0014961: Ships and spy probes disappear - DEV Arcen

ID	Project	Category		Date Submitted	Last Update

0014961	The Last Federation	Bug - Gameplay		May 6, 2014 2:28 am	May 7, 2014 10:46 am

Reporter	windgen	Assigned To	Chris_McElligottPark
Status	resolved	Resolution	fixed
Product Version	1.014 (Hotfix)
Fixed in Version	1.016 (Finish Him!)

Summary	0014961: Ships and spy probes disappear
Description	In the attached save file, head northeast while autofiring. The spy probe and the loads of ships launched by the Emergency Response Hangar will spontaneously disappear. The spy probes, although invisible, will continue firing. This has been reported many times, which I have marked as related bugs. According to 0014724, this is intended behavior. There are several issues here. The first is (1) UI issues and (2) bugs. 1a) It's not obvious that the drones are warping out. I just see stuff disappearing. There should be an animation, some text popup, or even a dialog, that says I've been detected by a spy drone. Right there, that very turn. 1b) Autofire will cause your shots to target the drone. This is undesirable! Stray shots are one thing, that may add depth to the gameplay by forcing you to consider angle of fire and hold fire when a drone and an enemy fleet are lined up. OTOH, having your ship AI open fire on the drone itself doesn't really add any tactical depth, it just feels like the game has poor controls. I think the solution here is not to allow spy drones to be selected by the ship's targetting algorithm (as a special case, this means your ship will hold fire if the only thing in range happens to be a spy drone). But stray shots should still collide with, and trigger, spy probes -- if you're aiming at something else that ends up dodging or dying, your shots can end up hitting up a probe. 2a) Ships disappear. IMHO this is just a straight-up bug. 2b) Drones keep firing after disappearing. This makes it seem more like a bug than "oh they warped out". 2c) No influence penalty with race in debriefing. Since this is a deliver terraforming specs mission, maybe that is intended, not a bug. However, this brings up the issue: If the other races don't care about the terraforming quest, and there's no influence loss if you're detected performing it, doesn't that make having the spy probes in this mission pointless? My suggested fix is to have a smaller influence penalty for being caught. This allows you to keep the spy probes and hostile turrets and hangars, which solves the gameplay problem of making the terraforming mission a challenge. The role-playing reason can be that the spacefaring races suspect your terraforming mission is really a cover for an attempt to smuggle spacefaring tech -- the description could be something like "Suspicious orbital activities" or something.
Tags	No tags attached.

Internal Weight	New

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
May 6, 2014 2:28 am	windgen	New Issue
May 6, 2014 2:29 am	windgen	File Added: bug14961.save
May 6, 2014 2:30 am	windgen	Relationship added	related to 0014949
May 6, 2014 2:31 am	windgen	Relationship added	related to 0014665
May 6, 2014 2:31 am	windgen	Relationship added	related to 0014724
May 6, 2014 2:31 am	windgen	Relationship added	related to 0014814
May 7, 2014 10:46 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Internal Weight	=> New
May 7, 2014 10:46 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Note Added: 0037655
May 7, 2014 10:46 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Status	new => resolved
May 7, 2014 10:46 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Fixed in Version	=> 1.016 (Finish Him!)
May 7, 2014 10:46 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Resolution	open => fixed
May 7, 2014 10:46 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Assigned To	=> Chris_McElligottPark