Scanner problems...and some more including fiasco.oxp

[Screet]

Hi,

since I've got some more updates on the "military fiasco" mission and was told NOT to fight the missing Leviathan, I do have some strange stuff, which especially increased after going to G5:

- I often encounter a Leviathan "military vessel" together with all of those missing ship types, scanner signature is common military instead of yellow with "fugitive"...then some ship approaches and they begin to fight - and all those vessels become flashing red and open fire at me, together with many yellow/fugitive marked ships of the fiasco that appear a few seconds later. It's not necessary that the first ships attack the Leviathan & Co - they do attack them, even when they are clean traders. Only after things become pretty bad, those fugitive fiasco vessels show up, leaving the only choice to run or use a WMD. What's wrong?

- since I came to G5, I thought there should be the cloak-ship. Seems I missed it?!? However, I do get regularly during intense fights "ghost blips" on the scanner, just as a cloaked ship is flashing visually (I have shot down Thargoids with enabled cloak), those things do on radar! Furthermore, a few missiles and white blips also begin to flash. I have never been able to make any visual contact with these things. Most often, shortly after some military ships show up with a Leviathan and then the above mentioned scenario prevents further investigation.

Is the program somehow too much slowed down by OXPs and thus behaving erratically? I also often have the cannons of space bars shoot a salvo at me, but they do instantly stop...and I am clean, never did anything to those ships. I also could imagine some sort of bug introduced in the most current test version of the game that leads to attacks on friendly ships.

Really, I've been through many very tough battles, but what's going on when the above mentioned things start is like being thrown directly into hell...

Screet

[another_commander]

If you believe it is a game bug rather than an OXP bug (which is what I think), then we will need: a) Latest.log of any situation like the ones you describe and b) a way to reliably reproduce these incidents in order to investigate.

Regarding the cloaking device problem: The CD mission should trigger on the 6th jump in G5. Please retry it without any OXPs loaded.

[Screet]

If you believe it is a game bug rather than an OXP bug (which is what I think), then we will need: a) Latest.log of any situation like the ones you describe and b) a way to reliably reproduce these incidents in order to investigate.

Regarding the cloaking device problem: The CD mission should trigger on the 6th jump in G5. Please retry it without any OXPs loaded.

The problem with the CD mission is, that I haven't an old save from G4...the latest other save is from G2 about 3000 kills away...but I'll surely use one of those just to hunt the CD. At least with my current save file I will not have to miss it, since I can buy it. I'd miss the encounter with that ship, though. The cloaked thargoids are too easy - they do not have enough energy to survive a few shots...

The above mentioned problems happened multiple times during a "navy mission" against a thargoid fleet and I have the savegame prior to this - I will keep it and retry to get into that situation again, thus having the necessary log.

Regarding the log file, I still have not found out where it is stored, or wether I have to install some OXP in order to have one written. I am using the most recent test version for PC (vista). Any suggestions?

Screet

[Svengali]

However, I do get regularly during intense fights "ghost blips" on the scanner, just as a cloaked ship is flashing visually...

I'm on XP and I can confirm that the blips are there, but it was in every version I've played (v1.69-v1.72.1) till now, so this is probably a display thing - maybe only in Win versions?

[another_commander]

Screet, you actually have pointed me to a bug with the cloaking device. The mission as it is in 1.72.1 is broken. Thankfully, the problem is within the oolite-cloaking-device-pod.js script, which means it can be edited and fixed without requiring a different binary.

Basically, scooping the pod that the cloaked Asp leaves behind does not award the cloaking device. The oolite-cloaking-device-pod.js script, found in oolite.app/Resources/Scripts looks like this:

Code: Select all

this.shipWasScooped = function (scooper)
{
	if (scooper == player)                      <------- THIS LINE IS THE PROBLEM
	{
		if (!player.ship.hasEquipment("EQ_CLOAKING_DEVICE"))
		{
			player.ship.awardEquipment("EQ_CLOAKING_DEVICE")
			// Should we make it possible to repair?
			// EquipmentInfo.infoForKey("EQ_CLOAKING_DEVICE").effectiveTechLevel = 14;
		}
		else
		{
			player.ship.awardCargo("Gold", 100)
		}
	}
	// Should probably award 100 gold to non-player ships too, but they don’t have awardCargo at the moment.
}

To fix the bug, the marked line must be edited and changed to:

Code: Select all

if (scooper == player.ship)

Next release of the game will have this fixed. As for the location of the log files in Vista, it is /C:/User/<UserName>/AppData/Local/VirtualStore/Program Files/Oolite/oolite.app/Logs, assuming you installed Oolite in the default location.

