Endless monsters

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AndrewW
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Endless monsters

#1 Post by AndrewW »

Ok, tried to finish off that game with the disappearing fleets. Was slow going, kept getting lots of Bloated Juggernaughts and Cosmic Dragons. Now, my fleets where perfectly capable of handling these, even when I would have a couple at a time in the system, and throw in a Psionic Snowflake or Black Kraken for good measure. But it amounted to endlessly clicking on Turn as they did damage each turn. Even for the fleet doing about 4k damage a turn this still took awhile for a Cosmic Dragon.

Eventually I gave up on the game when Rogue Fleets kept appearing, decided it just wasn't worth playing anymore. Eventually yes I could have finished it, but just didn't feel like it was worth the bother.

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mem359
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Re: Endless monsters

#2 Post by mem359 »

I noticed in your other screen capture that you were up to turn 490. (!!)

The wee beasties start spawning near turn 200. In my experience, that could mean up to 5-10 monsters every 5 turns. In which case, it is not surprising that 300 turns later it seems like an endless horde.

I did the same thing the first time I encountered the Experimentors late in the game. (Too many monsters, quit the game.) But since then, I made sure my empire was in a position shortly after turn 200 to make a swarm of high-tech battleships, in case I needed to fight some black krakens.

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Dilvish
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Re: Endless monsters

#3 Post by Dilvish »

I had a weird game over the weekend where the experimentor monsters sisn't begin spawning until turn 230. I had mopped up the AIs by about turn 205, and was just watching the experimentor outpost, waiting for it to spawn monsters and open a starlane. Around turn 210 I checked the scripts to see if something had changed, but no, they showed a 20% chance per turn for Black Krakens to spawn. I also checked for parse errors; none had shown up but it kind of seems there must have been something off with them since I didn't get anything until the Bloated Juggernauts at 230+.
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MatGB
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Re: Endless monsters

#4 Post by MatGB »

I've had that on and off for ages, sometimes the RNG just decides to not give you any beasties. Especially annoying when you have 100+ top of the line ships waiting at various points surroundign them with colonies, transformers, etc to move easily.

I mentioned the idea of changing it to 0.3 for 3 monsters instead of 0.2 for 5 awhileback, didn't do it in my most recent patch for them but do think it'd be good, better chance for them to spawn for those of us sat there waiting, but fewer overall monsters for players not used to them (and 3 is easier to build a fleet to fight if you're caught off guard).

And yeah, I was convinced I'd messed the code up completely one game when they didn't appear till 220ish, then the next game I got 5 per turn from 201 till 210 (and that was the game I was behind and nowhere near ready for them)
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AndrewW
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Re: Endless monsters

#5 Post by AndrewW »

In this case they didn't show up till around turn 300 or so.

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Dilvish
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Re: Endless monsters

#6 Post by Dilvish »

MatGB wrote:I've had that on and off for ages, sometimes the RNG just decides to not give you any beasties.
Yeah, surprisingly, the chance of getting 30 turns without the Krakens spawning looks to me like about 1 out of 900 -- quite low, but a much higher chance than I had been thinking it was.
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mem359
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Re: Endless monsters

#7 Post by mem359 »

AndrewW wrote:In this case they didn't show up till around turn 300 or so.
They spawn from one planet (the Experimentor colony).
While they can move around, they tend to stay in that area.
(They are also invisible until the Omni-Scanner technology is developed.)

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MatGB
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Re: Endless monsters

#8 Post by MatGB »

mem359 wrote: (They are also invisible until the Omni-Scanner technology is developed.)
That's no longer true, in the most recent test releases Black Kraken should be visible with Neutron Scanner, and the other critters visible with Sensors, it is of course possible that I messed the maths up (wouldn't be the first time) but that was the intent. You still can't see the Outpost itself without Omni Scanner but the critters should be visible.

(I still maintain you should be planning on having Sensors by turn 200 and Omni as soon as possible after that, even on a non-monsters map, but it's not always possible if you get a really bad start).
Mat Bowles

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AndrewW
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Re: Endless monsters

#9 Post by AndrewW »

They where showing up without Omni-Scanner (though did have that a bit later). Did also have a Panopticon Complex.

But what I was getting at, was that the amount of them just made the game not worth playing, even though they where defeatable.

And no seeing these monsters isn't new to me. Having them in such numbers though was.

