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Decoys no longer functioning

captainbladej52 shared this bug ago

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As the title says my decoys have stopped functioning at all in any of my worlds on all grids and blueprints. Only exception being catching the occasional lightning bolt if they even do that. As of 11-19-2023 all Decoys for me have stopped working and no longer pull fire towards themselves. This is effecting modded decoys and standard vanilla decoys for me. Turrets will not even glance in the direction of the decoys at all, and if they do it's mainly for a half second then completely ignores them. The only way to get the turrets to even glance in the direction of the decoys is using MASSIVE sheets of them on a ship. And by massive sheet I've included a photo for reference. Exposing them instead of hiding behind armor doesn't help. Builds that were previously working fine no longer draw the attention of turrets either. I'm aware that Decoys aren't meant to be a perfect cure all to gaining the attention of turrets, but them not working at all shouldn't be happening either.

Verification of game files has not helped, clean worlds have not helped. Cycling power on the grid the grid and the Decoys themselves on/off hasn't helped either. Currently they have the same effectiveness as the decoration blocks at drawing fire. If this is not corrected it will remove a very potent defensive option from players.

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Replies (1)

QA KeenSWH 2 ●

Hello, engineer!

Thank you for writing to us, and we sincerely apologize for the issue you have been experiencing with the Decoys.

After testing the decoys on our end, we didn't encounter any issues with enemy ships/drones prioritizing attacks on the decoy over other blocks or being struck by lightning.

However, it's important to note that the AI turret's targeting priority for Decoys may be influenced by the following factors:

target priority decreases when distance increases.
target priority decreases when surrounded by many blocks.

This means that decoys attract more attention close to the object they are meant to protect. It also means that to protect a large area or a large number of subsystems, you must deploy multiple decoys.

Decoys can distract automatic AI turrets such as Artillery, Gatling, or Custom Turrets when set to AI Controlled, but, static/manually aimed weapons like Gatling Guns or Rocket Launchers will not be affected since they are manual and not automatic turrets.

Moreover, if a decoy and turret belong to the same player, members of the same faction, or allied factions, the turret will not target the decoy.

If the above points don't align with your scenario, kindly provide additional information about the issue you've experienced.

Did you encounter this issue in a modded (with active MODs) world? If so, the issue might have caused due to MODs, and even after removing MODs, their dependencies could persist in the world's save file, causing the issue. To check this, could you create a new/fresh vanilla (no active MODs) world and check if the issue persists?

If the issue still occurs, please send us a screen recording/video showing these issues, the vanilla world save file, and the log file from when the issue occurred.

You can access your save files by typing %appdata% into your Windows search bar and you will be redirected to the hidden Roaming folder. After that just follow: \Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Saves. There should be a folder with your SteamID and your saves.
Please zip the file and attach it here. If you are having difficulty attaching files you can optionally use Google Drive. When sharing a Google Drive link please make sure it is set to be downloadable by anyone with the link.
You can access your log files by typing %appdata% into your Windows search bar and you will be redirected to the hidden Roaming folder. After that just follow: \Roaming\SpaceEngineers.

Kind Regards,

Keen Software House: QA Department

Hello, engineer!

Thank you for writing to us, and we sincerely apologize for the issue you have been experiencing with the Decoys.

After testing the decoys on our end, we didn't encounter any issues with enemy ships/drones prioritizing attacks on the decoy over other blocks or being struck by lightning.

However, it's important to note that the AI turret's targeting priority for Decoys may be influenced by the following factors:

target priority decreases when distance increases.
target priority decreases when surrounded by many blocks.

Moreover, if a decoy and turret belong to the same player, members of the same faction, or allied factions, the turret will not target the decoy.

If the above points don't align with your scenario, kindly provide additional information about the issue you've experienced.

If the issue still occurs, please send us a screen recording/video showing these issues, the vanilla world save file, and the log file from when the issue occurred.

You can access your save files by typing %appdata% into your Windows search bar and you will be redirected to the hidden Roaming folder. After that just follow: \Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Saves. There should be a folder with your SteamID and your saves.
Please zip the file and attach it here. If you are having difficulty attaching files you can optionally use Google Drive. When sharing a Google Drive link please make sure it is set to be downloadable by anyone with the link.
You can access your log files by typing %appdata% into your Windows search bar and you will be redirected to the hidden Roaming folder. After that just follow: \Roaming\SpaceEngineers.

