[0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

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Gregor
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[0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#1 Post by Gregor »

Hi,

I've experienced repeatedly two following bugs:

1. Gateway to the Void destroys own Outpost Base the turn after it's produced.
2. Gateway to the Void destroys any other own ships/fleets when a new moving order is submitted after pressing the End of Turn button (apparently after Fleet Movement phase), but before Begin Turn xxx message appears.

Gregor

PS. And a minor one, cought on the fly: selecting a part of the text in the middle of the Messages window and pressing [ctrl-c] copies the string from pos==0 (beginning of whole window text) instead of beginning of selection. ;)
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  • Gregor

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Dilvish
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#2 Post by Dilvish »

Gregor wrote:I've experienced repeatedly two following bugs:
No, it sounds like you simply made a wrong assumption about the content. It applies to all Fleets, including your own. I just checked the description as well and it seems clear enough to me. If you want it to explicitly note that "Any" and "All" include your own fleets and colonies, then you could put in a PR with the description change.

If this is somehow applying to fleets OUTSIDE of the Gateway to Void system, then please clarify and provide more info.
If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

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Gregor
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#3 Post by Gregor »

Hi Dilvish,

to my astonishment description actually says about all ships and all colonies, indeed:
Any ships who enter this system without passing through on the same turn are destroyed, and all colonies within are reduced to Outpost status, with a max population of one tenth.
I've checked: my own ship was destroyed after arrival to the Gateway to Void system set as a destination, the turn it arrived.
So it's confirmed: any ships who enter this system without passing through on the same turn are destroyed, including my own.
Wrong assumption, mea culpa.

Alas, a couple of questions arise:
  • If it affects all colonies within, why my own colonies are left intact (not reduced to Outpost etc.)?
    I haven't tested it with enemy/neutral colonies yet.
  • Whats the reason to build evidently defensive facility affecting also my own fleets/colonies?
    Usefulness of such a facility is questionable...
And the last but not the least, read description of my problem carefully, please:
in both cases ships were not entering the system: they were built there or leaving it.

Edited:
After thorough consideration I think I understand the logic:
ships appeared in the system (they are there this turn and they were not the previous one), ergo they must have entered it.
As far as I remember events are resolved in the following order:
Colonization/Invasion -> Fleet Movement -> Combat -> Production,
so it's logical that any ship that enters the system this turn (Fleet Movement) is immediately considered to be destroyed (Combat),
while ship built there (Production) falls under such condition the following turn.
My second case may fit the above explanation.
I'll try to test it later today.

Anyway, it doesn't explain why my colonies are not affected and leaves some room for description clarification (built may be not necessarily implicitly considered the same as enter by everyone).
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  • Gregor

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Vezzra
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#4 Post by Vezzra »

Gregor wrote:If it affects all colonies within, why my own colonies are left intact (not reduced to Outpost etc.)?
AFAIK the scripting of that building is very old and hasn't been corrected to take into account changed game mechanics ever since. Originally outposts were actually colonies with an extremely low population (0.1 or something like that). So, to reduce a colony to outpost status yo had to set pop to 0.1. That meant outposts, like colonies, had a species.

However, some time ago (actually that has been quite long ago already), that was changed. Outposts are now "colonies" without a species set and no population. That's probably why you still see your colonies as colonies, not as outposts. However, their population should be reduced to 0.1. Can you verify that? If that's not the case, it's a bug.
Whats the reason to build evidently defensive facility affecting also my own fleets/colonies?
Usefulness of such a facility is questionable...[/list]
Well, I've to admit, I'm wondering myself what whoever thought up and implemented that thing had in mind. It seems pretty useless to me too, and AFAIK no one ever uses that building (with maybe some very rare exceptions). So I guess this building is in need of a revision - like a lot of other things. Someday someone will get around to it... maybe you have an idea how to make that thing more useful? Feel free to take a look at the content scripts, make yourself familiar with the scripting language ("FOCS") and provide a pull request on github with a better implementation :D

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Dilvish
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#5 Post by Dilvish »

Vezzra wrote:
Whats the reason to build evidently defensive facility affecting also my own fleets/colonies?
Usefulness of such a facility is questionable...[/list]
Well, I've to admit, I'm wondering myself what whoever thought up and implemented that thing had in mind. It seems pretty useless to me too, and AFAIK no one ever uses that building (with maybe some very rare exceptions).
I have heard of one reasonably worthwhile use for it-- at a particularly valuable colony/system, like one with a black hole generator, making it un-invadable (at least, it seems to me it makes it un-invadable). Being un-invadable is pretty powerful-- it probably shouldn't even be a real possibility, but so long as it is it should have a very high cost, at least as high as what comes with the Gateway to the Void.

