1. Bug : Autopilot suicide, player ship.
Apricotslice
Senario :
When the autopilot is engaged, when an object,
like a roid or station
is in direct line between the ship position and the target destination
point, the ship will crash into the obstacle. 98% guarenteed.
The ship proceeds directly toward the obstacle
at full speed. At the
last instant, the ap recognises that a collision is imminent and
initiates a 90 degree course change.
At full speed, inertia carries the ship into
collision. Game over.
Problems :
The avoidance is recognised far too late. The
evasion is far too radical. Inertia is ignored in the avoidance taken.
Solution :
When the AP is engaged, it should recognise a
collision will occur on
the direct course. A course correction of say 25 degrees is applied
before the ship even begins to move (may need more or less, but without
knowing the existing coding, its hard to advise what will work best).
This is then checked for collision, until a course that will not result
in a collision is selected. Then the ship begins to move under AP
control. After which, normal course checking for collision and
destination should detect the needed change in course once the obstacle
is cleared. The ship moves around the main obstacle in a sort of arc,
rather than trying to avoid it at the last second.
Extra :
AI controlled ships should also use the same
logic.
2. Bug : Autopilot Speeds.
Apricotslice
As far as I can
tell, the speed used for autopilot avoidance of
obstacles is hardcoded, not using the actual max speed of each
individual ship.
The faster the ship, the more likely it will
collide with
something. Its as if the avoidance is being activated far too late
because the speed of the ship is not what the avoidance coding expects
it to be and so the ship is closer to an obstacle by the time avoidance
happens, than the code thinks the ship should be. Result is collision,
because the avoidance is triggered too late.
3. Bug :
Autopilot for TL/M1/M2
Apricotslice
The autopilot
makes no distinction for the size of a vessel and its ability to
navigate an asteroid feild.
Anyone who has watched a Mammoth navigate from
the north to south gates of CBSW knows how torturous the route is for a
big ship.
I've sat in ore belt and told a mammoth to move
500 meters from a gate
and watched it do a long round the sector route to get there, to avoid
a lot of roids it didnt even need to go anywhere near. In most cases,
the Mammoth is destroyed.
The procedure for moving a big ship should be
different than for small ones.
The main problem is that the TL/M1/M2 proceeds
at full speed the same
as any other ship, and relies on the AP to avoid collisions. And it
cant cope.
The procedure for moving a large ship should be
:
Select a course free of obstacles, turn the ship
while stopped,
move the ship to a safe point, stop, find a new course, move the ship
at an appropriate speed, stop, find, move, stop, find move etc.
TL/M1/M2 have no ability to turn and should not
be turning at full
speed in the middle of an asteroid field or near stations. All
menouvering must be made while stopped.
As this code seems to exist to align with a
gate, or a docking port, it should be possible to get the AP to use it
always.
4. Bug :
Ships sideswiping ships and stations while undocking.
Apricotslice
While partially
fixed in 1.4, ships still hit stations and other ships while undocking
from the external docking ports.
Several of the capital ships have been reported
to always hit the station on departure. If IS, ship is destroyed.
Obviously, some aspect of the models is not
being handled properly.
I'm not sure which ships are involved so would
appreciate someone listing them here.
Part of the problem is ships going to full speed
ahead, too soon. Or
they rotate too close to the docking port and hit things because the
model is longer than the the gap allowed for them to turn in.
All ships should back out of the docking arms to
the start of the
docking lights, and then the AP takes over and begins to turn the ship
to travel. Speed is not applied to the ship until the direction of
travel away from the station has been achieved, and confirmed as not
being a collision course.
The player ship should reverse at full reverse
speed, until the
player manually changes the direction and speed. (this seems to happen
in 1.4, but not 100% of the time). Joystick overrides are suspected of
causing player collisions, but not enough investigation has occured to
figure if this is the problem.
apogee
Can we have
something done about the "double" docking clamps on
equimpent docks where 2 large ships dock. on undocking you are either
destroyed or ejected 3k away from a station. Either stop 2 large ships
sharing one of the double points or replace the bay with the standard 5
clamp model.
5. Bug : Auto-pilot
after collision
Apricotslice
If a ship
survives an actual collision, it continues to have full speed
ahead and attempts to change course to avoid what its already hitting.
If the object it hit is a station connector within a complex, the
ship is unable to veer away from the connector, and continues to "Head
Butt" the connector until it dies.
