Help debugging focus blast

[TomastheTankEngine]

Hello All,

I am trying to debug the issue with the Zoanthrope's focus blast not working on transports. I have done some tests with Lag and it seems that 1 out of 10 times it will hit and stick. I will be writing some code over the weekend to help debug this but I need some input from player experiences to focus my efforts. I am trying to isolate the problem down to either the focus blast or the transports.

There are three possibilities:
- there is a problem with focus blast.
- there is a problem with transports.
- there is a problem with the transports and the focus blast

To help me figure this out could players let me know of issues with either the focus blast or transports.

As far as I am aware focus blast works every time as expected unless used on loaded transports. Are there any other conditions where focus blast doesn't work as expected?

Lulgrim has informed me that the Eldar Falcon has an issue targeting loaded transports. I don't play Eldar very often so that leave some questions for me.

- Does the Falcon AV weapon only fire on vehicles or will it fire on non vehicles also?
- Will it fire on transports with out units loaded?

Another question
- Do any other AV weapons or AV abilities have issues targeting loaded transports?

Any information would help...

Many thanks
ThomasTheTankEngine

[Ace of Swords]

About the falcon, i have run many tests months ago about it, i belive all of his weapons fire all the time.

What i know for sure is the fact that the AV damage of the falcon won't work on a loaded chimera, and probably it doesn't work with other loaded transports.

For the rest when the chimera is unloaded it will take full damage from the falcon.

Another question
- Do any other AV weapons or AV abilities have issues targeting loaded transports?

As far as i know everything works fine, meltas/plasma cannons/venom broods/las cannons, everything seems to be working as intended.

[FiSH]

I have no idea if this information helps at all, but I believe falcon can ground attack.
Good luck with debugging and your help is appreciated!

[Dark Riku]

- Does the Falcon AV weapon only fire on vehicles?

It also fires on non-vehicle units.

- Will it fire on transports with out units loaded?

Yes.

- Do any other AV weapons or AV abilities have issues targeting loaded transports?

No.

[Lulgrim]

I have no idea if this information helps at all, but I believe falcon can ground attack.

Hmm! I can't think of another weapon with snare effect and ground attack. Sounds weird but better test what happens when it's disabled.

[TomastheTankEngine]

Does the Falcon AV weapon fire on the loaded transport but do no damage?

Would test these things myself but it really hard to get the AI to play along.

[Lulgrim]

IIRC that's what it does, I remember Eldar players complaining about Falcon pulse lazor doing 0 damage to transports back in the days of Project L2P.

For labbing things, pop into the Elite chat room and get an assistant to do it with you, or ask people to pair up and do it for you.

[TomastheTankEngine]

IIRC that's what it does, I remember Eldar players complaining about Falcon pulse lazor doing 0 damage to transports back in the days of Project L2P.

hmmm... That is fitting with my theory about targetting issues. I will explain my thoery in detail in the next post.

For labbing things, pop into the Elite chat room and get an assistant to do it with you, or ask people to pair up and do it for you.

Yeah, I am doing tests with Lag and my brother when possible on villina Elite. The problem is I am adding debugging information to the code and that requires the person that I am testing with to have the same changes.

I will try setup a server with my changes. Hopefully this will allow anyone with Cope's toolbox to quickly download the changes and help me test.

[Lulgrim]

Why do they need Cope? Can't you just send your modified attrib/scar folders?

[TomastheTankEngine]

Why do they need Cope? Can't you just send your modified attrib/scar folders?

Yes could do, but wouldn't that mean the person downloading the changes would have to overwrite their current Elite install with the changes?

[Lulgrim]

Just make a copy with vanilla 2.1 files and another with your modded files, name one to ELITE and the other to SEKRET_PR0N_FOLDER and rename to swap...

[TomastheTankEngine]

Just make a copy with vanilla 2.1 files and another with your modded files, name one to ELITE and the other to SEKRET_PR0N_FOLDER and rename to swap...

