My problems with simultaneous

[PvK]

I think it makes reasonable sense that a ship should be able to move by itself before emergency propulsion will work. It depends on the mechanics involved, of course.

What's odd though is in practice the ship has to be able to move at speed TWO before EmProp will work. Again, I guess it's not unreasonable to imagine explanations for this ... ideally, the design screen would give a warning if a ship has EmProp but doesn't have enough speed to use it. By default, you can even put EmProp on bases.

As for simultaneous movement, you have to understand that it actually has time flow and speeds. That makes EmProp work differently.

In turn-based, there really is no time, just movement in sequence. So EmProp works by "replenishing expended movement points".

In simultaneous mode, there are no movement points, just speed. And there IS a limited amount of time. Orders are performed in sequence. If you give orders to move two sectors, then use emergency propulsion, then move five more sectors, the ship will move the first two sectors at its usual speed, then change speed to the new emergency speed, and move as far as it can at the higher speed. Some fancy maneouvers might actually use that, but generally, you get the most from EmProp in simultaneous mode, by using it first, before all other orders, so you move at emergency speed for the entire turn. Using it at the end of the turn would have no effect at all.

PvK

[PsychoTechFreak]

Originally posted by PvK:
What's odd though is in practice the ship has to be able to move at speed TWO before EmProp will work.

Does anybody know how many speed points have to be reserved for stellar manipulation components in simultaneous, maybe 2 also?

[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
This is just a guess on my part, but I wonder if the reason for this bug isn't that he programmed it so you can't use EP to accelerate a ship that is out of supply.

Geoschmo

There's an easy way to test that; let a ship with EP (and max move 2 or more) run out of supply, and then try to use EP. Of course, I always assumed that one use for EP was to help ships that had run out of supply just short of a resupply depot (yeah, I know there are emergency resupply pods too, but EP should provide an alternative).

[DirectorTsaarx]

Well, I did some tests. Geo was right about EmerProp not working on out-of-supply ships; but, at least in turn-based, it's not hard-coded to look for ships with speed 1. And it also provides some level of benefit...

Standard 1.84 game, turn-based (!); 2 ships:

1st ship: movement 1, EmerProp5
2nd ship: movement 6, EmerProp5

EmerProp worked as expected when supply tanks were full; i.e., ship 1 moved speed 6 and ship 2 moved speed 11.

With empty supply, both ships were only able to move speed 2(!) after using the EmerProp component. Since this was turn-based, the same effect occurred whether the EmerProp was used before or after issuing ship movement orders.

So it looks like Geo was right; EmerProp requires supply to move a ship. I'll have to re-test in sim-move as well...

[DirectorTsaarx]

All right, sim-move tests. Same setup as before (2 ships, each with EmerProp5; ship 1 has movement of 1 and ship 2 has movement of 6).

This time, same effect as everyone else saw. A ship with movement of 1 will not use EmerProp points, regardless of remaining supply. And a ship that has run out of supply will get no benefit at all from EmerProp (i.e., not even the 1 extra move you get in turn-based).

I'd say that three things need to happen:

1. Set up turn-based games to not give any bonus moves to out-of-supply ships that use EmerProp;
2. Set up sim-move games to give full EmerProp benefits to ships with movement of 1;
3. Make it clear that EmerProp gives bonus movement up to the limit of remaining supply

What do y'all think?

[DavidG]

Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
I do not get it, every once in a while strange and unpredictable things happen. Ships fly through black hole systems although I saw the blue line for the route was bypassing the sucking system, but maybe it was a mistake by myself. These incidents just happen too often to let me think it is always my fault.

I don't think anyone responed to this part of your question. I think there is a minor bug in the game where the ships do not always follow the blue line. I have noticed this quite often.

I have also noticed in a current PBW game that the game refuses to draw the blue line through one particular warp point. The ships do however move to and through the warp point as orderd.

[PvK]

Tsaarx, thanks for the tests. I agree your changes would be a way to make it more consistent between game types, which would be good for mods which are trying to get the same effect in both game types.

DavidG, yes there are three issues, I think, which apply equally to turn-based except I think maybe turn-based players are more likely to issue shorter move orders rather than long-range ones.

The first issue is that the blue line is just a possible course, and can even change different times you look at it. This is because the movement AI makes some arbitrary decisions, mainly which side to go around an obstacle, and it does those each time it thinks about the question.

The second issue is that the AI uses different reasoning during actual movement than it does when drawing the blue line. This seems to only apply to multi-system movement, and the decision of which warp points to use. The blue line will suggest one route, but the ships will actually choose another.

The third issue is that the AI (Last I checked it in any detail, which was a couple of patches ago) doesn't do very well with created warp points, human-made maps, and perhaps some modded quadrant types. It can also not realize it needs to take a warp point which looks like the wrong direction from the system it is in.

There is a fourth cause which generally makes sense, but can cause unexpected results, which is that temporary events during a turn can cause the movement AI to do unpredicted things. Mainly, it reconsiders each sector move, and if there are moving hostile ships blocking any choke-point, even temporarily, along the path, ships with long-range movement orders will look for alternate paths. If the obstacle is just an enemy ship zipping through a warp point, this could cause a fleet to take a detour for a few sectors, then revert back to the original course.

All of these can be worked around by giving ships more specific orders about where to go, though that is of course more work.

PvK

[PsychoTechFreak]

Thank god, I am not alone with my trouble.
But I guess it is not easy to compile all of these small issues into savegames for an enhencement report to MM, at least I have my problems with it sometimes.

PvK, if you do not need savegames for your reports, could you . Ahem, now I recall the other open issues that I still have not tested with patch 3 yet. Timeout.

[PvK]

Heh. One example: I was just looking at a game using patch 3, but using my "Rich Clusters" quadrant type from Proportions. There were several cases where the blue line would not show an intended course to the destination, as if the ship wouldn't go anywhere, but then during the turn it actually did take a course, and eventually made its way there.

PvK

[PsychoTechFreak]

Just a guess, in case of the blue line does not show up in the first attempt, is the course going through unknown systems?