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Why won't disabled fighters be towed?


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Now that I'm registered, I'll put this topic back.

I searched the forums and found many references over the titles to disabled fighters that can't be moved when they're towed.

I'm playing as a raider at Idan, and the region is now littered with disabled fighters. One is emitting an SOS and has engine status of 1, and is drifting at 155mps. Other fighters are in similar disabled status, but not emitting an SOS.

Here are the many things that I'm seeing:

o I can order a shuttle to Tow the SOS ship. The shuttle will tractor it successfully. When I order the shuttle to Deliver To Idan, the shuttle gets stuck, and will start to slow drift away from Idan. When I order the shuttle to stop towing the SOS fighter, the shuttle behaves normally. AI for the marine piloting the shuttle is 18 or so.

o I manually fly the CC to the SOS fighter. When I switch on the A/P AI and order the CC to tow the shuttle, the CC will tractor it successfully. When I order the CC to Fly To Idan, the CC won't move until I disable the tractor.

o I've seen NPC Paramedic ships tractor disabled fighters and then also get stuck.

o When I order the CC A/P AI to Fly To the SOS fighter, it switches to Target Search instead.

o When I order the CC A/P AI to Hyperjump to the SOS fighter, I get the message "Unable to compute jump coordinates."

o I can manually fly the CC to the SOS/disabled ship and manually fire my guns to destroy it. Missiles can lock onto the SOS/disabled ships.

All of these disabled ships were disabled via PTA firing. I would lock the fighter in the VDD to watch its damage, and my PTA's would first take the shield to zero and then the hull to zero. At that point, the fighter would become disabled. I do not recall any fighters being destroyed by the PTA's, only disabled. I'd think that some of these fragile fighters would be destroyed by the CC's PTA's, but they only get disabled, hence the littered region.

I'm wondering if there is some kind of ship data corruption going on from the PTA damage routines. Maybe the fighters are supposed to be destroyed, but are sometimes behaving like they're destroyed, but also behaving like they're disabled?

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You MIGHT want to try actually READING the manual. Nothing you wrote makes any sense; and considering how long the game has been out, if there were such problems with towing, we'd have already known about it.

You might want to find yourself a guinea pig and send them your saved game. Or have them explain to you how it works and why you're experiencing what you're posting.

The next time you re-create a thread after it was deleted, you will be temp-banned. You SHOULD know the rules by now!

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quote:


Originally posted by Steve Schacher:

quote:

and considering how long the game has been out, if there were such problems with towing, we'd have already known about it.

I did an archive search. People have been reporting this for two years now.


Which should - quite obviously - tell you that its not a bug or it would have been researched and fixed; since towing is an integral part of the game.

I read those posts and not ONE of them shows ANY signs of any bug in the operation. Ships generally CANNOT be towed unless they are emitting SOS. Being disabled does NOT mean that you can tow a ship because perhaps only the engine is damaged, leaving a bunch of other systems operational and which would otherwise leave the ships internal integrity at a high level; hence, no SOS.

If you have UCAWA saved games showing ALL of the symptoms you previously posted, then send it to me with a DETAILED (or it will be deleted) email explaining what - you think - the issue is, and how to reproduce it.

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Savegame sent.

I now think the issue is A/P ship orientation towards the delivery destination when towing a craft. I disabled the A/P on my CC and manually oriented the ship towards Idan, then enabled the A/P and the CC started flying towards it. The A/P would not orient the CC on its own, so the ship just sits there.

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I've been doing some more testing.

I have a savegame where an SOS fighter is less than 20 clicks from Idan, my shuttle has it in its tractor, but it won't deliver it to Idan. Targeting my shuttle and using the F10 camera view shows that Idan is almost directly behind my shuttle.

I wonder if this is related to the same feature that is causing ships to hyperjump backwards because they are almost perfectly aligned 180 degrees backward instead of forward. In that situation, the hyperjump effect seems to be moving forwards, but space is moving backwards (and the debris effect that falls into a ball in rear views is happening in the forward view screen).

It's almost like ships towing disabled ships that are oriented 180 degrees from their targets get stuck because they don't rotate and orient forwards first.

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From your posts (and emails) above, as well as your email below; you don't understand how the system works. So, let me explain.

Basically, there are NO bugs here.

  1. The code that clears a towed object's beached/disabled/sos states when the object is towed to space, resets the flags in both crafts (tractoring and towed). This works as designed, but as a side effect, the tractor's maneuvering state is sometimes also reset. This cancels any turn demanded by the A/P.
  2. You can't use CTRL+F if you are right on top (literally) of the object. In your saved game, you are about 20 clicks from the SOS fighter. So naturally, the ship is not going to go anywhere. Trying jumping to a distant jump anomaly, then use CTRL+F back to the fighter and engage the A/P. The AI does not allow crafts to engage disabled or SOS entities. What CTRL+F essentially does what other orders (attack, defend, fly-to etc) do. Since this command engages the FLY-TO order, when you turn on the A/P, if it sees the target as being invalid (disabled, SOS etc), it will cancel it and go in to target search. This is all perfectly valid.

I'm going to look into tweaking item #1 at some point.

quote:


IÔÇÖm sending two more save games. In the first, an NPC shuttle is attempting to tow a disabled SC. In the second, the SOS fighter is being towed by my SC. In these save games, the CC cannot be ordered to Fly To the disabled ship, nor does CTRL-F target the ship.

Restore save game NPC CanÔÇÖt Tow (slot 7).

Just watch it. The targeted shuttle is just circling the disabled shuttle.

Order the CC to Fly To the disabled shuttle. The CC ignores the order and goes into Target Search instead.

Try selecting the disabled shuttle in the VDD and pressing CTRL-F to target. The CC ignores this and goes into Target Search instead.

Restore save game Tow SOS fighter (slot 6).

Again, just watch it. The SC is ordered to Deliver To Idan, but it just sits there.

Order the CC to Fly To the SOS fighter. It switches to Target Search.

Press CTRL-F to target the SOS Fighter. It switches to Target Search.

ItÔÇÖs like these disabled ships canÔÇÖt be targeted, even though they are there.


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quote:


Originally posted by Steve Schacher:

I just got it from Direct2Drive.


What do you mean? The patch? Its not hosted by D2D. They simply protect the files, send them back to me. I then build the patch and upload to our patch server where the game Updater grabs it from.

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Sorry, and thanks for the clarification.

I used the updater when you first announced 1.00.10. The updater flashed and disconnected. Then when you posted that the Direct2Drive version was available, I ran the updater again and it found it. I just assumed that it was hosted there, since your warning in red implies that the publishers (Direct2Drive?) make patches available on their own schedules. I didn't realize that they make the patch and send it back to you.

That updater is a nice service. No more downloading the exe, copying it to the game folder, etc.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

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Yeah, the delay in getting the different patch versions out, is in waiting for the publishers to send me back the protected files so that I can build the patch.

Happy Thanksgiving to you to.

ps: The Updater will check the server, then disconnect if no new version is found.

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quote:

ps: The Updater will check the server, then disconnect if no new version is found.

I saw that there is a message to that effect on the updater screen, but it flashes by so fast that I can't read it. Since I have all sorts of adware/spyware/registry protection software that prompts me for permissions, I was able to read the warning on the updater, otherwise it would have flashed by so fast that I'd have missed it.

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