It could be turrets are reloading but upon reloading do not return to firing due to an event not tripped. Drone flies into turret range => trips firing event. Turret runs out of ammo => trips reload. Reload done = > no drones have transitioned into range since they are already in range => turret does nothing. Unity is like Godot in which area shapes are used for events instead of constant scanning. So if nothing transitions into the detection shape cause its already inside then there isn't a response. I think this is also why doors get confused and don't close, the transition trigger event isn't received properly.
Thanks cb750 but thats not it. It only affects some turrets. On pull back a few KMs and go back no change. Another thing that shows up is, if there is only 4 turrets on a POI and no NPCs outside, all guns fire on the POI, slowly take down the shield then chew on the POI turret. One turret pops, 1 out of the 6 30mm guns on my ship stops. Second POI turret pops, another of my turrets stop. The remaining 4 continue abet longer time as I lost 2 turrets to pop the remaining POI turrets. If there are a number of NPCs out side the POI, good luck, my ships turrets often end up quitting before getting to the POI after popping off the NPCs. Now If I have say missile turrets in the mix, they happily continue. Seems to affect Plasma, artillery on HV and 30mm on CV. BA just doesn't bother at all on base attacks.
I'm trying different things. If I removed the plasmas and just used rockets, no issue. Put laser cannons on the front to take down the shields, all good. Put Plasma's back on, old issue back. Then put the HV out of alliance use and set to private, Plasma's worked fine. I'll run more tests over the next few days.
I saw a post somewhere else where the concept that the selections you made for each individual turret or group may be an issue as well. If you have X turrets scanning X targets for X devices it make sense that there may be some lag in response. I'm not sure exactly how frequently they are polling either. You could try narrowing you targets very finely for some testing if you haven't already. I'm playing two MP games atm. One Vanilla and another Project Eden and I haven't noticed an issue with the cannons or miniguns on my BAs. My CV turrets seem to be fine as well but I haven't engaged in heavy combat and only have cannon, minigun and rocket turrets (total of 7).
I don't mean to disagree with nor dismiss the claims that this is a big issue and one which has been around forever. If you guys say so, then I am confident that it is a real issue for some users, and it sounds like a significant number of users too. But for some reason, I have no recollection of it ever being an issue for me, and I've got like 2,834 hours in the game. Could just my own wetware is wearing out and I don't remember it happening even though it has. But assuming that is not the case . . . If nothing else, it suggests that it is something which does not happen universally in all sessions. Whether it happens more often on some types of hardware, or in sessions with certain settings, I could only speculate about. However, reflecting on @Scoob's comment about it seeming to occur more the longer a session goes on . . . THIS is something I have encountered often. Meaning: the various well-known and perennial glitches the game has suffered over the years (gigantism bug; honey I shrunk the kids bug; etc.) are MORE likely to occur if the session has been going on for 5 or 6 hours instead of only 2 or 3. So much so that I had long ago come to regard this application as "one of those applications that you should not run for too long" because glitches start to become more common and severe. Most likely this has to do with some sort of memory storage that is not getting properly emptied out as a session goes on longer and longer. Maybe Eleon are not aware of any of this. So, with all that said: a possible "best practice" which folks might consider if this or other glitches are proving to be troublesome, is to try to ascertain how long you seem to be able to play the game without glitches starting to appear. Then develop play habits that include creating manual saves prior to embarking on high-risk play where having a glitch ruin your day would be unforturnate. Say for example: save the game every two or three hours no matter what, and in particular if you are just about to raid a POI or are likely to get into a combat. Exit the game, reload and do the risky thing and then repeat a couple hours later.
For me, a "longer session" is usually a couple of hours. By that point I'll often start seeing various issues. Turrets can degrade in a matter of minutes after loading sometimes. I've not clue what's going on in the code to cause this. Sometime turrets might be acceptable for a decent length of time, other times not so much. However, turrets are NEVER good, and they've never responded quickly and consistently to a most targets. Turret degradation is such a major cause of frustration for me at times, taking damage / being killed purely because my turrets chose not to fire is a pain in the rear. I've run Empyrion on a variety of hardware, and the turret issue has been consistent throughout. My current specs for reference: 3900X 32GB DDR4 3600 GTX 1070 M.2 NVMe in RAID0 Windows 10 Pro While Empyion can sometimes push my aging GPU quite hard (I've turned off the real GPU hogs and it's fine then) it barely touches the CPU and takes advantage of multiple cores quite well it seems.
What I have found so far is... It seems to be a combination of targets and time. Filtering is not it. Ammo not it. Just time and targets. On a CV 1st to give out is Plasma, second is Artillery at a close second, I didn't bother with 30mm (edit: for this test as I have a ship with only 30mm) but they give up anyway after a time even when a ship only has 30mm, (edit) same HV Plasma and Arts. Tried with a Torvera, over 25 plasma, they started to peter out. Some still had ammo in them, they just stopped after a target was removed and did not reacquire the next target. Missiles solder on, they are the best that way but crap against shields, Missiles don't have this issues whether on CV or HV.
