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Command craft PTA turrets not firing


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Since the 1.00.02 or 1.00.03 patch my PTA turrets have stopped firing. This goes for old saved games and new games as well.

To reproduce:

launch ship with PTA's in roam mode (I'm using the violon)

go to an area with enemies

power up the PTA turrets.

I know you didn't change anything with the PTA guns, but perhaps something with the combat officer??

Anyone else getting this?

[ 12-29-2005, 03:26 PM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

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Works fine here

EDIT: I also just ran the IA scenario Homeland Security and it works fine.

You can also use the cheats to create hostile crafts around you (in ROAM mode). Thats the quickest way to see if they work or not.

  1. SNG with Violon
  2. Halt craft & activate turrets
  3. Use cheat menu to create Gammulan/Military Violon
  4. Press ESC to activate TOM
  5. Press F4 to give the hostile Violon SAD orders
  6. Give your CC orders to attack the Violon and activate PTA

I just uploaded a saved game which I used above. Download and resume or restore it.

I think whats happening is that the Violon turrets have such a rapid rate of fire, that - due to the performance increase in the game - you can barely see them fire (or even register in the HUD). I might have to reduce that. But let me know. They are definitely firing. If you F10 the hostile, you should be able to see it fire.

[ 09-09-2005, 09:57 AM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

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quote:


Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Works fine here

I think whats happening is that the Violon turrets have such a rapid rate of fire, that - due to the performance increase in the game - you can barely see them fire (or even register in the HUD). I might have to reduce that. But let me know. They are definitely firing. If you F10 the hostile, you should be able to see it fire.


I just loaded the SG and was able to see the PTA firing a couple of times. It is happening really fast though. So fast that you can't see the PTA power bar on the HUD fluctuate and really hard to see the beams. I was just about to post that I could hear them firing but could not see the beams or the bar move.

They don't seem to do nearly as much damage as before if any. Possibly a result of them firing so fast??

Before the performance increase I was able to cloak and pull up along an enemy ODS with the PTA's on and watch them slowly blow it to bits.

It took a bit of rotating to set the optimal place to have at least 4 turrets firing at it. Can't do that now though.

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I didn't do ANYTHING with gun firing. Nothing at all. I didn't modify the attributes of ships either. You have GBS-IV, go compare OBJDEFS.SCR to GBS-III and see for yourself.

Weird thing is that the MK3 behaves just fine. So, I dunno why it is ship specific. It could be because of the placement of the guns on the Violon. Dunno.

btw, those performance improvements appeared in 1.00.03. So, I dunno how you managed to have this issue in 1.00.02 (as you mentioned above).

To get to the bottom of this (as I'm curious in figuring out wtf is going on), try this.

  1. Uninstall the game. Kill the folder.
  2. Re-install v1.00.01 from the CD-ROM
  3. Run that SG (it will work) again.
  4. Patch up to v1.00.02. Repeat the test. Note that 1.00.02 was just an INI file revision. No source code change.
  5. Do the same for 1.00.03 and 1.00.04 and lets figure out which version has this issue.

Don't use the in game Updater. Download the patches from the patch server if they are not already in your game folder (which is where the Updater will put them). If you already have the patches, move them out of there before you re-install the game.

[ 12-29-2005, 03:24 PM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

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So its the optimizations then. Now we have to figure out why it only affects that ship. As I said, the MK3 (for ex) looks just fine. Can you run some tests with other carriers and cruisers please, just to be sure; before I go off on a Red Herring hunt?

Try the Nightstar. I'll explain later.

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I just tried the following...

G-Super Carrier

Stormcarrier - working!!!

Super Carriers

Aestrom - working!!!

Firestorm - working!!!

Heavy Carriers

Violon - not working

Megaron - not working

Nightstar - not working

BCMK1 - not working

BCMK2 - not working

BCMK3 - working!!!

Super Cruisers

Warmonger - working!!!

Starcarrier - working!!!

Sentry - not working

Spacestar - working!!!

Garid - working!!!

I'll stop there since I think you know what is causing it...

[ 09-09-2005, 06:17 PM: Message edited by: Andergum ]

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Yeah, I know whats going on now actually. While you were testing, I was checking this.

I was right. The line/collision intersect routine is so fast now, that some crafts which have turrets in which their gun/turret vector is at an optimum orientation (e.g. Violon), will perform the calculation and the shot so fast, that its faster than can be registered by the graphics pipeline (which affects the visuals of the turrets, the graduated HUD displays etc).

So, unfortunately, this is not just a matter of disabling or tweaking something in order to fix. So, I have temporarily disabled those optimizations. The turrets are firing normal again (they *were* firing, but you couldn't *see* the shots because of the speed of the test) for now.

