[7094] NovaBombActivator Special on any Empire-owned Planet

[Seraphin]

Greetings everybody

In my recent game, played on SVN7094, it happend to me loosing quite some planets completly (= leaving empty systems only) by attacks from cosmic dragons. After trying to figur out how to mod the Nova Bomb to prevent complete loss of all planets of a system, I recognized some possible reason for that (imho unbalanced, buggy) behavior:

I see the Nova Bomb Activator Special on any colonized Empire-owned planets, asteroid belts and outposts too. Non-empire colonized and also non-colonized and -outposted planets aren't affected. They don't have got the Nova Bomb Activator Special.

It seems, the Nova Bombs of the cosmic dragons did only detonate, because of these activator specials. Personally I think, it's a bug.
But I'm not sure, and I couldn't find this bug already listed in the tracker or in this board.

So I thought I ask here first, if it may could be a "feature" because of functional nova bombarding cosmic dragons.

[Geoff the Medio]

I believe it's intended that Cosmic Dragons should cause novas to occur. Their ship design has a "SP_NOVA_BOMB" part, and this is detonated by the presence of a "NOVA_BOMB_ACTIVATOR_SPECIAL" special, which are added to empire-owned planets by the monster's hull.

What part of this seems buggy / unintended? The extra activators left behind?

(The whole implementation seems unnecessarily complicated to me, in that if it's intended that the dragons should destroy empire-owned systems, presumably after a turn or two, this could probably be done with a single part, and not require the use of the player-ship-part and activator special.)

[Seraphin]

The fact that cosmic dragons carry nova bomb's is the one, why I think it's possibly intended that way and no bug. But in any case, I think it's very unbalanced, at least that's why I'm looking into modding the nova bomb some way. But I'm getting Offtopic now.


To understand, why I think it's an buggy or unbalanced mechanic some background how I discovered it ...

It happend after the galaxy got rushed by the experimentor monsters (krackens), I had to retreat and leave some colonies bombarded down to outposts behind ... after I teched up and regained my territory, I recognized any of these left systems being completly empty now ... nothing left behind than wide space only. Up to that time I still didn't know what has happend to the outposts and planets.

I got my first clue about all the planets of a system beiing whipped out, after I had a fleet in a colonized border system getting attacked by a cosmic dragon. After the turn it arrived, anything in the system was gone and I checked the combat log. All my ships and the new found colony happend to attack the dragon, after that the log simply ended. First I thougt it was some sort of regular combat behaviour, I was annoyed of this mighty nova bomb and had to change my tactics (defending not the border systems themselves, but to order the fleets at least one starlane away from colonized systems).

When I thought about it, I remembered that this dragon would had to last at least some more turns, and it never happend again in uncolonized or non-outposted systems. So I checked and saw any colonized and outposted planet got this activator special. And I didn't see this special on any uncolonized planet, not even some few random ones.

So I think, it was simply that these cosmic dragons travelled by planets with this activator special and not explicitly attacked them with their nova bombs. So any travel by of a cosmic dragon would cause the nova bomb to detonate, and that mechanic I would consider a bug than an explicit attack with the bomb. Or at least beeing very unbalanced.

[Geoff the Medio]

Rewriting the Cosmic Dragon's nova effects to not use the same part and activator special could fix such issues.

[Seraphin]

Not sure, if I get you right ...


With Nova Bomb Activator Special I'm talking about the planet property, just like "Silmaline Crystals" or "Caretaker's Fruit" are. I'm not talking about the activator buildings. I even have to admit, I don't have a clue how cosmic dragons could explicitly nova bomb a system, as they don't have any buildings. And their description clearly tells of their ability to destroy whole systems.

I'm just annoyed that any epire owned system seems to get these activator specials automatically and therefore they will always be whipped out, if it happens a cosmic dragon to pass by.

My idea of a more logical mechanic would be, that cosmic dragons would use their nova bomb as a last hit before beeing killed. Would make more sense to me, especially as it means, the cosmic dragon would commit suicide else, wouldn't it? (Never used nova bombs myself). And even not then in any case, but maybe by some propability.

Also I wouldn't say anything, if this activator special would only be put to some few random planets, which they have from the beginning of the game, but not just afterwards because they got settled.


I don't know if others have the same opionion as me, or if I'm on my own. Maybe some will attend this discussion?
Anyway, can I consider this as a bug for now and open a bug tracker, or is it simply intended for now, as there is no detailed combat system like in MoO2 yet?

[Geoff the Medio]

With Nova Bomb Activator Special I'm talking about the planet property, just like "Silmaline Crystals" or "Caretaker's Fruit" are. I'm not talking about the activator buildings. I even have to admit, I don't have a clue how cosmic dragons could explicitly nova bomb a system, as they don't have any buildings. And their description clearly tells of their ability to destroy whole systems.

Cosmic dragons, the monsters, are in the game mechanics treated as a ship, which has a nova bomb part. The nova bomb part can be activated by a nova bomb activator building or a nova bomb activator special. The dragons' hull script places such specials on empire-owned planets in the same system, which causes the bomb to detonate.

I'm just annoyed that any epire owned system seems to get these activator specials automatically and therefore they will always be whipped out, if it happens a cosmic dragon to pass by.

You might be assuming there's more logic into the choice of target than there actually is... the dragon doesn't decide to bomb a system, then move there, then detonate... It just moves around, and sometimes will detonate by placing or being in a system with the activator special present.

My idea of a more logical mechanic would be, that cosmic dragons would use their nova bomb as a last hit before beeing killed. Would make more sense to me, especially as it means, the cosmic dragon would commit suicide else, wouldn't it? (Never used nova bombs myself). And even not then in any case, but maybe by some propability.

