Greetings,

I had hoped to have you all test what I've been working on while I sleep. I had thought that, apart from the persistent mission-menu issues and a little exploit in the pirate mission, my work was release-candidate-ready. That is to say, I didn't know of any bugs other than those I mentioned; not that I didn't fully expect someone to find more within minutes of testing :) But, alas, after updating the code on the test server to my latest working version, I found that the npc pirates no longer attack or pursue the convoy. :p I've tried for the last hour to fix this, but I guess I'm too tired to see the problem.

Just wanted to apologize that the test server will be mostly useless for the next 6 or so hours, and also to let you know that you can look forward to breaking a new version of Deliverator not long after I awaken.

~Michael

Michael, did you mean "breaking" or "breaking-in" a new version of Deliverator?

There's a big difference!

Thanks for the update.

He meant "breaking". He will sleep, work on the problems then, put a new working version on the test server for us to break.

I excel at breaking things. I'll get up early to see how much damage I can inflict.

a proper sleep is 8 hours not 6.

programmers only really need 4. the caffine supplements it nicely.

The next garbage truck will be an overworked dev losing control of his car ;)

No one will begrudge or notice an extra two hours!

Hehe... nice mom... now sleeeeeeep!

:)~

Well, I slept a lot longer than 6 hours- happy? ;) Since I woke up, I've been working on getting the npc pirates to do their thing. It was working before, but I rewrote some stuff (in a better way) making an assumption about the way the sector side was working. I've narrowed the problem down to that assumption. So now I'm in Lua-land, and I'm not sure how long it will take me to find and fix the problem since I'm far less familiar with this code and I'm sure Andy and Ray are asleep right now. At any rate, it will be a while longer before I have something for you to test. I'll post when I do.

I will be awaiting the post ready to break it sir!

me stands to attention, bug huntin guns ready!

...momerath, you just plain rock. Good luck finding that bug.

Hehe, thanks Phaserlight:)

So I fixed the targeting bug, finally. The pirates now intercept the traders at a wormhole, attack, follow, attack, follow... and then break off and return to base in the second-to-last sector of the trade route. They also know that other players/npcs taking the same mission are their friends and won't attack, even if you accidently shoot them.

There are still a few minor issues. Missions don't always show up in the menus. Logging off and back on usually fixes this.

The payment at the Corvus station for whatever you're supposed to bring back is still a placeholder, and the mission shouldn't really end immediately after the convoy gets to its destination, but those are pretty easy to fix and shouldn't require much testing.

I haven't tested the Escort or HiveHunt missions much in the last couple days, so it would be good to know if they're still working OK. BTW, the escort mission has had some bugs fixed (the ending mostly) since I last put it up on the test server.

Well folks, assuming no major new bugs are found, there's just a little polishing left to do before we can release these new missions. The latest version is now running on the test server. Have fun :)

Well, naturally, a bug was immediately found. The pirate mission ended prematurely. I'll post when it's fixed- feel free to test other missions until then.

OK, I'm pretty sure that bug is fixed. I'm going to limit the escort/pirate mission to sedina k13/d14 for the moment to make debugging easier. I'll be monitoring chat on the test server for the next hour or so (or until another ugly bug rears its head).

Yep, the mission didnt abort till the convoy made its destination this time, my only problem was I didnt have time to get the cargo back, maybe the mission should realise i have some Plas cores (or whatever) and wait for me to get back?

I dont mind, its just the moths run like hell (kinda like a player would) so getting them in b8 isnt easy :)

But yeah, it all seemed to work this time :)

Good to hear. Yea, the pirate mission needs to end more gracefully. That should be pretty easy; I wanted to get the more involved stuff (npc pirates) tested right away, though. Thanks for the report Yoda!

The NPC pirates did a great job, there was even one that seemed to always attack the same moth I was attacking, quite neat to see :)

Yea, they each have all the traders in their targets list and are assigned random priorities to begin with. So they should be distributed reasonably evenly, but with cases of gangup. The pirates will focus on that highest priority target until it's dead and then move on, maintaining that same list between sectors. They stop fighting and move on to the next sector as soon as the first trader does so; this keeps them from falling behind the way they tended to when they warped when their target warped. Anyone have any suggestions on how to improve this mechanism (make the mission more fun)?

Slow down the bots, basically, cos the moths run way too fast, i guess slowing the moth down (160ms) and doubling its armour would be a good step, or reducing the amount of moths (maybe only 1 or 2 per voy? but with twice the amount of centaurs) and making the moths a higher priority, or something.

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Oh, and give the moths conc/prox mines, but on a timer, dont get them to spam, make it kinda random.

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I guess the moths are a higher priority cos they have fatter belies, so scrtch that, this is gunna be fun!

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Heh, maybe I should think before i post, i mean, theres like 4 or 5 moths, 2 centaurs?, it should be 1 or 2 moths, 8 to 10 centaurs.

just had a 50 vs 50 (or so) bot battle in Sedina I9. It was sweeeet!