Critical Weapon Damage - Bug?

[Osito]

At the outset, I should say that I'm not sure whether this is a bug or whether it's by design.

With 1.9.0.6, I've noticed that every now and again my attacks will do critical weapon damage, taking out maybe 80 components at once (and destroying the target instantly, if it doesn't have enough components to survive the hit). I'm not sure whether this happened pre-1.9.0.6.

It only seems to happen when the player is attacking. I've never seen it happen when being attacked by a computer player.

How to confirm my findings:
(1) Start a new game with level 7 tech, normal difficulty.
(2) Build an attack ship with one pulse blaster, and a a trace scanner, so you can keep track of the target's components
(3) Build a defender with no shields and about 500 units of standard armour (actually, the same thing will happen if you choose ultradense armour, but it might take longer).
(4) Put the attacker and defender next to each other, using the game editor, and change the race of the defender.
(5) Attack the defender, and observe its component status
(6) Before the target is anywhere near destroyed, you should see it occasionally (i.e. once every 50 or 60 hits) lose a vast number of components (e.g. 70 or 80) in one hit.

I can confirm that I have seen this effect with beam weapons, projectiles, missiles and torpedoes.

Osito

[elliotg]

Hi Osito

Thanks for the report. I was not able to reproduce this using the steps you outlined here.

Thanks
Elliot

[Osito]

Hi,

Thanks for trying to repeat it. It’s strange that you couldn’t reproduce the results, so I started a new game and tried to reproduce it myself, and couldn’t.

So I started another game and tried to reproduce it again, and this time I could. I have no idea why one game reproduced the problem and another didn’t; it’s clearly not a problem that occurs every single time, which may make it rather difficult to isolate. Anyway, I saved my second game and reloaded and I can still reproduce the error. I’ve tried 10 times now, and every time I can reproduce the problem with this save game.

I have therefore uploaded this game as “Critical Weapons Damage Test".

When you load the game you will have "Attacker 002" facing "Stout Scheme".

Attack Stout Scheme with Attacker 002, then target Stout Scheme to observe the damage. Within 100 hits or so, you should see the damage on Stout Scheme leap from around 10 up to 90+. This always happens for me by around 2100/02/18 at the latest. If you let it run as far as 2100/03/01 and you still don’t see it, then it’s probably not going to happen.

If you can’t reproduce the problem with this save game, let me know and I will try testing on another computer.

Osito