[FUBAR-BDHR]

You posted while I was editing.  See above.  It was a corrupted weapons.tbl on client side.

[karajorma]

The game should definitely have responded to a 0 length weapons table. I'll try making a dodgy one after the game tonight and see what happens.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Maybe I should have said 0k instead of 0 length.  There might have been something in there just not enough to show up as 1k. 

Any ideas on the player beams not scoring as shots, hits or kills?  Spawn points for dogfights not being the ones set in mission?  Vorlon base crash?

Found another problem.  In MD05 (and I assume MD07 and MD15) two heavy fighters (SH Guardian) self destruct at the beginning of the mission for no reason.  I thought I had the teams set to friendly or hostile but they were set correctly to unknown, have no departure cue, and are flagged indestructible.   

[IPAndrews]

Any ideas on the player beams not scoring as shots, hits or kills?  Spawn points for dogfights not being the ones set in mission?  Vorlon base crash?

Let's be careful not to overstate the problem. In the Drakh dogfight mission we tried our Drakh Raiders were not scoring kills. But I don't remember anyone complaining about it being a problem in the Nial missions and Nials use beams? So it could be Drakh Raider weapon specific. That said I'm not sure what that specific difference is.

The spawn point behaviour reminded me of arrive within Xm of nearest enemy. You sure that's not in your mission file?

Found another problem.  In MD05 (and I assume MD07 and MD15) two heavy fighters (SH Guardian) self destruct at the beginning of the mission for no reason.  I thought I had the teams set to friendly or hostile but they were set correctly to unknown, have no departure cue, and are flagged indestructible.   

 

[karajorma]

You can't respawn within the bounding box of any other object even if there isn't actually anything there. That means if you have a very large object (Like the Drakh mothership) you can have a lot of empty space near it which you can't respawn in.

We've already got a partial fix for that worked out for 3.6.10 though.

As for the self destructing I'm willing to bet the game is rather stupidly blowing up anything that is a fighter or bomber regardless of the team it's on. I'll check into that tonight since if it is what I think it is it will be pretty easy to fix.

[IPAndrews]

the game is rather stupidly blowing up anything that is a fighter or bomber regardless of the team it's on.

Please forgive the multiplayer FREDing noob but... why is it blowing anything up?

[karajorma]

Dogfight missions aren't meant to have any AI ships in them. In a 12 player dogfight you'd have 12 player starts. If only 3 people play the game then you'd spend most of your time having to fight the remaining 9 computer controlled ships rather than the actual human opponents you joined the online game to play against.

decided to simply blow up the extra player starts after the game begins. I don't see anything wrong with that but I suspect that they didn't actually check the team of the ship before blowing it up. If the cause is what I think it is then the fix is pretty simple.

[IPAndrews]

Why didn'y they just have them warp out with no warp effect?  Pyrotechnic fans?

[karajorma]

I suspect it was simply quicker to blow them up.

Warping out would require packets to be sent to the clients telling the ships to jump out. I suspect blowing them up and not respawning them simply requires the game to blow them up on the server and let it propagate to the clients.

Speaking as a BtRL dev I'm glad they picked that route. With a few changes it means I can make the game simply end and not have anything warp out in the entire mission. Which is good since Viper's don't have jump drives.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Wonder if setting ship-vaporize? (the one that isn't single player only) would look better.  I think there is already a way to tell if the ship has a player so a start event might fix the explosions.  As for the SH Guardians I was thinking the same thing.  It's probably just looking for the player-ship flag.  If it exists boom. 

On to the beams.  I wonder if them not getting counted is a result of a flag on the weapon.  Don't have time to look right now but maybe the Minbari beam doesn't have a particular flag.  In TvT it isn't as much of a problem since there is a bonus for the team with the most kills at 6 minutes that should result in a win anyway.  I did notice on my single pilot that shots weren't being counted either so it's not just a multi issue it just shows up there. 

I don't remember the spawn point problem in retail FS2.  Of course the ships weren't as big.  I remember spawning 3 or 4k from the pack sometimes.    Heck we even tried to make it so players would spawn closer and have to stay near the cap ships instead of heading off into open space but could never get it to work. 

[Vidmaster]

Let's be careful not to overstate the problem. In the Drakh dogfight mission we tried our Drakh Raiders were not scoring kills.

see FUBAR? I were right. NO KILLS AT ALL.   (problem is I got no solution )
Send you a list of working missions. I hope we are able to increase it. Did exclude the Minbari ones, because of the frequent ghost hits, which is extremely distracting when using beam weapons.

[IPAndrews]

see FUBAR? I were right. NO KILLS AT ALL.

Well I should be careful to point out that I really don't know if that's true or not. Do we really have verification of this? If you guys believe this is so I'll take your word for it.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

From what I saw you get kills but not score for the kill (at least in TvT).  I'll try some testing runs with and without beams to see what happens.

Nope don't even get kills.  So far the Drakh one is the only one that doesn't work.  I tried:

MF Neutron Gun:  Works
VE Lightning Cannon:  Works
SH LiteAAA:  Works
SH HeavyAAA:  Works
BI XRay Gun:   Works
DH Light Neutron Beam:  Fails

Log file just shows the ship as destroyed but does not say what destroyed it

[karajorma]

Okay, new build to test with. This should take care of the self_destructing AI ships and the not at all destructing ones (when a player drops).

I haven't actually tested either fix yet myself and I'm somewhat nervous about the former fix having a knock on effect since it's obvious that never expected AI fighters to exist in a dogfight mission. On the other hand no one else but TBP has AI fighters in a dogfight mission so I thought "**** it!"

[FUBAR-BDHR]

New info on the Drakh Raider Beam issue.  I ruled out the beam.  The beam works.  I made it an available weapon for the DH figther and that scores kills so it's something with the DH Raider.

If the AI ships in a dogfight are that much of a concern I can easily edit them out.  They are just background.  I could see the use of things like the Whitestar as background in missions as well so it's kind of a 50/50.  Other mods might want the same thing. 

[IPAndrews]

Drakh Raider is a gunship. See if the problem goes away if you modify ships.tbl and make it a fighter or a bomber. I expect it will. Hard coded limitation that says only fighters or bombers can score kills. Number one suspect. 

(actually I'm not that mad, I just like the smiley)

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Already tried and yes that is the answer.  Looks like it will affect the Whitestar as well.  Those the only 2 player ships I saw with the gunship flag.  I didn't check the tbm though.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Okay, new build to test with. This should take care of the self_destructing AI ships and the not at all destructing ones (when a player drops).

I haven't actually tested either fix yet myself and I'm somewhat nervous about the former fix having a knock on effect since it's obvious that never expected AI fighters to exist in a dogfight mission. On the other hand no one else but TBP has AI fighters in a dogfight mission so I thought "**** it!"

Just downloaded it.  Got a quick question.  Do these builds have any new sexp's over the old ones.  For instance the multi player death counter?

Off to install and restore the working tables so I don't get shot.   

[karajorma]

No but I can add them fairly easily tomorrow if you want them.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

It's not that important.  I just had a special ending in mind for MT07.  It works half way right now but the other half needs some way to tell if the other team is dead.   I just put a note in the comments to fix it later.  Mission plays fine the way it is.

Forgot to mention new build is working fine so far.