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Issues with random encounters


Sclerocephalus

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On 10/02/2017 at 10:55 AM, scbfromnc said:

Correct, it's only available here.  Version 2.0.0 -- see Arthmoor's second post under Unofficial FO4 Patch.  I started a new game with it and seems to work great.  So many more random encounters now.  And maybe it's just my imagination, but the encounters seem much more dangerous.

 

Don't know if it's related to random encounters, but I feel things are indeed more dangerous. Those defend the checkpoints misc. quests, I found a 3-way fight between railroad agents, synths (and a courser) AND rust devils. Don't remember seeing this kind of behaviour before.

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For all we know, due to the bugs that have been fixed, this is how this stuff was always supposed to work.

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I can confirm, this is working even on my already messed up save, great job :redface:

 

Quote

Ah, yeah, we probably need to update that don't we :P

I see you did already haha, thanks Arthmoor :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hmmm, something still doesn't seem right.

 

After installing the newest 2.0 patch, I went to a known random encounter "hotspot" (road to cambridge polymer labs) to see what's new

 

Found plenty of things happening: preston garvey impersonator, ness (related to the skylines crash site quest) even was able to recruit the scribe as a vendor. All working good, no problem.

 

Then I played some more, completed automatron. Went back to the same place to see if I could find smiling lary - The only thing I could find after a hour trying: Rust devil patrols, over and over again.

 

It's intended to random encounters AFTER automatron be only about rusty devils or robots? I read something like that in the wikia.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello, good people! I am not yet good with papyrus and quests system, just wrote two scripts to do something with item respawn in exterior cells, but I read all topic with attention.

I am using last version of UFO4P and there is still a problems with random encounters.

If you save game when cell with RE bodies is still loaded and then load it (I play on survival and the only way to save there is by sleep and ususally RE near Sanctuary Hills or 2 to 4 RE near Sunshine Tidings are close enough ) than bodies will remain and not disappear. I guss it means that quest is still holds them and running. But next there could be two ways of how things behave: On some games that RE stops to spawn anything, on other it spawns, but old dead body is still there (which means quest is running). Sometimes there may be lots of corpses like dead settler, 3 ghouls, 3 raiders with pickman's message and a dead gunner - and there spawns raiders for some reason but I dont thing they are part of RE, but thats result in many corpses.

Another thing is that sometimes not everything spawns - like 1 or 2 mirelurks instead ot 3, or 3 raiders trying to get money from 2 settlers instead of 3 (and usually kill them too fast). The next time there may be only 1 Mirelurk or so (is he one that didnt spawn last time?).

And another thing is that object encounter sometimes despawn what they placed. Well what would I do with master-locked safe on level 2? Funny thing thou - its contents are already determined according to level 2 character. And later it is usually still there, but sometimes not, or sometims pile of earth under it is missing and it floating in air. In my first attempt to play FO4 on april there was radioactive barrels(without radroach) that disappeared (but zone left disabled forever like it should).

And another one - I noticed that on some ocasions objects form RE like container or beds get disabled or enabled in my sight - can it be because of overloaded script engine or it is result of new cooldown system? Well first time I saw that I just loaded previous save that was a hour ago, and other time green long bag disappeared while I was looking at it (there was no RE at the moment I got there).

And there is that problem when RE from robot DLC outplace any other as soon as I found Ada. No more child of atom or supermutants. Why this happening?

Sorry for bad english, I just want to help and to better understand things so may be I can fix something myself and do it right away.
It is horrible how I hate bugs and imperfection while I want to play in this game from day of release bugfree.

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(1) RE quests will stop running (clear their aliases and subsequent cleanup of generated actors by the engine) if all actors have unloaded. When you levae the game, all game data is cleared from your PCs memory, but that doesn't mean that the actors have unloaded in the game. If you reload and are still in the same area, they have not unloaded. You must leave the area and only then the cells (plus actors) may unload, and only then the quest stops running and the engine can perform the cleanup. This has been tested extensively and works as intended.

