List and Observations in BETA testing MK II

[zoommooz]

"1) Basically when it's shields hit 0, the ship is entirely disabled (weapons, engines, regen, etc), and if it is not destroyed within 60 seconds the ship will die anyways."

 

Hmm. Say, you have got a level 6 capital ship, which can still have considerable hull strength, is it not a bit extreme to have it get completely destroyed with so much fight still left in it? I could see this action taking effect when down to 1/6 hit points for example, (not sure if it would be possible to implement this) but with only full shields gone as the activation, not hull damage, I would think that this actually nerfs the Vong more then any experience lost to the attacking race. Don't get me wrong , just trying to understand your thought process.

 

Edit. Understand a bit more. Looks like the Vong ships don't get hull per level additions. Also the Vong operations 2500, does 2200 damage to the 2500 hit point ship? Will play a bit more in game and see how this turns out.

[Lavo]

The Vong only have hull strength due to abilities which directly affect the hull. If these abilities did not exist, the Vong would all have 1 hull on their ships. In addition, the Vong do not gain hull strength when leveling up, and the dying ability actually does a big hull damage strike to the Vong when it fires off. The Vong's shield mitigation, plus their fairly high shield regen and points, make them a very tough cookie. I've seen a level three Scout Ship being able to fight on near even terms with a level 3 Tector.

[2IRRC]

Ever since the last patch by Ironclad I'm getting random mini dumps on multiple maps. So far I tried Hutt as well as Huge Ring and both crash after a while. Can't seem to get past the 1 hour mark on those maps after multiple attempts. I could play for hours endlessly previously to the patch so I know the patch broke something or changed something that screws with the mod.

[Lavo]

I have no idea what in 1.041 could cause this... According to Stardock, the only changes were changing some localization stuff for their Japanese publishing partner and temporarily disabling Cloud Saves. Edit: Do you have a save from around that time, and what factions were present? The Vong have been noted to be causing a minidump again, it might be them.

[2IRRC]

Yeah I play with all factions at the same time.

 

The latest change you made has done one thing only. Now I'm just crashing instead of also getting the mini-dump message box.

 

Unfortunately I saved over that game from before the update.

 

I have a save right before the crash now but when I load it everything works for a while and then crashes again sometime down the line. It's as if the game ran out of memory. Except I have been checking periodically if it's eating up RAM via memory leak and it hasn't. I don't get it.

 

EDIT: Further testing. I did not include the Vong in a new match on Hott. Game crashed 15min into match no mini-dump message. It's not the Vong changes doing it.

[Lavo]

Playing with all the factions at the same time is your problem. Sins cannot handle having all six factions loaded at once that well; it is bound to cause minidumps mid/late game. Unless you lower all your graphics settings to lowest, and even then, Sins may still crash. Load up less factions, and suddenly you will find that the crashes will go away. The game does run out of memory; it's hitting the 2 GB limit. Whether you have 4, 6, 8+ GB doesn't matter with Sins if you are on Windows. Also make sure you have a paging file for the partition Sins is on.

 

The only way to make full use of your RAM is to play Sins on Linux via WINE.

 

To copy paste from the read-me I have for the next public release:

Q. I don't understand why installing this mod is so complex. Why did you split off the factions?

A. Due to how Windows handles 32-bit applications, Sins is limited to 2GB of RAM on all Windows machines. SoGE, with all factions enabled, has a tendancy to hit that limit, resulting in minidumps/crashes. By not enabling factions you aren't playing with, you reduce the amount of stuff loaded into memory, and thus help keep that 2GB monster at bay.

[2IRRC]

Lavo I'm sure that's all true but the fact is pre-patch I had a game going for 8+ hours straight on Hutt with every race and it was just as fast at that point as it was the first second I played. I had lots of matches at 5 or 6 hours+ with no crash. Heck I haven't had a crash since the Vong were fixed several weeks ago. I probably dumped 40+ hours into 4 different maps in that time and never crashed.

 

This is 15min at the start of a match. Something broke.

 

Page File is out of the question as I'm using an SSD. I also checked the size of the game carefully every few minutes. 1.79GB at the start and 1.79GB a minute before it crashed.

 

I'll do more testing when I can. I can't do any more this weekend.

[Lavo]

Without a paging file, Sins cannot use 2 GB of RAM, it tops out at anywhere from 1.5-1.8 GB. Before I had a paging file set up on the partition steam is on, I was frequently crashing in the 1.5-1.62 GB RAM usage range on Rebellion. It isn't 1.041; you've just lucked out until now.

[2IRRC]

I just realized I have been forcing LAA on the .exe file. When the patch came through it overwrote it and reset the .exe files to default.

 

I just put the switch back but I can't test it until sometime during the week. I'm 99% sure this will solve it.

[Planetkillerzz]

Still with that pagefile nonsense

Update did indeed overwrite exe file so re-enabling LAA again will fix. Did it for all of us and no issues again.

Good times

[Lavo]

Aye, for those who don't worry about multiplayer and don't want a paging file, LAA does the trick as well.

