TobiWahn,

Good luck I have friends who code for a living and know it can be litterally anything hiding in the proverbal haystack. I'm still mulling the Vorlons. I think the mechanic is right if it can be implemented but pacing their tech is hard.

Darvroth

@Davroth
Yes, the ancient races will be the two most difficult to balance. But I'm confident we (you ) can make it work

I still don't think it will be that difficult to balance them.  Since they are living ships, just make their build times much longer.  In an equivalent-sized battle with the younger races they should be able to turn everything into meatloaf.  However, since their numbers are smaller due to longer build times things should be pretty even.  By doing this, you probably wouldn't even have to make them super-expensive or make their research times insanely long.

In the series, both of them had been in space for thousands of years (maybe millions?) before the other races, yet their numbers still weren't all that impressive to me.  I chalk that up to them having to grow their ships rather than just weld and rivet metal together.  Growing anything takes a very long time. Then again, the Vorlons and Shadows themselves might not be prolific races and thus didn't have the crew to run several thousand ships (even so, growing ships should still take a long time).

Another idea I just had for the Vorlon ships: give them the same hitpoints/armor/regen as the shadows, but also give all of them (except the fighters) the Vasari starbase directional shield ability.  In the series, when they charged their main weapon, it also acted as a front-only shield.  The original Sins AI is very effective at getting the ships to sit there and fight eachother head-on.  However, with some strategy you could flank a Vorlon opponent and get some shots in to the sides and rear of their ships and completely avoid the shield.  Here's a youtube link that illustrates this perfectly (and is also one of my favorite battles of the series): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxd3jIiL3TI  The video shows the Vorlon front shield fully deflecting a Shadow beam (31 seconds in), and at the end a Shadow engages a Vorlon from the rear to avoid the shield (1minute, 5seconds). 

Also, have you tried sending the minidump to the developers?  It would be so much nicer if the gamers could actually read what caused the minidump rather than a bunch of jibberish.  I think minidumps make us all this mad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8MjQ5Z7ZNo

Peter1x9,

The hardest thing is to balance the First Ones for both small and large maps. Nicely balanced via fleet size alone for a small map makes for puny Vorlons (numbers wise) late game. They are so powerful early game we are trying to implement mechanics that prevent them from engaging Younger races, at least for a while.... or there would be accidential exterminations, which from a player perspective is no fun. Also both the Shadow and Vorlon will (with luck) have different mechanics that what is in SOASE and will play very differently from Younger races who will be more traditional. That said we have yet to implement the ideas will undoubtedly run into road blocks andhave to modify the art of the possible.

Darvroth

Ah, I didn't take that into consideration because I prefer larger maps and massive battles.  On a small map, I doubt anyone would want a hostile first one neighbor aka a neighbor from hell.

Btw, here's (hopefully) the fate of the bug that's causing the minidump:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNBFvEXumSc

Hi all. Just want to give you the status (so you do not think we've abandoned you)

I'm working on getting the DB export (with all our research) bootable in sins and working without a minidumo. Afterwards I will slowly add content (abilities) of the pre-DB Version to find the final cause of the minidump.

I as of now have a working version of the pre-DB stuff without all abilities and planetmodules, so they might be the culprit. Thanks for your patience (as if you had another choice  ' )

Tobias

It's really a nightmare I tell you! I've got the mod starting into sins, but always minidumping after a few seconds.

Minbari won't even start as a AI player without the research "RESEARCHSUBJECT_SQUADACCESS_MINELAYER.entity" available to them. Any idea why (whoever thinks can help)

Most of the problems seem to stem from research I suppose, but it's hard to prove.

If any of you are willing to help us get this version bug free please send me a personal message and I will give you access to the latest build. This is only for those willing and able to help, so please refrain from trying to get the newest version just to play. It will not really work anyways until we sort the problems out.

Thanks

Tobias

Besides some technical issues in the files  (I'll send you those later), I'm concerned about the Diplomacy tree. I know I had some mini-dumps last year when I didn't have this tree setup right. I think the AI looks for specific research items and mini-dumps if they don't exist.

@ZombiesRus5

Thanks, I sent you a pm with the things Peter1x9 found out and some info from my. Many thanks for helping out to you both!

Sent some more info your way and I found similar things to Peter1x9 though I tried fixing the file to no avail before having to swap it out like he did...

Very frustrating indeed.

The whole colony ship thing is very very strange.  The only real things different between the stock colony ship (besides cosmetic issues) and the asimov are these:

mass 0.000000

renderShield FALSE

And I'm not sure that either would cause the catastrophic invisible ship bug we are encountering.  I'll play around some more with the asimov and see if I can figure anything else out.  My guess would be the zero mass, but I don't see why it would cause this.

The debug function is being a real pos because the game keeps spamming this line in the log file:

C:\Projects\P4\SinsDiplomacy\Release\CodeSource\GS\Entity\Interfaces\IFighter.cpp(148): assert! [dockPointCount > 0]

After playing for a not very long time I ended up with a 103,363kb log file of mostly that one line. 

On an unrelated note, I really have to complement you guys on the custom models.  They are absolutely 100% Babylon 5 awesomeness!  I got a little worried when the Omega left the shipyard without a rotating section but it quickly appeared.  Must be an engine issue,

My guess is that your mesh is corrupt. This happens sometimes and will mess up your rendering.

Try re-converting the mesh and then retrying it in-game.

Also, Peter1x9, moving sections can only happen through particle effects, and those only appear after a ship's construction is complete.

