Peaceful Thargoids Bug

[Rorschachhamster]

I found some Thargoids loitering around the wichpoint buoy. They didn't spawn tharglets, they didn't act hostile, even when they where shot at.
I found this in the Log:

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12:14:35.460 [ship.setUp.escortShipCircularReference]: ----- WARNING: Ship <ShipEntity 0x17e58938>{"Thargoid Thargorn Battleship" position: (96326.9, 101228, 94408.5) scanClass: CLASS_THARGOID status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT} requested escorts, when it is an escort ship itself. Avoiding possible circular reference overflow by ignoring escort setup.
12:14:36.468 [ship.setUp.escortShipCircularReference]: ----- WARNING: Ship <ShipEntity 0x17787d70>{"Thargoid Thorgon Cruiser" position: (99201.1, 96335.6, 106195) scanClass: CLASS_THARGOID status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT} requested escorts, when it is an escort ship itself. Avoiding possible circular reference overflow by ignoring escort setup.

and a few more like these, but nothing else.
I have installed TCAT, Xepatl's sword, thargoid carrier, thargoid witchspace battles and probably some more I'm not aware of.
I posted it here as it is probably an OXP problem. Could be a bug, too. Happened twice in a row in the same system. As I'm testing I came from the main to the wp, could be that this flew under the radar for some time...

[Smivs]

Not Xeptatl's Sword - niether ship type mentioned in the log entry are from that OXP.

[Eric Walch]

Not Xeptatl's Sword - niether ship type mentioned in the log entry are from that OXP.

No guarantee. THe bug is not in the shown ships, because they should have escorts. The bug is in one ship level higher, were apparently 'thargoid' is used as escort role.

[Smivs]

Probably not Xeptatl's Sword... (I hope )

[Thargoid]

Both of the ships are from Thargon Threat OXP, and both have escorts defined with role "thargoid-escort". The only ship in the OXP that has that role active is the Terroriser Frigate, which itself does not have escorts defined.

So at least in the version I have installed (v1.5) it looks OK. I can only think that there may be another OXP using that role though, which is causing confusion and error, as it is a bit generically named?

@Rorschachhamster - were the loitering ships just standard Thargoid vessels (or those from whatever shipset you may have installed)? The Thargon Threat ships are quite distinctive looking. If you can remember (or find) the ships exact name (from the ident computer for example) then it should narrow things down. I know there was a bug in TCAT at one point where the Pathfinders were a bit docile until you shot one (the AI got stuck sometimes), but I think that was fixed a long time ago.

[Rorschachhamster]

I think I found it. Maybe? there was no thargoid carrier, asfaict. Maybe it was blown up by NPCs fast, as it is a big target...
In the Thargoid Carrier OXP, the escortsare set up with

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<key>escort_role</key>
		<string>thargoid</string>
		<key>escorts</key>
		<integer>4</integer>

Could that be it?

[Thargoid]

Yes that would do it if you have both OXPs installed.

One for McLane to sort out, probably with a like-ship or similar tweak.

[Rorschachhamster]

So if i'd change that role to "thargoid-escort", it would be followed by ships from your OXP?

EDIT: I tried that. Now it's exclusively Terroriser frigates loitering about and doing nothing.

[Commander McLane]

Yep, it's from Thargoid Carrier, and it should be harmless.

I wanted to keep things as simple as possible. Therefore I avoided using custom roles, and fill everything with ships of role "thargoid" only. This also gives the biggest possible variation on for instance the escorts of a Thargoid Carrier.

Thus also the Battleship and the Cruiser can serve as an escort for the Carrier. Both ships usually also have escorts, which are suppressed when they're created as escorts themselves, reflected in the error message in the log.

This is harmless, however, so you can safely ignore it. It doesn't explain why the ships are hanging at the witchpoint, though. Obviously they have lost their mother, so their escort AI makes them look for another mother. When they don't find one for some time, they should automatically get a patrol AI and start flying up and down the space lane.

This isn't an optimal solution, but shouldn't lead to recognizably weird behaviour, because they're going to get attacked by other hunters based on their bounty anyway, so they should end up doing what Thargoids do: fighting.

