Crucible glitches and oversights

Hey Webbernever1,
thanks for your report (ps. I love your creative workshop maps ;).
But for the future, please create separate reports for each unique issue.
The reason is that it makes the internal management of bug reports much simpler.
Each issue can fall into responsibility of a different person and with separate tickets, issues can be assigned to different persons and resolved at different times.

Now we will see how we convert this one into internal tickets.
But thanks for reporting bugs and participating int the community anyway :)

Ah, okay, apologies, I shall create separate tickets in the future. I just thought that they may be somewhat linked.

Glad to hear that you like my maps, it always means a lot to hear that. I should probably start looking at integrating the new map editor mechanics.

There is indeed quite a lot of differents bugs in here = )
1) Ghouls going feral when their necro die ss intended behavior. However attacking the gateways ? In crucible the gateways don't have the fight module. Maybe a unit too close to the portal made it look like they were attacking the portal/gateway

2) We fixed yesterday the artefact, not for gold however. They fall on a non owned territory. That's some design discussion. But atm you can use the AureateMonolith active ability to collect the gold piles.

3) Apocalypse does kill everything on the <70 waves. I guess it's a balance/design/writing issue

4) There was a bug on respite when used during Set wait, it was fixed a day or two ago = )

5) On the top right, the goldstones will glow and you can click on them. But we could add a map ping too you are right

6) That's for you Stefan ;)

7) Intended, you are supposed to die anyway isn't it ; ) And lasting 2h is already incredibly long ^^

8) I overlooked that, I heard it too but never acted upon it. I just fixed it after reading your comment though. So next patch ^^
9) I never encountered it, so I'd love a replicate steps ^^'. I'll fix the flying unit on the racks though

10) It was a misleading VO notification, Stefan fixed it a day or two ago = )

11) Gold value is quite high in fact. The "last stand" (Letting mass unit destroy your goldstone and pack at your dungeon core) requires millions of gold. For highscores, apocalypse end up costing you 800k+ gold ;)

12) Our first and only map, during most of the development time, had the middle lane on the north and was spawning first. The decision to add a number for feedback happened late. we still have an announcement during setup time though, that tells which lane will spawn and when.

Ah, it is nice to hear that most of these have been fixed already, I shall look forward to the patch. Thanks for the quick responses.

Regarding 1) - You are probably right. What led me to think that the ghouls were attacking the gateway was that three of them, in a line but with about a ghoul and a half distance between each, were all pointing towards it and attacking. I shall see if I can replicate it and get a screenshot of it.

Regarding 9) - Unless my game was bugged, it was simply a case of trying to convert the enemy units. I shall see if I can replicate it and provide the steps.

Regarding 12) - I noticed the announcements, but just thought it would be more logical to renumber the gateways so that wave 1 = gateway 1. It also makes sense that gateway 1 is the most important gateway. What I really meant was for later waves too. For instance, sometimes only two gateways are used for spawning enemies, so I would be able to prioritise my fortifications acccordingly. The announcements are, admittedly, difficult to read and remember when I am in the middle of, say, building a room.

For point 6) are you sure you did not had maxed out again meanwhile or you converted many prisoners (which also occupy population)?

Last time, I did not use the torture chamber at all because of point 9). I was also using aureate monoliths, so most of the enemies were turned into gold anyway. My rooms were also small, I had Very few minions. But the minions simply were not coming back. I had around 15 minions in total, I think, and it told me that the gateway was at 100%.

I tested this now ages long with killing units in multiple ways and waiting for respawn by looking carefully at all values and it seems to behave all as intented.
What you should know though:
- Prisoners count to your population until used (when converted they keep counting to your population)
- Sacrificing an alive minion for Vampire, Crypt, Torture or Tavern spitroast delays the respawn of same kind for one minute
- Throwing a minion back into the gateway does even lower the spawnrate of same kind over multiple minutes while it gradually recovers (get back to normal speed) over this time and this does stack to some extent if multiple are thrown away
Also:
The spawn rate is a wait time before trying again to spawn "the most suitable unit".
If you lose your entire army in this time it will still have to wait for next spawn attempt before it spawns again more frequent.
eg. if you have an army of 100 population with 2 gateways the wait time is almost 2 minutes.
If you lose all your minions briefly after last spawn it will take almost 2 minutes before units respawn.

These are my guesses why it did feel like not working as intented.
But I was unable to find any bugs.
Let me know if one of the points I mentioned might have applied to you or if you still think there must be a bug.

Well, I shall try a game later today or tomorrow and see if it happens again. All I know is that I was at the population cap Very early.

My prison was small, it could probably hold eight enemies at most. My overall population was probably fifteen at most. I sacrified gnarlings for vampires. However, even though the game lasted over the hour mark, I do not recall seeing another gnarling spawn. I think my rooms were:

Archive 5x5 (four cultists).