Kind Regards,

Keen Software House: QA Department

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captainbladej52 ●

Below is a link to a google drive file containing footage demonstrating the issue and the copy of the vanilla world used for the second half of testing. Since this report an odd interaction was discovered that can potentially force recognition of the decoys. Will explain in a moment.

In the footage I started out showing the issue as I first found it on a modded world using custom decoys with modified steel plates. In this first set of tests, the decoys were unable to pull threat from anything.

In the second round of tests I showed the interaction that could force recognition of the decoys. This interaction only occurs when there are modded and unmodded decoys that have been present on the same grid. If a ship has used exclusively modded decoys, or unmodded decoys, the issues with dead decoys will pursist. To get the ship to potentially recognize decoys again, it requires a modded decoy and unmodded to be present briefly. For example, in the testing for the second round, the ship I demonstrated with used exclusively modded decoys for a time before slapping a vanilla decoy on there briefly. upon removal of the vanilla decoy, that grid was able to consistently pull threat with its decoys.

For the third round of testing I swapped to a purely vanilla world and used a ship that was as close to the modded one as I could get. In the vanilla world the ship was only able to pull threat with decoys in very very extreme cases.

I realize that decoys aren't meant to be a cure all and to always pull threat every time. However when they worked prior to the 19th they pulled threat around 50% of the time. Now they rarely pull threat if they ever do unless the modded and unmodded decoy trick is used.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZjXdyNBo3udZqicwcjT9S0TdcKJv-b5O/view?usp=sharing

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QA KeenSWH 2 ●

Hello, engineer!

Thank you for providing the world save file and the video. We greatly appreciate your efforts, as they have helped us in determining the issue you have been experiencing.

After discussing it internally, we would like to inform you that it seems the issue you have experienced isn't a bug.

Several factors could contribute to the behavior you have experienced, for example, if a decoy is placed behind the other variable target like propulsion/power system/weapon blocks, the turret is more likely to target the other variable target blocks, instead of the decoy.

Additionally, the distance between the turret and the potential target significantly influences its targeting, especially if the target is out of the line of sight of the turret or if it's out of range.

Although the issue you reported might not be a bug, should you require further information or wish to share additional details, please don't hesitate to reach out to us here.

Thank you for your understanding.

Kind Regards,

Keen Software House: QA Department

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captainbladej52 ●

I did the test from that angle in the video specifically so the ship would have the full range of the decoys to target. The problem here is that with the decoys not working is that it goes beyond just the issue with them drawing threat from turrets. If/when a lightning storm occurred while on a planet, the decoys were not drawing the lightning away from other things like they're suppose to. One of their key points is that they act as lightning rods. So effectively they are dead blocks with no purpose and players will have lost what little protection from lightning strikes were had.

If the team were to grant better tools for modders to control how threatning a decoy is, I could work around this with my modded decoys. However currently I cannot. As is right now in their current state they're little more than pretty deco blocks.

Given that this has implications well beyond just my own builds I must ask. What would the team need to see to convince this is a bug? I know decoys are not meant to stop everything 100% of the time but currently they're not stopping anything at all.

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kazagistar ●

Hi. I did a simple test, and can confirm this is the case: to reproduce, make the setup as shown:

1. Turret, cargo with ammo, battery (all default settings)

2. 5 other functional blocks with a decoy amongst them. This *should* give the decoy a 2/3 chance of being hit, given that it has a priority of 10 instead of 1. (10/15)

3. Transfer ownership of the target to Space Pirates.

Most of the time it will work as expected. But every once in a while (maybe due to orientation or position or idk what) it will spawn in cursed, and try to shoot every block except the decoy. 2 video attached of just such a cursed grid.

(note, I also found a much more minor bug as well, which is that the closest targetable block is NEVER targeted first)

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QA KeenSWH 2 ●

Hello, engineers!

After further discussion with our designers and programmers, we have decided to report this issue internally.

Please wait until this thread switches to "Solved" status with new information, comments, and possible fixes coming.

Kind Regards,

Keen Software House: QA Department

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