I have given up. Plasma is for losers (just a pun), arties less so but 30mm are equally affected as plasma. I'm putting on EMP cruise at 5 seconds for Eden reforged, as a backup for the plasma. Only need 1 or 2 launchers. Missile have been ultra reliable. At the end of the day, if you are using turret weapons other than missiles it's going to stop working after a time dependent of time and number of targets.
Since I ran a windows update 4 days ago. The issue with the turrets seems to be cured. Keeping an eye on it. But how odd is that? Game mechanics dependent on Microsoft dll's. That would be scary considering the issues found with MS issues re windows updates. Something enterprise admins battle with. Would it not be wise for a game engine to be reasonably dependent from windows? I would not think this is an Elion issue. Back in the old days you could run a game like an old UR tournament as a stand alone. This may well be a game engine issue?
That is odd. My PC is kept fully up to date, yet turrets remain somewhat unreliable for me. It would be interesting is there was some OS factor involved in this. However, that nothing in the OS changes when I get the issue, do a save / reload and all is well again for a short while. I have noticed that when I have turrets set to attack BA Turrets, they'll keep firing for several seconds after the target turret is destroyed. They'll then wait a short while before engaging the next target, effectively making the delay even worse.
Well Unity relies heavily on the .net framework, for one part, and any game engine is run by the OS, which is the one who decides to allow access to hardware drivers. The main reason why DOS games can't be run anymore in Windows without an emulator is that they had direct access to hardware and could cause hard crashes of the PC, so Windows took ownership of the whole system. Now games share resources with other software that may be running at the same time, like anti-virus, browsers, and all these mysterious processes with a number ID that keep popping back even when we kill them in Windows 10. In versions of windows prior to 10, users could easily disable processes unrelated to running a specific piece of software to make it run faster/ better, but windows 10 made that practically impossible to achieve. Tons of processes are simply gathering data about hardware/ software / performance & usage and sending it back to Microsoft "to improve user experience" while degrading it doing so. Just look in the task scheduler for a precise definition of all the garbage Windows runs on your system just to report home about what you're doing. Empyrion already has its own quirks, even opening a constructor has a delay, animation is stuck, switches and logic circuits are very flaky and unreliable, etc. For turrets, especially if players are running mods, they are already objects nested into other objects, nested into another object (turret weapon, child of turret block, child of ship or base, etc). These hierarchy levels are among the worst offenders when players start experiencing performance degradation in their game.
Having this issue as well. It's not just cv turrets but sentry turrets inside of poi's as well. Seems to depend on where you stand. You can be standing right in front of it but if you're at the edge of a block it won't fire at you. If you ever move a turret manually you'll see that turrets don't move smoothly. They have a blocky movement. You can literally stand in a spot that the turret can't align it self to shoot you. This is most easily noticed when using the multiturret while zoomed in
Everything you said here has happened to me in single player. It's been happening for years, and is one of the most annoying bugs. I've lost many HVs and Bases to turrets that either don't shoot or shoot slowly. About the only ones that seem to work properly are the projectile and sentry turrets on CVs that are parked on a planet. And even those don't always manage to function properly. But hey! We get some pretty water soon.
I noticed that too when playing with turrets zoom factor. The case gets worse with distance. Here I aim at a specific spot with a cannon turret, from 85 meters: I change my mouse motion to very slow to be able to move 1 increment to the left, when zoomed-in : Relative to a CV/BA block, this 2 small squares increment is almost as large as the player's width, as can be seen here (same small squares texture): When going back to 435 meters the step is huge. From the zoomed-in cannon turret : Now the reticle moved a whole block to the right, which means anything smaller than a CV/BA block can not be aimed at precisely, unless the structure holding the turret also moves/ turns a bit (not applicable for a BA/ POI). This may be a clue that "rotation" is not using very small floating point values when computing turret rotation, or simply they use integers (1 unit = 1 degree) to keep things quick, or they use a round-up function to keep floats from being too long. At least that's what it looks like from the player perspective. If the AI driven turrets have the same limitation, then it may mean that when they are not firing it's simply because they can't have a correct aim at the target, like what is shown up here. .
Wow, thanks Kassonnade. That makes a lot of sense. The windows update, that was not the fix. Still happening. It's a combination of time and large number of targets. Kassonnade's findings fits in with what I saw when the turrets stopped firing, on moving the vessel the turrets would jerk left and right as they try to target the target as the vessel changed vector or changed direction.