There's no mechanism for effects like nova bomb detonation during combat... It occurs as a separate part of the turn processing. However, the dragon's script could be written to cause it to detonate if its structure (health) is below some threshold, instead of when there is an activator special present. This would require the dragon to be damaged in combat, but not so much as to destroy it during that combat.

Anyway, can I consider this as a bug for now and open a bug tracker, or is it simply intended for now, as there is no detailed combat system like in MoO2 yet?

I'm still not sure what aspect(s) you consider to be bugs. If it's the extra activator specials being scattered about, then that's probably a bug. If it's that the dragon doesn't generally behave as you'd prefer, then no... that's a design issue, as it is supposed to be placing activator specials to cause itself to detonate.

[Seraphin]

Ok, I think I'm getting closer ...

These Nova Bomb Activator Specials aren't automatically placed on any empire owend planets, but they get placed (random by probability?) when a cosmic dragon passes by and then the bomb will detonate in the same turn?

If I understood right now, it seems there may have been a bug in my game anyway. Absolutly all of the occupied planets got this activator special, even the ones I'm quite sure, a dragon didn't pass. Like the systems around my homeworld, I'm quite sure no cosmic dragon has been there. Of course, I can't tell for sure as I didn't look for it, but a enemy of this dimension must have been mentioned otherwise. And I can't recall any enemies in the zone there, except of maybe white ones taken by psychogenic dominance. There are also the colonies I founded during fighting back the monsters which got this activator special too. They where founded in the secured zone. And also any of these still exist, except for the ones I mentioned in the beginning which I had do leave alone during my retreat.

I just can tell, absolutely any of the planets have this activator, so absolutly any system would be whipped away, as soon as a cosmic dragon enters the system. Is this intended that way?


But because of your description I also just did a test now, after conquering the experimentor outpost and destroying any monsters: I founded a new colony, which didn't get this special in the first few turns after founding.

edit:
Ok, I just did another test ... I founded the same colony as before, but in an older savegame where the Experimentors and monsters still exist. No Nova Bomb Activator Special got added to this colony too. Either I'm wrong that there where no cosmic dragons in my secured zones, or at least I'm not able to reproduce yet how this Nova Bomb Activators got added to the colonies.

[Geoff the Medio]

The SH_COSMIC_DRAGON_BODY hull probably needs "activation = InSystem" added to its effectsgroup that adds the activator specials. Right now, it's probably picking one empire-owned planet randomly each turn and adding the special to it. Currently it's selecting planets that are in the system with ID equal to the monster's system id. Problem might be that when the dragon is not in a system, its system id is -1, and in that case, the InSystem condition will match objects in any system.

[Seraphin]

Maybe, that's it ... as an addition, see the edit of my last post.

Due to your last answer, I just hit the [Turn] button some times more, and yep ... suddenly this activator special was added to the new found colony in a secured zone, where all cosmic dragons where kept away in their own zone by my starlane blocking fleets.

Now, this can be considered a bug?

[Geoff the Medio]

Try adding that activation condition...

See: http://sourceforge.net/p/freeorion/code/7105/

[Seraphin]

I did the update of the cosmic dragon hull, and did test again:


I founded the colony around turn 667, until turn 709 still no activator special. (while unmodified, it was set in turn 675).

I did some further testing afterwards, so I opened the zone to the monsters: In 733 the first cosmic dragon arrived and set the activator special (didn't destroy anything). The dragon was destroyed the turn afterwards. Until 772 there didn't arrive another dragon on this colony, but one visited a neighbor colony (which already had the activator special since before the modifying) in 743 and destroyed it.

[Geoff the Medio]

Sounds like it's now working more as intended then.

The underlying mechanic of placing the specials to trigger the detonation is still quirky, though not really a bug.

[Seraphin]

Great!

Mein Danke nach München für deine Zeit und Mühen.

[MatGB]

The SH_COSMIC_DRAGON_BODY hull probably needs "activation = InSystem" added to its effectsgroup that adds the activator specials. Right now, it's probably picking one empire-owned planet randomly each turn and adding the special to it. Currently it's selecting planets that are in the system with ID equal to the monster's system id. Problem might be that when the dragon is not in a system, its system id is -1, and in that case, the InSystem condition will match objects in any system.

It's rare though that they're not in a system, they move so fast they rarely if ever stay in a starlane whereas the activator turns up all over the place once they spawn.

I hadn't seen it until recently when I've been testing playing through with Robotic Hulls a lot, and therefore hadn't conquered the map early enough to prevent them, but when I did see it I had assumed it was, well, a feature—if they turn up at a system that's had the special placed, they destroy it, ergo you need to keep them away from such systems as a priority while sending a force in to remove the source.

I'm beginning to think the Experimentors overall need a rework, I love that they turn up as an end-game threat, but they do seem to be overwhelming in an offputting way for less, um committed players, and you basically need to be setup to kill them at or around turn 200 to stop them swarming too much. Even if they don't get reworked, we definitely need better in game explanatory text, sitreps, etc to give people some hints-maybe some 'rumour' style stuff that links to Pedia entries, and some hints in those entries about how to defeat them?

[Dilvish]

I'm beginning to think the Experimentors overall need a rework, I love that they turn up as an end-game threat, but they do seem to be overwhelming in an offputting way for less, um committed players, and you basically need to be setup to kill them at or around turn 200 to stop them swarming too much.

I think you're right. As a quick stopgap, I'd suggest slowing down the rate at which they spawn, and delaying the points at which the tougher ones start.