Help needed with terrible AI movement Bug

from Sins Forums

Hi everyone,

I have run into a terrible bug. The AI isn't moving any of its ships anymore. Sometimes it will move them move a few seconds but then tends to stand still and just fire weapons. I have replaced the Gameinfo file and entity manifest to remove all the modding I was doing to exclude that as a source for the bug. But even with everything restored the ships in the SoA2 mod just aren't moving for me any more.

What is also weird is that the player's ships always move as normal regardless which ship is spawned.

Has anyone ever come across something like this and found a way to solve it?

 

Edit: This is getting stranger by the minute. Now the AI does move its ships, but not as much as before. And the Explore ability has stopped working both for me and seemingly the AI as well as their scouts are just sitting put.

modding
4,524 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Did you started to play saved and then when load game choose to play as another player ?

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

I started a new game on each test. I loaded everything up from scratch using the DEV.exe Within the game I then swapped around between active players a few times, but never inbetween save games.

 

Also ships are moving again, after a reload of the game (not a save game). but not as readily as before and the explore abiltity is no not working any more.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Movement has stopped completely again. I have reloaded the game again and started a new game. Whenever I spawn an AI ship it moves for a few seconds and then just stops.

However, the explore ability is back to normal.

 

After a few minutes of gameplay spawned vessels will move. But it is at that point that the explore ability stops to work. This repeats itsself every time. Have reloaded at least a dozen times now.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Is this just for the AI or will your ships no longer move as well?

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

You arent the only one that had this problem, and SoA2 isnt the only mod that has the issue. It is a known AI lag issue. With the SoA2 ships all of them have more than one weapon type. In fact most ships have 3 different weapon types. This contributes to the problem, because vanilla sins frigates usually only have one forward firing weapon, and we MUST use the same roletype, and statcounttype for the vanilla sins ship a mod ship replaces, or the AI doesnt function at all (wont build, wont expand).

All of the SoA2 ships use dynamic (fighter) movement. This may also be a contributing factor, because vanilla sins ships do not move like that. They just move to a position and stop to face their targets. With dynamic movement it is possible the AI wants to fire an aft firing weapon but the target is facing forward, so the AI has a seizure when that happens.

What i believe is happening is that the AI is trying to figure out which weapon, on which facing, on which target to use, and the AI gets confused, and stalls. Same thing happens on player controlled ships sometimes (ships jump into the well and just freeze for a while before attacking).

Sins AI is hard coded so we cant alter or tweak it. I dont think anyone knows yet how to fix this. Least not that i am aware of. We have been trying to get developer help on it. Plus we have been in vain trying to figure it out ourselves.

BTW which version of SoA2 are you using for which version of sins? If it is for Original Sins (not entrenchment, not diplomacy) then there is no dynamic movement, because original sins does not support it.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

In my experience, that sort of bug usually happens when you spawn ships using the developer .exe - it doesn't have anything to do with dynamic movement, as I have tested that extensively and under normal circumstances never had the AI do what it does when you use the console to spawn ships - in which case it often stops moving ships and just fires them when something comes in range.

For testing purposes (for example if you want to see how certain units behave in combat and want to spawn them via console, try spawning all ships at enemy player homeworlds, with phase travel disabled. I believe the issue is in AI getting confused when it suddenly receives ships in unexpected places.

As far as firing arcs go, I believe the AI simply evaluates which weapon can be fired - it doesn't actually have any preferences of its own, and if conditions are met then it simply fires them. Unless a specific target is designated, it will even switch targets of opportunity on the fly.