[zoommooz]

@ Lavo, sent you a pm about a week ago, it looks like the message count is not working so you may not have seen it.

[Evaders99]

That Corellian CR90 CVT for 2500 credits on the NR must be a mistake (unless it does something super awesome?)

EDIT: CIS Hardcell for 2000 credits... what am I missing?

[Lavo]

Those are their respective faction's envoys.

[Evaders99]

Meh, never did play Diplomacy. I never used the Diplomacy options anyway

[Lavo]

Can't say I blame you, diplomacy is pretty lame. However, if you're playing with locked teams and have an ally, the pacts can be very useful.

[zoommooz]

Hey Lavo, just checking if the tractor beam 'weapon' is working yet for the empire? Had a look at the code and could not see what is missing. Any idea how to get it working that I could do?

 

Cheers

 

Edit:

 

I am also trialling the following finish condition for the Vong self destruct ability,

 

finishCondition

finishConditionType "DamageTaken"

damageNeeded

Level:0 250.000000

Level:1 0.000000

Level:2 0.000000

typeOfDamageNeeded "AFFECTS_ONLY_HULL"

 

If this does not suit at all, I will just keep it for my own verson. I am thinking of ajusting to the damage for each of the buffs (operation 100, operation 1000 etc) to about 2/3 of the hull points of the relavant ships (ie so that it has 1/3 left)

[Lavo]

The tractor beam is still a WIP. In truth it works, it just doesn't work very well.

 

As for the Vong ability, I intentionally avoided using that finishCondition as it means the ship would self-destruct without giving XP.

[zoommooz]

Yeah, but correct me if I am wrong. The above finish condition I applied to buff_openetration, which when meet, THEN allows the buff_damage to go into effect. The net result is that a certain amount of hull damage is required, rather then only zero shields, then, as designed, the buff_damage goes into effect, depriving the enemy of the experience, as its instant action remains unchanged, namely 'make dead'.

[Lavo]

You're understanding the entire implementation of the ability incorrectly. The buff_damage is not supposed to instantly kill the ship, it is only supposed to kill the ship after 60 seconds have elapsed, unless an opposing faction has destroyed the ship before that (and thus gains XP).

 

The ability is meant to somewhat stimulate the organic nature of the Vong, that their ships "die", and be something unique.

[zoommooz]

It has a delay of 60 sec, then the ships dies. These buffs have two instant actions (well most do, the -100 only has make dead) 'make dead' and 'deal damage'. Both are subject to the 60 sec time frame. Regardless, its still means that the enemy is deprived of experience if the time runs out.

 

Still don't get me wrong, I love the unique idea you have implemented, but to me, it just seemed a bit harsh to have the no shield as the trigger, rather, some amount of hull damage (the amount is subjective) seems right to me. However, of course I'll only have it in my own game where, a Vong ship of say, 6000 hull points, takes 4000 hull damage, then the 60sec self destruct sets in.

[Lavo]

The truth is, the only reason the Vong have hull points, is that there are abilities that exclusively deal hull damage. If I gave Vong ships 1 hull, they would be auto-killed by these abilities; hull points are meaningless for the Vong, you have to take a look at the whole picture with them. Plus, by giving the Vong hull points, you are making them EXTREMELY overpowered.

 

Due to their high regen and shield mitigation, Vong ships can take more damage than their galactic counterparts, even if they have seemingly less health. For every 10 points of damage a non-Vong ship would usually take, a Vong ship will take anywhere from 8.5 to 6.0 (depending on tech, and 6.0 is a conservative figure) points of damage.

 

Not that this matters, as it's your own personal game, however I must note it nonetheless.

[zoommooz]

I take your points completely, and agree, this does make the Vong OP, which in single player games (the only ones I get to play, unfortunately) means there is a real challenge out there for my favourite faction (the empire).

 

Cheers

[zoommooz]

Report on current game:

 

Playing as the Empire on the hutt map, and am having a really enjoyable game.

 

1. Finally got to see the ai build some super capital ships (Vong medium titan) which really presented a great challenge.

 

2. Ai has actually done some techs, not great but at least some.

 

3. Ai, in this game at least, is absolutely in love with cultural rely stations. On one industrial planet it had 33 on these stations.

 

4. Deep into the game, and have not seen any star-bases, which previously, the ai seemed to build really well, so not sure what going on?

 

Overall, SOGE, IMHO, is really starting to be a great, great game (not that it wasn't before).

 

Cheers.

 

Oh, you might get away with increasing the range of slave circuits to 2000, as this stops a lot of fiddly micro, but does not overpower the ability.

 

 

Edit. Not sure if its just my computer play up, but I seem to be getting quite a few run time CTD errors. Seems a bit weird, as I have never had this problem with Sins before. Game plays for 20-40 mins, the crashes.

[VE_Herbzta]

just noticed a crash while autosaving a 500+ planets map, now everytime i try to access autosaves, the game crashes

 

rev 963