Once a ship has collided, speed should be cut to zero, it should back
away from the object (the same as backing away from docking), find a
vector that it will not collide on, turn while stopped, and then slowly
add speed on that vector.
6.
Issue : Tractor Beam Forges are removed by the God Engine before the
player can find the forges or has a ship that can mount one.
jlehtone
The Tractor Beam
Forges will eventually disappear from the game and so
do all the produced Tractor Beams. This may very well happen before the
player has resources to obtain one. Particularly, the player may not
foresee the need of the Beam in time.
Apricotslice
The player
should be able to find one when they
finally are able to afford one and have the ship to use it, and thats
well into the game. Also the issue of how long it takes to explore far
enough to find a forge or EQ dock that stocks the tractor beam. The God
Engine must be prevented from removing the tractor beams from the game
and not replacing them. Difficult to find is one thing, unobtainable is
a
gameplay issue.
Graaf
Add voice for the Tractor Beam Forge. Everytime
I select one its "...... ...... ...... alpha".
7. Bug : Collect Wares in Sector
command.
jlehtone
Symptom: Ship
misses the object, turns 360, and is in same position than before.
Endless loop.
Ship just circles around the object until the command is turned off.
Proposed solution: Stop, turn on target,
approach slowly. Or whatever suits the other autopilot modifications.
Apricotslice
Speed is usually
a factor here. The ap moves the ship at full speed,
and so misses on the first pickup, and then tries to reallign itself on
the target at full speed. Eventually it may or may not, slow down
enough to align correctly. If it doesnt slow, it never moves far enough
away to properly align at the speed the ship is moving.
If the ship misses the target on the first pass,
it should stop,
realign then move slower to pick up. Most pickups should be under 100,
yet faster ships use top speed all the time.
moggy2
the ship slides sideways as it's turning in X3. What
happens is the
ship turns to face the target, slips sideways and misses it.
It needs to approach from further away so
the slide has finished and it
can fly straight at the target.
Apricotslice
It would be far better if the
transporter device was used to beam the containers aboard, than the
auto-pilot trying to get the line-up right.
8. Bug
: XI mission spawning
apogee
XI missions appear
on multiple BBS at the same time. When the mission is not taken from
the sector the XI happens in, the BBS mission remains on all other
BBS's it was placed on, and can be taken multiple times immediately.
jlehtone
IMO, the
"realistic" solution would be to expire the message on any
boards that have it the moment one copy is accepted anywhere.
However, I assume that the XI script simply adds
the message to BBS
when invasion is 'active' and you dock at valid stations. Thus it may
not 'know' which BBS actually have a copy. Maybe a solution would be to
add the message on dock and expire it already on undock? It would
reappear if one redocks anywhere, as long as the mission remains
'active'.
9. Bug/Issue :
Ships destroyed by God-Engine removing Station.
Apricotslice
Any ship docked at a
station removed by the God-Engine is destroyed along with the station.
This includes NPC and Player Ships. Since the player gets no warning of
this event, ships are lost without warning and beyond the control of
the player. This happens to UT's as well as station traders.
This event should first undock all ships, remove
station, ship orders are reactivated so Player and NPC ships move again
with a purpose. (NPC ships optional, Player Ships essential).
10. Bug : Model
problems in ships. Orca (rear turrent, side turrent), Caiman (Bridge).
Demeter model
wrong ? Shark turrents.
11 removed as
proved not to be a problem.
12. Bug :
Tractor Beam range is not long enough.
Apricotslice
The range of the
tractor beam is 2km. But high yeild ore roids cannot be towed from that
close, given only large long ships can mount a tractor beam. The Ore
Mine on high yeild roids spins constantly and the tow is lost
continuously after only seconds attached.
The normal range for towing is 3.5 to 4km. The
tractor beam range should realistically be 4km.
13.
Bug : When you add a new station to a complex, all the details the
player has set get reset to default values, station and complex details.
Apricotslice
When a new station is added to a complex, NONE of the
prices set for intermediate or product trading should be changed.
The jumps value is reset too and should not be.
The name of the station that the player changed it to is lost as well.
If you need to identify a particular station and you have 10 with the
same name (eg. Crystal Fab Alpha), its not enough to tell them apart.