Foundry (seven chunders I think).

Alchemy lab 7x3 (two crackpots).

Barracks 7x5 (six gnarlings, later built an extra prop which attracted a new gnarling).

Garrison 3 3x3 (two augres).

Beast den was large but was built late in the game.

I had four vampires.

I think I had as many as three prisoners.

A large portion of the map was a vault.

Other than that, I am pretty sure that that was all I had. I did build a arena, but I Never received a beastmaster. As I said, my prison was also small.

I used the same map as seen in this ticket I wrote:

http://brightrockgames.userecho.com/topics/1651-blood-of-rhaskos-graphical-glitch/

As you can see, there is not exactly a lot of room to build in any case. The left side was almost entirely a vault. The right side was almost entirely a beast den. The top had a sanctuary, arena, and a small prison. What I am trying to say is that I am not sure if there is even enough room to build enough rooms to hit the population cap anyway. Especially if a vault/beast den is going to be used.

I actually have a feeling that using the aureate monolith may have done it. Effectively, all three gateways were surrounded by many, many golden statues. I sometimes threw a few of my minions into the battles to help fight off the enemies. I am wondering if when my minions were killed and subsequently turned into gold, maybe the population was not reduced because the statues were on the gateway (unclaimable) ground, and hence still in play, technically. Just a suggestion. As I say, I shall have a go at testing it again.

Just a small comment to remind that AureateMonolith turn even your units into Gold statue. Just sayin' because I ended up once wondering why I had so few units ^^

Interesting, maybe this is the root cause of the problem

Not the cause unfortunately as Gold Statues are explicitely filtered out when calculating the current population.

Hm, I shall have a go at testing later today. Out of interest, are bosses or crucible units able to kill vampires permanently? I recall sending four vampires after chunders (I think the chunder boss), and they seemed to disappear, I presumed that they were killed. However, they never respawned, I presume due to the gateway limit.

If not, it is possible that it is something related to the map.

There is nothing particular for Vampire in Crucible. A few more units than usual are able to kill them but apart from that nothing. Their respawn have nothing to do with the gateway limit =)

Ah, okay. Just going to do another test now. Whilst I think of it, I have one more theory to offer: I do not really understand why the gateway population would be shown as 100% so early on, and why it would not fall below that even when minions were dying. I remember at one point I saw a few minions return, but nothing substantial. I am wondering if ember demons are somehow contributing to the population. As I see it, perhaps something was causing the population limit to artificially rise. My ember demons were killed very often, so perhaps that was it. In support of this theory, at one stage, my ember rifts would have been destroyed, and perhaps this was when I saw a small rise in population, albeit it would have been too late by this stage. Alternatively, is the population limit in crucible mode lower than usual? If not, micropiglets/rats are my next guess. If none of those, maybe some of the crucible units take up a lot of population (albeit, I doubt all of these reasons because ember demons do not usually do this, and the population which would be required by the crucible unit would be very high). I am just going to presume that something went very wrong with the game, perhaps the way I was playing, and see if it happens this time.

Edit: By the way, I can confirm point 3. The narrator Definitely says that apocalpyse kills all enemies other than bosses 'outright'. To hear it, reset the tips.

Just played again. The gateway populatin limit did not occur again, so I am really not sure what happened on that game. However, I do have an image of point 10. These disciplines simply stood here. I noticed that if I built stone bridges and then removed the connecting tiles, sometimes units I had shockwaved would simply stay there.

I shall create separate tickets for two other odd things I encountered. Just to ask though, is it intended for an artefact of incantation not to complete vampire rituals? If not, I can create a ticket for that.

output_log.7z

Hey Webbernever1,
Just to confirm each Ember Demon occupies 1 population like most minions do.
Micropiglets however do never occupy population.
So I am still unsure what was causing your population issue, but if you find any way to reproduce the problem so we can debug our self, it would be more than the half way to actually fixing it.

And yes separate tickets are easier to manage as said.

I noticed that some of the issues mentioned in this ticket did not occur last time, for instance respite worked. Have there already been some fixes?

Just to confirm: an Ember Demon ceases to occupy one population upon its death?

Hey yes we partially fixed issues you reported already.
If you would have made separate tickets, some of them would be closed by now and you could easily see ;)

Yes Ember Demons use 1 population until wiped out, but will use 1 population again once respawned.

I did the last point I kept meaning to do but had more important stuff to do, fixing the torture height for scaled units = )

Thanks, glad to hear about the fixes.

I am afraid that I have had a bit of computer trouble over the past couple of weeks, so I have not managed to test or play many games. When I come around to playing another crucible game, I shall see if any of the more elusive aforementioned bugs occur again.