Enemy is damaged, and suddenly invincible!

[sebling]

Hey there Space Traders.

I just wanted to know if anyone else has experienced this very strange battle scenario, which I have been experiencing with increasing frequency. This may be due to my game level, or a change in the game code?

I am flying around in a pimped out Royal Dark on Crazy Level, I'm a level 32 captain, and I keep finding bad guys that I can get in some good early hits in on, but then they suddenly they become impervious to my weaponry! I sit there blazing guns at close range (Engines and/or Decks) for hundreds of turns with no result: no damage to me, none to them either. Here's an example


Royal Dark ...............Pirate BattleShip (lvl 47)
Hull......... 22 / 22...... 21 / 21
Armour....11 / 11 ..... 0 / 10
Engines.. 50 / 50.. ....17 / 21
Sails...... 45 / 45....... 0 / 21
Crew..... 182 / 182.... 25 / 60
Hold....... 26 / 100..... 21 / 40
Guns ..... 20 / 20 ...... 0 / 30
Torps ......4 / 5.......... 4 / 11

"Turn # 973 Pirate Battleship tried to escape the Royal Dark ... and Royal Dark opened fire on Pirate Battleship and missed!"

Retreating and firing torps does nothing - no hits for 200 turns.

My ship and captain are not ideally customised for boarding operations, but supremely suited to defending them. Yet a single bording operation in one of these situations ends up smashing my ship in two: Last time I lost all 20 guns, all armour, half my engines, and a third of my crew in ONE TURN, yet the ememy sustained NO DAMAGE, and it read at the bottom "Royal Dark borded [enemy ship] for 10 damage".

Let me reiterate that the damge on the enemy results within the first 10 turns of hitting "Engines" - looked like I was kicking some bee you tea - then I can press the engines button for another 500 times with absolutely no result.

What the ... ?

It's almost like the code is getting our stats mixed up - me no guns, and boarding damage going the wrong way??

[Cory Trese]

"It's almost like the code is getting our stats mixed up"

That is unlikely. If that was happening the game would immediately Force Close because the objects aren't cast-compatible in Java.

I will investigate this report. I can check the simulator runs, thankfully the game's combat system is automatically self-testing and I run about 200,000 turns per release, just to double check the numbers.

What game turn are you on?

Why are you still using "Engines" when the Enemy's Solar is at 0? Just curious.

[gearheadwhat]

I have had a few similar situations. One thing I have seen a lot lately is during boarding, it will say I do 10 damage to the enemy... But nothing seems to change. Do it for 20-30+ turns in a row before the enemy captain dies. This always and only happens when their ship is severely damaged. I was figuring 10 damage may either be a different scale, or simply a blanket statement and I am not actually doing anything. That is with a boarding specialized captain and with one who isn't as well.

[slayernz]

I've had situations where you've taken out all but a couple of engines of your opponent and yet they still have the ability to retreat and increase range. Your ship has 34/34 intact engines and they have 4/24 engines, yet staying at close range for long stretches is nigh on impossible.

In reality, wouldn't you expect them to be pretty much stuffed when they've had so much engine damage that you out-drive them more than eight engines to one?

[Cory Trese]

in orbit or deep space? (ask because grav move can help "fleeing" ships in orbit)

[Cory Trese]

I will go run some simulations.

Maybe something is wrong with some recent change, I'll never say it isn't broken.

The flip side is that the player probably takes advantage of this feature as much as the NPC do, so, something to think about.

The game is littered with tweaks to keep the player alive / give them a numerical / odds advantage so that the game seems "less random."

[slayernz]

My comments are not specific to the latest build. It's just an observation I have found. I'm not sure if it is deep space or orbit - usually I set the co-ordinates into the computer, push the auto-pilot, and get my first officer to watch the bridge while I sleep. Often the encounters don't last too long and by the time I scurry back into the bridge (wearing a nice terry-cloth bath robe), the battle is won and the cleanup crew are busy appropriating goods.

I just did a test on my phone ... Deep space encounter on Crazy
Me: Rank 39, pilot/stealth = 42, tactics = 21
My ship: Honor of Thulun with engines 33, sails 33
Deep space encounter.


Opponent
Rank: Lvl 4 Bounty (hey, he attacked me your honor)
Ship: Terror class with 19 of 32 engines remaining (no sails)

We were at close range, I took out his sails then almost half his engines, then he managed to move back to medium range.

I move to close range, fire at his engines hitting him twice and now his engines are at 9/32. Still he manages to move back to medium range.

So first of all - surely a ship flying at level 4 shouldn't have been able to change ranges at all compared to my test pilot. Even if he could - surely taking out 70% of his engines would stop him from moving around much.

After I defeated him (I felt compelled to), I let him go without destroying him. Catch and release allows the little pilots to grow into big fat juicy ones.

[Cory Trese]

OK, pointing at the latest release is interesting. I will take a careful look at the simulator runs and the code changes.

Let me see if I can find some type of inadvertent change that was made.

[Fenikso]

I have encountered similar scenario as OP once or twice. Especially annoying was when me and my enemy we both were unable to hit each other or run away for full 1000 turns. Then combat ended as Draw, but still, thousand button clicks were really annoying.

[Tenebrous Pirate]

This sounds a lot like something I have seen quite a bit of, off and on since I started playing. My best success for actually killing enemies that do this is to back off to medium or long range, and start using torps. Sometimes this works, sometimes they stay teflon coated.

[Cory Trese]

Your Captain will not always be a match for the enemy Captains.

Annoying, sure.

Predictable, definitely.

Cause? You probably spending points the NPC doesn't care about.

If the NPC has 120 Stealth and you have 22 Tactics, you're never going to hit them. If they have 24 Pilot and you have 80 Pilot, they're going to have a heck of a hard time escaping you, but they're going to dodge most of your shots.

This is especially true the higher level you get the more chances that the enemy will have points enough to build a counter Captain (although randomized they have routines.)

[Fenikso]

The only thing I have found annoying is 1000 turn combat without any way how to finish it earlier. The rest is ... well ... my captain's problem .

[Cory Trese]

1000 turns was a limit that we added. Previously unlimited.

we could change the limit if we wanted to but various players have commented on it many times.

[hillm1234]

Aug 7, 2011 10:30:20 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Why are you still using "Engines" when the Enemy's Solar is at 0? Just curious.

I've been hitting engines until engines are at 0. Reading between the lines, it sounds like Cory is saying we should stop targeting engines once the sails are at 0?

[Cory Trese]

The button actually means "Fire Weapons and Propulsion Systems" but that didn't fit on the button.