SSHIP - General Discussion

[sapiens86]

I'm away from my main computer, and on the secondary it crashes.
Maybe you, @Belovese or @Macaras or @kostic, could check?

Anyone able to help?

[Macaras]

I tried to download the sav, the link doesn't work ?

[sapiens86]

hmm i just tried the link. seems to be working:

https://we.tl/t-sVUh7m93ax

[Macaras]

Sorry, it works, I just needed to agree for the "terms" . Unfortunately I am getting crash right after loading your file, I am probably using different version then yours- I only kept the last updates. Maybe other guys are able to open your save ? Which version are you using?

[sapiens86]

I am playing the latest public version. 0.97, patch H. Is this the version you guys are on?

[XXZit]

-
First of all I want to congratulate the team for still working on and improving the mod. The changes you've made are notorious and can be appreciated from the moment you fire up the campaign map. My favorite features include the new building system, the changes to region growth (love this one), public order, the agent overhaul and the new reputation tracker. These alone completely change the gameplay experience for the better. When compared to 0.96. The rest of the changes are icing on the cake. Also, I'm not one to care much about looks, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that some of the campaign map units and character portraits and icons are simply beautiful. Great work, whoever worked on those!

Now, after extensively playing 2 campaigns, I can say with confidence this new version fits almost perfectly my ideal of what a TW game should be. Yet there are still rough edges that need further work. The crashes are without a doubt the biggest sore point, happening religiously every few turns, which is very frustrating to say the least. The trait system while immensely improved from 0.96, is still not functioning correctly. Many times my generals gained bogus, unrelated and undesired traits when they shouldn't. I've included an error report detailing lots of trait related errors reported by the game. Perhaps these errors have something to do with it.

I've only praise for the new settlement building overhaul, yet at some point two of my cities lost all queue slots and I was unable to recruit anything else from them. And speaking of cities, the AI seems to be having huge problems keeping public order, at various points close to 50% of their cities were lost to riots. Maybe this was always so and I'm just noticing now because, for testing purposes, I'm playing without "fog of war". Personally I didn't have much problem with PO because I kept an eye on it, but the AI couldn't handle it very well. Perhaps the stem could be tweaked a bit to their favor.

To further elaborate on the topic of the crashes, I'm certain most of them are related to the campaign script. I removed all the civil war section and the crashes were at least halved. I would honestly take a look to try and diagnose exactly what is the issue, but that thing is abnormally large, and for no other reason than that restrictive 'scripting language' -if you can call it that- the developers created. Trying to work with that would both infuriate me and give me a headache. Also there’s the possibility that there is nothing incorrect with the script itself but you’re reaching a sort of hard-coded limit of the virtual machine -assuming that’s how it’s done- which produces some sort of memory overflow, possibly corrupting the stack and eventually causing a crash? You’d think there would be some warning informing you of such event but considering missing a closing bracket in a xml configuration file causes the game to crash, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t the case.

Anyway from the comments in the file, I gathered, you are trying to shorten it / optimize it, and something that I quickly noticed -besides the nausea caused by the verbosity and repetitiveness you poor folks have to put up with to accomplish anything in that thing- was the multiple uses of the same monitor with slightly different conditions. One way to eliminate extra code is to use a single monitor for the event you are looking for and use the conditions inside to achieve whatever you want to accomplish.
e.g

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

monitor_event BecomesFactionLeader CharacterIsLocal
    and Attribute Authority < 4
    and Attribute Command < 9
    and Attribute Chivalry > -9

    log --- Script Major cities unrest --- Weak leader takes power
    set_counter paris_occupied 1
    set_counter london_occupied 1
    ...
    ...

Followed by:

 monitor_event BecomesFactionLeader CharacterIsLocal
    and Attribute Authority < 7
    and Trait Usurper > 0

    log --- Script Major cities unrest --- Weak usurper takes power
    set_counter paris_occupied 1
    set_counter london_occupied 1
    ...
    ...

Can be merged into a single monitor:

monitor_event BecomesFactionLeader CharacterIsLocal

    if    Attribute Authority < 4
        and Attribute Command < 9
        and Attribute Chivalry > -9
            log --- Script Major cities unrest --- Weak leader takes power
    end_if
    if    Attribute Authority < 7
        and Trait Usurper > 0
            log --- Script Major cities unrest --- Weak usurper takes power
    end_if

    set_counter paris_occupied 1
    set_counter london_occupied 1
    ...
    ...