(2) Don't confuse respawning (preplaced) enemies with random encounters.  A large fraction of enemies in the game is preplaced. They will be cleaned up eventually after they're dead but will respawn upon cell reset. Depending on how you move during a fight, you may drag enemies from adjacent cells into the battle, but not all of the cells may reset at the same time, and on another occasion, you may have less enemies to fight in that area. Thus, that's not a bug either.

(3) There are seven encounter types in the game: assault, camp, object, checkpoint, chokepoint, scene and travel. Each encounter type uses its own triggers, i.e. assault type triggers will only start assault encounters, camp type triggers will only start camp encounters, etc. To do so, the trigger sends an encounter specific keyword to the story manager, and this randomly selects a quest from a list (there are separate quest lists for the individual encounter types). Now, the Automatron DLC adds a separate set of lists for each encounter type and lets the story manager decide at a 50/50 chance from which list to select the quest. Since this has been implemented very consistently, there's no doubt that this was intended, and therefore, this is not something we consider a bug. It certainly is bad design though, since the number of quests in the DLC added lists is much smaller than the number of quests in the lists from the base game, hence the chances for specific encounters are much higher for those from the DLC [NB: making a mod to modify this to your liking should take less than a minute: simply reduce the random chance values on the respective story manager nodes].

(4) Culling of in-game placed objects is not normal behaviour, and even if specific references have been set up to be disabled in specific conditions, this should not happen right in front of your eyes. Missing landscape pieces are clearly a rendering problem and have nothing to do with random encounters. Unless you're running some really bad mods, there likely is a problem with your game configuration: either you have touched certain ini settings you should have better left alone or your game settings are too ambitious in regard to what your PC can handle.

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18 minutes ago, Sclerocephalus said:

[NB: making a mod to modify this to your liking should take less than a minute: simply reduce the random chance values on the respective story manager nodes].

 

Then I would really like a mod like this available, or even better, a tutorial showing me how I can do this on my own. Say, like, a 25% chance of an automatron related RE to trigger after automatron would be ideal.

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3 hours ago, kawaksallas said:

Then I would really like a mod like this available, or even better, a tutorial showing me how I can do this on my own.

xEdit -> Global -> DLC01REPercentChance

EDIT: right-click on the global, then select 'copy as override'. Make a new file, give it a meaningful name, then change the value in the override. Done.

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I have been running the game unmodified for ca. 3 months now, and it is pretty much 1:1. Perecption is deceptive because you see the indivudal DLC encounters more often (there nowhere are more than half a dozen in any encounter category). Chance values of 20-30 are probably more appropriate nonetheless.

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what about loading screen hints? after picking up ada every damn screen show those robot repair kits info

now I know I nitpicking here, but since we're talking about it...

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Not true either. There also are plenty of base game load screens displayed.

Load screen appearance frequency is determined by another global, DLC01LoadScreenRate. This has been set to a whopping 20%, which is far too high, considering that the automatron DLC only adds 6 load screens, compared to around 100 (a rough estimate, I did not count them!) in the base game. Thus, this one might even get fixed.

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8 hours ago, Sclerocephalus said:

(1) RE quests will stop running (clear their aliases and subsequent cleanup of generated actors by the engine) if all actors have unloaded. When you levae the game, all game data is cleared from your PCs memory, but that doesn't mean that the actors have unloaded in the game. If you reload and are still in the same area, they have not unloaded. You must leave the area and only then the cells (plus actors) may unload, and only then the quest stops running and the engine can perform the cleanup. This has been tested extensively and works as intended.

(2) Don't confuse respawning (preplaced) enemies with random encounters.  A large fraction of enemies in the game is preplaced. They will be cleaned up eventually after they're dead but will respawn upon cell reset. Depending on how you move during a fight, you may drag enemies from adjacent cells into the battle, but not all of the cells may reset at the same time, and on another occasion, you may have less enemies to fight in that area. Thus, that's not a bug either.

