Can someone explain to me.....

[KEVs77]

Ok, first let me preface what I'm about to say by saying I'm a huge HBS and battletech fan and am mostly happy with everything that has been accomplished.

However, can someone explain to me how the escort bug has not been resolved after all this time? I've seen countless threads regarding it and the FAQ but didn't see any official responses other than the brief one on FAQ. Is it being worked on? If it is a really hard bug to correct, why not give us an option to blow up the vehicle that is stuck? I know you can't target a friendly unit but how about a self destruct button or something, anything.

It is really annoying to run an ironman game and then have to take a loss for no reason just because the AI pathfinding is garbage. I even tried to crtl-alt-del out of that mission and try again and the vehicle got stuck in the SAME place.

Please HBS, I implore you give us an option to at least get the unstuck vehicles out rather than just withdrawing and failing.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

This is indeed one of the original BATTLETECH bugs, I understand your and the frustration of others. :bow:

Obviously it has been a tenacious bug / challenge for HBS to figure out. This seems self evident to me.

That being said the Stray Shot Feature to me is only half a System.

Your idea of enabling the Player to fire on an Ally, potentially opens the door to completing the Stray Shot System by adding Allies and our very own Mechs to be hit by our own Stray Shots.

I would like that very much.

In combat, one much “clear one’s Fires” to ensure the preponderance of Stray Shots don’t inflict fratricide. This means that some shots just aren’t taken. For example, “Do I fire this UAC20 at the Enemy King Crab’s Front Armor? Or does the fact that my own Atlas’s all-but-destroyed Rear Torsos are in a direct Line of Fire beyond the King Crab, mean I should hold my Fire, bank away some heat and reposition for a reengagement next Turn?” For me it comes down to that old Clint Eastwood Line, “Do you feel lucky, punk?”

Which of course could lead to a host of very interesting decisions, earned rewards and earned consequences.

But I have noticed that on more than one occasion HBS has proved reticent to put into play “earned consequences.” So such fratricide, ANY fratricide even @KEVs77 ’s tactically correct Convoy Truck Destruction-In-Place (which is a real-world thing by the way) is not something HBS have proven willing to do in the past and I would be surprised if they put in place going forward.

 

[KEVs77]

Yes Prussian, I totally agree with you that friendly fire should be in the game as well. However, I do not think the stray shot would solve the problem of the stuck vehicles, as when the enemy is defeated, you are unable to target anything to "accidentally" hit the stuck vehicle in question. :/

 

[Corraidhin]

Surely the simplest solution would be an 'OpFor is cleared, I'll pick you up from where you are' message from Sumire. No waiting for any convoy stragglers then.

 

[whosthebestcop]

I just got the game within the last 4 weeks and didn't even realize about the escort bug until boom I am hit with it after I did a full salvage on a King Crab. 1 truck would never move no matter what. Had to with draw and not get my 1st assault mech ever. I was upset. I only had 1 heavy at the time it was going to be a big jump and pretty cool since I was such a new player.

How is there not a quick hotfix that checks if there is any enemies or any reinforcement left and just auto completed the mission when there isn't any possiblity of new enemy spawns?

I mean it is a huge bug. Now I won't ever do any escort missions when my lance is making a jump to the next level of mechs because it might be wasted if I have to withdraw because of the bug.

Reminds me of a bug you would see Obsidian leave in their games for years and years. If the path-finding can't be fixed just give a work around with a 100% enemy destroy victory condition.

 

[stjobe]

However, can someone explain to me how the escort bug has not been resolved after all this time?

Sure. Let me preface my answer with the fact that while I'm not a game developer, I do make my living as a programmer. I deal with code bugs on a daily basis (mine and others).
I think I can safely say that HBS by all means want a bug-free game. However, in order to fix a bug one needs to:

1. Find the bug (this is usually easy; users will quickly report any bugs they find)
2. Replicate the bug (this one can be easy or really, really hard, depending)
3. Debug the code when replicating the bug (aka find out what's causing the bug)
4. Come up with a fix (this, and to some degree the item above, is the "art" part of the job, most of the rest is "craft").
5. Implement that fix (which might be a really complicated process that entails serious refactoring of large parts of the code-base)
6. Test the fix (generally, several times by several different people)
7. Test the rest of the game so one hasn't fixed one bug by introducing two new bugs (this is generally automated)
8. Roll into a patch and ship.

