Strange launches with 1.71

[Eric Walch]

I just files a bug at Berlios about traders hitting the navigation buoy on launch. Is this general or only at special computer configurations.

Launching traders should make a 90 degree turn after launch. Since 1.71 they fly straight ahead in direction N-buoy. In most cases the wormhole is created before the buoy is reached. But the used command creates the exit point after 10 flight seconds. What means that for fast flying traders the exit point is further away so the occasionally hit the buoy.

Ahruman added a very nice "target inspector" to the mac debugging tool. (My compliments, very useful) With this tool I see that all launching traders have a "exitting trader AI" as they should. Almost all other launching ships on my system leave with a "police1patrolAI", what is wrong. Or this are two separate bugs or they are connected.
EDIT: the target inspector shows that all the launching ships have a AI stack depth of 3 (or 4 when they are in a gotoWaypointAI). It looks a little bit high. I would expect 0 for a new ship.

Anyone else seeing strange launches with 1.71?

[another_commander]

Confirmed. There are indeed cases of trader vessels launching from station and hitting the buoy before jumping out.

[Commander McLane]

Weren't there always cases of ships hitting the station buoy? And wasn't that supposed to be fixed? Although probably it weren't traders then?

By the way: I think also jumping out before reaching the buoy is a bug in itself (and it is a new behaviour in 1.71, at least I have never seen it before, but quite commonly in 1.71). Because the buoy (roughly) marks the distance to the station before which the jump is cancelled, doesn't it?

[Svengali]

And I often saw police ships crashing into the station. They launched, turned 180 deg after launching and before they can correct their collision course - BANG.

(v1.71.x)

[Commander McLane]

And I often saw police ships crashing into the station. They launched, turned 180 deg after launching and before they can correct their collision course - BANG.

(v1.71.x)

Yes, had that too.

If their AIs were re-worked, something could have gone wrong there. (Or in the general AI handling of the engine.)

Eric???

[Eric Walch]

Seeing the reactions the behaviour is more common. What is happening with exitting traders is that they ask for "witchspaceEntryCoordinates". When there is a station nearby the get coordinates 10 km away that forces them to make a 90 degree turn out of the flightpath. When it does not sees a station in scanner range it just gets coordinates 10 seconds flying ahead. For most traders this is before the buoy, but the fast traders are getting coordinates beyond the buoy.

I don't know were it goes wrong. Probably the scanning routing does not find a station nearby for some reason. But because most ships also leave with wrong AI there could be a common cause.

Weren't there always cases of ships hitting the station buoy?

I'm pretty sure it were in most cases escorts that hit the buoy. In 1.69 I altered the escort code so that they also used the "getWitchspaceEntryCoordinates" routine. This altered escortsAI I used during the whole period of 1.70 and never saw a missing N buoy. But the underlying bug was that escorts not always found their mother. That should be fixed, but when the mother crashes, the escorts just follow.

And I often saw police ships crashing into the station. They launched, turned 180 deg after launching and before they can correct their collision course - BANG.

When you make a dump of those ships you see that the are always in a "gotoWaypointAI". They get in that AI when their flightpath is blocked and are searching for a new route. I see 90% of the ships launching with this AI and when they finally sorted things out and do a return from stack they fall back in a route1patrolAI. On a mac you can follow this very nicely with the new target inspector that "on-line", in a floating window, displays the AI state and the remaining time to the next AI update. Very useful for AI developing.

BTW: All that buoy crashing could cause a system wide shortage of buoys. Maybe someone should think of a way to produce more buoys in the near future?

[Frame]

I have seen and reported Weird AI behaviour too..

I saw a sidewinder do nothing but looping, just outside the station.-..
at that same run, i saw an Adder, try to land on the planet... making minor corrections to his heading all while flying down to the surface..

Upon reaching the surface, he bounces up, heads for the station, then starts to go down into the planet again...

Once i was outside the Safe zone, i killed him
flew back.. Hello, now a new sidewinder (not the looping one), did the exact same thing... however i got no nifty State Viewer... :-/

was looking for the Red baron, since Circus had come to Orbit, but didnt see him ^^...

[Commander McLane]

I have seen and reported Weird AI behaviour too..

I saw a sidewinder do nothing but looping, just outside the station.-..

That was presumably an deserted escort, hung up between AI states.

at that same run, i saw an Adder, try to land on the planet... making minor corrections to his heading all while flying down to the surface..

