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System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 7:27 am
by Bulgroz
SVN 7809 Win32 on Win7 64 bit.

This occurred: There was a system with 2 gas giants (one with an outpost of mine which had a Nova Bomb Activator), a fleet of mine (which did not have any Nova Bombs) and a Cosmic Dragon.

After finishing the turn there was a sitrep detailing combat between my fleet and the Dragon.

But there was nothing in the sitrep about how the entire system was wiped, leaving only its star. I take it this was the Cosmic Dragon's doing. Oughtn't this show in the sitrep? Or is it working as intended?

On an aside, I hope it was not my own Nova Bomb Activator in the system which set off the Dragon's bomb (there are no enemy Activators in neighbouring systems but I'm guessing Dragons don't need them). And my Activator should not be active: Outpost, i.e. not possible to set focus to Nova and so it is my understanding the Activator is in passive mode.

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 10:22 am
by MatGB
Partial answer, not got the code in front of me, almost certainly the Dragon's doing, and lack of sitrep is almost certainly because no one's gotten around to coding it, TBH it hasn't happened to me for so long that I didn't think about doing it when I wrote a huge pile of Experimentor related Sitreps a few months back. It should be fairly easy to script in there if you want to give it a try and reload the savegame/autosaves the turn before to test (ensuring that sitrep works requires ensuring an in game situation where it's going to happen which is quite a lot of work ;-) ). If you do get the sitrep working, upload the monsters.txt file (or possibly shiphulls? I forget) and we can make it into a patch.

(actually, if you're on Win7 you can upload the autosave as I can run Win7 saves but I've not got a huge amount of coding time currently)

Not sure at all what sets the Cosmic Dragon off, it might have been your activator, it might've been the special they place themselves, but that should give a turn or two lead in, should be fairly clear in the scripts though, let us know if you think the script's wrong?

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 10:59 am
by Bulgroz
OK, I'll take a look at the files you mention and give it a go. Have patience please.

Is there a sitrep given if a player or an AI Novas a system? Perhaps it would make sense if I reused that one for the Dragon Nova.

I can see how it would have been nice to have preserved the save from the turn just before the missing sitrep, but alas I only saved the turn after, where the Bomb already went off. But it will be relatively easy for me to take it from there and get another Dragon-fired Nova explosion so I can test what modifications I make.
MatGB wrote: Not sure at all what sets the Cosmic Dragon off, it might have been your activator, it might've been the special they place themselves, but that should give a turn or two lead in
As another Dragon nuked another system a bit later (and I was careless & did not move my fleet away), I'm fairly certain it goes like this:
1. Dragon arrives in a system containing at least one planet, gas giant or asteroid belt. Possibly there has to be a colony or outpost (this system was colonised by the AI I have peace with). Possibly there has to be hostile (to the Experimentors) ships in the system.
2a. Dragon flips the switch on the Nova Bomb, which goes off next turn after combat is resolved.
or
2b. In the following turn, after combat is resolved, Dragon flips the Nova Bomb switch and it goes off immediately.
I am 99% certain there were no Nova Bomb activators in the vicinity for this second nuking I observed.

This seems sane enough to me and there are even two combat rounds to avert the Nova by slaying the Dragon(s).

Note that if a system contains only a star (or nothing) and fleet(s), the Dragon will not set off the Nova Bomb (at least that has not happened in my game).

----
An off-topic PS: For many, many turns I've had "AI 4: AI Error: in "calculate_priorities": "555"" on each turn. This is from the AI I have peace with, which is totally boxed in by me & the Experimentors. Later on the other remaining AI reports errors from the same routine but with a different number. This other AI is also very hard pressed (to say the least) by the Experimentors.

If you like, I can upload a savegame displaying these errors.

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 11:09 am
by AndrewW
Bulgroz wrote:I can see how it would have been nice to have preserved the save from the turn just before the missing sitrep, but alas I only saved the turn after, where the Bomb already went off. But it will be relatively easy for me to take it from there and get another Dragon-fired Nova explosion so I can test what modifications I make.
Would you still have it in an autosave? If you have that enabled and haven't gone past it yet.

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 11:10 am
by Vezzra
Bulgroz wrote:If you like, I can upload a savegame displaying these errors.
Yes, please, that would certainly help our resident AI expert to investigate the issue.

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 11:18 am
by Bulgroz
AndrewW wrote:Would you still have it in an autosave? If you have that enabled and haven't gone past it yet.
Unfortunately no, autosave goes back 10 turns and I played 94 turns since that nova already. But as previously mentioned I could create a just-before-Dragon-Nova situation with only a little work so I can test (or I can make such a save for anyone who needs it).

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 11:34 am
by Bulgroz
Sorry if I'm double-posting, Vezzra posted while I was answering AndrewW.
Vezzra wrote:
Bulgroz wrote:If you like, I can upload a savegame displaying these errors.
Yes, please, that would certainly help our resident AI expert to investigate the issue.
This is the savegame just after that first Nova Bomb went off. There appears to be an 1MB limit for files and even with .7z compression the other one I wanted to upload (with both AI's displaying errors) comes to 1.24 MB. But this one has the error for the green AI (remember I use SVN 7809).

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 1:05 pm
by Vezzra
Ok, I've taken a quick look at it. The save game can be loaded with the currend svn rev (7873), and the error does show up. Dilvish should be able to work with that. However, as he's on Linux, he won't be able to load that save game, because it's in binary format. I've converted it to XML, but even compressed it's to big to be attached to a forum post, so I uploaded it to wetransfer.com.

Download link for the archive: http://we.tl/AOB0FqFv1I

@Dilvish: This link will be valid for a week, so if you want to take a look at the issue, be sure to download the file before the link expires.

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 3:23 pm
by Bulgroz
Now you have that savegame, another issue with it: At some point, well along in the game, input in the "Design Name" field was sort of doubled, i.e. if typing "Robot" the result is "RRoobboott"". This is on the Ship Design window.

The "Description" field just below works as it should, it is only the "Design Name" field which acts strangely.

Now this might be a local issue with my machine - I did check available RAM and there was still 1½ gigs left but it could still be my system I guess.

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 3:38 pm
by Geoff the Medio
Bulgroz wrote:...input in the "Design Name" field was sort of doubled, i.e. if typing "Robot" the result is "RRoobboott"".
www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=8829

Re: System Nova'ed - Nothing In Sitrep

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 8:54 pm
by Dilvish
ok, the AI error was due to invasion planning not paying attention to the possibility that a target might have been destroyed. I did a quick for this particular problem & will try to keep the issue in mind, I don't think I had really kept planetary destruction in mind much with any of the AI code.