(3) There are seven encounter types in the game: assault, camp, object, checkpoint, chokepoint, scene and travel. Each encounter type uses its own triggers, i.e. assault type triggers will only start assault encounters, camp type triggers will only start camp encounters, etc. To do so, the trigger sends an encounter specific keyword to the story manager, and this randomly selects a quest from a list (there are separate quest lists for the individual encounter types). Now, the Automatron DLC adds a separate set of lists for each encounter type and lets the story manager decide at a 50/50 chance from which list to select the quest. Since this has been implemented very consistently, there's no doubt that this was intended, and therefore, this is not something we consider a bug. It certainly is bad design though, since the number of quests in the DLC added lists is much smaller than the number of quests in the lists from the base game, hence the chances for specific encounters are much higher for those from the DLC [NB: making a mod to modify this to your liking should take less than a minute: simply reduce the random chance values on the respective story manager nodes].

(4) Culling of in-game placed objects is not normal behaviour, and even if specific references have been set up to be disabled in specific conditions, this should not happen right in front of your eyes. Missing landscape pieces are clearly a rendering problem and have nothing to do with random encounters. Unless you're running some really bad mods, there likely is a problem with your game configuration: either you have touched certain ini settings you should have better left alone or your game settings are too ambitious in regard to what your PC can handle.

1) there passed 2 ingame hours(real life hours but spent in game) and I cleared in meantime ArcJet, and few places beyond, but that Body in Sunshine Tidings is still there and nothing new spawns. The only mods I run is UFO4P, CBBE, console enabler for survival - changes one GMST, and my mod to fix item/container reset bug. It only contains two simple scripts - one detects location change and other teleport player into interior cell and back.

2) I know the difference, I talk about random encounter with 3 Mirelurks. It often spawns 2 and rarely one, but there is always 3 piles of dirt and I remember that when I played after game release there was always 3 Mirelurks. And it is begining of game so none of cell yet reset. Is it normal behavior(when RE missing some npc)?

3) okay I look onto that more carefully, may be it is a matter of place, but I just tried to move my ton of items from my stash near the place when you first see BOS (that square with ghouls) to Jallbert's Brother Disposal and has to do more than 6 runs back and forth and there was 3 RE zones(one in building where always fights going, near Corvega-Lexington, one one road near bridge to Beantown Brewery, and one near broken building that leads to square) nearby and they all spawned robots and rust devils... each time, I just tired of looting it and it was always back there and always robots. Well 6 times x 3 RE zones gives 18 times 50/50 for robots to win, that is still possible but it may be some jam in scripts.

4) I can get you screenshot of that safe and red box in midair and a savegame, initialy it was on top of dirtpile. And about something happening in front of me - and I not talk about landscape as it never happens, I tals about RE assets - can this be connected to cooldown timer from UFO4P expiring this moment or is it because of overloaded script engine that you tried to save by adding this timer? (that is not about RE on screenshot, it is about others, camp type mostly). I just lack info so I dont know what should I do with it.

ScreenShot64.jpg

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Are you talking about the dead ghouls at Sunshine Tidings ? The dead ghouls are pe-placed dead bodies and they are never cleaned up. You have to disable them if you want to get rid of them. Note that there are two sorts of ghouls when you arrive at Sunshine Tidings for the first time: dead ones and living enemies. The enemies will get cleaned up after you killed them. That's how the game engine works: any actor who starts in the game alive will be cleaned up after he has been killed (this also applies to pre-placed actors), but pre-placed dead bodies will always stay. BTW, none of the gouls at Sunshine Tidings is created by random encounters.

Random encounters do NEVER place dead bodies. Encounters with dead enemies (often at camp sites, but also the dead postman and a few others) do technically create living actors and kill them at run-time (there is a special function on one of the RE scripts to do this), so they will all clean up properly.

I don't think that mirelurks are ever involved in random encounters (there is a workshop mirelurk attack that may take place on Spectacle Island, and another random encounter with mirelurks at Far Harbor, but this only ever occurs on the island). I will have to look at the RE quests though to be sure.

Object encounter triggers do not reset. That is, all object encounter locations are only used once (there are designer notes on the end fragments of all object type RE quests that make it very clear that this has been intended). UFO4P doesn't change this, and therefore, neither the cooldown timers (this is vanilla functionality to add a delay to the reuse of specific triggers) nor the UFO4P rearm timers (a rvariable short timer that has to run out before a trigger that was unintentionally not rearmed gets actually rearmed) apply here because they never run. What has been placed by an object trigger will stay in the game forever (unless picked up by the player), and if those objects disappear eventually, there's something fundamentally wrong with your game.

