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IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0022872AI War 2Bug - GameplayJun 17, 2021 6:27 pm
ReporterLord Of Nothing Assigned ToBadgerBadger  
Severityminor 
Status resolvedResolutionfixed 
Product Version2.004 Hotfix 
Fixed in Version3.202 General Bugfixing 
Summary0022872: Selectively Invulnerable Dark Spire Generator.
DescriptionI'm not sure what's going on here, but in the attached save there is a partially invulnerable Dark Spire Vengeance Generator on Herado. I've just done the hack, the hack finished, the hack options have disappeared, and something has damaged it a little, but now the generator seems to take no further damage from being attacked by the spirefleet and remains fully functional. (If you want to test that in a hurry, just venture one jump north...) However attacking it with normal ships (There are a few support fleets also on the planet) appears to work normally.

Unfortunately the situation did not reproduce from a previous save.


Update: I believe have found the source of the inconsistency. It's related to gamespeed. When running the game at normal or close to normal speed, the generator is invulnerable to spire weaponry. If you ramp the gamespeed up past 300% or so, (For my computer, at least) it is vulnerable to spire weaponry. This will reproduce from either of the existing saves. This can be easily seen by starting the attack at 100% speed and then ramping the speed up.
TagsNo tags attached.

Relationships

has duplicate 0024356 new Spire Ships cannot hit Conquest Vengeance Generators 
related to 0025262 resolvedChris_McElligottPark Spire Coil Beams missing some stationary buildings 

Activities

Lord Of Nothing

Feb 28, 2020 7:08 pm

reporter  

BadgerBadger

Feb 28, 2020 7:59 pm

manager   ~0056157

So on loading your save, I do note that regular ships can damage the VG, but that spire ships cannot.

I'm actually leaning toward saying "Unexpected feature" rather than bug. It seems pretty reasonable to me that the Dark Spire VGs might be able to ignore damage from Spire ships. Seems thematically okay.

Does anyone feel strongly opposed to this?

BadgerBadger

Feb 28, 2020 8:00 pm

manager   ~0056158

If noone objects, then some text explaining this could be added to the VG.

Strategic Sage

Feb 28, 2020 8:58 pm

reporter   ~0056166

I like it personally, so long as the VGs remain something you can take on with normal ships.

Lord Of Nothing

Feb 29, 2020 4:55 am

reporter   ~0056169

The reason I reported it is that normally, spirefleet ships can damage them in the same way as anything else. I don't think I'd object to it being normal ships only as such, but right now this is not normal behaviour and is... odd.

Lord Of Nothing

Feb 29, 2020 5:29 am

reporter   ~0056174

Additional note: I did test this a few more times from the attached save, and it did-reappear 3 times out of somewhere between a dozen and twenty attempts with varying parameters, but I still could not find a consistent cause. My guess was it had something to do with planet ownership changes, and that's what I was playing around with, but no joy on it being consistent.
Gen Hack Presave.save (1,568,199 bytes)

Lord Of Nothing

Feb 29, 2020 5:33 am

reporter   ~0056175

(Oh, and while we're on the subject of weird, when it re-occurred in my test cases, the regular fleet wouldn't fire at the generator even when ordered to until the spire ships had stopped attacking, which is not quite the case in the original savegame - in the original savegame they will fire at it very reluctantly before the spirefleet is ordered away, and when it is ordered away they open fire in full)
Probably not terribly relevant, again, I just thought it was odd.

Lord Of Nothing

Feb 29, 2020 5:50 am

reporter   ~0056176

Updated main note with apparent cause.

Lord Of Nothing

Mar 8, 2020 1:47 pm

reporter   ~0056396

Small extra note: Also occurs with the anti-marauder phlebotinum emitter.

GreatYng

Jul 9, 2020 1:56 pm

reporter   ~0057536

I noticed that it's only the coilbeam that the Vengeance Generator is immune to, because I had a Spire Reactor close to it and the laser attack was able to damage the generator but not the beam.
When vulnerable the Plasma Driver will also damage the generator.
Additionally, Fallen Spire ships will actually (futilely) attack an invulnerable generator when ordered to do so if they're in range whereas every other ship doesn't bother.
The reactor is invulnerable in the 'DarkSpire 2' save, and vulnerable in the other if you want to do some quick testing.

I'd say the generator needs to be more invulnerable to the Spire if that is the story we're going for.
DarkSpire 2.save (833,638 bytes)
DarkSpire 3.save (761,908 bytes)

Lord Of Nothing

Jul 9, 2020 4:17 pm

reporter   ~0057537

Yeah, there's something weird with coilbeams and game speed at the moment. I can't help but wonder if it's somehow linked to the occasional cases where they accidentally kill things that should be targeted only when ordered to such as things that increase AIP, but that's so much less consistent that it seems unlikely.

Lord Of Nothing

Aug 17, 2020 5:16 pm

reporter   ~0058113

Possibly vaguely related, going to put it here rather than making a new report for it:
The Anti-Marauder Phlebotinum emitter is also invulnerable in a very similar way to the splash attacks of Dark Spire Phantoms, when targeted directly on it, including the interference with the ability of other nearby ships to fire enough shots to kill it quickly. (Takes ages to kill if whole fleet inlcuding Phantoms are firing, dies very quickly if Phantoms are retasked.)
The only apparent difference is that the simspeed has no effect that I could determine - unlike with the coilbeams, cranking it all the way up did not suddenly allow the emitter to die. Note that Phantoms are AOE damage-with-no-limit-on-number-of-effected-targets, similar to a coilbeam's secondary.
If I get the chance to test other combinations of splash vs the beacon, and splash vs the generator, I will, but it probably won't be any time soon. :)

RocketAssistedPuffin

Aug 17, 2020 5:57 pm

reporter   ~0058114

target_type_for_player="NeverTarget"

This line is on the base Generator entity (and every Minor Faction Beacon). It is not altered on the vulnerable entity. My guess, based on the fixed case recently of AoE hitting a forcefield and doing nothing to said forcefield (because the actual unit wasn't in range of the blast), is that when the AoE shot hits the Generator, it then detonates and tries to find targets in its radius to damage. Since the Generator is set to never be targeted, the AoE always ignores it. This part makes sense, so you could never accidentally kill such a unit just by firing at something near it.

