Thargoids Robot Fighters weirdness? r4426

[Zireael]

I got ambushed by Thargoids just a moment ago, and there was at least 2 warships, who spewed thargons. I killed two mothers, yet the thargons still fought. I suspect there was one more mother, because there were more and more thargons in battle... enough to kill me in spite of IronHide and Military Shields.
I can't be sure about anything, though... it's all happened too fast...

[Thargoid]

What OXPs do you have installed?

Specifically do you have either TCAT or Second Wave in the mix?

[Switeck]

Or my mod, which sometimes doesn't "shut down" Thargons until they have to change targets.
(This was done because earlier they were going stupid whenever ANY Thargoid died...anywhere in the system!)

[Zireael]

I have nothing Thargoid related, save for (maybe) Galactic Navy. And no, I don't have Switeck's mod.

I can't post log right now, but it's what I have: Target Autolock, BGS, Behemoth + Galactic Navy, Snoopers, BlOOmberg, Military HUD, Accessories, Python Class Cruiser, aegidian's specials, aegidian's x-ships, Hired Guns, Iron Hide, Captain Berg's, Vector.

[Eric Walch]

I got ambushed by Thargoids just a moment ago, and there was at least 2 warships, who spewed thargons. I killed two mothers, yet the thargons still fought. I suspect there was one more mother, because there were more and more thargons in battle... enough to kill me in spite of IronHide and Military Shields.
I can't be sure about anything, though... it's all happened too fast...

It could be caused by a small change in 1.75.
- Before, all thargons scanned regularly if there was a mothership around. The used scanroutine for that stopped after having examined the 16 closest ships and had a maximum scanrange of 25600 meters (despite the scanrange for the tharglets are set at 50000 meters in shipdata). In heavy populated screens this led to loosing mothers even when some were on screen.

- In 1.75 the thargon first looks if its real mother is still present. For this it uses the range defined for the ship itself. This allows for the mother being much further away than in the past. Only when the mother was killed, the thargon falls back on the old scan method for looking at a ship with role "thargoid-mothership". When found this becomes the new mother.

This results in that a thargon can still fail to find a mother with much entities around, but now only after loosing its current mother. In your case there was probably a mother present outside your scanner range but within the thargon scanner range.

And, as mentioned above contain some oxp also thargons with the "thargoid-mothership" role. Second wave calls them "control drones". As long as such a control drone is around, the other thargons won't shut off.

[Zireael]

Thanks, that clears the issue somewhat.
Although I'm fairly sure that at least a few of them were spewed by a mother I killed a moment later.... and they didn't stop fighting.

[Commander McLane]

Usually Thargons don't deactivate immediately after their mother dies. It may take a couple of seconds before their blips become white and they stop firing.

[Zireael]

Usually Thargons don't deactivate immediately after their mother dies. It may take a couple of seconds before their blips become white and they stop firing.

Well, it was more than 'a couple of seconds'

[Zireael]

Update: I switched to the newest trunk and the weirdness continued. This time, I killed a mother just a few seconds after it spewed the second thargon. Both thargons continued to fight even after the mother was destroyed.
Then a few more mothers appeared, spewing more robots. I though I was gone (you know, red alert complete with no more HUD on screen ) when suddenly, the mothers disappeared - I surely didn't shoot three at once in the same moment . This time, their thargons deactivated as they should.

EDIT: Tried to post the log, but it exceeds the limit of 60000 characters by itself.

[Commander McLane]

Update: I switched to the newest trunk and the weirdness continued. This time, I killed a mother just a few seconds after it spewed the second thargon. Both thargons continued to fight even after the mother was destroyed.
Then a few more mothers appeared, spewing more robots. I though I was gone (you know, red alert complete with no more HUD on screen ) when suddenly, the mothers disappeared - I surely didn't shoot three at once in the same moment . This time, their thargons deactivated as they should.

I don't see weirdness here.

Thargons stay activated for a couple of seconds after their mothership died. During this time they are actively searching for other motherships. If they find one, they stay active as daughters of their new mother. If all motherships in range are dead, they go inactive.

This is their normal and desired behaviour, and it seems exactly what you are seeing. So I don't get the weirdness-part.

The only change in 1.75 is that the search for new motherships has become more successful than it used to be. In older versions of Oolite we had many Thargons go inactive, in spite of motherships still being around. That was the bug, the improved search routine corrected the bug.

[Zireael]

Ah, so now I understand. I was so used to the previous behavior...