_attack gets a chance to trigger ^^ signal_killed simply trumps signal_attacked (I tested it a while ago with a Q oos, signal fires fine if the target survives)

additional to this the ES implementation of signal_attacked is quite weird, the first call blocks any further calls until the first attacker is killed ...

[wyvern11]

OK
Q is a bad example because of the massive damage. But I'm positive about similar incidents to lesser xenon not signal-killing (at least up to 2.6)

I do not have a large logfile to prove it for my (just begun) 3.1 game though.

I'll post the incidents if I do

[Litcube]

Wonder if this was fixed for Albion Prelude? If not, maybe.. maybe take a look at 'er? Maybe?

[Sir Warwick]

(Duplicate response)

[Sir Warwick]

can't confirm but my knowledge of s.a is that it does not always fire on every attack./quote]

Just been working withese signal alot as writign a bailing / loot drop mod.

I havnt noticed any issues with the signal not firing at all, but I havnt been explicityly checking for pirates in either state. However the signal does not fire on every attack - Im guessing for performance reasons - for eg I often only see if it fire maybe 2-3 times from first attack to death of ship in AP.

I suspect its on a timer - ie if signal sent within last N seconds, dont bother sending it again...

[Sir Warwick]

additional to this the ES implementation of signal_attacked is quite weird, the first call blocks any further calls until the first attacker is killed ...

Odd - now that I havnt noticed, or maybe it doesnt impact secondaries?

Im definately getting multiple, but spaced out signals in the same fight involving only two ships - else no way would watching for my bailing conditions work.