Long present pirateAI bug

[Eric Walch]

I just discovered a bug in the pirateAI.plist. It affects their escorts when they have (e.g. python). Under some circumstances they are not able to send the escorts after the attacker. The bug was there already in version 1.55. Only strange that nobody (including myself) ever noticed this.

What happened: I attacked a pirate with two escorts. The mother went for me but the escorts just kept following their mother, even when I shot the escorts till death.

To understand the bug, one must realise that an escort will never initiate an attack on its own when flying escort. On an attack it only sends a message to their mother. It only attacks a target as result of a GROUP_ATTACK_TARGET message or when the mother sets it in a interceptAI with a deployEscorts command.

When the mother finds a target by itself, it sends a GROUP_ATTACK_TARGET message to the group members, including the escorts. But when the mother itself is attacked first, it is just going in attack mode and does not call for help (traders and police do call help from escorts in this situation). Just adding a groupAttackTarget command in the attack message would change pirate behaviour because now also other pirates from the group would react. But adding a deployEscorts command in every attack message (except the ATTACK state itself) would do the trick (similar as with route1PatrolAI.) It now just looks stupid when hitting the escorts and they don't react.

BTW I am still experimenting with the new CLOAKED messages for pirates. It works well. Setting them in a special flee mode does not really make the pirates weaker or stronger, but the reaction on an cloaked attack looks now better.