This only partly answers the Coilbeam. Part of it is AoE, so that section would ignore the Generator with this theory. The direct damage shouldn't, but appears inconsistent.

I'd then suspect the reason that such units prevent others from firing at it is because the targeting is considering the Generator/Beacon soon-to-be-dead and thus those units won't fire overkill shots. The AoE units then fail to do anything, and so another salvo begins, and repeat.

Both Generators and Beacons have these priorities, which might be a factor as well for the AoE component:

priority_as_ai_target="IgnoreMe" priority_as_frd_target="IgnoreMe" priority_to_protect="IgnoreMe"

BadgerBadger

Aug 18, 2020 12:04 am

manager   ~0058117

I've made some minor changes. See if this is an improvement for you.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jun 17, 2021 6:27 pm

administrator   ~0062135

Thanks!

* Coil beam math is tricky! Reworked and simplified some of the beam weapon calculations in a couple of ways:
** First, if these things would hit everything in a line, but hit nothing, then assume we still hit the target (it likely is just at the outer range, but we wouldn't have shot if a different form of calculation had not already declared it in range). I'm not aware of this actually impacting anyone, but it was a distinct possibility.
** Secondly, if these beam weapons that normally hit multiple targets only hit one (and that one is the intended target), then just have it use a bit simpler math to save time.
** Thirdly, if these beam weapons hit 1+ targets beyond the primary target, then make SURE that the primary target is the first one hit, so that it gets its share of damage if it should.
*** The older logic for this part was a lot more complicated and not as effective (and could have led to you doing 10% more damage than intended to a line hitting 20 targets of which 10 could share damage, for instance. Although that over-damage effect would only have kicked in if the older math actually worked, which it did not. In practice, this means it will definitely actually hit the target, instead.
*** Fourth, fixed an issue with secondary targets taking less (or more) damage than their primary. Not sure if any beams were using that, but if so then there was a multiplier that was causing this damage to be amplified 100x too much. So for example if you had configured a beam weapon to deal normal damage to the primary target, and 14% of the normal value to each target it hits along the way, it would actually have done 1400% damage instead of 14%. Ouch.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
Feb 28, 2020 7:08 pm Lord Of Nothing New Issue
Feb 28, 2020 7:08 pm Lord Of Nothing File Added: Vengence Generator Invulnerable.save
Feb 28, 2020 7:08 pm Lord Of Nothing File Added: Vengence Generator Invulnerable.savemet
Feb 28, 2020 7:14 pm Lord Of Nothing Description Updated
Feb 28, 2020 7:16 pm Lord Of Nothing Summary Invulnerable Dark Spire Generator. => Selectively Invulnerable Dark Spire Generator.
Feb 28, 2020 7:16 pm Lord Of Nothing Description Updated
Feb 28, 2020 7:59 pm BadgerBadger Note Added: 0056157
Feb 28, 2020 8:00 pm BadgerBadger Assigned To => BadgerBadger
Feb 28, 2020 8:00 pm BadgerBadger Status new => requires feedback
Feb 28, 2020 8:00 pm BadgerBadger Note Added: 0056158
Feb 28, 2020 8:58 pm Strategic Sage Note Added: 0056166
Feb 29, 2020 4:55 am Lord Of Nothing Note Added: 0056169
Feb 29, 2020 5:29 am Lord Of Nothing File Added: Gen Hack Presave.save
Feb 29, 2020 5:29 am Lord Of Nothing File Added: Gen Hack Presave.savemet
Feb 29, 2020 5:29 am Lord Of Nothing Note Added: 0056174
Feb 29, 2020 5:33 am Lord Of Nothing Note Added: 0056175
Feb 29, 2020 5:50 am Lord Of Nothing Description Updated
Feb 29, 2020 5:50 am Lord Of Nothing Note Added: 0056176
Feb 29, 2020 5:51 am Lord Of Nothing Description Updated
Feb 29, 2020 5:52 am Lord Of Nothing Description Updated
Mar 8, 2020 1:47 pm Lord Of Nothing Note Added: 0056396
Jul 9, 2020 1:56 pm GreatYng File Added: DarkSpire 2.save
Jul 9, 2020 1:56 pm GreatYng File Added: DarkSpire 3.save
Jul 9, 2020 1:56 pm GreatYng Note Added: 0057536
Jul 9, 2020 4:17 pm Lord Of Nothing Note Added: 0057537
Aug 17, 2020 5:16 pm Lord Of Nothing Note Added: 0058113
Aug 17, 2020 5:57 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Added: 0058114
Aug 18, 2020 12:04 am BadgerBadger Status requires feedback => feedback
Aug 18, 2020 12:04 am BadgerBadger Note Added: 0058117
Jan 23, 2021 12:13 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Relationship added has duplicate 0024356
Jun 15, 2021 8:41 pm Lord Of Nothing Relationship added related to 0025262
Jun 17, 2021 6:27 pm Chris_McElligottPark Status feedback => resolved
Jun 17, 2021 6:27 pm Chris_McElligottPark Resolution open => fixed
Jun 17, 2021 6:27 pm Chris_McElligottPark Fixed in Version => 3.202 General Bugfixing
Jun 17, 2021 6:27 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0062135