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IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0022644AI War 2Gameplay IssueJan 17, 2020 9:01 am
ReporterArnaudB Assigned ToChris_McElligottPark  
Status resolvedResolutionfixed 
Product Version1.304 So You Like Combat Engineers? 
Fixed in Version1.308 Mega Performance 
Summary0022644: Strange Large forces from nowhere
DescriptionSomething I ran into in my last game and I don't get HOW that 1,6k strengh of ships got in the cluster, and it keeps being reinforced.

There are no warp gates anywhere in the cluster. There is no wormholes invasions going on. Pretty much all the worlds there have been neutered.

Lots of attacks in the empire but that one is completely unexplained. They didn't go through the rest of the worlds. They have no path to the Red AI homeworld.

How did they get here? And If that's normal, then how are we supposed to defend when neutering and gate-raiding allow them to sneak that kind of firepower without wormholes invasion?
TagsNo tags attached.

Activities

ArnaudB

Jan 16, 2020 2:30 pm

manager  

AbnormalAttack.rar (1,302,163 bytes)
LargeForceFromBehind.jpg (284,709 bytes)
20200116202302_1.jpg (318,444 bytes)

RocketAssistedPuffin

Jan 16, 2020 3:15 pm

reporter   ~0055618

Last edited: Jan 16, 2020 3:32 pm

May need any earlier saves if you have them to diagnose this, please.

EDIT: It seems to be something about the planets Finin or Tavika...they're the only ones in that area that could produce Mark 4 units, and the units in that force match what they have in the Posts. How long ago was this area gate raided?

ArnaudB

Jan 16, 2020 4:22 pm

manager   ~0055619

(Damn the bugtracker upload size limit. I lost what I found again.)

Saves show Finan and Mannan had gates at 10h07 and didn't have them at 11h22. I remember going to gate raid both planets because I already got red attacks in that timeframe with hundreds strength worth of ships. This wasn't due to wormholes invasion either.

Might be a problem with AIP increase. In part because I noticed the others AI threw me hundreds of strength on multiple planets while that 1,5k showed up.

Maybe instigators interactions? The two blue instigator didn't get kill for a while because they were so stupidly deep in blue territory (behind a homeworld and requiring multiple jumps through 'Reserve-able' planets which is kind of ridiculous. Could be instigators have capped the Red Planets guards, and caused the excess to appear despite the lack of warp gates?
Part of what make me think this, is that when an Intisgator spamming Royal ship-types around it, despite civil war being a start option those instigator-created ships do not participate in the civil war. I have literally seen blue and yellow fight over a planet, while my fleets were fighting instigator-created ships on the same world.
Fight 9.rar (1,097,264 bytes)
Fight 5.rar (1,127,160 bytes)
Fight 3.rar (1,108,761 bytes)

ArnaudB

Jan 16, 2020 4:26 pm

manager   ~0055620

This is horribly written, damn. To resume some points more properly:

-The two blue instigator in the "Abnormal Attack" save didn't get killed. It's likely they kept reinforcing ALL AIs rather than just blue, then the excess got turned into attacking forces. It seems worth investigating at least.
-On Royal ships, those are from a specific kind of instigator that creates ships around it, rather than reinforce a budget. I don't think it's alive in the recent saves. It isn't either the the two instigators behind the Blue AI Homeworlds, it's dead by the most recent save. Either way, ships created from this (now dead) instigator didn't participate in the civil war.
-Instigators probably need a limit on how far they can spam from player-held territory, because that got silly.

RocketAssistedPuffin

Jan 16, 2020 5:03 pm

reporter   ~0055621

Last edited: Jan 16, 2020 5:32 pm

Hm...I have the save closest to AbnormalAttack running, and Finin is reinforcing quite rapidly. In AbnormalAttack, the strength there is vastly reduced, so it seems to be something set all the Guards there loose somehow, and then they've came after you.

So question is, what triggered it...you don't have a reason to go there, so I can't see it being a possible accidental trigger by you, and Border Aggression isn't a thing here right now either, far as I'm aware.

I'm...confused by the mention of Royal. There isn't one here and Instigators do not spawn their units.

EDIT: Doesn't seem to have enough on Finin to account for everything in the attack, and still no sign of a trigger.

EDIT 2: Bunker and Hollerith both have lower unit counts in AbnormalAttack, which makes it even weirder...

EDIT 3: Blue AI had a CPA, part of it spawned in that area but died on your defenses in an odd way. Red AI has a CPA inbound.

EDIT 4: Said CPA is launching for me, after the AbnormalAttack save, maybe it was delayed for me but came in a normal time for you.

RocketAssistedPuffin

Jan 16, 2020 5:33 pm

reporter   ~0055622

Got it. It's the CPA for the Red AI. Somehow, it's pulling the Guards out of those planets.

Far as I'm aware, CPAs were entirely budget based and didn't operate in the way Classics did, so I've truly no idea why it did that.

ArnaudB

Jan 16, 2020 5:41 pm

manager   ~0055623

I thought the CPA was meant to come from the homeworld of its sender so that confused me too.