Alternatively I could give them a script that changes their AI to the normal thargoid AI when their mother dies. This wouldn't remove the error message, but would at least prevent them from hanging dead in space.

[Rorschachhamster]

This isn't an optimal solution, but shouldn't lead to recognizably weird behaviour, because they're going to get attacked by other hunters based on their bounty anyway, so they should end up doing what Thargoids do: fighting.

Alternatively I could give them a script that changes their AI to the normal thargoid AI when their mother dies. This wouldn't remove the error message, but would at least prevent them from hanging dead in space.

They don't fight, even when attacked. When I changed the role, it spawned terroriser frigates from Thargoid's OXP, but still no carrier, so it has something to do with the Carrier OXP.

[Thargoid]

EscortAI should already (as of 1.77) switch an escorting Thargoid ship to the trunk thargoidAI.

As this seems to be reproducible, I guess the AI and AIState should be available to check if the debug console is installed.

@Rorschachhamster - do you have the javascript debug console installed (or are you on a Mac)? If so target it and then do PS.target.AI and PS.target.AIState and let us know the output.

Or failing that can you do an entity dump when one of the problem ships is in the system (pause the game and press 0 (zero) to dump them to the log). Then find the ship in your log and post the relevant bit here.

Oh, and Thargon Threat isn't my OXP - it's by Arexack Heretic.

[Rorschachhamster]

EscortAI should already (as of 1.77) switch an escorting Thargoid ship to the trunk thargoidAI.

As this seems to be reproducible, I guess the AI and AIState should be available to check if the debug console is installed.

@Rorschachhamster - do you have the javascript debug console installed (or are you on a Mac)? If so target it and then do PS.target.AI and PS.target.AIState and let us know the output.

Or failing that can you do an entity dump when one of the problem ships is in the system (pause the game and press 0 (zero) to dump them to the log). Then find the ship in your log and post the relevant bit here.

Will do that.

Oh, and Thargon Threat isn't my OXP - it's by Arexack Heretic.

Oh. Sorry. The name and all that...

EDIT: OK. The AI is EscortAI.plist, and it's state is Choose_new_Carrer (in caps... ). Taking a look now at the entity dump.
EDIT2: Just the same for all of them, no carrier to be seen.

[Commander McLane]

EscortAI should already (as of 1.77) switch an escorting Thargoid ship to the trunk thargoidAI.

Can you elaborate on that? Under which conditions?

@Rorschachhamster: please don't change anything in the OXP. As I said, I'm already fixing the problem, and it has nothing to do with the escort role.

[Rorschachhamster]

EscortAI should already (as of 1.77) switch an escorting Thargoid ship to the trunk thargoidAI.

Can you elaborate on that? Under which conditions?

@Rorschachhamster: please don't change anything in the OXP. As I said, I'm already fixing the problem, and it has nothing to do with the escort role.

I just tried the changed the role to verify that it was from this one. Witch was more of a lucky guess after looking at some shipdata.plists from Thargoid.oxps, than any inside knowledge.

[Thargoid]

EscortAI should already (as of 1.77) switch an escorting Thargoid ship to the trunk thargoidAI.

Can you elaborate on that? Under which conditions?

If you open up escortAI you can follow the sequence through:

• GLOBAL state - goes to BEGIN_BUSINESS.
• BEGIN_BUSINESS - if escortCheckMother returns NOT_ESCORTING, goes to LOOK_FOR_BUSINESS.
• LOOK_FOR_BUSINESS - if scanForFormationLeader returns NOTHING_FOUND, goes to CHOOSE_NEW_CAREER.
• CHOOSE_NEW_CAREER - checkOwnLegalStatus will return SELF_THARGOID, which switches the AI to thargoidAI.plist.

The only questionable part for OXP alien vessels is whether checkOwnLegalStatus will return SELF_THARGOID, as I'm not 100% sure of how that is determined. I would guess probably by being scanClass CLASS_THARGOID.

I should also have been a bit more clear - I meant it should switch an escorting Thargoid that has lost its mother to thargoidAI, not a generic immediate switch.[/color]