Alpha Test Game 5

Once again I have no "orders" button.
Odd that the game wants orders from you at all; none of your fighters are in a firing position on anybody as best I can tell. Washout would be, if Violent Breeze's guns had that kind of range. Could be an area to check for a possible bug.

Screwed up Dead Meat's orders. Dammit.
 
Once again I have no "orders" button.
Should you have any, or is it correct that you had no valid errors? There is code to predict when no order is needed, and so far we haven't had any false-negatives (i.e. no orders needed when orders WERE needed).
For some reason, Boo'ya (a Drakhri) requires orders (as in he has the button), although he can't do anything.
Another false positive. these are annoying, but preferable to false negatives. Keep reporting them, but for now, you can go ahead and just submit them as empty. (If they're wrong though, and you are empty but think there *is* a valid move, let me know).
 
Everyone pay close attention to this upcoming EP phase result. Last EP phase we had an FF just vanish. Post here immediately if it seems to happen again. We've got a lot of them 'in the air' so hopefully we can make sure that doesn't happen again. (Note: at the moment there isn't a report listed if the missile just runs out of fuel and dies though, so this could be how the one that vanished did go.. however at the time, it had looked to me like it should have tracked a target and hit).

edit: looks like turn just came out. Everyone, count out the missiles and make sure they were all were dealt with (either shot down, still on the board, or otherwise mentioned). The report has a lot of them being shot, but I see none hitting... should any have it?
 
Just finished MP. I was the last one to do it, when I returned to check: "Shelton turn error(1): attempting shelton turn greater than allowed turn rate. Error with pre-processor?". I did not attempt any Shelton this time. Cheers,
 
Interesting... I was the one attempting the Shelton slide with a Drakhri (turn rate 2). On the first choice there was turn port/starboard 1-2 and on the second it was turn the respective direction 3 minus the previous value. (2 and 1, respectively.) I don't know, shouldn't the shelton slide be possible to do without the first turn? And the second problem is that if I select the first value as 2, the second can be selected only as 1, therefore exceeding the turn rate like we have just seen
 
Interesting... I was the one attempting the Shelton slide with a Drakhri (turn rate 2). On the first choice there was turn port/starboard 1-2 and on the second it was turn the respective direction 3 minus the previous value. (2 and 1, respectively.) I don't know, shouldn't the shelton slide be possible to do without the first turn? And the second problem is that if I select the first value as 2, the second can be selected only as 1, therefore exceeding the turn rate like we have just seen
First off, the error you're all seeing is because the turn is ready to be processed.

The general policy of the way I coded this is that the orders window is not supposed to ever be able to let you put in an order your ship can't handle. If one does go through, I have only a very few rudimentary checks in place, but they're all absolute forced-crashes like this so there's no way I can miss them. This is why you're all seeing the message just because 1 person did it.

Clearly there is a problem with the shelton slide aspect of the pre-processor. The math didn't work out. Good work on finding this bug, Humungus. I've manually deleted your order and pushed up the 'remaining' counter such that you can test it out before re-submitting.

So I also found the issue with the pre-processor. It looks like a turn rate of 3 was hardcoded into the shelton slide code. I've updated it to reflect your maximum turn rate.

I've also gone ahead and coded in a 'straight ahead' option for the 1st turn. Please iterate through all possible values and make sure the behaviour is correct before re-submitting your orders, Humungus. I've done it and it looked okay, but you never know.

It just goes to show you that the bug fixing is never done. I had thought the Shelton Slide issues had been finished months ago, but I guess no one tried to do one with a ship with a turn rate less than 3!
 
Works perfectly now. Also checked, just to be sure, and the normal afterburner isn't broken either. (really didn't expect it to be, but you never know.
 
A bug cropped up with Porcupine 1. His rear turret should be able to hit afterlife.

I've asked McGeeZax to hold off on submitting the order until the rest of you have put yours in. Then I'll debug it, and submit it for him. (This way if any of you are trying to submit orders while I'm debugging, you won't get anything messed up).
 
Okay. With all the orders in, I debugged Porc 1's aft turret.

Apparently all aft turrets were firing in only a 60 degree arc. I'm surprised across all 5 games so far, no one noticed. Code updated so aft turret has a 120deg arc, while the port and starboard retain only 60deg.
 
Hey Guys,

I just found another bug, one that would have taken the entire game + statistical analysis to locate by one of you. I realized that the weapons fire had an error where your dice rolls were not getting the bonuses of your ship's pilot skills, but were still getting the negatives of the target's pilot skills. On average, this meant that you were rolling worse than you should be, as you didn't have any 'local' pilot abilities to counter enemy fire. (This last round, I really started to feel that people were getting "too unlucky" and rolling too low, and I looked at the code and found an error).

Keep your eyes peeled for more issues like this, although I realize it is easy to either always blame the dice, or always blame me for a coding bug in this case. Unfortunately we won't know if the fixed worked until the Turn 9 CP resolution.
 
Is it alright that up there in the Zombie - Violent Breeze missile duel the IR missile fired at Violent Breeze didn't move one bit when VB performed an evasive action? It's true that VB was just one hex away from it, but shouldn't it at least move to the hex where the ship last was? (or at least try to)
 
Is it alright that up there in the Zombie - Violent Breeze missile duel the IR missile fired at Violent Breeze didn't move one bit when VB performed an evasive action? It's true that VB was just one hex away from it, but shouldn't it at least move to the hex where the ship last was? (or at least try to)

Yeah, this is suspicious to me. The missile should have, at the very least, flown forward with its full speed. Ideally, it should/could have flown forward and turned 2 right in its best attempt to follow after.

I'm still dealing with a lot of the missile chase code issues. (We still had that one FF that just vanished). I've also noticed that missiles that are getting shot down seem to just go away, no mention of a successful shooting down, no explosion icon, etc.

I'm looking at the code, and at a glance, everything says the 'missile chase' routine should have gone off, but it looks and acts like it didn't.

Since only QuailPilot, Humungus, and Ironduke have taken their turns, I'm going to 'rewind' this entire turn sequence and reprocess it a few times. Unfortunately this means that all shot down missiles, and any successful evasion may get revsered. It will still let me test this out though, since if Violent Breeze fails the shelton slide, it will still be on the same square, and the same range and bearing will result for testing.

For now, no one can move. I'll hopefully get to this later today. When it is done, everyone will re-receive the 'new turn available' email, assuming the system functions correctly.
 
You may want to check point-defense while you're at it, Avacar. As best I can tell, Zombie hit that DF twice; according to the rules on page 7, a single hit should've sufficed to successfully shoot down the missile, and yet Zombie took the missile hit.
 
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