Regarding the Royal, that was somewhat unrelated. I suspected the Blue Instigators caused problems, because the predecent instigator (not in Abormal Attack) creating Royals made me think I needed to report about not being part of the civil war. It might be intended but it still seems odd to have AI-created units that completely ignore the civil war.

It's good to see the Red problem get worked on so quickly. It was kind of frustrating finding my backyard slammed like that, when I... already had more than enough to deal in the rest of this game's galaxy.

RocketAssistedPuffin

Jan 16, 2020 6:02 pm

reporter   ~0055624

CPAs here are launched from Reinforcement Points of that AI, so clearing out Posts for instance reduces how much a planet can launch. So if you had fully neutered those Red planets, there'd be not as much.

Strange. Instigators use the tag "InstigatorSpawn" to know what to launch, and their Guardians are copies of the normal type. That tag isn't on any Royal unit, and the Royals don't copy from the Instigators. So huhm...curious.

We're looking into the CPA thing now. There's some confusion as to what exactly it's trying to do.

RocketAssistedPuffin

Jan 16, 2020 6:33 pm

reporter   ~0055625

Okay so there's no confusion, it's just me having the wrong idea for a long time, thinking the CPA generated new ships (it has a budget like anything else, why wouldn't it be?)

Turns out no, that's the budget for units it can draft, just like Classic. And draft the Red AI did...

Literally *every single guard unit it had in the galaxy*. It can't even draft more. Holy crap. You play some helluva wild games.

There's an internal discussion on some changes to CPAs, but what happened here appeared to be normal.

RocketAssistedPuffin

Jan 16, 2020 9:58 pm

reporter   ~0055626

See this from Chris:

https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:_The_Grand_New_AI#Cross_Planet_Attack_.28CPA.29_tweaks

ArnaudB

Jan 17, 2020 4:24 am

manager   ~0055629

Thank you for the work and information.

Yep that was a wild game. It did seems excessive for a single diff7 to throw THAT much from a mostly neutered cluster, so I'll see how that goes when the next update drop in. I also experienced the performances drop a few times, which apparently will get solved with the pre-stacking of ships on CPA.

I still wonder though, shouldn't the ships from red mostly have come from planets outside of the cluster? Or does the CPA 'teleport' all drafted ships to attack a single place?

I do find funny that ultimately my mistaken belief CPA worked like in classic, which you told me was wrong months ago, turned out to be true. I swear it's the AI spreading fake news to give us trouble!

RocketAssistedPuffin

Jan 17, 2020 8:34 am

reporter   ~0055631

It didn't teleport them there. It's just that it reinforced that cluster by far the most. I watched it with Debug Scout All and every Post that AI had was emptied. Just that cluster had the majority of units available, all the other ones seem to be either not reinforcing or under attack constantly, so there was little to draft there.

Yeah, apologies for that error! Everything seemed to say it was new units it bought, even the units would always be the current AI Mark level rather than being a mix depending on where they got drafted from. Reading the code as well made it seem that way, until yesterday when Chris looked at it.

ArnaudB

Jan 17, 2020 9:01 am

manager   ~0055632

Well, it's good that my tribulations serve to find and fix bugs.

I'll see how it goes from there.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
Jan 16, 2020 2:30 pm ArnaudB New Issue
Jan 16, 2020 2:30 pm ArnaudB File Added: AbnormalAttack.rar
Jan 16, 2020 2:30 pm ArnaudB File Added: LargeForceFromBehind.jpg
Jan 16, 2020 2:30 pm ArnaudB File Added: 20200116202302_1.jpg
Jan 16, 2020 3:15 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Added: 0055618
Jan 16, 2020 3:21 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Edited: 0055618
Jan 16, 2020 3:32 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Edited: 0055618
Jan 16, 2020 4:22 pm ArnaudB File Added: Fight 9.rar
Jan 16, 2020 4:22 pm ArnaudB File Added: Fight 5.rar
Jan 16, 2020 4:22 pm ArnaudB File Added: Fight 3.rar
Jan 16, 2020 4:22 pm ArnaudB Note Added: 0055619
Jan 16, 2020 4:26 pm ArnaudB Note Added: 0055620
Jan 16, 2020 5:03 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Added: 0055621
Jan 16, 2020 5:07 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Edited: 0055621
Jan 16, 2020 5:09 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Edited: 0055621
Jan 16, 2020 5:25 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Edited: 0055621
Jan 16, 2020 5:32 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Edited: 0055621
Jan 16, 2020 5:33 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Added: 0055622
Jan 16, 2020 5:41 pm ArnaudB Note Added: 0055623
Jan 16, 2020 6:02 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Added: 0055624
Jan 16, 2020 6:33 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Added: 0055625
Jan 16, 2020 9:58 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Assigned To => Chris_McElligottPark
Jan 16, 2020 9:58 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Status new => resolved
Jan 16, 2020 9:58 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Resolution open => fixed
Jan 16, 2020 9:58 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Fixed in Version => 1.308 Mega Performance
Jan 16, 2020 9:58 pm RocketAssistedPuffin Note Added: 0055626
Jan 17, 2020 4:24 am ArnaudB Note Added: 0055629
Jan 17, 2020 8:34 am RocketAssistedPuffin Note Added: 0055631
Jan 17, 2020 9:01 am ArnaudB Note Added: 0055632