[zoidburger]

I decided to give the nightlys a shot, in the hope that someone had solved the bug described in the excellently titled thread here.

So I loaded up a nebula mission (an inappropriate one it turned out, but hey) and I was greeted with this:



That's weird, i thought, that's a lot of flak...

My suspicions were confirmed when:



Now I KNOW that's not right. I mean, the engine is even capable? I guess this is what happens when you try messing with the AI code, it's like attempting archaeology in a WWII minefield...

So I ended up playing the mission on insane, just to watch my capships knock the socks off anything that got in range. And just because I could (I normally play on easy...) Unintended feature was fun. Wouldn't want to try a bombing mission though!

Well, thought y'all should know.

Seeing as this is my first post, SCP: you're awesome. THANK YOU.

[Colonol Dekker]

Think i'll chooooose......green today. Yes, green.

FIRE THE GREEN ONE!!

[zoidburger]

Thanks!

Also, for reference, this is windows build 7309.

[Luis Dias]

Welcome! And that's a pretty neat bunch of beamz!

I'm no expert but I'm willing to bet that you'll be asked to post the debug text....

[zoidburger]

Thanks, that's cool, could you tell me how please?

[Jeff Vader]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=56279.msg1180359#msg1180359

[The E]

Well, my first question would be which difficulty these shots were taken on.

The second shot, with the Ravana firing a few too many beams, may be due to too many fire-beam sexps at once (Not sure if that mission uses any, but it's the first thing that comes to my mind).

[NGTM-1R]

It's so pink.

[Snail]

The second shot, with the Ravana firing a few too many beams, may be due to too many fire-beam sexps at once (Not sure if that mission uses any, but it's the first thing that comes to my mind).

Actually I believe it's because it has both beam-free and fire-beam acting at the same time.

[Jeff Vader]

Yeah. I, for one, have always seen the double-beam thing on the first salvo fired by the Ravana in that mission.

[zoidburger]

Thanks for that link. I get the feeling I should have already read that... ah well.

That's happened before? Oh well, here's my debug log. Played though the mission again on easy, but I can vouch for it being exactly the same on insane. It's The Great Hunt, but I guess you already knew that. I'm starting to get the feeling it's just a mission bug, which I guess the SCP can't change :/

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[zoidburger]

So the obvious question is, does this happen on retail? I'd test it myself, but the game won't recognise my graphics card, and refuses software mode.

edit: typo

[Commander Zane]

It does happen on Retail, I've seen as many as four beams firing from each prong.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Yes, this has been happening since retail. When I first saw it, I thought it was a Shivan feature (multi-beam turrets! YEAH!), until it wasn't applied consistently throughout the campaign. I guess the FSU could fix the mission at some point - it won't affect balance, since the mission is ending there...

The amount of flak you're seeing there is correct, by the way - Deimos' have proper defenses.

[G0atmaster]

I just played through the campaign, not on a nightly build but on the vanilla 3.6.12 build, and this mission played fine for me.  Why would a different exec file cause this issue??

[zoidburger]

Yeah. I, for one, have always seen the double-beam thing on the first salvo fired by the Ravana in that mission.

It does happen on Retail, I've seen as many as four beams firing from each prong.

Yes, this has been happening since retail. When I first saw it, I thought it was a Shivan feature (multi-beam turrets! YEAH!), until it wasn't applied consistently throughout the campaign. I guess the FSU could fix the mission at some point - it won't affect balance, since the mission is ending there...

The amount of flak you're seeing there is correct, by the way - Deimos' have proper defenses.

Well it seems this is normal behaviour (for a given definition of normal). The mission still felt weird to me, I didn't have to do anything, even on insane, just fly around and watch the pretty fireworks. Even the bunch of bombers that arrived just got pulverised. But then it is a very short mission. Just unbalanced, probably.

False alarm then, embarassing.  But then I'm obviously no expert on the game. Well, you got to see some pretty beams anyways.

I just played through the campaign, not on a nightly build but on the vanilla 3.6.12 build, and this mission played fine for me.  Why would a different exec file cause this issue??

Wait, what? Fine, as in just one set of beams?

[G0atmaster]

As far as I could tell... Yes. Just one set of beams.

[G0atmaster]

I could play it again if you guys want, just to make sure.

[Fury]

The thing is that it is highly possible that both beams originating from same turret have same trajectory (aka same target like subsystem), hence it looks as if it is one beam. You'll only ever notice this if same turret picks different targets. It most likely happens because wanted to make it a sure-kill situation and if Ravana looks more dangerous in the process than it actually is, the better.

[chief1983]

On high difficulties, your allies are often much better equipped to deal with threats.  Escort missions are often more difficult on lower difficulty simply because of incompetent friendly AI, forcing you to have to do all the work yourself.