Upon reaching the surface, he bounces up, heads for the station, then starts to go down into the planet again...

Once i was outside the Safe zone, i killed him
flew back.. Hello, now a new sidewinder (not the looping one), did the exact same thing...

This sounds like normal behavior. Adders are used (among others) as shuttles. A shuttle is a craft that circles between the planet and the station. Other shuttle crafts are e.g. the Worm or the Orbital Shuttle. Shuttles leave the station and head down to the planet, where they land (which would usually involve being taken away as soon as they are reasonably close to the surface). However, for each shuttle that has landed on the planet a counter of shuttles-on-the-planet is raised. And if this counter is greater than zero, a shuttle may be launched from the planet (=it is created close to the surface) and go to the station. There the circle starts again.

however i got no nifty State Viewer... :-/

You got. What you have to do is to choose the entity you want to examine as your target, and press the key for dumping the target state (default is SHIFT-H). This writes all kinds of informations about your target to your logfile. If you press SHIFT-H without a target chosen, the same information about your own player-ship is dumped to the logfile.

[another_commander]

Seeing the reactions the behaviour is more common. What is happening with exitting traders is that they ask for "witchspaceEntryCoordinates". When there is a station nearby the get coordinates 10 km away that forces them to make a 90 degree turn out of the flightpath. When it does not sees a station in scanner range it just gets coordinates 10 seconds flying ahead. For most traders this is before the buoy, but the fast traders are getting coordinates beyond the buoy.

I don't know were it goes wrong. Probably the scanning routing does not find a station nearby for some reason. But because most ships also leave with wrong AI there could be a common cause.

Eric, you are correct. getWitchspaceEntryCoordinates fails because checkScanner does not return any scanned entities for the launching trader. The reason this happens is that, somehow, the ship has not been fully added to the universe at the time the scanner is checked. The adding to the universe happens after the getWitchspaceCoordinates has been executed (and returned no station, no nothing).

Well, at least we are halfway there, we know what goes wrong, now to find out why...

Edit: I just noticed you referred to police1patrolAI in your original post. Do you by any chance mean route1PatrolAI? I can't find police1patrolAI anywhere. If it is indeed route1PatrolAI, then I think I know where it goes wrong.

[elite]

I have seen a ship leave the station then almost straight away it did a hyperjump. The wormhole was very close to the station entrance.

All ships that then left the station ended up going into the wormhole.

I know I have seen this before but never that close to the station.

I had to wait for the wormhole to dissapate before I could enter the station.

[another_commander]

@elite: I think what you saw was the escorts of a trader convoy following their mothership to its destination. If you saw Kraits and Sidewinders entering the wormhole then it is normal. If, on the other hand, you saw for example two Anacondas and a Boa Cruiser following each other in the wormhole, then probably that's bad.

[Commander McLane]

I think it is bad anyway to have a wormhole so close to the station that you can't dock, directly in front of the docking bay.

It breaks the "Oolite-physics"-law, according to which large masses nearby (like a station) "masslock" the witchdrive (and the hyperdrive as well).

So any player would ask themselves: Why is my witchjump aborted if I'm in station range, but NPC's can witch out. It makes no sense within the logical framework of the game itself.

[another_commander]

Yes, it definitely is bad to have a wormhole close to the station. I expect this will be automatically fixed once we figure out what exactly is that is causing the traders to not be fully added to the universe by the time their AI requests witchspace coordinates.

[JensAyton]

Even if it is fixed, the game should refuse witchspace jumps by NPCs in mass-lock range (filed as bug #13710).

[Frame]

This sounds like normal behavior. Adders are used (among others) as shuttles. A shuttle is a craft that circles between the planet and the station. Other shuttle crafts are e.g. the Worm or the Orbital Shuttle. Shuttles leave the station and head down to the planet, where they land (which would usually involve being taken away as soon as they are reasonably close to the surface). However, for each shuttle that has landed on the planet a counter of shuttles-on-the-planet is raised. And if this counter is greater than zero, a shuttle may be launched from the planet (=it is created close to the surface) and go to the station. There the circle starts again.

Thanks for the State Viewer info...

However, your explantion does not cover why a sidewinder is launched and does the same thing as the Adder, Sidewinders dont have shuttle in theire role set...'

Other than that, The adder never landed, it just bounched up from the surface, was heading for the station for a few seconds, then went down towards the planet again..

Thats until i killed it, and the sidewinder got launched and did the same thing