50 Nightly - ASF/DS Low Atmo Insanity

[Thom293]

I dont even know how to describe what is happening really.

Princess v Princess. My DS takes some kind of crit around turn 13 and starts losing elevation.

It then stays in the same hex and loses elevation for most (but not all) of the next 20 rounds. It stops shooting for most (but not all) of the next 20 rounds. Enemy aircraft fly in the exact same circle for the next 20 rounds and stop shooting for most of them too. Hand drawn cirrcle of enemy ASF path for 20 rounds.

I guess my DS is falling out of the sky? Not sure. Maybe this is intended behavior? No idea. Never seen it before.

ThomCustoms8.28.24.zip

FallingLogs.zip
Falling.sav.gz

Player names are Celcius 233 or c233.

[gsparks3]

Was the DS bot-controlled? (Yes it was, per the original post)

Turn 13 makes sense, the DS takes a large amount of total damage, fails its end-of-round control roll, goes out of control and loses 1d6 Altitude (in this case 2). An out-of-control spheroid DS will be unable to expend thrust, so it cannot Hover or Go Up and will lose 1 elevation per turn due to being at 0 Velocity, which happens as expected in the movement phase of Turn 14. All normal so far, and it regains control at the end of Turn 14.

Reading through the game log, the serious weirdness starts in Turn 18, where it loses elevation from ... voluntarily choosing not to Hover, Go Up, or Go Down? It doesn't appear to have lost control, in any case, but it still shows the "Loses elevation!" text in the round report, indicating that it is stalled out and did not choose either of those three options. This happens again on Turn 19 and Turn 21 (but not Turn 20?). Turn 21 it gets splatted by a Mosquito Radar Plane dumping its external ordnance, fails another end-of-round Control Roll and loses 1 Altitude. Loses Altitude and takes more damage turn 22, fails the damage control roll, but it's already out of control, and then it makes its roll to regain control immediately afterwards (still on turn 22). Turn 23 is normal, Turn 24 it's back to voluntarily losing elevation again. Turn 25 is normal, Turn 26 it loses elevation again. Turn 28 is normal, Turn 29 it loses elevation again - seems to be a pattern? Elevation loss: 30 no, 31 yes, 32 ... also yes, whoops, broke the pattern there, 33 no, 34 yes, 35 yes, 36 no, 37 yes, 38 yes and the log ends there.

Very strange.

If that last picture is from the end of the fight, it does seem that it was using Go Up on the turns it wasn't voluntarily falling, since we see it still at Altitude 8. The positions of the fighters are oddly reminiscent of #3429.

[Thom293]

Yes. DS is bot controlled.

Thank you for summary. And I'm not familiar enough with ASF to make any lucid guess as to whether any of things are ok.

I guess 10,000 foot (har har) concerns would be: 1) why you no fly, Princess? And 2) it would be nice if the Enemy ASF were smart enough to finish off the flailing/falling/failing DS. But as with most Princess things that's probably a huge task and not urgent.

[Thom293]

And on the other Bug you linked - yeah she did the odd positioning like that a lot throughout the battle - even when it was a normal fight.

I'm guess but it could be that she values "putting a strong armor facing" toward the enemy than doing damage. It's sort of like what Testbot (or maybe old princess) used to do a long time ago where he would face almost his back arc toward the enemy often. I assumed it was armor related but just a guess.