Middle States 7.5 Release Bugs/Discussion

Tested the wingmen, anyone else find they seem to have a few quirks-?

As I noted above, they jump fine when assigned to defend me, they keep up much better,etc. However, once the defend command is issued, whether to me or my target, the halt command does not register. They will continue on their defend task. The approach command is haphazard at best, seems to get worse after I issue it the first time, then doesn't work at all. Sometimes (a lot) if I issue the approach command during the dock or defend command, then they will come to a complete halt wherever they are. The dock command that I had trouble with before, works, unless I dock the wingman to another SNrV, then it no longer responds to any command, including undock. (I don't know why you would need to do that but I did.) Mainly it seems that the defend, dock and load cargo commands work fine. Halt and approach seem problematic(?).

Loaded saved game (so I don't have to buy/sell ship everytime) bought reputation with Emerald Navy and Azran Corp. Went to Emerald alone, docked at Defense station, bought corvette, saved game. Upon launch, reputation and purchase was intact this time. Went to Emerald STC, bought several upgrades, docked saved game, upgrades and reputation still intact. Exited and quit the game, started up again, reloaded last save (Emerald STC), the ship was intact with upgrades, but all reputation was lost. Loaded save from Emerald Defense, ditto.
Other notes; seems the Hack Cargo IFF to steal pods is somewhat cumbersome(?), especially when you're being fired upon with no cover. Fewer steps might help.
The response by hostiles is overwhelming at times; I don't know, maybe it's s'pozed to be. Two cruisers, half dozen interceptors, I don't know how many patcoms and corvettes all emerged at the next L-point after I tried to escape after pirating two pods.
Or is it just the particular faction (Aiken in this case)? Also had a CTD, but I haven't gone back to reproduce it yet.

Well done. There are two types of global variables. One type does not save permanantly. And that explains how my testing gave different results. I need to do more app exiting and restarting to catch these cases.

The response forces are picked by the old traffic script. New traffic scripts are first priority for the next release (Traffic). We can't do much about it until then. Where are you pirating?

Lpoints are going to be death traps with lots of arriving ships. Instead, picking off lone groups that are LDSing from station to station should work better.

Your comment on Hack Cargo brings up an interesting point for debate. Cargo theft is slowed on purpose. The reasoning is that it gives responding forces time to get to the ship under attack. And this increases the threat on the player. It is all part of the effort to push pirates out of civilized areas and into the waste lands. One version of hack cargo even had a delay timer.

The question is: Is this making piracy too hard? (I also realize that LDSI missiles need to be more common now that Lpoints and stations are much more dangerous).

Finally getting some free time to make progress on the bug list. I have the faction relations saving and returning correctly now.

I am going to rewrite the wing man halt. Right now the code just purges the current wingman orders. But that does not always stop the current behavior (I don't know why). So in addition to that, I am going to add code that formates the wingman to a waypoint. (Just like the cargo loading code). This should force the wingman to stop where ever they are. This should be useful for keeping wingmen in a known location as well.

[Edit]Just spotted the error in the Halt command. Not all ships were getting the halt order.

Can I get more detail on the approach command issues the people are seeing. I was just reading the code, and I should state that the current design will refuse to go closer than 5km to a target. I think the reason I added this was to prevent loaded wingmen from crashing into stations. So if you issue the approach command, and you are closer than 5km, it won't do anything. Please let me know if you are seeing something else.

[Edit Edit]
I looked into the cargo list issue. The list is getting the correct item selected. If you press order item again, the correct item is ordered. However, the scroll bar does not seem to move the window to display that item (matching the bug report). I have no way to force the window to scroll down. Our only fix is shorter lists of cargo.

Found the patcom purchase issue. My typo in the player_ships.ini file.

[More..]
Still having troubles with reputation. I am holding these fixes until I can get something working that does not pick fights with the player so much.

The problem was trickier than expected. The PS scripts include this little tug that shows up and attacks the player sometimes. When you shoot back, it turns the tugs faction hostile. It seems that only the Independent faction launches these tugs.

The fix required some changes to the cluster geography and faction assignment as well as some special case code. I am looking forward to having only our own traffic scripts running. The new release will be posted shortly.

The 7.5.1 update is posted. Feel free to post issues and comments here.

Small bug: Upon losing my ship and being ejected into the escape pod, my two wingmen were nolonger in my target list. However, they did survive, and can be seen in my Wingman Status screen. I cannot find them anymore, so they will continue to drain my funds, while I am unable to fire them without finding them.