Doubt with tow

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2545 days, 6 hours, 16 minutes ago

Doubt with tow

Hi, I'm playing with privateer and I don't understand a situation

There's a Automa (#45) towing another Automa (#125) to 35 light years and warp 9And I try to tow the Automa (#125) with a Meteor (#405) to 92 light years and warp 9

But I didn't obtain the tow and I receive this message:Unable to lock tractor beam on AUTOMA (#125). They moved away before we could tow them

I supose the TOW is by order of IDs. But I remember the formula of DISTANCE * WARP to broke the TOW. Can anyone confirm that the unique option to broke a tow is it by ID?

Thanks

2545 days, 1 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Towing is as you said in order of Id. He had the lower Id and towed the #125 away before you could get a lock on it.
A tow can only be broken (in the way you mean it) by the towee. If #125 had a waypoint more than 81 lys and warp 9, the tow lock would have been broken.

2544 days, 22 hours, 45 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Doubt with tow

If the Robot is clever you can't tow one of the two Automas unless you have a tower with ID < 45. Automa 45 will successfully tow Automa 125 every turn so both ships are away at the time a ship with ID > 45 tries to tow one of them. Warp factor and travelling distance of the towing Automa don't matter as long as they are sufficent to tow the other Automa. Also your gravetronic advantage doesn't matter in this case.

2544 days, 20 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Thanks for the answers

This turn I tow the automa #45 with the meteor #405 and it works !!! (I don't know if there was a tow between automa #45 and #125)

In other way, in Phost 4.1e the tow was in relation with the distance, gravitonic, num of engines ...

Tow_strength = Engine_contribution + Movement_contribution (... more info in help)

2543 days, 21 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

PHost is a bit different, didn't realize the towing mechanics where that different though, definitely a more realist approach.

But yes, in this version of the game, as in THost, its all about the IDs, which is why for the PRivy's, those low ID MBRs and BR4/5s are VERY VERY valuable.

As are the high IDs for cloak intercepts.

I would personally love to see a PHost version of NU Planets, I really enjoyed that version of the game the most, it had hte best features.

2543 days, 18 hours, 6 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Doubt with tow

Now I have also a question: Does a ship with tow mission whose tow target got invalid (because it's gone - broke the tow or towed away by a ship with lower ID) still counts as towing ship and therefore moves in the phase "towing ships move"?

2543 days, 17 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Does it matter?

I mean, I'm seriously asking, I haven't really thought it out.

2543 days, 6 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

If you can prevent being towed (by the Priv), it does matter. Don't know whether it works...

2543 days, 0 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Ah ok, I see what you are saying.

Based on this I think it would not work, you must SUCCESSFULLY tow in order to move during that phase:

The "try to tow" mission is executed in order of ship ID. So if multiple ships at the same location are attempting to tow, host.exe starts wit the lowest ID-ship present. It checks if it can successfully tow it's target following the rules above. If successful, tower and target will move away. After moving these two ships, the Host program checks if they are influenced by a warpwell. After that, the Host program moves to the next lowest ID-ship and the process is repeated.

This means:

A ship that tries to tow another ship can be towed away before it even gets to try and tow, by a ship with a lower ID.
A low-ID ship can easily escape being towed altogether by towing a (friendly) ship that does not break the towbeam. This way, the ship moves away before anyone else can even try to tow it.

2543 days, 0 hours, 2 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Doubt with tow

Capnkill, I made a different experience. That's why I asked. Here is what happened - a little bit simplified.

Situation

4 ships at one planet (I'm race A so I don't know exactly what ship 300 did):

Ship 100 (race A, cloaked) towing ship 200 with warp 9.
Ship 200 (race B) sitting with warp 0.
Ship 300 (race B) flying 30 LJ with warp 9, very likely also towing ship 200.
Ship 400 (race A, cloaked) towing ship 300 with warp 9 for 5 LJ.
All ships had plenty of fuel.
None of the ships had gravetronic engines.

Result

Ship 200 was towed by ship 100. Ok, this was expected.
Ship 300 broke the tow of ship 400. This was not expected because it flew only 30 LJ. According to the docs the towee needs to fly with w9 and > 81 LJ to break a w9-tow.

Possible explanations

There is a minimal distance for a successful tow which is greater than 5 LJ. I searched at Donovan's but didn't find anything.
Ship 300 was also trying to tow ship 200. It was not successful but still moved when all towing ships move. So it was away when ship 400 tried to tow it.

I'm sure I overlooked something completly trivial. :)

2542 days, 23 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Was ship 300 MBR or BR4/5?

2542 days, 23 hours, 4 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Doubt with tow

No. I added this to the descpriction of the situation.
But this shouldn't matter because the warp factor is only doubled for gravetronic towers not for gravetronic towees (Donovan).

