Matrix Games Forums

I have to say, I’m rather disappointed with StarShatter. The concept of this is great and while I enjoy playing the game its constantly ruined by AI that crashes into it’s own ships and CTD’s.

Now, maybe I’m spoiled with the support given with HTTR and WITP, but still! Maybe I don’t know which username to search for, maybe I haven’t done my research, maybe there is some StarShatter meeting going. Who knows. Whatever the case, it seems, from reading these forums that other people are somewhat under whelmed by the AI and also plagued by CTD’s.

My apologies if I’m missing the thread with all the good info, but at this point I’m wondering – does Destroyer Studios know about this forum?

If your talking about the fighters crashing into the carrier, nope, you're not misssing anything...that question has been asked several times and is as yet unanswered.

If you're talking about capital ships running into each other when the use their quantum drives, well, I haven't actually asked about that yet. It's still frustrating though.

Destroyer Studios is just me. I've been in Indianapolis the past four days supporting Matrix Games and Starshatter at GenCon. Prior to that I was in-and-out of town on other business.

As far as support goes, CTD's have the highest priority, followed by AI bugs. The problem lies in being able to reproduce and diagnose them. I'm just not getting the CTD's on any of my machines, nor is anyone at Matrix. This is why it is imperative that you send me the errlog.txt file from your computer each time the game crashes. Those log files are the only chance I have of detecting the underlying problem unless I can actually reproduce it here under controlled conditions.

I haven't personally seen the fighter crashing problem since the 4.0.2 patch, but then I don't play as a carrier admiral as much as some people do. Can you describe in detail the type of scenario that is likely to exhibit this problem? Is the carrier moving or stationary? What kind of mission were the fighters engaged in when they crashed? Where they damaged or under attack at the time?

Thanks for your patience.

John,

Glad to see you got home safely. Hi everyone, GenCon was a success, we sold out of Starshatter during the morning of the last day. John also loaded up a few of the Battlestar mod ships and we tried out a quick mission with the Galactica defended by 2 Vipers and attacked by 20 Cylon Raiders. Great fun, good work to the modders.

We are now through our summer convention schedule, which taxed our staff to its limits. Support for Starshatter is ongoing and as John noted we need the help of folks still experiencing occasional crashes to keep sending in error logs and describing the situations involved. John is a gentleman and an excellent developer - as soon as he can reproduce these reports, he'll send us a patch and we'll release it to all of you. Hang in there and keep the lines of communication open. Thanks.

Regards,

- Erik

About the fighter crashs: Since I lack the rank for controlling CVs in a campaign I tried the single mission. I think most of the fighters that crashed were on some patrol or intercept mission but that doesn't say much since that is the most common mission type. The problem nearly evaporated when I let the ship run on navigation autopilot. Probably that is because the ship can hold a position very steady... when I use my Joystick - which sadly isn't in a very good shape any more - I always have a little moving and there are many crashes.

John,

Doesn't matter if you are a carrier commander or not. If the carrier moves the fighters continue to try to land and crash doing so. Go into any battle leading a cap ship. Radio the carrier to follow you and watch as it fails to recover fighters. I can repro that happening 100% of the time.

I would think it arguable it shouldn't recover while moving (it should be able to but at lest it could be a condition) but if that is the case it shouldn't allow fighters to try.

After the 4.0.2 patch the game has been very stable for me. I had some issues early on but I think it was related to my Norton anti-virus. I've since not had any CTD's. As far as the capitol ship merging as a result of Q-jump, I rather like the challenge of that. Q-jump is risky this way since you might rematerialize into another vessel. This encourages use of farcasters. I've found that as long as a space out the ships when jumping (i.e. give 30 sec between jumps) this seldom occurs. The biggest trouble I see is the fighters crashing on recovery. I lose about 30% of my fighters when I attempt to recover them even when fully stopped with zero pitch facing north. I finnished the game and I'm starting it over. Great game Millo!

question regarding AI fighters. Do they use thrusters to translate? Using thrusters I can land on a carrier moving any direction pitch/yaw/roll. I would imagine that AI pilots would be better at this sort of thing than I would be using keyboard/mouse...

Maybe thats why they crash? no thruster control...