In the case of a Mine, where the player name includes the yeild, the
yeild information is lost completely once joined to a complex, where if
the name remained on the individual station, this information is
retained. Each station in a complex, should retain its name from before
joining to a complex.
14. Issue : Remove
homebase ability missing.
Fixed
in the Bonus Pack and removed from the final submission.
Apricotslice
Its not adequate to remove a
homebase by the player entering a
ship.
15. Bug : OOS Lasertowers.
Apricotslice
OOS Lasertower performance is pitiful. I have seen 50
LT's take 20 minutes OOS to kill 2 ships out of 6, with 2 casualties.
Jump in and IS, the same LT's take 20 seconds to destroy the other 4
ships without casualties themselves.
I have modded the LT's to take 1gb
sheilds, and yet, OOS, you still lose LT's at the same rate as 25mj
shields.
This appears to be hardcoding
issue in the way LT's fight OOS, where the specs of the gun are
ignored, so any scripting/modding changes are ignored.
Any hardcoding of OOS LT combat,
must access the spec files for sheilds and gun values.
16. Issue :
Please LOSE Susie. She is driving everyone nuts !
Apricotslice
General
review of the station announcements would be grately received by all.
Removal of the old X2 announcements and replacement with new ones
please. Alternately, a turn off station announcements switch in the
player options.
17.
Bugs
: Boring Boron Start.
teladianium
The player ship
is an Octopus spawned in
Kingdoms End. When you push the throttle forward using X key a small
bar of light slides forward along the centre axis of the ship and stops
just in front of the nose of the ship. Decreasing the throttle moves it
back towards the ship. It is always there at full throttle. After a
while you stop noticing it though - it is not too intrusive.
Don't know if this is general - when going
into a trade station barter menu, if there are M or Larger goods (the
Octopus is an M5 that can only carry S type goods) the quantity column
shows M or XL e.g. instead of 0. I think this is just for goods bigger
than S type, as the S tyep show a qty of 0.
18. Bug : Convoy Mission in Ore Belt.
richardthesane
I've just started plot mission 5 where
I am escorting the mammoths and the mission just never seems to end!
I killed all the Khaak from three turrets, then mopped the remainder up
in my Nova. One of the mammoths did die (ran into an asteroid I think,
not sure though). I followed the convoy to Paranid prime and now
they just keep flying round.
Apricotslice
I thought this one was long fixed,
but apparently not. Some thing screws up during this mission and you
never get a mission failed message, but you also do not get the mission
completed message either.
richardthesane
3rd time lucky -
reloaded again from the same save (luckyly I did a
save just before starting the mission!) and on killing all the Khaak I
got the confirmation.
Two things were different. Firstly one of the mammoths didn't splat
itself on an asteroid shortly after I ported out.
Secondly there were 5 khaak in each group I killed from the turrets.
THe other games there were only 4...
19. Issue : IS
Mobile Mining.
Apricotslice
IS Mobile Mining is way to dangerous still. Part of this
is the auto-pilot and its problems, but most of it is the fact the ship
is moving while picking up the ore chunks, and vulnerable to collision.
Picking up can only be done safely while the player is OOS. The whole
process of a moving ship inside the post-1.3 asteroid field trying to
pick things up at high speed with an AP that cannot avoid collisions is
basically rediculous.
I suggest that the pickup process
be changed as follows. Require a transporter device. On activation of
"collect rocks in sector" command, ship moves to a safe point within
transporter range of collectable rocks. Ship stops. Ore Collector and
transporter combination beams rocks into the cargo bay without opening
the cargo bay doors. Ship is moved to another safeplace near
collectable rocks, stops, collects, moves and repeat.
No messing about with the
auto-pilot, no having to ensure 2 roids are not too close together and
unable to avoid an impact.
20. Plea :
Re-allow TS/TP ships to dock with TL and M1.
soleseacher
well with the new bonus packs frieght
beamer mods you don't need to
dock with them now just beam your stuff in bit of a pain thou i know if
your jumping your TL all over the universe and you can't take you TS's
with you.
