[Starman01]

I'm now messing around with a minor error in one mission, but it  affects the gameplay-feeling in a way so that I want to change it in every case. I'm pretty sure that this is not a problem with the goals or the sexpression, I tested that.

Here is a shot from the mission-area, so I can explain it better. I also placed the wellington-carrier so, like it is in the game when this  problem occurs:


As you can see here, I have the carrier waiting in the center, while  the ralatha-destroyer is simply ordered to follow the waypoint-path  "ralatha-way" with "waypoints once". Also I wrote down the  Y-Value, so you can see that he should get on a deeper level than  the carrier (this way he will fire it's upper guns).

Now every time this little ***** arrives at Waypoint3, he decides that  proceeding further could cause a collission, so he start rotating at  fully 360 degree over his own center-axis on the same spot, then turns to right (about  1000 meter, even if there are no waypoints) and finally then he starts moving to waypoint 4 after another turn around.

Why the hell is this happening ? Ingame there is nearly 2000 klicks space between his strange rotation-point and the parked wellington carrier, and this should be more than enough for him to simply face waypoint 4 and move towards it, or not ?

Has anyone of you coders a idea if that can be changed or if this is a
bug ? (Dynamic goals for the ralatha has been turned off btw).

This is really driving me nuts, so thanks for any help

[IceFire]

I don't think the AI on capital ships is capable of making such decisions.  They just follow waypoints, even if it means endlessly colliding with another ship.

There is the possibility that the bounding box is too big and the two are "colliding" despite being several hundred meters apart.

[Goober5000]

I don't think it's the collision code.  Capital ships aren't 100% reliable when following waypoints, particularly if the waypoint path involves a sharp turn.  Try removing all the sharp turns from your waypoints.

[Singh]

ive observed a similar behaviour with smaller ships.....everytime they hit a waypoint, they stop, turn strangely and then move on o_O

[AqueousShadow]

Yea, if you want the Ralatha to maneuver around the Wellington, try giving the waypoint path more curvature, or adding more waypoints so that there are more points to curve at, rather than turning sharply.

Does this ballet dancing only happen before going to Waypoint 4?

[Starman01]

Yeah, it only happens after he reached W3 and should move to W4.
I will try giving it more curves, but what I really want is to get it closer
to the wellington, and that's not working.

The original idea was that the ralatha should kamikaze into the wellington as soon as he is disarmed, but no matter what I try, I
can't get any ships perform a working kamikaze anymore, I don't know
why This really sucks. If everything breaks, then I will have to
stop the ralatha at waypoint3. (but why should an unarmed kirlathi
simply hold position until destroyed, this sucks too). Life is really hard

[Kie99]

To Kamikaze you don't make the ship do a waypoint right into the Target ship, this will just make it keep hitting the Target but not blowing up. You order the Kamikaze ship to attack the target and give it a Kamikaze value, then...
BOOM

[StratComm]

Kamikaze is a little suspect right now, so it might be a legitimate bug.  It also may require the dynamic-goals flag.

To resolve the waypoints, what you could do is have it come to the end of one path at waypoint 3 (within 50 meters or so) and then order it to go on a seperate path of waypoints 4-6.

[Starman01]

Originally posted by StratComm
Kamikaze is a little suspect right now, so it might be a legitimate bug.  It also may require the dynamic-goals flag.

Bingo, you hit the bullyeye ! I hope this will fixed soon.

To resolve the waypoints, what you could do is have it come to the end of one path at waypoint 3 (within 50 meters or so) and then order it to go on a seperate path of waypoints 4-6.

Allready tried that, the effect is exactly the same. It looks like the
ralatha fears to collide with the wellington. Maybe it is also a problem with the ships turning possibilities specified in the table