Bug Attached Entities stop taking damage after breaking off

[Benevolent27]

Hello there. I am posting this so I can link to it on the StarMade bug tracker and include images. I did a search for this issue and did not reveal any results. I found it difficult to search, since there were a LOT of unrelated results and I couldn't quite narrow it down, so it is quite possible there is a thread out there, but I feel I did my due diligence and could not find it.

So here is the issue.

I was testing a new ship design, which used only cannons for turrets, but had both cannons and missiles on the main ship weapons. I was in single-player creative mode. I put god mode on myself and then spawned in some custom pirates. These custom pirates had turrets and other attached entities. After firing at them for a while, I was able to put the main entities of each pirate into "overheating," but when their turrets and other entities came off, the cannons and missiles on the turrets and main ship stopped doing any damage to them. I could still see damage indicators, but no actual damage was being done.

So, I recreated a new world and tried the same experiment, with the same result. I tried restarting the game, and the entities were still impervious to damage.

Steps to reproduce the issue:
1. Start a new world in single player with creative mode on.
2. Create a ship with lots of cannon turrets with punch-through effect on.
3. Set god mode for yourself.
4. Spawn in pirate ships that have attached entities and turrets.
5. Attack the pirates with the cannon turret ship.
6. Ensure that some of the attached entities of the pirates are coming off during the attack.
7. Watch as the attached entities become impervious to all types of weapons fire, including cannons and missiles.

Here are some pictures:

Example Ship (overloaded with cannon turrets - every turret has 360 degree unobstructed movement):

Picture of a single turret:

Here is a detached entity that became invulnerable, and me attacking it with the main ship weapons only:

And here is a detached entity that became invulnerable, and me attacking it with both the turrets and the main ship weapons:

Here is a zoomed out Image of the entity while being attacked, that shows it is taking no block damage at all:

 

[Lancake]

We had something similar in the past, where certain or all entities stopped receiving damage. I believe that was fixed after restarting though, and that's not the case for you.

You said you still saw damage numbers, so your weapons still hit the entity? it didn't fly through it? And could you physically hit those invulnerable ships? Like bumping into them or did you fly through them as if they were thin air?
I suspect they were still physical otherwise you wouldn't be able to hit them but doesn't hurt to ask.

I'll check this out later myself, might be an issue with overheating and docked entities.

 

[Benevolent27]

We had something similar in the past, where certain or all entities stopped receiving damage. I believe that was fixed after restarting though, and that's not the case for you.

You said you still saw damage numbers, so your weapons still hit the entity? it didn't fly through it? And could you physically hit those invulnerable ships? Like bumping into them or did you fly through them as if they were thin air?
I suspect they were still physical otherwise you wouldn't be able to hit them but doesn't hurt to ask.

I'll check this out later myself, might be an issue with overheating and docked entities.

I am able to bump into them still. The weapons were actually hitting. I also had separate bugs during the same testing round, but I haven't isolated those bugs yet. They had to do with docked entities as well, but which were longer than 50m and still attached to the ship. Also had ghost entity type bugs. But for this one, the entities are very real.

 

[Lancake]

I am able to bump into them still. The weapons were actually hitting. I also had separate bugs during the same testing round, but I haven't isolated those bugs yet. They had to do with docked entities as well, but which were longer than 50m and still attached to the ship. Also had ghost entity type bugs. But for this one, the entities are very real.

Alright, sounds like that issue that some people have seen happening in SP for a while. Stuff becomes "invulnerable", triggered by some event (we had it before the overheating feature).
1 more question though, are they still invulnerable after restarting your SP? (not resetting the map, just shutting down your client and rebooting)

 

[Benevolent27]

Yes and no. When I was doing my testing, I restarted the game several times and it persisted originally. However, I just started my game and tried attacking entities and I was able to kill them all. This is strange, but one thing that changed is that I had removed some of the entities, including one that had gone into "ghost-mode." This is where I could fly through the ship and could not hit it.

