Greetings,

Please give our new Escort missions a try on the test server**. They are substantially similar to the ones in production, but are now completely Deliverator-independent. This means that they will be more reliable (always available, no bot pile-ups), and also that Deliverator will have less to do and should become more stable while we move the rest of its functionality into Kourier.

** For the new users: You can log into the test server by typing "test:" (without the quotes) before your username when you log in. This won't work if you subscribed in the last 2 days (we mirrored the database on monday).

Please post your experiences (successful and unsuccessful) in this thread. With luck we can put this into production on Friday.

~Michael

sooo does this mean that Kourier is running on the test server?

Well, that didn't work :-(

Took the escort mission from Dau to Nyrius G-2, and it all went well until we got caught in an Ion Storm. Fought off a few bots and the moths made it to jump without being damaged. It was at that point that I noticed that the Ion Storm exit was 10km away...

By the time I got to my storm exit, the ships had left the group. Docking at the station, and no messages to say that the mission is completed, and indeed it's still running even though everyone seems to have reached the destination safely.

Had to abort the mission.

Attempt 2: Going back to Arta Caelestis. We got caught in the same Ion Storm, and yet again I seemed to have a different exit point to the moths, so I had to escort them out of the storm, then fly about 8km back to my exit.

This time they waited around the wormhole to Dau (one on either side of the hole, for some reason). Got to our destination, they both left the group leaving me the only member and the mission uncompleted again.

Attempt 3: A quick run without any Ion Storms. We got to the destination and it completed properly.

I would guess that the long delay between the moths leaving the previous storms and me getting out (due to us having different exit points) caused a problem, but I didn't even get a mission failure at any point.

A couple of observations:

There were 2 moths plus a couple of vultures. Only the moths were actually part of the group that was created. Shouldn't the vultures be also?

Secondly, on coming out of the wormhole into Dau, the two moths when in completely the opposite directions to get to the 3000m jump distance, so it was only possible to escort one.

Although my mission didn't fail, I also had exit points that were very different from my convoys. Makes it near impossible to protect them if they hit two storms in a row. And echoing sam up there, if there's a way to make the convoys stay relatively together it would make escorting them much more feasable.

@sam: I think the reason only the transports are grouped is to avoid confusion. In large convoys it gets very confusing trying to pick out who is a transport and who is an escort if everyone is in your group. Much more efficient to have just the transports grouped.

By the way, kudos to whoever designed that "orion special operations" mission or something of the like. It was fun and actually made me feel like I was doing something important that affected people around me. Something that vendetta needs a lot more of.

3 missions, also had different exit points in the Ion storm - I went straight for my exit, didn't bother staying with the transports. First 2 convoys succeeded, third 'didn't make it' even though I was right behind the transport when it docked

In my 4th try (long trip through Grey to see what happened when the convoy got shot up, but there turned out to be no pirates anywhere), I headed straight for the storm exit when we got caught.

I waited until the 1st convoy ship started its jump out of the storm, and jumped then in order to try and time things as closely as possible. The mission completed fine that time

I attemped to fix the "bots get improper storm exit" problem on the test server around three hours ago; is that still happening?

Hopefully all reported bugs are fixed. I fixed a couple things that could cause reported problems (and errors in the logs) and Andy fixed something that may be the only (remaining) cause of the 'improper storm exit' bug.

We're testing, and haven't been able to cause these bugs to reappear, but you are better at doing things we haven't thought of than we are, so please have another go at it! :)

i tryed it now(1 minute ago). i had no problems until i got into strom.
in the storm the storm exit point of bots was 11k away from my storm exit point. Only cargo ships were part of my group.

I ran an escort mission from Geira Rutilus O-4 to Sol II B-12. Didn't hit any storms, and everyone docked without a hitch. I noticed that the "lead" ship of the group, or atleast the one that seemed to have the others following it wasn't shy of switching. Sometimes it was a Centaur in front, other times an Atlas with the 'moths and Centurions behind it.

sleon: Damn. Well, I have one more theory.

Only cargo ships are supposed to be in your group, by the way, since they're technically the only ships you need to worry about. Maybe it'd be better, if the group is small enough, to add the other escorts to it too?

I'm going to try to improve the "formation" behavior of the bots (as in, actually make them use their group formations...) before we release, I think. The convoys just don't stay together like they should, and usually somebody gets way ahead.

Ion storms now seem to be behaving correctly, and the convoy is using the same exit as I do.

One other unrelated issue I noticed whilst testing things, is that when selling cargo, the message I get is along the lines of "25x of Cargo sold for a total amount of 0c (profit of 0c)"

If I check the advancement logs however, I find that "496750 credits added to your account", so it looks like just the message that is broken. It's happened twice.

I tested a couple of missions too, they all worked except for one: I couldn't help myself and shot the behemoth I was supposed to protect. However the behemoth contained no cargo. Therefore I sold the scrap metal, but also got a message that I sold 6 cu for 0c.

Oh, when I shot the moth, I got a message: You were warned (todo) ....something (explain repercussions)

I guess that means that you haven't filled that part in yet, just checking if that was intentional ;)

Furthermore, everything looks good, I hope you introduce these missions on the production server soon.

Ps. Is it normal that there are only two moths in every convoy I escorted?

Just another plea, to please continue testing this over the weekend. They put some more fixes in last night, as well as some optimizations to database code (so people with a bajillion items can now load sectors more quickly), and we really need to test it all before it goes into production.

I'll make a newspost later explaining more thoroughly, but.. please give it a whirl.

ok i just did one everything went perfect

one little annoying thing was that the voy had a different storm exit point than me

[edit] and the sector load times are beautiful

ok 2nd time was even better everything was perfect

well from the way i see it nothing went wrong

a tenny bit more nitpicking tho when voys exit a wormhole make them stick together

they spread out that makes it impossible to guard the entire voy

run #1:
As a serco-hated itani, I gots meself an escort to rhamus, although that might just be annoying, rather than an actual bug.

Also, the bots had a storm exit directly opposite mine, but everything worked alright.

run #2:
Same problem with the ion storm for the first one, but the second storm I hit had the same exit for both me and the newbs I was escorting, which was nice.
Also, I managed to hit an aputec with a railgun twice! yeah!

The funny part was the reward, which was 4200 combat points, 1000 credits and 10 faction standing points. As in, my actual faction standing with Aeolus went from 32778 to 32788. And this is for a mission from Helios to Setalli Shinas. I didn't even know where Setalli Shinas was when I took the damn mission. :(

run #3:
storm I hit had the same exit point for me and my botses, but that didn't stop me from losing one of them anyway. :<

then I got distracted by food, so as it turns out I only stayed with the group for 80% of the way, so I only got 1200 combat points, 1350 credits and four actual faction points. (58271-58275)

I just did an escort mission on the test server. There were 2 ion storms and the bots had a different exit from me both times. They survived though, and the mission succeeded.