I solved it!  I put the original Frigate_EA_Asimov.entity back into the mod and changed the line

mass 0.000000 -> mass 2000.000000

and it worked flawlessly!  Btw, for now he is using the stock TEC colony ship mesh as a placeholder there so I knew it wasn't that from the start.  Very strange that zero mass would do this, but I guess the engine just doesn't know what to do in this case.

A more minor thing I noticed is that the Omega happily fires its forward beams, but not the forward pulse cannons.  However, for now we should just focus on getting everything running and playable properly.

Ya, that was what I tried fixing above, which fixed the invisible ship, but still mini-dumped. I had to overlay the file to resolve the mini-dump with the Tech Colony.

Glad it worked for you though and atleast it helps Tobias narrow down one of his issues.

All the other races also had the same zero mass on their colony ships.  Try changing them on your end and see if it still dumps on you.

Edit: well that fixed one problem but it's still dumping on me.  I just didn't give it enough time to dump before.  Something else is wrong with the colony ship too.  Shoot!

Ok, that was my experience too. Odd huh?

Overlaying that file seems to fix it though for whatever reason.

Ok, I've got it running again.  It has to do with the frigateRoleType.  Since you based your placeholder on the tech colony ship, the AI thinks that it should be able to also be a "ResourceCapturer".  Probably the best way to fix this is to allow the Asimov and all the other colony ships to also capture resources that can be captured by ship.  Right now it runs but it will probably minidump 15 minutes into the game when it goes to use the Asimov to capture resources but doesn't have the AbilityCaptureNeutralEntity.

You could also use the Vasari colony ship as your placeholder, but then that adds a totally different issue as the AI would try to build starbases with it and then minidump when it can't.

A complete fix for the colony ships:  Mass -> 2000, typeCount -> 2, frigateRoleType "Colony", frigateRoleType "ResourceCapturer".  I'm not sure how to get the button working to capture resources for the colony ship, but I think you have to add AbilityCaptureNeutralEntity to all the races.

Hi,

First, thanks to Peter1x9 and ZombiesRus5 we got rid of some errors.

@Peter1x9 and ZombiesRus5
I've pm'd you a link to an incremental update to 0.419c
The update incorporates many of your findings as well as preliminary mesh corrections so there's no more spamming with the dockpoint messages going on.

Sadly it still minidumps a few seconds into the game. Hope we find a solution to this soon.
Also has any of you an idea why Minbari need the RESEARCHSUBJECT_SQUADACCESS_MINELAYER research? I can't think of any one reason.

Thanks for your kind words on our models, we take a long time to make them, but I think the outcome is worth the effort.

Looks like it is going to take a while to upload.  In the meantime, fixing the roletype seems to solve the minidump a few seconds in.  The AI seems incredibly sensitive to any changes.

In Frigate_EA_Asimov.entity (same for every race's colony ship), change

typeCount 1
frigateRoleType "Colony"

to

typeCount 2
frigateRoleType "Colony"
frigateRoleType "ResourceCapturer"

edit:

also change

ability:0 "AbilityTechFrigateColonize"
ability:1 ""

ability:0 "AbilityTechFrigateColonize"
ability:1 "AbilityCaptureNeutralEntity"

This should, in theory, completely eliminate all AI minidumps related to the colony ships a few seconds into the game or 15-30 minutes into the game (depending on whether or not the map has capturable asteroids).

Well the minidump is gone now thanks to the roletype fix I did.  I can't colonize anything since the asimov's AntiMatterRestoreRate is 0.000000.

There is still a lot of spammed lines in my debug logfile.  It is now this batch over and over:

C:\Projects\P4\SinsDiplomacy\Release\CodeSource\GS\Window\Screens\ResearchScreen.cpp(555): assert! [blockInfo != 0]
C:\Projects\P4\SinsDiplomacy\Release\CodeSource\GS\Window\Screens\ResearchScreen.cpp(722): assert! [index < fieldInfo.blockInfo.Size()]
C:\Projects\P4\SinsDiplomacy\Release\CodeSource\GS\Window\Screens\ResearchScreen.cpp(722): assert! [index < fieldInfo.blockInfo.Size()]
C:\Projects\P4\SinsDiplomacy\Release\CodeSource\GS\Window\Screens\ResearchScreen.cpp(722): assert! [index < fieldInfo.blockInfo.Size()]
C:\Projects\P4\SinsDiplomacy\Release\CodeSource\GS\Window\Screens\ResearchScreen.cpp(722): assert! [index < fieldInfo.blockInfo.Size()]

Edit: I changed the Asimov's AntiMatterRestoreRate to 0.500000 and can colonize planets now.  I also found that the constructors now work properly on all planets.

TobiWahn,

About the mine layer, each race will need access to some varient type depends on what coding path is being emulated, (EA, Vasari, Advent). In your example it sounds like the Advent carrier mine squadron emulation is in use (or at least being requested by the AI. Not specific but hope it helps.

Darvroth

The EA and Centauri run just fine with the colony ship fix, but there appear to be other problems causing the Narn and Minbari to dump out within a few seconds.

Many many thanks. I will incorporate all your findings this weekend. Perhaps we can fix the Minbari and the Narn too!

FFs, I hate windows!  The colony ship WAS in fact the only thing causing the minbari and narn to minidump within a few seconds.  I just didn't save the changes to the files within the mod directory. 

I'll pm you the fixed files and we can go from there. 

Note to self: don't try to mod when tired. 

@Peter1x9 and ZombiesRus5

After incorporating all your findings I can now play Minbari flawlessly. EA crash after about 12 savegames, Centauri and Narn after 4-5 savegames.
Could you send me your EA and centauri files so I can see if there is any difference between them and mine?

Thanks very much!!