Ah that is a good idea. Thanks, I will let any testers know.

[Lulgrim]

Make sure they spell sekret pr0n folder correctly to avoid bugs/unexpected behavior.

[Dark Riku]

I have no idea if this information helps at all, but I believe falcon can ground attack.

Hmm! I can't think of another weapon with snare effect and ground attack. Sounds weird but better test what happens when it's disabled.

Falcon doesn't snare :p

[Lulgrim]

Emperor's arse-plate... I have been luled :-|

[Nuclear Arbitor]

if it snared it might be worth 90 power!

[Kvek]

if it snared it might be worth 90 power!

no moar snares for gaydar plz

[Asmon]

My Falcons snare, but I never need it.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

cheater. no chapters for special variations; eldar share the goodies.

[Lag]

My Falcons snare, but I never need it.

[TomastheTankEngine]

Testing report thus far:

My brother (Bob the Builder) and I have done some testing over the weekend. We might be able to fix the focus blast, or at the very least make the odds at hitting loaded transports much more favourable. The bad news is that the problem is a lot worse then we first thought. It is not only the Falcon which suffers reduced damage on loaded transports but entire weapon groups. We tested the following weapons and have found that they suffer damage loss against a loaded transport: Plasma, venom, melta and piercing damage. If I'm not mistaken, these are all burst damage weapons types.

The units we tested where Fire Dragons, Dark Repears, Falcon, Shuriken Platform and bright lance (platform and Wraith Lord). All suffered (except brightlance) reduced damage against loaded transport, with the more units loaded the lower the damage. We expect that all units using the same weapon types will suffer from this problem.

As an additional test, we gave the falcon pulse laser a tiny splash, and found the damage against a loaded transport was significantly better.

There are two possible reasons that we can think of that may be causing this issue; stacking cover bonuses or decreased accuracy. It is unlikely to be stacking cover bonuses as standard AV weapons (eg brightlance) are not effected. Our current guess is that burst weapons have reduced accuracy versus loaded transports due to the mob damage distribution mechanic. This mechanic tries to spread the damage over the mob scatter area. The same effect can be seen when placing units very close to a transport and targeting the transport with say a Falcon. The more units closer to the transport the less damage the transport takes while other units soak up damage. We suspect the mob mechanic is trying to share the damage with loaded transport units (the game must consider them as present with the transport) but because the units get perfect cover they don't take damage, i.e they are absorbing the damage with without taking any.
Adding splash to pulse laser negated this by ensuring that all units where hit.

If our idea is correct, then how do we go about fixing this? Ideally we try could try remove the mob factor from loaded units. I will take a closer look into how load/unload behaviour works and whether the events can be intercepted or modifiers can be applied to loaded units.

The other way is modify the weapons directly. This is not ideal cause the basically be changing the nature of the weapons. I suggest this only be done for the Focus Blast as it is targeted ability which rarely used on anything besides vehicle. By making the Focus blast similar a to brightlance, it may prove to be more accurate versus loaded transports.

Further testing to be done.

[Ace of Swords]

we gave the falcon pulse laser a tiny splash

Be careful with that, in the past it happened that units inside transports would die by AoE.

[TomastheTankEngine]

Be careful with that, in the past it happened that units inside transports would die by AoE.

This is one of concerns of changing weapons in order to try hack the problem. We would rather fix the bug that is causing the problem. We only changed the AoE for testing.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

the other issue is that hitscan AV weapons don't generally miss by more than the splash range, resulting in av weapons such as the laspred being very effective against infantry as well as vehicles.

do you know how the units inside the transport are preventing the damage? is it 100% damage reduction or true invulnerability. if it's the former, giving them the later and giving av weapons splash should prevent them from receiving damage. you may be able to test it by casting an ability that increases damage for a time such as doom, loading the unit into a transport, and then firing at it with an aoe weapon. i know that damage modifiers are additive or multiplicative, which is why bloodletters, with their 100% damage immunity ability, can still receive damage if doom or a similar ability is cast on them.