And that's only for bugs that get selected for fixing; somewhere between item 2 and 3 someone does bug triage - decides which bugs are prioritised enough to make it into the next sprint (bugs are in direct competition with new features, most of the time). If one e.g. can't replicate the bug, it won't get prioritised for fixing. If one can't come up with a fix that doesn't break other parts of the game, it won't get prioritised for fixing.

So yeah; while it might seem baffling that HBS has left this bug in so long, I can almost guarantee that it's because they haven't found a way to fix it yet.

And yes, it does suck. I got hit with it just yesterday and had to withdraw from a mission where I'd cleaned the board with the opfor easily.

If they can't manage to fix it I'd love if instead of Sumire doing her standard "opfor cleaned up" speech, she'd say something to the effect of "Okay commander, you're done here. We'll send out a tow truck for that last broken-down APC, but you can go ahead and board now".

 

[KEVs77]

Sure. Let me preface my answer with the fact that while I'm not a game developer, I do make my living as a programmer. I deal with code bugs on a daily basis (mine and others).
I think I can safely say that HBS by all means want a bug-free game. However, in order to fix a bug one needs to:

1. Find the bug (this is usually easy; users will quickly report any bugs they find)
2. Replicate the bug (this one can be easy or really, really hard, depending)
3. Debug the code when replicating the bug (aka find out what's causing the bug)
4. Come up with a fix (this, and to some degree the item above, is the "art" part of the job, most of the rest is "craft").
5. Implement that fix (which might be a really complicated process that entails serious refactoring of large parts of the code-base)
6. Test the fix (generally, several times by several different people)
7. Test the rest of the game so one hasn't fixed one bug by introducing two new bugs (this is generally automated)
8. Roll into a patch and ship.

And that's only for bugs that get selected for fixing; somewhere between item 2 and 3 someone does bug triage - decides which bugs are prioritised enough to make it into the next sprint (bugs are in direct competition with new features, most of the time). If one e.g. can't replicate the bug, it won't get prioritised for fixing. If one can't come up with a fix that doesn't break other parts of the game, it won't get prioritised for fixing.

So yeah; while it might seem baffling that HBS has left this bug in so long, I can almost guarantee that it's because they haven't found a way to fix it yet.

And yes, it does suck. I got hit with it just yesterday and had to withdraw from a mission where I'd cleaned the board with the opfor easily.

If they can't manage to fix it I'd love if instead of Sumire doing her standard "opfor cleaned up" speech, she'd say something to the effect of "Okay commander, you're done here. We'll send out a tow truck for that last broken-down APC, but you can go ahead and board now".

I have absolutely no problem with not being able to track and resolve the bug. What I don't understand is how is there not a temporary work around by something that is this major and has been around for so long?

 

[stjobe]

I have absolutely no problem with not being able to track and resolve the bug. What I don't understand is how is there not a temporary work around by something that is this major and has been around for so long?

If I would hazard a guess, it is because we do have a work-around: The "Withdraw" button.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

If I would hazard a guess, it is because we do have a work-around; the "Withdraw" button.

And that in itself is a masterful piece of Clausewitzian Friction of War.

Sometimes (and coming from someone who has spent just shy of three years in a War Zone, it can feel like “oftentimes”) it seems like even when you and your troops do everything “right,” a mission can still go sideways hard enough that a Withdraw turns out to be all the Win you’ll ever see that day.

And BATTLETECH is a 3025 Rimward Periphery BattleTech War Game, so in my book HBS gets High Marks for getting this one so much closer to grim reality, than not. :bow:

 

[Donvale]

I'm guessing the fact there are loads of people with hundreds of played hours that have never ever experienced this that it's a pretty darn hard bug to cause and track down, you would probably have to replicate exactly move by move what a bugged player did or if it's an actual terrain issue have a screen shotted spot on a particular map in a logged bug report.
I also think it can be mostly alleviated by careful manipulation by the player (which may explain why some players simply never have it happen in the first place).
For me personally all I ever do is have one mech directly behind or beside the last escort vehicle and the other three mechs way the heck up field (advanced two turns usually before activating the escorts). The escort mech has a religious fervor for keeping his position until the mission is complete! Wether it is this or just blind luck, but I must have run well over 100 escort missions by now and never had it bug once, it's not a "fix" as it were, but it does seem to work.
The other thing I do is always tag all incoming enemies at least once to prevent them firing on the escorts, it's concievable being shot may change an escorts AI behaviour and cause it to manauver somewhere unintended and hence get stuck!
I have seen some screenshots of people who had stuck escorts on missions I know I have done multiple times and almost always their mechs are all jumbled up in amongst the vehicles and some of the vehicles are well off what I know is the defined path they normally follow.

