[#152][5.10 HF2] (477240) ARG Beam L turret seems to charge Xenon I shields - Fix in a future build.

[XelSirko]

@CBJ, I think I caught a pretty good example of this. Problem may be happening specifically when beams/lasers are hitting XL shield generators.

Got a bunch of Laser Towers (Mk2) deployed next to a gate to Xenon sector, and a "K" with shut off engines hanging right above them.

See how fully-kitted rattlesnake barely decreases shields on it - they immediately regenerate; then about 30-40 seconds in the video, all laser towers get disabled and you can immediately see the difference. I re-enable towers around 1:05 and you can see how shield starts regenerating at ridiculous pace again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=149HU8AIBRw

This is pure vanilla steam install, no mods.

Save: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kSJvU- ... sp=sharing

[SerthVarnee]

Yeah I can confirm having the exact same issue with the laser towers just supercharging Xenon K and I ships. Only those two ship classes are affected though and in 2 out of 14 cases this issue did not occur.
The laser towers (MK 2 if it makes a difference) do damage to subcomponents like medium shield generators, turrets and engines just fine. They also damage the hull just fine. But the instant the shield generates just 1% they boost the shield up as XelSirko's video demonstrates.

I'm not sure if the towers can damage the XL shield generators once the shield is down. Haven't had the chance to study that due to the Xenon not behaving themselves during the tests.

[Alan Phipps]

@ SerthVarnee: A link to a further vanilla save showing the issue happening would be of far more use to the devs than an unsupported 'me too' post. Please help them if you can.

[SerthVarnee]

A fair request, but while the mods I have installed are quite limited, there are still mods installed. Given the fact that one of those is used to make sure I don't get my epilepsy triggered by long range scanning, I'm not really too happy about playing long enough on an unmodded save to be able to upload it here.

[CBJ]

If you provide a save that has just that mod installed but no others, and indicate the reason when you upload it, we should still be able to use it.

[SerthVarnee]

Alrighty, will give that a go tomorrow then.

[SerthVarnee]

Okay, so I did a new game with only the mod named "Spherical Long Range Scan" enabled (said mod has been further tweaked to not just make the scan spherical, but also remove the scan pulse animation entirely when a scan is done by the player controlled ship)

I found and fought 2 separate Xenon K in the same sector and have been unable to reproduce the charging shield issue.
Anecdotally I can absolutely confirm it happening in my modded save, but that is obviously not useful from the dev point of view.

However! I did manage to catch some other weirdness going on:

First I came across a Xenon M that simply did not take shield damage from the 25 towers focusing on it.
It only lost a single percentage once in a while due to the hazardous region we were in.
Once it finally reached zero shields its hull was depleted in about 1-2 seconds.
Loading the save to confirm the bug resulted in the M getting damaged correctly and dying almost instantly while the game was still transitioning from loading screen to gameplay.


Second, and this is something I confirmed on both Xenon K, the laser towers cannot harm the K until the last M shield is destroyed. The XL shields will just calmly regenerate their shields at a normal rate, as if they weren't being shot at by 5-25 towers. Once you kill off that last M shield though, the XL shields will absolutely take damage.

Third, Some of the towers will fire continuously at the XL shield generators to no effect, others will shoot straight at the center mass of the ship to no effect and the rest will target specific modules and will hold their fire if their line of fire is blocked by the main body of the Xenon K. Since that K has either lost its engines or it just doesn't feel like turning around, this will lead to a whole cluster of turrets just painting the K or not shooting at all.

Example 1, first Xenon K
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kKoBsW ... sp=sharing

Example 2, second Xenon K
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pkB8h3 ... sp=sharing

Really annoyed that I couldn't reproduce the charging shield bug, but oh well. That's testing for you.

[j.harshaw]

Second, and this is something I confirmed on both Xenon K, the laser towers cannot harm the K until the last M shield is destroyed. The XL shields will just calmly regenerate their shields at a normal rate, as if they weren't being shot at by 5-25 towers. Once you kill off that last M shield though, the XL shields will absolutely take damage.

Note that the shields protecting the hull of the ship do not take damage when bullets hit surface elements such as M shield generators.

[SerthVarnee]

Right, but I'm talking about 25 towers being unable to damage the main shields at all until the 2-4 towers actually shooting at the M shield has managed to kill it.

[XelSirko]

Just doublechecking that my comment from a month ago was noticed (viewtopic.php?f=180&t=448029&start=15#p5138025)

The problem is very clearly visible on video and I provided the link to the save there as well: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kSJvU- ... sp=sharing
No mods were ever used with my installation of X4.
Please let me know if you had any trouble downloading the save or if there is a different process for uploading save for dev review other than posting it here. If I can help in any other way, e.g. provide HW spec or any other details - let me know as well.

[CBJ]

Bingo!

There have been many unsuccessful attempts by different people to provide us with a scenario demonstrating a problem with shield recharge, but you have broken the chain. Using your save, we were able to work out that under certain specific situations involving multiple beam weapons firing on the same target, the damage applied could end up being significantly reduced. Without knowledge of the underlying high recharge rate, this could make it look like the shields on some capital ships were being recharged instead of damaged (in fact the recharge was simply outpacing the damage).

This long-standing issue will now be fixed in a forthcoming update, so thank you for the extremely helpful report!