I think to hone in on it a bit, I will need to try to replicate the issue with god mode on, god mode off, spawning in pirates, and simply spawning in entities (factioned and unfactioned). I may also need to replicate the ghosting bug (which occurred without my ship having any contact with the ship, upon the ship being spawned in). I will then need to try restarting the game a few times and rebooting the PC entirely.

Ah, bug hunting.

Unfortunately I cannot load the original world to test, because I had accidentally spawned in a bunch of 900k ships in a pirate wave, and my game crashes when I try to load that world. lol. I will let you know what I find out and whether I am or am not successful in replicating the bug again. I'm trying right now actually. This is very odd, i was able to replicate it before quite easily, but am having a bit of trouble now.
[DOUBLEPOST=1457986655,1457983847][/DOUBLEPOST]Ok, it took several tries but I was able to replicate something similar for 1 entity and then for 2 other entities. There were some slight differences to the two groups. This was in single player on creative mode with god mode on. This time there was another ghost entity occurrence. I had also crashed once trying to clear overheating entities and had to resort to using /destroy_entity_dock to clear out maybe 20 overheating entities.

Entity 1: I was able to keep targeting the entity, damage was showing as done, but no damage was being done. I was able to bump into the object, however it showed as "sticking," bouncing up and down rather than true movement. I restarted the game, and then the entity showed as overheating. Hmm..

Entity's 2 and 3: After restarting the game completely, 2 more entities showed up on my N screen. These were also invulnerable to both turret and main ship weapons fire. They also appeared to be "sticking." I restarted the game again, and this time I could attack and kill them both.

"We shall live forever!"

"Viva la revolution!"

And here is the ghost turret:

"Ooooooh oooh ooooh!"

I have created a few more waves and been unable to recreate the same exact situation. So far I have been unable to create the invulnerable detached entities that survived more than one restart, though I think the fact that restarting once allowed more entities to "show up" and be invulnerable, which then required a second restart to attack them is telling.

If I find anything else useful or am able to replicate the original issue exactly, I will let you know. I can tell you this though that it is common enough to be an issue.

 

[Benevolent27]

My Theory: I think that the entities that became invulnerable were not showing up on the N screen. When they are added to the N screen, something makes them invulnerable. That something is reset sometimes when the game is restarted, but not always. When I first ran into the issue, the same exact entities were invulnerable for at least 2 restarts, but on the 3rd or 4th restart, they became vulnerable again. This could be some kind of sync issue between the server and the client, and how damage is applied to that target.

I don't know if that makes sense to you, but based on my rudimentary understanding of java coding for games, I believe that might help pinpoint where in the code things are going wrong.

 

[Benevolent27]

Ok, one more recreation story:

1: I spawned in some pirates and killed em all. I used the /clear_overheating command, and boom, the turrets popped off one of the overheating ships and went ghost mode. I could target the ghosties on the N screen, but not kill or touch them. The cannons also were not shooting directly at the entities, but below them.

"Can't touch this!"

2: I restart the game. The ghosts materialized and I was able to shoot and kill them. But I noticed 2 new entities showed up.

3. So I fly over to them, and low and behold, these two entities were invulnerable. And they would dance when I tried to bump into them, rather than flying off into space. One had shields that would regenerate every 10 seconds (I timed it), and those shields immediately went down due to the cannon fire, but the blocks would not die. So, the hits seem to do actual damage to shields, but not the blocks themselves.

"I am the Omegatron!"

4: I restart the game again, and these two entities die quite easily.

"Goodbye Cruel World!"

Ok, I think I'm done testing this now. lol

 

[djthekiller]

i think the sync problem may just be either your computer lagging, or not fully using the processors too,

 

[Benevolent27]

i think the sync problem may just be either your computer lagging, or not fully using the processors too,

I don't know. It's on single player with modest graphics settings. The game had, I think 4 gb of RAM allocated, and I have a 3.1 quadcore phenom processor. I could reproduce the same result multiple times.

 

[djthekiller]

hrm, ive not experienced the breaking off of turrets myself eventhough i have shot them, but i probably havent shot a ship and overheated it when it had like 50 turrets on it, thats probably why