Nanook
That only solves
a relatively minor problem. When placing large numbers
of factories, the inability to gather up freighters in your TL means
that you need to outfit every freighter with jumpdrives and energy
cells simply to get them safely to where they're needed. No more flying
a TL to a shipyard, purchasing the TS's, loading them up and
transporting them to their factories. It's now a LOT more tedious to
do, not to mention expensive. You can buy a TS for as little as 100K,
but then you have to give them a 100K jumpdrive! And then, you have to
get the jumpdrives on them, which means, since you can't carry more
than one at a time, you need a TL to carry a load of fighters that can
carry the jumpdrives. Then you need to somehow transfer all those
jumpdrives from the fighters to the transports simply to get the
transport to jump to where they're needed. Whew!! Yeah, that sounds
like fun.
And yet another problem. I capture ships for a
'living'. That means
lots of TS & TP smugglers. In X2, any captured freighter could be
loaded on the TL/M1 and shipped to market. Now, unless a shipyard is
nearby, it means equipping the new capture with a jumpdrive, Nav
software and energy cells and jumping it to a shipyard. But then,
unlike X2 where you could beam the jumpdrive off the ship before it
jumped, in X3, you have to fly to the shipyard and manually transfer
the jumpdrive off the TS/TP before you sell it, or lose 50K for each
jumpdrive you use. That also sounds like fun, doesn't it?
The lack of TS/TP docking capability on both
TL's and M1's has
dramatically reduced gameplay and increased tedium in a number of
areas. It's not simply about transferring wares between two ships.
Indeed, I need to transfer upgrade modules between two ships much more
often than wares. So the remote transfer function is of limited use to
me.
Apricotslice
For
whatever reason the decision to not allow TS/TP's to dock with a TL/M1
was made, playing the game as a TRADER is now significantly more
complicated, as Nanook has outlined. The ability to move large numbers
of unoutfitted ships to the few places they can be outfitted
(especially jumpdrives) is essential given the inability to buy things
like jumpdrives at more than 1 a ship. Anyone who is based in the east
sectors, has significant trouble, not to mention fluing time, getting a
newly bought ship to CBSW to buy a jumpdrive. It basically isnt fair on
the trader (or the capper for that matter) to have taken away the
ability to transport freighters accross the universe in a single jump
using a TL or M1. The M1 has become purely a strike-carrier, and the
trader player does not need this. Traders need a ship mover-carrier
instead, and this has been taken away from us. The freighters are too
big to dock argument is very thin. The docktl script shows it can be
done, but that script has its own limitations.
Please please please please please put this functionality
back and let us dock TS and TP ships at a TL or M1. Alternatively, add
a M1 and TL variant to each race that is a ship-mover, not a strike
craft.
jlehtone
So there are two
possible solutions: either let something to carry
freighters, or make remote bulk transfer of upgrades possible. I would
rather see the mass hauling of upgrades. However, I fear that adding
docking possibility is easier to implement.
21. Bug :
Disappearing ships
Apricotslice
It seems to be
that 1.4 introduced random
spawnings of small groups of M4/M5, with no particular hit this target
order or go here order. These spawned ships are later de-spawned but
players are capping them before the despawn happens. Some ships
that are capped, disappear as soon as they leave the sector. They just
vanish, without any log entry as to why.
Nanook
From my
observations, this particular disappearing ship phenomenon is
restricted to the pirate M5's and occasional M4's that spawn near the
edges of sectors, in groups of three, and the civilian ships that spawn
in regulated space. These spawns were introduced in the latest patch.
They cannot be saved, no matter what you try. Believe me, I've tried
everything I could think of. These disappearances occur some amount of
time after you leave the sector where the ship is located, or send it
to another sector. They disappear out of stations, out of TL's, as they
pass through gates, and just out in space. If it's their time to go,
they go. And you never get a message that they've been destroyed. It
appears to be a 'despawn' flag or some such thing that doesn't get
reset when the player captures the ship.
It doesn't seem to affect any of the other
spawns, such as pirates at
Teladi shipyards and pirate bases. I've never had any TS/TP/M3
disappear in that manner (other ways, yes). So far, out of some 500+
captures in the two games I've started since 1.4, I've had maybe 20 go
missing due to this bug. So I don't thnk it's a major problem, unless
you really want to keep one of these ships (for me, it was a Pirate
Harrier Raider that I really, really, REALLY wanted, but it just wasn't
to be
)
Apricotslice
In the claim code,
it would seem there should be a check to see if the player has claimed
the ship, and if so, the despawn is aborted, by removing whatever flag
exists to make that happen. Should be a minor if-else check in the
claim code to disable the despawn flag.