Topic: Reclamation (OP) Neutral Coop Report: Some Success (Read 2768 times)

jdmckinney · « **on:** April 18, 2003, 09:35:24 pm »

I'm going to start a running list of missions that appear to allow allied neutral coop. So far, I've found one good candidate, but will keep looking. Feel free to add your own to the list if you find you are able to reduce neutral hex DVs through coop on certain missions.

First one:

Courier Intercept

Tempest (as Romulan) drafted me (as Lyran) into this mission. We were able to drop the DV of a neutral asteroid hex, and actually flip it (to Lyran, oddly enough) by killing the courier and running. We'll have to try outright winning the mission next.

jdmckinney · « **Reply #1 on:** April 18, 2003, 11:17:28 pm »

OK, it's not as good as I had hoped. It turns out the cooping players have to all log out between missions to keep the DVs dropping each time. Otherwise, you just tread water.

Really, could this not get fixed by now? Oh well -- at least those who are really keen on coop can log out after missions to get it to work. So far it seems to work with Courier Intercept, and may work for most others. We'll keep trying missions.

jdmckinney · « **Reply #2 on:** April 18, 2003, 11:32:54 pm »

To clarify, you don't just have to log out; you have to reboot OP as well. It's getting late, so I'll have to wait to try more missions tomorrow.

FireSoul · « **Reply #3 on:** April 19, 2003, 12:48:45 am »

So I was right in my observation?

Cleaven · « **Reply #4 on:** April 19, 2003, 12:58:50 am »

I don't understand what re-booting between missions would achieve unless it has to do with reinitialising some local variables.

FireSoul · « **Reply #5 on:** April 19, 2003, 01:10:37 am »

Quote:

I don't understand what re-booting between missions would achieve unless it has to do with reinitialising some local variables.

It's called tracking down bugs we know little about..
.. I doubt the bugs are with the ED missions. .. so any information we can pass to Taldren could very well help them fix the problems in the next patch.

EmeraldEdge · « **Reply #6 on:** April 19, 2003, 04:47:03 am »

Doesn't this fall in line with the previously notion that neutral coop would work, but only for the first mission, after that nada? It's supposedly been that way since day one, but I wouldn't want to point it out, they don't like that.

FireSoul · « **Reply #7 on:** April 19, 2003, 05:48:03 am »

point it out again.
.. in fact.. give me the entire story and I'll post it.

EmeraldEdge · « **Reply #8 on:** April 19, 2003, 05:53:04 am »

Really not much to say. I believe it's been posted a few times. The standing buzz is that you can effect OP hexes in neutral coop, but only on the first mission. After that you get no effect when you coop. First mission only. I haven't bothered to check this out in a long time, but I do know it seemed to be that way a long time ago, although I never put in a lot of time tracking it down specifically.

Cleaven · « **Reply #9 on:** April 19, 2003, 07:32:15 am »

Hmmm, and I thought that meant the first mission in the hex would work, and that all other missions would fail, by anybody. This implies though that you could run a second mission with different players and it would work for them. I don't think this is the case, but it sure is screwy.

EmeraldEdge · « **Reply #10 on:** April 19, 2003, 07:45:49 am »

Hmmm, duh I didn't think of the "first mission in hex" (as you said, that was the thinking before now) thing and just focused on the "first mission" period, but like I said I hadn't tested it in a long time because there was never a fix for it so... Maybe it's the first mission you do in a hex, lower 3 or 4 hexes and you can shut down, start up again and then lower the 3 or 4 hexes by one mission yet again? Who knows, we'll have to test more I guess.

Or, perhaps the recent changes have altered the neutral coop situation, without fixing it?

jdmckinney · « **Reply #11 on:** April 19, 2003, 09:13:26 am »

I'm going on right now and will be on and off throughout the day. If anyone feels like helping me try different things, feel free to come out and play.

FPF_TraceyG · « **Reply #12 on:** April 19, 2003, 12:00:50 pm »

To the best of my knowledge, the neutral coop problem behaves exactly the same way in EAW as well, that is, if it's the first time both the drafting and drafted player(s) are taking a neutral coop mission, then the DV updates correctly (well, it shifts downwards regardless of mission success). After that, it doesnt work anymore. I don't know if shutting down the game has the same effect as in OP, that is, you get your one neutral coop success again. There are local variables stored by the client which may have something to do with it. When you first log into a campaign, the map terrain does not show bases or planets unless you have moved within 1 hex of them. As you move around, they appear on the map and remain. If you log off the server and re-log into the server without shutting down the game, the map still shows all the bases and planets you moved past on your previous. If you shutdown the game completely, this information lost. This tends to suggest that map data is being held in a buffer somewhere, and may or may not be related to neutral coop working the first time. The fact that it does work at least once though, also tends to suggest that its not a server problem nor a mission scripting problem, but a client bug, although not necessarily. The only true way to debug the problem is to see exactly what data is being returned regarding mission results, and how that is processed by the server. That of course would require access to the code, but that's the first place where I would look.

jdmckinney · « **Reply #13 on:** April 19, 2003, 01:37:34 pm »

So far it seems inconsistent. It appears to work in hexes that have not had a coop run in them before, but then Tempest and I ran our first mission today in an untouched hex and had no effect. We seem to be able to affect a hex once most of the time, though. Next we'll try hitting successive hexes between reboots.

I pretty much guessed the same thing about the map data being stored per session. I wonder if there's a tag on each player account that has a side-effect of canceling neutral coop.

FireSoul · « **Reply #14 on:** April 19, 2003, 06:03:43 pm »

I have passed along the above 2 posts as quotes within a thread I have started in the testers forums weeks ago called "SFC:OP 2538 bug: Neutral Coop Bug".

-- Luc

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