BTW, OnLoacationChange events are tricky: this event fires when you enter or leave workshop mode, which may leadi scripts into 'thinking' that the player left or entered a location when he actually never moved. Depending on what your script is supposed to do, you may need to conceive a workaround to discern those invalid events from valid ones.

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36 minutes ago, Sclerocephalus said:

I don't think that mirelurks are ever involved in random encounters (there is a workshop mirelurk attack that may take place on Spectacle Island, and another random encounter with mirelurks at Far Harbor, but this only ever occurs on the island). I will have to look at the RE quests though to be sure.

 

there is one that comes to mind, 2-3 dead mirelurks and some raiders, alongside a cooking station - apparently they're were cooking those mirelurks

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Well that RE with mirelurks truly do contain number randomizer, sorry that asked you before looked onto it myself. It is REsceneRJ01 and also very often happening RE, but it seens okay now.

About object RE, about dead bodies and kill script - I know all this, I am noob but not that much and I also read all this topic and remembered it (about Object RE I knew even before it as I digged into this myself). And I talk about random encounters only as it is right place for it.
By the way that dead settler with note from RE disappeared and RE spot come alive after I took that 10mm from HaluciGen it was pointing to. Or may be it is becaut another 2 hours of gameplay passed by the moment I visist it, so it works probably.

Howewer I still get confused when I see lots of corpses from more than one RE quest at one spot.
Also there is that RE most likely ReChockepointSC03 (from now on I will be like this) , when Raiders demand money from settlers and if you kill raiders and settlers are alive you can send them to your settlement. And ofcourse they are not vanish when unloaded. Their dead bodies (if you wasn quick enough to kill raiders or if grenades was used by raiders) howewer too. But spot is working, I just dont know if there is some way to know if they are held by quest or something so I may want to terminate it or can I just disable + markfordelete them.

Also not quite understand why you mention OnLocationChange. If it is about my mod then I dont use that function anyway as I want it to be reliable as kalashnikov, there is OnTimer event and GetLocation function. And well... another reason is that OnLocationChange function should be called on actor - player in this case, but I just could not do it for some reason as script wasnt attached to player and as I have really strong hate for "registerforupdate" just like to "oninit" event and anything basically that not look 100% reliably.


Also a question - as I not against "fixes" that are used like tools (like that fix for respawn) - is it safe to make a tool (may be even txt file for running with console command bat) that will set stages to all RE quests and to use it in case of problems?

About screens attached - RE spot near Sanctuary - you see bodies of "Junkie + 3 Bloatflies" RE and fresh corpses of "Pack of wild wongrel" RE. So trigger got rearmed and made new RE, but those bodies from old one are still there. Not sure how it will be in few hours thou.
Another one is at the dam near Sunshine - there is corpses of settlers from
ReChockepointSC03, as said above and a thirsty guy (as I remember it is Object type so I can say Goodbye to this spot). How do I know if I should stop some quest or do something to make things right? You see - one of settlers was alive and I sent him to Sanctuary. It probably not going to be unloaded, howewer in another playtrough raiders killed all three settlers and spot was disabled for some reason and corpses remained.
And screen showing that I should not worry about number of mirelurks.

ScreenShot66.jpg

ScreenShot65.jpg

20170420_114017.jpg

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On 4/19/2017 at 11:25 PM, Sclerocephalus said:

xEdit -> Global -> DLC01REPercentChance

EDIT: right-click on the global, then select 'copy as override'. Make a new file, give it a meaningful name, then change the value in the override. Done.

by the way it is not retroactive if used as plugin.... which is weird... may be something else is setting this global and it would explain high chance. You can check it in console using "help DLC01RE 3" line and set with "set DLC01REPercentChance to 33" line. I was thinking about what value I should use and stopped at 33 because those RE are action packed in contrast with "gassy settler" so 25 may be not enough. 1/3 seems fair.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 4/20/2017 at 4:34 PM, Sclerocephalus said:

What has been placed by an object trigger will stay in the game forever (unless picked up by the player), and if those objects disappear eventually, there's something fundamentally wrong with your game.