 

[Eximar]

For me personally all I ever do is have one mech directly behind or beside the last escort vehicle and the other three mechs way the heck up field (advanced two turns usually before activating the escorts). The escort mech has a religious fervor for keeping his position until the mission is complete! Wether it is this or just blind luck, but I must have run well over 100 escort missions by now and never had it bug once, it's not a "fix" as it were, but it does seem to work.
The other thing I do is always tag all incoming enemies at least once to prevent them firing on the escorts, it's concievable being shot may change an escorts AI behaviour and cause it to manauver somewhere unintended and hence get stuck!

That's the way I've always done it too, because it makes escort missions very easy.

I've never seen the bug either in 1200+ hours of play.

 

[whosthebestcop]

Seen it under 15 hours of playtime. Regardless there are enough posts everywhere for 100% enemy destruction condition being added.

I know on the map I played I knocked down a mech far in advance of the escort vehicles. The escort vehicles went crazy because they wanted to fire on the knocked down mech. Moved position fired and never moved again.

Making excuses for the dev team or saying it didn't happen to me is absolutely meaningless.

The bug exists. It's been in there since day 1. Soon as it happened I googled it. Thousands of threads about it on every game forum relating to Battletech.

Can't fix the bug. I got no problem with that part. Not creating a work around with a simple destroyed all enemies conditions. It's extremely grating. That's what I got a beef with.

 

[KEVs77]

If I would hazard a guess, it is because we do have a work-around: The "Withdraw" button.

Failure when you win a mission is not a "work-around." That is ridiculous.

 

[stjobe]

Failure when you win a mission is not a "work-around." That is ridiculous.

It is enough to stop the bug from being game-breaking. A failed mission is not career-ending.

Of course, it's pretty safe to assume the bug isn't trivial to find and/or fix, or they would have done so long ago.

 

[Corraidhin]

I just hit this bug for the first time last night. I was on a badlands map where you move North directly to reach the convoy, then travel a spit of land directly East to the landing pad.

The landing pad is on a rise with a convenient 3 hex wide choke point up the hill. The problem arose when 2 APCs decided to go around my mechs, leading them into dead end drops, but directly facing the extract point.

They did not register that they needed to go back around once I moved my mechs, so the pathing seems to bug out when the levels are different between virtual hexes. It doesn't register that it can't go straight and treats the cliff in front of it as an insurmountable obstacle.

I'll re-run the mission when I get chance without slowing the APCs up at all to see how they behave.

 

[Timaeus]

If you absolutely don't want to restart/withdraw you'll have to enable. debug and open the debug menu in mission to complete the mission.
This also has the added benefit of having buttons to log contract information and AI. ya know, if that might be helpful for reporting the bug. which people should do.
How to: Tech Support/ Bug report
(screenshots help too.)

Spoiler: enable debug mode

CTRL + SHIFT + MINUS to open the debug menu in mission.

 

[KEVs77]

If you absolutely don't want to restart/withdraw you'll have to enable. debug and open the debug menu in mission to complete the mission.
This also has the added benefit of having buttons to log contract information and AI. ya know, if that might be helpful for reporting the bug. which people should do.
How to: Tech Support/ Bug report
(screenshots help too.)

Spoiler: enable debug mode

CTRL + SHIFT + MINUS to open the debug menu in mission.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot next time it happens. So, once I enable the debug, is there an auto win mission command?

I didn't report it because it has been reported many times before since launch. I didn't want to create a duplicate bug post.

 

[Timaeus]

Nothing is harmed by creating a bug report. even duplicate ones. the more information the better.

 

[Corraidhin]

Nothing is harmed by creating a bug report. even duplicate ones. the more information the better.

I'll see if I can recreate the condition on my next run. I'll grab a screenshot of the map either way.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Yeah... even with my shepherding Mechs in much the same manner as @Donvale, I’ve had this bug occur twice.

In both instances I had the other three Mechs come back to join my LRM Mech at the stuckee, but no luck.