[LittleBear]

@Secret. The spacebar occasionally firing a salvo at a Clean ship (including the player) is a known bug with the bar's AI rather than Oolite itself. It has somthing to do with the fact that to get a quick detection of criminals by the bar I have it target all ships nearby in order to scan their legal status. This has the effect of making the scanned ship the station's current target and looks quite cools as the turrets track it. Sometimes though for reasons I haven't quite worked out, occasionally when it finds an offender+ target and so switches to an "attack target and launch fighters" state it keeps the prior clean target as its target rather than switching to the offender target that triggered the attack. Its attack state though does a cross cheak to immedatley stop attacking a clean target, and it should break off and send a "Sorry for the mistake Commander. Your drinks are on the house when you dock." type message. I'll try and squosh the bug for the next realease, but a single volly shouldn't cause serious shield damage and its just one of those things that can happen with trigger happy gunners! At least they say sorry!

[Screet]

Basically, scooping the pod that the cloaked Asp leaves behind does not award the cloaking device. The oolite-cloaking-device-pod.js script, found in oolite.app/Resources/Scripts looks like this:

Wow...I just was about to write this as an additional bug to this thread, as I got my old saved game to G5 and had the encounter...with an empty pod

Concerning the save location, for everyone else asking or looking, the folder is HIDDEN (at least with vista). That explains why I've always been unable to find it until now, as I like to keep hidden stuff hidden instead of spamming my folders.

Furthermore, I've found out that the cloaked ship also has the same scanner result as the one I reported as buggy! This is very interesting, as I had those flashes together in one encounter:
- for a common attacking ship
- for missiles
- for a cargo-blip (probably a MASC using ship? I've got scanner filtering)

Surely other ships beside that of the mission also use the device, as I experienced Thargoids to do so. However it's a strange coincidence to have multiple cloak-using ships within one encounter, and it does not explain why I also saw a cloaked missile on the scanner! I am pretty positive now concerning the idea that those scanner readings were caused by CDs - it's the same appearance.

Now I'm going to fix that thing...and am curious wether I will get the CD "mission" with my saved commander again or not...I somehow have the feeling that it's still active after many more jumps and typically those feelings are correct, even for strange bugs. Maybe I've worked too much in the software industry (beside getting burnout)...

Screet

[another_commander]

Furthermore, I've found out that the cloaked ship also has the same scanner result as the one I reported as buggy! This is very interesting, as I had those flashes together in one encounter:
- for a common attacking ship
- for missiles
- for a cargo-blip (probably a MASC using ship? I've got scanner filtering)
Surely other ships beside that of the mission also use the device, as I experienced Thargoids to do so. However it's a strange coincidence to have multiple cloak-using ships within one encounter, and it does not explain why I also saw a cloaked missile on the scanner! I am pretty positive now concerning the idea that those scanner readings were caused by CDs - it's the same appearance.

I think these are OXP bugs. Only the Asp in the CD mission is supposed to behave like this in the core game.

Now I'm going to fix that thing...and am curious wether I will get the CD "mission" with my saved commander again or not...I somehow have the feeling that it's still active after many more jumps and typically those feelings are correct, even for strange bugs. Maybe I've worked too much in the software industry (beside getting burnout)...

Screet

You will not get the mission again with that saved commander. The best thing you can do is go back to the saved game before the jump to the Cloaking Device mission and redo the mission after you have made the correction in the script.

[Eric Walch]

- I often encounter a Leviathan "military vessel" together with all of those missing ship types, scanner signature is common military instead of yellow with "fugitive"...then some ship approaches and they begin to fight - and all those vessels become flashing red and open fire at me, together with many yellow/fugitive marked ships of the fiasco that appear a few seconds later. It's not necessary that the first ships attack the Leviathan & Co - they do attack them, even when they are clean traders. Only after things become pretty bad, those fugitive fiasco vessels show up, leaving the only choice to run or use a WMD. What's wrong?

You seem to get all in once. Above findings show you are in the final stage of the fiasco mission. The missing Leviathan has the same scannClass as the normal ones. You can only tell them apart by his behaviour and the fact that the pirated ship has pirate helpers that show yellow on your scanner. This is the ship you should kill.

But to let it not spoil your other problem, just remove the fisco.oxp from your folder and restart Oolite to get your CD. When you have it you can put fisco back and it will continue were you removed it. (This works for most oxp's).
On the CD: the cloaked asp arrives after the 6th jump. When you don't fight it, you will also see it in a later jump. But once the asp is killed by you or a police and the devise was released, this asp will never come back. When you have a saved game from before you scooped up the empty pod it will still come.

[Screet]

Hmmm....I've had some more encounters with unpleasant acting police condors which shot my reserve duty comrades.

At least now it's clear: The missile-blips do not come from cloaked missiles, but are falsely reported, as if the missile would "jump" between scanner sides...and it doesn't happen to all of the missile stream, but only to one at a time.

Thus there is definitely some problem with the scanner in the current test version for the PC I just can't tell where it comes from.

Screet

[Screet]

You seem to get all in once. Above findings show you are in the final stage of the fiasco mission. The missing Leviathan has the same scannClass as the normal ones. You can only tell them apart by his behaviour and the fact that the pirated ship has pirate helpers that show yellow on your scanner. This is the ship you should kill.