[Lulgrim]

Plasma, venom, melta and piercing damage

Are you discussing damage types or weapon families? They sound like damage types, but "weapon group" is a bit ambiguous.

If I'm not mistaken, these are all burst damage weapons types.

The term makes no sense, burst firing patterns are not related to weapon family or damage type. They are set for each weapon individually. Some melta weapons fire bursts (fusion gun) and some fire single shots (TM melta gun), for instance. And how about melta bombs?

The units we tested where Fire Dragons, Dark Repears, Falcon, Shuriken Platform and bright lance (platform and Wraith Lord).

All the others (except the brightlances) are burst weapons, yes. And what do you know, Focused Warp Blast also has burst definitions...

Here some data about the weapon families -> damage types mentioned; the garrison occupant behavior also varies but I think the burst mechanic is the culprit anyway:
http://www.dawnofwar.info/elite/weaponf ... ?fam=melta
http://www.dawnofwar.info/elite/weaponf ... plasma_pvp
http://www.dawnofwar.info/elite/weaponf ... cannon_pvp (for the pulse laser)
http://www.dawnofwar.info/elite/weaponf ... bolter_pvp
http://www.dawnofwar.info/elite/weaponf ... tlance_pvp

If our idea is correct, then how do we go about fixing this? Ideally we try could try remove the mob factor from loaded units. I will take a closer look into how load/unload behaviour works and whether the events can be intercepted or modifiers can be applied to loaded units.

If you can do that, cool.

The other way is modify the weapons directly. This is not ideal cause the basically be changing the nature of the weapons. I suggest this only be done for the Focus Blast as it is targeted ability which rarely used on anything besides vehicle. By making the Focus blast similar a to brightlance, it may prove to be more accurate versus loaded transports.

We'll just change them from burst to single-shot functionality then. For piercing/suppression it is pointless as they do almost 0 damage to vehicles anyway. Changing fusion guns to single shot (like TM) is no problem IMO. Focused Warp Blast is a single-shot ability and there is no reason for it having burst numbers anyway.

Falcon pulse laser is a bit tricky as it has both AV and AI functionality and probably shouldn't take huge chunks of health off Tacs and the like with single shots... but we can tweak the firing pattern suitably (actually GK storm bolters use a single-shot mechanic instead of burst).

[Nuclear Arbitor]

pulse laser hits small and medium with .5625 accuracy and only does 28 damage; it's not going to do much to tacs. it's also venom cannon which means that it does full damage to everything.

[Lulgrim]

34.6 DPS before accuracy adjustment, 19.5 after... it's not epic but not much different from what a Tac squad does to another Tac squad either. But my point is that the damage is applied over bursts.

Now if I just changed it straight into single-shot without tweaking firing pattern, it would be 98 DPS against Tacs before accuracy, 55 DPS after... see how that might affect Falcon balance?

[dance commander]

Add KCSM AC melta pistol to the list, it goes full retard against tranports with troops inside.

[Nuclear Arbitor]

34.6 DPS before accuracy adjustment, 19.5 after... it's not epic but not much different from what a Tac squad does to another Tac squad either. But my point is that the damage is applied over bursts.

Now if I just changed it straight into single-shot without tweaking firing pattern, it would be 98 DPS against Tacs before accuracy, 55 DPS after... see how that might affect Falcon balance?

no

i assumed you would keep the damage the same though


slightly different, but: is burst visual or does the weapon deal it's dps each burst with a different chance to hit?

[Lulgrim]

The damage is applied over the burst duration... so if I leave the base damage as-is, it will just be applied instantly, followed by the next shot etc. etc. which results in DPS going up quite a bit. Hence changing the weapon to single-shot requires tweaking the fire rate/cooldown and base damage to keep the DPS about same as before.