I don't know how many of these type of entries you have in the file -again I was just looking at the civil war section to delete it- but you may save a few lines here and there, which given the size of that thing, I'd say it's worth it.





Thank you for your hard work and perseverance in improving this wonderful mod. Your efforts are very appreciated!

[Jurand of Cracow]

I am playing the latest public version. 0.97, patch H. Is this the version you guys are on?

ah, ok, no, we actually thought you're on 098 from August
I'll have a look at 097H on Monday.

In the meantime, you may add some pictures from your campaign in the AAR section

[Belovèse]

I am playing the latest public version. 0.97, patch H. Is this the version you guys are on?

Hi @sapiens86, one of the reasons we ask for the log is that in the 0.97 standalone version I uploaded to modDB as well as all the 0.98 builds we have a little piece of script that shows the exact version of the mod you are using. It saves everybody time and avoid misunderstandings.

But most importantly thanks for the time you took reporting and posting the save!

-
Anyway from the comments in the file, I gathered, you are trying to shorten it / optimize it, and something that I quickly noticed -besides the nausea caused by the verbosity and repetitiveness you poor folks have to put up with to accomplish anything in that thing- was the multiple uses of the same monitor with slightly different conditions. One way to eliminate extra code is to use a single monitor for the event you are looking for and use the conditions inside to achieve whatever you want to accomplish.
e.g

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

monitor_event BecomesFactionLeader CharacterIsLocal
    and Attribute Authority < 4
    and Attribute Command < 9
    and Attribute Chivalry > -9

    log --- Script Major cities unrest --- Weak leader takes power
    set_counter paris_occupied 1
    set_counter london_occupied 1
    ...
    ...

Followed by:

 monitor_event BecomesFactionLeader CharacterIsLocal
    and Attribute Authority < 7
    and Trait Usurper > 0

    log --- Script Major cities unrest --- Weak usurper takes power
    set_counter paris_occupied 1
    set_counter london_occupied 1
    ...
    ...

Can be merged into a single monitor:

monitor_event BecomesFactionLeader CharacterIsLocal

    if    Attribute Authority < 4
        and Attribute Command < 9
        and Attribute Chivalry > -9
            log --- Script Major cities unrest --- Weak leader takes power
    end_if
    if    Attribute Authority < 7
        and Trait Usurper > 0
            log --- Script Major cities unrest --- Weak usurper takes power
    end_if

    set_counter paris_occupied 1
    set_counter london_occupied 1
    ...
    ...

I don't know how many of these type of entries you have in the file -again I was just looking at the civil war section to delete it- but you may save a few lines here and there, which given the size of that thing, I'd say it's worth it.

Thank you for your hard work and perseverance in improving this wonderful mod. Your efforts are very appreciated!

Hi @XXZit, I'm really happy to see you here and that you're still playing the mod ! And thanks a lot for your feedback and ideas, and thanks again for the AI you provided, I'm really liking it.
I'm a bit short on time so I'll answer to you more in details in a few days, but about the monitors: unfortunately it doesn't work, because this engine language is really.... let's say unique?

So the Trait condition, for example, will need a character export that is provided by the monitor BecomesFactionLeader. But sadly the character export is not passed down to if section, so we can't use the Trait or Attribute conditions. Some conditions doesn't require an export and that's the only one we can use in if sections, like I_FactionLeaderTrait and I_FactionLeaderAttribute.

But those have other disadvantages, the big one being that the syntax is: I_FactionLeaderTrait <FACTION> <TRAIT> <OPERATOR> <VALUE>. So we would have to duplicate the if section for every faction in the game. Worth it for an heavy monitor like CharacterTurnStart, but here it really is simpler this way.

[Jurand of Cracow]

My favorite features include the new building system, the changes to region growth (love this one), public order, the agent overhaul and the new reputation tracker. These alone completely change the gameplay experience for the better.
...
I've only praise for the new settlement building overhaul, yet at some point two of my cities lost all queue slots and I was unable to recruit anything else from them. And speaking of cities, the AI seems to be having huge problems keeping public order, at various points close to 50% of their cities were lost to riots. Maybe this was always so and I'm just noticing now because, for testing purposes, I'm playing without "fog of war". Personally I didn't have much problem with PO because I kept an eye on it, but the AI couldn't handle it very well. Perhaps the stem could be tweaked a bit to their favor.