What I see initially is turrets not moving at all in response to targets. They're not pointing in the direction (or rough direction) of the target then not firing, rather they're not moving at all...until they do. However, they will often stop / pause firing when shooting at small targets - which is exactly what Kassonnade's observations cover. Indeed, I've posted on this very subject in the past regarding the lack of movement resolution on turrets, making hitting smaller items sometimes impossible. Even when engaging larger targets - such as Base Turrets - this can be a problem. For example, I have an Artillery HV I use to take out enemy Base Turrets at range. I sit at max weapon range, zoom in and aim manually myself. Sometimes I actually cannot hit the target without moving the HV slightly, due to the effect described. I move the turret left a bit, skip the target, move right a bit, skip the target again etc. When NOT in the turret myself, I've sometimes seen the artillery cannon "wobbling" left/right rapidly but not firing. This appears to be it "skipping" the target due to the low movement resolution. So, there are two issues that can be observed here. The first is the regular unreactive turret, where the turret totally ignores the target for some time, not moving and certainly not firing until it suddenly wakes up. This delay can easily be several seconds. The second observable issue here will see a turret point towards the target - perhaps after a slight delay - then perhaps not fire, or fire a couple of shots and stop. The aforementioned "wobbling" might also be observed. This is the classic turret movement resolution issue. I think the issue where turret aiming and firing is hugely delayed is by far the most obvious, and perhaps the most impactful in general vessel vs. POI (BA or PV) gameplay. The turret movement resolution issue is more subtle, and will impact defence vs. on-foot enemies more. Their range exaggerates the issue. Also, and this has been mention so many times now, there's another MAJOR impact on turret effectiveness, and that's where the player is standing. I parked my CV in a Zirax territory last night, there were LOADS of robots and troops surrounding me. My turrets could be seen firing on some enemies, but not on others, despite being well in range. With the CV not moving and many of the enemies not moving, my walking towards them saw my turrets start firing, moving away saw said firing stop. This seems to be particularly prevalent when the target is on-foot. As I moved away from my CV I could see it ignoring more and more of the enemies on-foot. They were still well within the range of the CV's turrets, easily, they were just ignored. Eventually they popped out of render range. However, several Drones closed in from the far side of my CV - much further away than the on-foot foes - and, surprisingly, the CV's Turrets were shooting at these - something that didn't use to happen. Player positioning can have such a huge impact on turrets that it can make observing what's going on totally mess with the results. One final thing regarding turret aiming delay. I've noticed that sometimes an unreactive turret will suddenly snap to a direction. I.e. the enemy (who's perfectly in range) is behind the turret's current aiming vector. The turret is unresponsive for several seconds, but then starts to slowly turn to face it. However, rather than continuing that slow turn - at the turret's rated turn speed - it will suddenly instantly snap to facing the target perfectly and open fire. This is often welcome, considering the initial firing delay, but certainly not right. As an aside, the advent of Shields did help lessen the impact of slow turrets. Now the player, in a suitably equipped vessel or Base, can soak up a few shots without structural damage. Of course, it's not the point though, as the Player's turrets should have taken out the target before it got in-range at all in many situations.
so they need 64bit floating point instead of integer. the thing is with the scale of this game and the distance and a small player object, the slightest deviation would be an issue.
I think absolute accuracy is not even needed for a turret to shoot, because targets usually change position constantly, and often put themselves into the right spot to get hit. The problem only arises when a target is stationary in the "blind spot" that a turret cannot pinpoint. If the problem is indeed what I described. A possible solution to this would be to have turrets shoot anyway even if the shot is a true "miss" and allow some projectile deviation ( bulletspread) for turrets, and this could result in a hit upon any random shot. Turret decision to shoot could then be when target is within X range of "perfect alignment with reticle" when no prediction algorythm is used (stationary target). There is no possibility for a player to know what the turret is really trying to do, but frustration arises from knowing that the turret is not shooting. So let the turret shoot, even if it "knows" it can't hit, but just allow a very slight random projectile variation to compensate for the turret's accuracy defect. I doubt that a player being missed by a few inches by a huge turret laser will stay in place if it is well known that any of the next shots can hit. Better to have the turret shooting constantly until target is dead, even if missing a few shots, than not firing at all because it can't get proper alignment, IMO.
Been running a test with the default scenario and with reforged eden. Both are behaving the same. Plasma is 1st affected. They just stop. No errors no logs. Reproducible? Hell yeah. I think is was Kassonnade that did work on this too and found issues re focusing. I wonder if the games AI is doing that? And after a bit the ability to target gets less granulated? Elion.. Please fix. It's really annoying. If the navy had guns like this you think they would sign contract renewals during a war? I hope I'm going to bite my tongue and say sorry when I found out Elion is already working on it.
Here's something of interest... I just continued a Reforged Eden save from v1.6 in V1.7 Experimental III. Right away, I noticed that the turrets on my CV are SUPER responsive and their RoF is far higher. Soon after loading the game, several Zirax Patrols spawned right next to my CV and the turrets appeared to open up instantly. They also have very little delay switching to the next target. All the while with the aforementioned RoF increase. Now, I suspect as Reforged Eden isn't updated for v1.6 yet of course, something has gone a little screwy. However, it's really interesting to see these super-responsive turrets. perhaps somehow tied to their increased RoF. Not done any testing, just what I've observed in the first few minutes of loading the save.
