Issues with Deaths in Ship Combat

[MTKnife]

I fought two ship combats last night that produced odd results. In each case, before departing back to the map, I checked the "Ship Report" tab, to make sure no one had been killed. Both times, a handful of crew were listed as wounded, but no deaths.

But...I get back to the map, and notice I'm down two crew in one case, and one crew in the other case. I check the Captain's Log, and, sure enough, the deaths showed up there (the Shock Trooper in the second screenshot was from a separate crew combat):




And that's when I noticed the second problem: in both combats, the Doctor's Life Saver Talent had prevented one of the deaths--and yet the crew member died anyway. Were the crew members "killed" twice each time? I'm not sure precisely how log entries from the same combat are ordered, but I'd think that, if a crew member is saved and then "killed" again, the real death would be listed after (that is, above) the save. Also, the first combat I think lasted two turns, and the second only one turn, which would make it a remarkable coincidence if, in both combats, a single crew member received fatal damage twice.

[MTKnife]

It just happened again....3 for 3.

[Cory Trese]

This all looks like it is working. The Crew member is being saved, but probably not restored to enough HP.

The log you'll find in the combat log is "%s's %s Talent saved %s from imminent death, restoring HP to %d."

The restore rating is not scaled on difficult -- depends heavily on Medical Rating and Doctor Skill.

What is your Ship's Medical Rating?

[MTKnife]

It was less than 15 years in, so whatever is standard on the "Aeternum Vindex", plus a single Doctor/Combat Medic officer.

Are you telling me a crew member can get hit just once, have the Talent trigger, and the Talent has no effect? Because the initial damage took the crew member to negative HP? I had no idea negative HP were even possible.

If so, I see a couple of issues here:

First, it doesn't match the Talent description, which is: "Crew member is restored to HP equal to Doctor Skill + 3 x Medical Rating of onboard medical components". That "to" is important: it implies (and I mean "implies" in the strict sense, not "suggests") that the number in question is the crew member's final HP, as opposed to ending up with the number + the original, negative HP. And the description really doesn't say that the Talent might or might not work, depending on how damaged the crew member is.

Second, since that Talent has a cooldown, if it's not going to do anything useful, it shouldn't be triggering at all--especially if, as was the case in the first screenshot, it could have been applied to another crew member in the same combat.

Or are you saying the crew member was saved, restored, and the took fatal damage again? It seems very, very unlikely that the same crew member gets hit twice in three different ship combats.

Aside from that--and this might be a different issue entirely--note what I said about the "Ship Report" screen: the crew deaths are not showing up in the post-combat report. I only noticed them because my vacant crew slots went up.

[MTKnife]

Or I guess there's a third possibility: did you miss when I said the crew in question had disappeared from the ship? In that case, if the crew member was "killed", saved by Live Saver, and then killed again, wouldn't two different death messages show up? I think I even remember seeing that before, a long time ago. But that's not what's happening here: the crew in question are not saved. They are gone from the ship.

In fact, I didn't even think to check the Captain's Log until I noticed the number of open bunks on the ship had increased--since the Ship Report screen isn't reporting deaths in ship combat.

If you want to see for yourself, here's a later save file from that run:


mtknife.net/game_42.db

[Cory Trese]

Not sure we're communicating very well -- negative HP? Sorry this one has caused so much confusion and back and forth. I wish I was better at writing documentation and explanations!

Thank you for the DB file -- that is helpful. I will run the saved game file you linked through the analyzer to see if there are any issues found. If there is anything wrong with the file, I'll report back right away.

I'm still hopeful that the discussion on Discord spills over to the forum, or some other players chime in here.

I will try very hard to set aside a block of hours to go back over the Wiki pages and code to try to improve the documentation for the Talent, and see if I can write up a detail description that makes sense to you and answers more questions than it creates.

Again, very sorry for the negative experience. Hopefully it gets cleared up soon!

[MTKnife]

Thank for your patience. I'm afraid I still don't understand what happened, or what was supposed to happen, or what can happen (assuming it's all working right).

I've been re-reading your statement that "The Crew member is being saved, but probably not restored to enough HP," and I'm still not clear on what that means. Is it supposed to be possible for Life Saver to trigger and not actually save the crew member's life? That's where I got the idea of "negative HP"--that is, it looked to me like you might be saying that Life Saver doesn't restore enough HP to keep the person alive.

I just joined the Discord server, but I don't see any discussion about this on there, but maybe I haven't scrolled up enough yet.

[MTKnife]

OK, to assist communication, here's my understanding of how the crew death process works in ship combat, based on in-game text and what I've found in the wiki.

1. Crew member takes damage equal to or greater than her max HP. Her HP is now zero, and she is (provisionally) "dead".
2. A death save takes place. If it fails, the character remains dead. Otherwise, she's now alive, and has a number of HP based on the ship's Medical Rating (MR). I'm not sure what the formula for number of HP is, but, if it's similar to those for Life Saver and similar Talents, it's probably 3 * MR plus some constant--since starting ships typically have an MR Of 0, I assume there's a constant added to that part.
3. If the death save fails, and Life Saver or a similar Talent is available, that triggers, and the character is now alive, with a number of HP equal to <skill> + 3 * MR.

It's possible #3 comes before #2--I'm really not sure. But my biggest point of confusion is your statement "but probably not restored to enough HP." "[E]nough HP" for what? Doesn't any number over 0 keep the character alive?

[Cory Trese]

Enough HP to survive the next hit [to the component they are in] during Ship Combat.

[MTKnife]

OK, thanks for the clarification. The thing is, in the first two combats (I don't remember the third), the ship only got hit 1-3 times (IIRC, one combat last one round, the other lasted two), so it seems unlikely that the same crew members got hit twice each combat, two (or even three) times in a row.

Anyway, one more question: if a character is saved by Life Saver, will that normally be the only entry in the Captain's Log, or will a "death" message also show up? If someone is saved and then dies from additional damage in the same ship combat, will the death message show up twice?

[Cory Trese]

Tested 1M runs, no log duping was detected.

[MTKnife]

Log duping?

[MTKnife]

Yay! Just had a Life Saver work during ship combat. So I'm guessing the other stuff was horrible coincidence.