Finally somebody has discerned the things I've been working on over the last half a year (but reputation tracker - I'm not involved)
Interesting observation with the PO for AI - actually, it has plenty of buffs, so it shouldn't be so.
How is the building behaviour of the AI? Does it build Landowners? Do the cities grow?

I am playing the latest public version. 0.97, patch H. Is this the version you guys are on?

still crashes for me...

[Angelo_Auditore]

I really love the new improvments for the 0,98 version, the new buildings, the inclusion of KCC, the improvment of traits for gameplay and roleplaying purposes. It's great that you are still improving this mod cuz I really think it has the potential to be the best mod for any Total War game, the perfect combination between histroical accuarcy and gameplay. Still I've found a little problem that is breaking my immersion.

Is the 0,98 AI more aggresive than 0,97? I'm currently playing a France campaign medium difficulty, it is turn 35 and the Sultanate of Rum has been crushed by Byzantium, 4 factions had been excomunicated, Jerusalem and the Seljuks are on the brink of colapse and what is weirder for me is that all AI factions send small armies (less than 5 units) deep into enemy territory. Some examples are: the abbasid caliph laying siege on Kerman with the Seljuks still controlling everything between Bagdad and Kerman, a small moorish army near Clermont, the prince of Sicily near Milan, England puting small armies outside Paris, Orleans and Poitiers at the same time without war declared. I really don't mind a constant state of war since that was the norm in the Middle Ages but now it looks like the factions don't have a clear conquest path like in 0.97

[Jurand of Cracow]

Is the 0,98 AI more aggresive than 0,97? I'm currently playing a France campaign medium difficulty, it is turn 35 and the Sultanate of Rum has been crushed by Byzantium, 4 factions had been excomunicated, Jerusalem and the Seljuks are on the brink of colapse and what is weirder for me is that all AI factions send small armies (less than 5 units) deep into enemy territory. Some examples are: the abbasid caliph laying siege on Kerman with the Seljuks still controlling everything between Bagdad and Kerman, a small moorish army near Clermont, the prince of Sicily near Milan, England puting small armies outside Paris, Orleans and Poitiers at the same time without war declared. I really don't mind a constant state of war since that was the norm in the Middle Ages but now it looks like the factions don't have a clear conquest path like in 0.97

This is an important insight. I don't have a clue why it's happening but we'll try to improve it.

[AlberdoBalsam]

Is "A medieval 2 mod" a ripoff of SSHIP?

Also, whats the easiest faction to play as? I only played Poland, abbassids and Byzantines on very hard. Impossible for me, i think i will turn the difficulty down, its not as easy as normal SS. I would like to know some of the easier factions though.

[Jurand of Cracow]

? ripoff ?

I'd think that HRE and Byzantines are easy. Maybe England and Almoravids as well.
The Seljuks have their Nemesis - the Mongols.

I think the HRE is more interesting now with more buildings (wonders and Hanseatic guild), and with the economy starting small but ready to develop.

You may read the description of the changes, they provide some insight, and I've updated it some time ago.

[AlberdoBalsam]

Yeah. There is a mod in moddb called "a medieval mod 2". It looks just like many aspects of SSHIP. Is it someone stealing your assets?

[Kilo11]

Could you post a link to that mod's page? It may just be similar to ours, or it may be using some assets which are not proprietary to our work, but it would be good to make sure there is no funny business. Also, if it is just some other team who is interested in the same sort of mod as ours, there are good grounds for us to at least get in touch with them and see if there isn't any room for us to share ideas and assets with one another. At any rate, knowing who this other mod's team is would be of value to our crew.

[j.a.luna]

Could you post a link to that mod's page? It may just be similar to ours, or it may be using some assets which are not proprietary to our work, but it would be good to make sure there is no funny business. Also, if it is just some other team who is interested in the same sort of mod as ours, there are good grounds for us to at least get in touch with them and see if there isn't any room for us to share ideas and assets with one another. At any rate, knowing who this other mod's team is would be of value to our crew.

Here you have mate,
https://www.moddb.com/mods/a-medieval-mod

[Belovèse]

Hey @XXZit, I have a bit more time in my hand this morning, so I could read you whole post!