2542 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Hmmm.. did not know that, so you are saying that an MBR traveling a distance of 81 lyrs at warp 9 cannot escape tow?

Learn something new everyday :)

But anyway, there could be a bug in your scenario, since Ship 300 should not have escaped tow, since it clearly failed to tow ship 200 if that is even what it was trying to do.

I would ask your opponent if that is what he was trying to do, and then I'd report this immediately, but perhaps run a quick test in a 1 on 1 game just to confirm.

The minimal distance thing I've never heard of, I've towed ships 1 lyr into the warpwell without any issues.

I think the only plausible scenario is that Ship 300 successfully towed a cloaked ship that you cannot see... only thing I can think of.

2542 days, 22 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

The id 300 ship had fuel after the travel? What was his warpfactor? Any minefield present? His waypoint was visible?

I have a theory but I need you to answer my question to be sure. Regards,

Nite

2542 days, 20 hours, 54 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Doubt with tow

Hi Nitemare,

ship 300 traveled exactly 27 LJ to another planet of mine. I destroyed it on arrival so I don't know it's warp factor or it's mass. Before it always travelled with warp 9 and it's tank was full the turn before. But ship 300 (Cobol) could have transferred most of it's fuel to ship 200 (Virgo). I don't know this either because ship 300 was also destroyed immidiatly at the location I towed it to.

There were no minefields present and ship 300 didn't get a hit. Good idea anyway. If it's waypoint was > 81 LJ but it then was slowed down by a mine hit this could have been an explanation.

I think I know your other idea. Also a very good one. Ship 300 could have set a waypoint > 81 LJ but had only fuel for 27 LJ. So it could break the tow despite of travelling only a short distance. That's a new trick to me ... I love this game. But in this case it doesn't work because even a Cobol with full cargo room needs less than 20 KT to fly 27 LJ. And a ship with less than 25 KT fuel isn't able to break a tow (Donovan).

So if my guesses were right your two clever ideas are no explanation candidates for this case. Or?

2542 days, 20 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

He's towing a cloaker!! I WIN!!! WOOOT!!

Oh.. well unlikely I know, but would solve your problem :)

2542 days, 20 hours, 9 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Doubt with tow

Yeah, Capnkill, that would be a possible solution!

It's unlikly but not impossible as this Colonial may own a single MBR. I'll ask my opponent soon. This or next turn he won't say I guess.

Edit: I have a Loki near the target coordinates of the Cobol and there is no cloaker visible now. Ok, it could be a Fed/Lizard/Bird cloaker which the Cobol is towing since 4 turns. I never thought that my little question would reveal that a Darkwing is in orbit of my planet :)

2542 days, 19 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Mmm! My to options are gone. The cloaked ship sounds like the best option without entering the bug world.

Re reading your comments emork I remembered a bug report and looked for it. You are right, ships that are set to tow move in the tow movement phase although they lost their towing target.It was commented some time ago and still not fixed in a bug report, not fixed either, that I reported regarding breaking tow. You can read about it here:

http://planets.uservoice.com/forums/136520-general/suggestions/2760491-bug-lower-id-ships-can-break-tow-no-matter-his-w

So my last question is, what message did you have about the tow failure? Does it says that you were overpowered or that the ship moved away?

Regards

Nite

2542 days, 19 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Your welcome ;)

Seriously though I think its a bug as you suspected... broken tow is still treated as part of tow movement, you should verify it in a 1 on 1 game.

2542 days, 19 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Oh nice find Nitemare.

IMO this is a very serious bug that needs to be addressed ASAP>

2542 days, 18 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

I looked at this a long time ago when you posted it nitemare, but I didn't really understand it until now. I think this is indeed happening, it still moves during the tow phase, but actually should move during the regular movement phase when it fails. I'll have a look and see how hard that is to fix.

2542 days, 18 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

Nice Joshua, hopefully it won't be too hard to fix. I'm Spanish speaker so my post are not as clearly explained as I would like but I'm doing my best.

Emork mystery solved! ;D

Nite

2542 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Doubt with tow

And the solution wasn't a hidden Darkwing, hurray!

I'm glad to help identifying this bug. Thanks for contributing so much, Nitemare and Capnkill.
Joshua, I link Nitemare's bug report to this discussion - just in case this bug can't be fixed now.

Edit: Nitemare, to answer your question, here is the message I got. Good hint, I forgot to look it up.

From: Hisser ID#xxx
Unable to lock tractor beam on COBOL CLASS RESEARCH CRUISER ID#xxx. They moved away before we could tow them.

2542 days, 0 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Doubt with tow

No no, you don't know this for sure!! You can still have a FLEET of hidden DKwings right there, you just don't know, never know, dirty birds, everywhere!!