Author Topic: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered  (Read 5838 times)

Offline Align

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 196
    • View Profile
Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« on: February 03, 2015, 06:39:09 pm »
So I'm fiddling with balancing the game by requiring more interrogations to progress, and wanted to get a Snakeman Soldier captive for plasma rifles -> craft plasma beam, but bumped into a weird bug.

In the attached save, a snakeman soldier and a navigator lie stunned. Ending the mission gives score for 2 live aliens, and there's no message of dying to lack of containment, plus there's at least 3 spare slots in it anyway, yet with the attached mod active no Snakeman Soldier is in the base! The navigator is correctly recovered, but not the soldier. With the mod off, this bug doesn't happen.

What could possibly cause this? I haven't touched the captives or corpses in the items part of the ruleset, or anywhere except research:
Code: [Select]
  - name: STR_SNAKEMAN_AUTOPSY
    unlocks:
      - STR_ALIEN_BIOLOGY
  - name: STR_SNAKEMAN
  - name: STR_SNAKEMAN_SOLDIER
    dependencies:
      - STR_SNAKEMAN_AUTOPSY
    unlocks:
      - STR_PLASMA_PISTOL
      - STR_PLASMA_RIFLE
  - name: STR_SNAKEMAN_ENGINEER
    dependencies:
      - STR_SNAKEMAN_AUTOPSY
    unlocks:
      - STR_ENGINEER_INTERROGATED
  - name: STR_SNAKEMAN_NAVIGATOR
    dependencies:
      - STR_SNAKEMAN_AUTOPSY
    unlocks:
      - STR_NAVIGATOR_INTERROGATED
(I thought it might be the empty "- name: STR_SNAKEMAN" definition and tried removing that, but that had no effect)

EDIT: Discovered that removing the dependency on autopsy causes the soldier to be captured properly, but why the heck would that happen for the soldier only?
EDIT2: Discovered that with the bug happening, the Soldier is killed - there's one more Snakeman corpse in the base than without the bug.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2015, 07:51:35 pm by Align »

Offline jackstraw2323

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 206
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2015, 06:22:28 pm »
Are you using 1.0 or the nightlies? I'm running into similar issues with stunned aliens producing corpses.

Offline Align

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 196
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2015, 10:15:01 pm »
Nightly, but not the most recent:
openxcom_git_master_2015_01_23_1405
Though, it does correctly show it as Snakeman Soldier, not as a Corpse when standing over it, so it's not exactly the same as what you described in the other thread.

Offline SupSuper

  • Lazy Developer
  • Administrator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2160
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2015, 01:26:42 pm »
Live aliens are only stored if they still have some research value.

Offline yrizoud

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1014
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2015, 04:16:40 pm »
? I thought this (player-friendly) restriction was in research screen. ie. Storage still happened, and for example if you had "live alien sale" option, you could sell the excess sectoid soldiers.

Offline Align

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 196
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #5 on: February 05, 2015, 05:37:35 pm »
Live aliens are only stored if they still have some research value.
But why would the dependencies cause the issue? If it was the unlocks, that would fit, though I was indeed hoping to sell the live soldier for more than a corpse...

Offline redv

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 335
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #6 on: February 05, 2015, 07:36:53 pm »
But why would the dependencies cause the issue? If it was the unlocks, that would fit, though I was indeed hoping to sell the live soldier for more than a corpse...

No dependencies. You cannot change this behavior via settings. This behavior hardcoded.
If you use the "Live alien sale" option, then this aliens will be sold automatically.

It is a good example of a bad optimization:)

Offline Align

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 196
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #7 on: February 05, 2015, 07:42:18 pm »
No dependencies. You cannot change this behavior via settings. This behavior hardcoded.
But it does change if I have/don't have dependencies for the snakeman soldier research. I specifically tried with having the dependency commented out; when it was, the bug didn't happen.
Quote
If you use the "Live alien sale" option, then this aliens will be sold automatically.
But I get a corpse when the bug happens.

Offline Align

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 196
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #8 on: February 14, 2015, 07:20:11 pm »
Live aliens are only stored if they still have some research value.
Just checking again, what exactly does research value mean? I've got heavy plasma depending on tier 3 weapons depending on ethereal/muton soldier interrogation, and got the same problem after knocking out an ethereal soldier - it arrived as a corpse, so I can't research heavy plasma.

Offline SupSuper

  • Lazy Developer
  • Administrator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2160
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #9 on: February 15, 2015, 12:17:35 am »
I've removed the feature since it seems to cause more confusion than benefit.
If your live aliens still don't get recovered, file a bug report.

Offline Align

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 196
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #10 on: February 15, 2015, 12:53:00 am »
Sweet, thanks! Sorry for being so pushy, I had just spent several turns being psi-brutalized by Ethereals so was really excited when I got lucky and a laser hit knocked one out, but... yeah.

Offline jackstraw2323

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 206
    • View Profile
Re: Mod causing Snakeman Soldier to not be recovered
« Reply #11 on: February 15, 2015, 11:10:07 pm »
Just about to test out on my total conversion. Hopefully this resolves the weird issue I was having too.