...and I finally got it. The "problem" with the CD is, that my old saved game is far too old to continue it, but I wanted to get that device the normal way, even if I can buy it with my up-to-date commander

The fiasco is solved for now, too. Apparently I had always the "luck" to get it loaded into the system when I was there fighting for some other mission type...especially the navy missions (thargoid attack, thargoid fleet, pirate base), but also with common random thargoid invasion. This time at first a Leviathan jumped in when I went after the pirates...and when I got them down and had another look back to where my comrades should follow (I was using injectors to speed ahead for higher bounty), there was not one, but two Leviathans...thus I hit the injectors, went for the second and it attacked. It's escorts were massively lacking behind, thus the fight was very easy, but when I stumbled into the escort, they took my whole shields immediately, thus I used the little remaining injector fuel to get away. Good choice...they did not care for the escort, but had a nice reward for the carrier

I've checked my current commanders save file...apparently the counter for the CD mission went to 8 before it stopped. Well...I was busy at that time with the deposed mission - and did not even understand that it was completed when I delivered that passenger with the chip...however the file says it's complete. Guess the author initially wanted to do more but decided otherwise?

Screet

[Lestradae]

I assume originally there was no idea there would be so many missions in parallel. This sometimes dismisses the chance to do missions as two or five can run at the same time and do their thing, and there's no scanning equipment available at the moment to deal with that.

The CD is buyable with RS, something I now consider too easy the way I originally did it. It will still be buyable with the successor of RS, Oolite Shipyards Extension (as will be the Scanner Jammer & MASC), but it will be much more difficult to obtain those items, and much more expensive

I would suggest that when OSE comes out, to sell the CD and other stuff (MASC etc.) via Commander McLanes Sell Anything oxp (before OSE was installed) and buy it again when at the appropriate place in OSE ...

I wish you fun with your extreme test-playing of all things Oolite in the future too

L

[Thargoid]

The cloaked Thargoid ship is from Second Wave.oxp. It was designed to be not too difficult, but if it's coming out as too easy I may increase its recharge rate for the next release version to make it a bit tougher.

One other thing I'm finding with the cloaking device is that it doesn't seem to transfer between ships. I've had a couple of occasions where I've sold ships with one and the new one doesn't seem to have it any more. I need to check it a bit more, but it could be another bug with 1.72.1 and the CD.

[Screet]

The cloaked Thargoid ship is from Second Wave.oxp. It was designed to be not too difficult, but if it's coming out as too easy I may increase its recharge rate for the next release version to make it a bit tougher.

Please, do that! The CD obviously has the Warship/Invader drained to energy low on itself...it was really like shooting up a "Famous Number Five" without any enhancements. Hit the trigger and it's gone...

Concerning the Q-Bomb usage of Thargoids: I *really* love the impressive fireworks when during navy fleet action vs. thargoids they do launch their bomb. However, I just had several such "missions" and almost always did the Thargoids use the bomb, eliminating both fleets with me as sole survivor...and that in a very early stage of the battle. It's an impressive sight...but if they are so eager to use it, they could send a fleet of target dummies instead of battleships. Maybe they should only use the bomb if the odds turn too sharply against their fleet?

Furthermore, if you can make them launch their robot fighters earlier, please do it....in my eyes they do still wait too long. After fleet battles, it's a common sight that the launched robot fighters still are in formation, as just having been launched before the mothership got destroyed.

One other thing I'm finding with the cloaking device is that it doesn't seem to transfer between ships. I've had a couple of occasions where I've sold ships with one and the new one doesn't seem to have it any more. I need to check it a bit more, but it could be another bug with 1.72.1 and the CD.

I thought that was intentional, as the only eq that got transferred was the trumble...however, it would be nice, if the "secret" equipment would be transferred: naval energy unit, cd, masc & filter. I guess the navy would be angry otherwise that such eq becomes public available and changing ships is really costly enough, let alone that there's no way yet to rebuy some of this stuff if RS is not installed...

Screet

[Eric Walch]

The CD is buyable with RS, something I now consider too easy the way I originally did it. It will still be buyable with the successor of RS, Oolite Shipyards Extension (as will be the Scanner Jammer & MASC), but it will be much more difficult to obtain those items, and much more expensive

Why do you insist to sell something like a MASC'M. It is alpha equipment that was already abandoned in the code in Oolite 1.55. It is therefor never really tested and probably buggy. It does work for NPC ships, but for a player it does nothing. So why not selling also a "SDF", "DFT", "KUR'H" or a "HDX". I just invented them but they also do nothing to the player. For me it makes absolutely no sense to sell equipment that does nothing.

And when the MASC'M would work as designed, it would feel like cheating as no other ship would be able to see or target the player. You just could kill anything without other ships fighting back.

And selling its counter measurement is kind of spoiling any future use of it with missions. Currently it does nothing as there are no NPC ships out there that have the MASC'M.