I’m experiencing exactly the same problem with object RE as ChaosWarrior.

RE with safe, toolbox and working radio in a pile of junk initially spawns properly but when you return to it later after 24 ingame hours or so - the pile of junk and radio is missing, there is only safe and floating toolbox.

The same problem happens with other encounters that can spawn on the same spot (tested on spot between Abernathy Farm and Concord). For example: the bar stand with barmen - missing the barmen after 24 hrs.; rusted Vaul-tec van with skeleton and note – skeleton disappears; guy in power armor salvaging the car – car disappear. Probably there is other like this.

Playing with only mod - F4UP.

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No, actually refs that are generated by the game via an object trigger do not require the player to pick them up to remove them. If that trigger is set to delete stuff after some time, then those items will be gone later. If this didn't happen, the size of the save game would bloat.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So had an interesting conversation with DeeZire, the author of FreeFall 4 for PS4. Apparently at some point a bug was introduced into the story manager where triggers using alias references will flat out not fire. This causes a few "is companion with you" quests not to trigger it seems (such as the vanilla one where Preston discovers a former minuteman he knew), and the fix that was introduced to keep Workshop Vendors from appearing at camp sites may inadvertently cause them not to appear at all now due to it. Might be worth looking into?

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Hi guys just to elaborate a little on this, it would seem that at some time during the games patch history a bug was introduced that has affected the story manager. I can't be sure exactly which patch did it, but it was after UFO4P version 1.0.3.

Basically, if the Story Manager utilises conditions that require it to fill aliases with a reference it will always fail to fill them thus the associated quest will not run. I can see from the latest beta here that you have implemented a workaround as you realised the script event manager was not properly respecting the alias requirements to allow some qeusts to start up. Before the latest beta, I noticed this using UFO4P with a new game in that Ron Staples, The Scribe, Smiling Larry and Doc Anderson would just never show up in my game. I did some testing and isolated other encounters so that only theirs would be chosen and run and they never did.

The same issue as those vendors also affects REAssaultKMK_COMPreston, REChokepointKMK_COMNick and RETravelKMK_MS10Strong that all attempt to check & fill aliases in the same manner meaning they too never get run. I'd suggest having a peek at any quests that the designer 'KMK' did as the issue seems specific to their code.

Another oddity from a patch is that all of the Drinking Buddy terminal entries were set to identical text entries meaning the recipe holotapes all show that they are the recipe for Dead Redcoat Ale even though only one of them provides this. The original (presumably correct) recipe names can still be seen on the wiki since that was written based on an earlier game version before the change. Because Bethesda :)

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@chaoswarrior Yeah i have that encounter too. It refuses to reset.

I have 2 others that dont want to reset either: the settler that tells you about the lowkowski cannery bad meat, he wont despawn when i leave.

And the other one where they bury someone who died, his grave is permenant and doesnt get replaced by a new encounter.

I also have Art vs Art, but instead of being a one time encounter, it just repeats. So if the Real Art dies, he just respawns as if he never died in the first place... Also if you kill synth art, your companions will hate that -_- even if they are hostile...

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  • 1 month later...

Somehow even after the U4OP 2.0 fix DLC01MQ04_01RadiantAssault is still not stopped properly in my game, and the random encounter spot is dead, only few random scavengers spawned on dead robots. 

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  • 1 month later...

The scavengers are spawned by a quest that reacts to an ActorAttach event. This quest is not using a trigger.

If you want to look into this further, recompile REParentScript, RETriggerScript and REScript in debug mode. When I implemented the fixes, I diverted their debug messages so as to get all printed on a separate comprehensive RE log. This log will tell you at any time which triggers are currently blocked by running quests.

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Small general update:

The "gassy settler" quest was broken too (another one by KMK, btw). The stop conditions were all fine, but the script never checked them because the start fragment was missing.

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