momerath: I didn't mean to imply that the cause of any of the things I listed was laziness on your (the devs) part. Also, I realize that some of the things I listed have been fixed, after having spent a long time broken.

By "capship AI" I specifically meant the "backpedaling 14789349857m from the jump-in point so you can't possibly find and bomb them, which in turn means that there is no real way to accomplish the mission objective" thing, which, as far as I can tell, has recently been fixed.

No, 1c was not game-breaking, but I notice it every single time so it was on the top of my mind.

But, until inspiration strikes or we have some other reason to re-engineer that area of the code, it will likely remain unsolved. Again, it's a question of the best way to spend our time.

This is the point I was getting at with the original comment that sparked this discussion. This bug has existed the entire time I have played the game, and will likely continue to exist for some time. Since my main character's only real source of income is convoy piracy, it is the single most painful bug in the entire game for me, but it's not being fixed due to 'lack of time'. I appreciate that time management is a very important aspect of developing a large project like this, but the fact that bugs like this are being shoved to the back burner stings a lot more when dev time is being spent on things like, well, removing cool unaligned hive fighters from the game.

And that is what I meant by my one-line off-the-cuff remark earlier in this thread.

Ladron, one thing that might help us debug that specific issue (NPC/PC convoys getting separated), is perhaps starting a new Bugs thread on it, and detailing exactly how it happens. I know we've all seen reports on it and so on, but because it has proven to be so challenging to debug, getting more exact, empirical specifics would be helpful. This would hopefully include dates/times of the incident, where the convoy was going and where it was headed (source/destination sector) when it occurred, etc.

One area of concern I've had, for instance, is the fact that in wormhole areas there is some significant range to where people can be placed (I forget how big they are, but a few thousand meters). In some situations, this could lead to someone believing one has been separated from one's convoy, on the jump-in or the jump-out, simply by the wormhole mechanics actually functioning as intended. However, this doesn't jive at all with the reports of the issue also happening during unrelated intra-sector jumps, not in wormhole sectors.. but it's still something that could confuse the issue or further muddy the waters.

I had hoped to spend some time just taking convoy missions over and over, to see it happening myself and if I could determine any commonalities to when/where it happens (certain path angles when crossing a given sector, for instance, or specific to storms, etc). Unfortunately.. well, there's no way I could have added that to my workload recently.

I have a feeling that from the standpoint of the code Michael has been trying to instrument, the "destinations" are always identical, but due to a combination of implementation variability (like some range factor) along with user perceptions, creates a multi-fold issue that may have several causes.

So, anyway, I vote for a new thread, with lots of exact specifics. Not like "it happened to me yesterday!" but.. when (in UTC), where, source sector (coming from), destination sector (intended going to), did you get dropped into a storm. Also, eliminate cases that involve the use of wormholes.

I can't help but feel like you missed my point, Ladron. That bug isn't not being fixed because of "lack of time," while the unaligned HS bug was, because we thought it was more worthy of our time. It hasn't been fixed because, after spending more time, trying to track it down, than most new features take, the cost to fix it is unknown and presumably substantial, whereas the unaligned HS bug was fixed by the addition of 11 characters to one line, and required no more than a minute to puzzle out.

At any rate, we would _love_ to fix that bug, and detailed info, as Inc suggests, may help us in that pursuit.

Okay, I've tried to keep track of that stuff in the past, and specifically worked with mom on it for a little while at one point to help track it down, to no avail.

Unfortunately I'm usually camping a wormhole when I see it so I can't tell you where the ships were coming from or where they're going, only that they jump in to (for example, Sedina) from Latos but are 5000m away from the wormhole, and then instantly turn around and jump wherever they're going in Sedina.

However, I will open a bugs thread on it and make a point of recording each time this happens with as many details as I can get.

Better yet, just message any bot you see like that with a search-friendly message, like "ladron sez ur 5000m from the wormhole warping in", and then tell me what you said and any extra details here. That way I'll have the character-id of the bot, the time+location of the warp-in in question, and can track everything else down. Unfortunately, I've tracked cases like this before, and all indications in the log were that their warp-in points were no further away than expected (which can be kinda far for some ships if they all warp in at once).

Ah, nice, I didn't realize I could even do that. Any bot I find misbehaving will get an earful :D