I agree that changing it would be best, though.
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coCoKNIght
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#6 Post by coCoKNIght »

I don't play much but I use this building in almost all my games :-)
Some systems only have gas giants and or asteroid belts. Constructing this building on such a system can help defend your empire.
Some systems are 'star lane wise' at such key positions that it's worth micro sacrificing a planet this way.
Combining Gateway to the Void and Spatial Distortion Generator can be powerful / fun.
Also consider that with proper technologies planets can recover pretty quickly from the population loss.

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coCoKNIght
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#7 Post by coCoKNIght »

But it's weird that it's unconquerable. You kinda can't loose then...

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Dilvish
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#8 Post by Dilvish »

coCoKNIght wrote:I don't play much but I use this building in almost all my games :-)
Some systems only have gas giants and or asteroid belts. Constructing this building on such a system can help defend your empire.
Some systems are 'star lane wise' at such key positions that it's worth micro sacrificing a planet this way.
Right now it has a great deal of 'extra' defensive value because the AI simply isn't yet programmed to take it into account. Once the AI is, it will have much less value in that respect (though still some, I suppose).
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coCoKNIght
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#9 Post by coCoKNIght »

Human players always fall in the trap the first time. Also, the building/planet could be cloaked. But it is like a one time trick, because the opponent will remember, or in case of the AI should remember. It still can have strategic value limiting enemy fleet movements though.

defaultuser
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#10 Post by defaultuser »

Maybe it would be a help in cleaning up an area infested with Experimenter spawn.

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Dilvish
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#11 Post by Dilvish »

defaultuser wrote:Maybe it would be a help in cleaning up an area infested with Experimenter spawn.
I hadn't thought about that, but yes, it would probably be a huge help for that.
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MatGB
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#12 Post by MatGB »

I have never, ever, built one. Factor in the cots of the outpost (or troop ships) and then the time/cost of the building I'd rather have a bigger warfleet. Plus, knowing me I'd forget it was there and kill one of my own fleets.

Admittedly, my default strategy in pretty much every game is build more warships ;-)

If it still uses the old code it needs updating ASAP, given Geoff's done some nice work with Spatial Distortion to actually make that useful now, anyone got ideas for what we could do with this? Rescripting it as written would be a minimum improvement but it should be a useful cool thing.
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defaultuser
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#13 Post by defaultuser »

MatGB wrote:I have never, ever, built one.
Sometimes you do things just for the experience. In one game I blowed up a bunch of Krakens n Friends that had congregated at a world with a nova bomb, just so I could see it in action. Problem was that the first attempt failed because the ship was destroyed. So I built some Titan hulls with bombs and flew a few in. That worked, but I'm sure it would have been easier and maybe cheaper to have just built more warships.

Hey, here's a question. If you use a nova bomb on the Experimenter world, do you get the "win"?

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MatGB
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#14 Post by MatGB »

defaultuser wrote: Hey, here's a question. If you use a nova bomb on the Experimenter world, do you get the "win"?
No.

Because when I scripted it I wasn't good enough to get it to work and haven't gone back to it since I learnt more (I did, actually, try). We now have better 'victory' handling so it might be doable but might require a few fudges to get it to work.

And I agree about the idea of using stuff just to see it go, I did the same thing with a bomb once and do want to do more with that sort of effect. It's just one of those things I've never got around to trying, partially as it's just not suited to my playstyle.
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coCoKNIght
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Re: [0.4.5] Gateway to the Void self-aggressive

#15 Post by coCoKNIght »

and then the time/cost of the building
You could build a transformer to reduce the build cost of the building :lol:

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