Download new EXEs from the Beta folder. Note that I have not changed the game version numbers. Once I get a definitive fix, I will roll out a new patch to address this. These optimizations are too valuable to just disable them because we can't see the shots on some crafts. So I have to think up something. I'm on it.

[ 09-09-2005, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

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Just tried new version and the Violon's PTA's are working again.

I think it was more than a matter of just not seeing the shots. The shots were so fast that they weren't doing any damage either.

Well at least you know what's going on.

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  • 3 months later...

I just checked some of the other ships and I found following:

MK1 - Works fine

MK2 - failed to get aft lower turret to fire

Nightstar - failed to get following turrets to fire:

* both aft lower turrets

* front right lower turret

* both aft upper turrets

* front left upper turret

I don't know if your fix was general or only for the Megaron, so I post this if it helps. I will not post any more investigations of ship turrets unless you want me to - don't want to be a pain

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quote:


Originally posted by Cruiser:

I don't know if your fix was general or only for the Megaron, so I post this if it helps. I will not post any more investigations of ship turrets unless you want me to - don't want to be a pain


What I did is not ship specific; it is a global revision which should affect all ships. In 1.00.05, the 1mm margin of error before a collision (from turrets against their own ships) was too low for some ships. So I have increased it to 2mm and it seems to work.

I haven't released a new patch in a while, mainly because it is a pain having to release different patches for different versions (Starforce, Direct2Drive, TryMedia); especially since I have no control over when the other services will protect and make their patches available once I give them the unprotected files.

Which version of the game do you have? The BMT Micro (Starforce) version? If so, I can release a new EXE for you to try out.

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Well, I can't protect a D2D version, sorry. So you just have to wait for the official patch which should be out sometime next month.

...actually, I can just send you the StarForce version executables and a CD-KEY for it. Just be sure to backup your UCAWA.EXE and UCAWAMP.EXE files (the D2D versions) so that you don't overwrite them.

Just a sec....

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Cruiser, check your email.

Below is a 1.00.11RC1 patch with this fix. It is not an official patch, so use at your own risk.

Download the file, copy it to your game folder. Backup your existing UCAWA.EXE file, then run the self-extracting archive.

EDIT: file removed

I also included a saved game which shows this fix. Unless you use the invincibility cheat, you won't last more than a minute or so.

Oh, and this saved game will probably rip your graphics card's head off and piss down its neck. In other words, unless your system can muster it, you're gonna have a bleeder on your hands.

[ 01-04-2006, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

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Thx, I really appreciate it. I can't wait to try it out.

Will report back when I have tried several ships.

I will make a backup of the entire game folder, just to be sure.

Will try it later today. Right now my appartment looks like someone fired a tactical nuke inside it

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I've now tried the fix and it works perfectly. I tried testing the turrets on the following ships:

* BC MK 2

* Megaron

* Nightstar

* Violon

* Solnar

I was able to get all turrets to fire on all ships. I tested this by going to a hostile base on earth, hovering over it while turning on the PTA.

During my tests I noticed 2 issues which are of no concern at all, but I will mention them anyway:

1. The PTA system seems to always choose to fire at the "capture tower" in the hostile base. I have not so much experience in this game but the capture tower seems to be invulnerable (it has no shield / armor indicators in TACOPS). Therefore the PTA fire has no effect on it, and the PTA system will waste its attention on this to no effect.

2. When testing the solnar, I wasn't able to get the two front lower turrets to fire at the same time. I don't know if the ship is designed in that way.

Well, thats it for now. I thanks again for your time. The Megaron really kicks ass now

ps. You could easily survive your saved game by simply cloaking your ship. But awesome battle anyway, you must've pissed somebody pretty good

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PTA turrets do not pick targets depending on whether or not they can destroy them. They just pick whatever happens to be within their firing cone.

The Solnar works just fine when I tried it; and the turrets don't fire at the same time. They are independent of each other and fire based on whatever target is within their firing cone.

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quote:

The Solnar works just fine when I tried it; and the turrets don't fire at the same time. They are independent of each other and fire based on whatever target is within their firing cone.

Yes, I guess I couldn't get them both to fire at ground targets simultaneously because of the angle between the turrets. Only one can shoot directly down depending on which side the ship has been rolled.

I guess I didn't explain myself quite clear before.. sorry.

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The solnar does not have turrets which can shoot straight down. Not at all. If they were to shoot straight down, they would be hitting the ship.

Load the model in BCStudio (its part of GBS). Then turn on Model/Tag/Primitives and take a look at the positions of those turrets (2&3).

Anyway, please don't get carried away and waste my time. I've solved the PTA issue and I don't want to have to waste my time explaining stuff that has been discussed here before or which is covered in the manual.

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