First of all I want to congratulate the team for still working on and improving the mod. The changes you've made are notorious and can be appreciated from the moment you fire up the campaign map. My favorite features include the new building system, the changes to region growth (love this one), public order, the agent overhaul and the new reputation tracker. These alone completely change the gameplay experience for the better. When compared to 0.96. The rest of the changes are icing on the cake. Also, I'm not one to care much about looks, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that some of the campaign map units and character portraits and icons are simply beautiful. Great work, whoever worked on those!

thanks a lot!

Now, after extensively playing 2 campaigns, I can say with confidence this new version fits almost perfectly my ideal of what a TW game should be. Yet there are still rough edges that need further work. The crashes are without a doubt the biggest sore point, happening religiously every few turns, which is very frustrating to say the least. The trait system while immensely improved from 0.96, is still not functioning correctly. Many times my generals gained bogus, unrelated and undesired traits when they shouldn't. I've included an error report detailing lots of trait related errors reported by the game. Perhaps these errors have something to do with it.

I totally agree with you, there is still a lot of technical stuff to streamline. I read the errors log you sent: these are not harmfull, as far as I know. It is just the game warning you against lowering a trait: it seems the devs intended to rely on the antitrait system instead, but it is bugged. So as you say below if you're missing a bracket you're on your own, but here someone took the time to have the time to bugger you to use the antitrait system. Which, once again, appears to be bugged. Go figure!

To further elaborate on the topic of the crashes, I'm certain most of them are related to the campaign script. I removed all the civil war section and the crashes were at least halved. I would honestly take a look to try and diagnose exactly what is the issue, but that thing is abnormally large, and for no other reason than that restrictive 'scripting language' -if you can call it that- the developers created. Trying to work with that would both infuriate me and give me a headache. Also there’s the possibility that there is nothing incorrect with the script itself but you’re reaching a sort of hard-coded limit of the virtual machine -assuming that’s how it’s done- which produces some sort of memory overflow, possibly corrupting the stack and eventually causing a crash? You’d think there would be some warning informing you of such event but considering missing a closing bracket in a xml configuration file causes the game to crash, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t the case.

I agree with you on the civil war being the source of crashes. I have a plan for a new system, and saw someone else already done it in another mod: instead of using the command faction_emerge, you can spawn an army of a dead faction. If this army conquers a settlement before the end of turn, it looks like the faction reemerge. Same can be done for rebels, using a scripted slave army to assault your cities instead of relying on the faction_emerge command.

About the memory overflow I don't have enough knowledge to investigate. I only know LAA reduced the number of crashes for me, and allow me to get rid of the compatibility mode.

About the building errors: these are also errors that can be ignored. In some of the new buildings chains there are some levels that can be build only by certain factions, so there is indeed some gaps in the chain for some factions, but for now everything is working as intended in the code. On this case I must admit it is a useful report from the game, it is just Jurand that found some effective but funky way of coding faction-specific building!

And thanks again for your detailed and helpfull feedback!

[Berk]

I agree with you on the civil war being the source of crashes. I have a plan for a new system, and saw someone else already done it in another mod: instead of using the command faction_emerge, you can spawn an army of a dead faction. If this army conquers a settlement before the end of turn, it looks like the faction reemerge. Same can be done for rebels, using a scripted slave army to assault your cities instead of relying on the faction_emerge command.

@Belovèse I wonder what mod it is. Can you give the link of the mod? I would like to test and experience.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Yeah. There is a mod in moddb called "a medieval mod 2". It looks just like many aspects of SSHIP. Is it someone stealing your assets?

No, they're using the base Stainless Steel plus some icons from elsewhere. Besides, I'm actually pretty relaxed about using my work, at least. Sometimes I also add few instructions how to incorporate it.

About the building errors: these are also errors that can be ignored. In some of the new buildings chains there are some levels that can be build only by certain factions, so there is indeed some gaps in the chain for some factions, but for now everything is working as intended in the code. On this case I must admit it is a useful report from the game, it is just Jurand that found some effective but funky way of coding faction-specific building!

I think coding this one provides a ton of errors ;-)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Belovèse]

@Jurand: actually all the errors come from this building chain only But it is working as intended in-game, so all is good!