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MatGB
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Re: Endless monsters

#10 Post by MatGB »

I've most recently taking to building a dedicated task force of ships to get to the Exp world bypassing all in between monsters and taking it down quickly, all you need do is ensure 40 troops survive in orbit, as I'm working on the Organic line at the moment then 20 Ravenous with at least Deflector Shields, Xentronium Armour and decent guns, plus a squad of ten with 3 armour plates and 4 troop pods will do it—due to the nature of the Experimentor effect these ships will be lost to me if they succeed, but they prevent the creatino of new beasts. Then you need to kill all the existing ones, but with no new ones churning out that's easier.

But yeah, if you haven't taken the outpost by turn 400+, there will be so many monsters on the map it's going to make further progress almost impossible; there's been talk of having them as a difficulty setting or at least tied to AI difficulty—they are a victory condition, and while it's not perfect it is interesting and the random nature does add flavour to the game.
Mat Bowles

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mem359
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Re: Endless monsters

#11 Post by mem359 »

I assume that the Experimentor system will not create star lanes unless there are creatures in orbit?
Maybe the Experimentor star lane creation algorithm should ignore things like Sentries and Sentinels.

Found the Experimentor colony as the game was almost over, and before turn 200.
It had a solo Sentry in orbit, so by turn 205 there were plenty of star lanes created, but no wee beasties spawned during that time.
A bit anticlimatic to send in the 100 troop ships (with Neutronium armor) to take the system with star lanes intact.
(Then after the capture, send the death beam warships to mop up the one Sentry.
They were promised black brackens, dammit! :wink: )

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MatGB
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Re: Endless monsters

#12 Post by MatGB »

Yeah, they create starlanes when there's a monster in orbit, this includes sentries, sentinels and player controlled monsters (hence I try to attack with monsters if I can). Until relatively recently, there was no turn minimum, so they started creating lanes from turn 1 until they ran out of lanes to place, which was messy and annoying.

I coded a patch to fix it after I lost another exploratory fleet to a seemingly empty system with a sentry that actually had experimentors in, another time it happened there were Acirema there, etc.

Getting it to not create lanes pre 200 was, at the time, the extent of my scripting ability, I think I could possibly do more now but there are other things I'm currently working on, the trigger is written to check for the presence of a monster with no exclusions, I think you could put in some NOT statements to exclude key things, or even to check for just Experimentro created critters (which would be better I think given I've seen a Space Cloud trapped there).

Have a look, see what you can come up with, it's in Buildings.txt in the Outpost.
Mat Bowles

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mem359
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Re: Endless monsters

#13 Post by mem359 »

Oh, I hadn't considered sending in player-controlled monsters. :)

I let my most recent game go until I could see the Cosmic Dragons (past turn 310), since I hadn't seen them before.
A bunch of observations:
  • First spawn was at turn 215, then next spawn 13 turns later. This is highly unlikely with a 20% spawn/turn rate (1 in 30 chance, followed by 1 in 20), so it does seem like there might be something buried in the code suppressing the chances.
  • Psychogenic Domination doesn't protect against Psionic Snowflakes? Maybe the text description needs to make this clearer.
  • I assume the window of no Psi Snowflake spawns (turns 290-330) is to give the player a chance to build up before the Cosmic Dragons show up?
  • Cosmic Dragons are slow enough that they can be stuck in space when the star lanes vanish.
  • A nova bomb going off definitely needs a Sit-Rep. Weird to see an entire system go "poof" like that.
  • Capturing the Experimentor colony gives a Victory message on that turn. Getting the Singularity of Transcendence generates messages every turn.
Somewhat unrelated... I didn't know there were critters like "Warden" and "Plague of Krill". Where would I see a "Warden"? How long would a Krill have to be kept alive before it might develop into a "Plague"?

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Dilvish
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Re: Endless monsters

#14 Post by Dilvish »

MatGB wrote:Yeah, they create starlanes when there's a monster in orbit, this includes sentries, sentinels and player controlled monsters (hence I try to attack with monsters if I can).
The conflicts with Sentries and Sentinels have now been eliminated (I think) and the the player-owned-monster oversight is also now corrected.
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Endless monsters

#15 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dilvish wrote:...the player-owned-monster oversight is also now corrected.
Was that really a problem?
mem359 wrote:O...it does seem like there might be something buried in the code suppressing the chances.
I'll try changing how the random number used for the chance condition is calculated... It's currently using a slightly unusual method for unclear reasons.
MatGB wrote:But yeah, if you haven't taken the outpost by turn 400+, there will be so many monsters on the map it's going to make further progress almost impossible;
The monster-spawning scripts could probably be modified to stop or slow spawn if certain numbers of monsters are present on the map...

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