Pre-emptive "Research Limpets are Bugged" Thread

[Jmanis]

Just some prelims: Why's this here?
There's a good chance the next CG is going to be a Thargoid Tissue Sampling CG, and I'm just trying to get ahead of the game and get visibility of this bug in a vain attempt to head this one off early. If the next CG turns out not to be the tissue sampling one, or the CG goes ahead and finishes, this can probably be moved... but for now there's already several people stockpiling samples ahead of time.

----

So, if you've come here, it's probably because you've been wondering why your research limpets are turning up empty. It's not a "random chance" that you don't get samples, and it's not (usually) a collision destroying the sample on your ship or before it's returned (though that can happen).

Official statement included these lines:

The Fifth Aegis Initiative Trade Community Goal will be closed today at 1PM (November 27).

The closure has come about due to a bug with the research limpets spotted over the weekend, stopping the goal being completed to a high level.

Instead, it's a five-year-old bug which means not all limpets retrieve a sample. It was enough to get the last tissue-sampling CG cancelled, and although it's fair to say that things are different today with 16t CRCRs, the failure rate is still anywhere between 40-75%, although your individual rates can be as low as nothing or as high as 100% returns.

What to do?
Please add your experience/reports/videos to this bug report: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/49387

References
Official announcement on the cancellation of the Fifth Aegis Initiative.
Fifth Aegis Initiative CG Thread

 

[HappyMoonMonkey]

Hopefully we don't have to wait for the Thursday playthrough on Frameshift Live for the CMs to realise this. It's a bit more of an obscure bug but its persistence given the previous acknowledgment is infuriating. Although it would be funny for them to see a bug live and then have to playthrough reporting that bug on the tracker.

And they'll have everyone in chat screaming at them "it's bugged!" When they can't acheive the objective.

 

[Sleepyman]

Tried sampling in an AXCZ, until the Cyclops showed up it was reasonably successful. The scouts ignored me as I made no attacks but simply tagged them. For a limited run I got a 50% success rate, some of my losses were the tagged scouts being destroyed by the NPC AX forces. My only damage was the odd stray shot and flying through a corrosive cloud when a nearby scout was blasted into pieces.

When the Cyclops arrived I tagged that with multiple limpets most made it back again a 50% success rate. However I took a lot of damage from the swarm and eventually boosted out. My PD managed quiet well against the odd missile.

So sample hunting from scouts before the cyclops arrives worked well but it was fairly boring , simply tagging scouts and flying in circles.

My not exactly optimal Cutter build

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

The sad thing is: Neither will this get hotfixed before Thursday, nor will the CG be cancelled.

 

[HRDiagram]

I was aware of this potential bug, so I have tried to do some tests myself.
I have gone to a NHSS 4 and started gathering samples from the last Scout in the instance, and I have had a 100% success rate (10 limpets out of 10 managed to collect the sample). I was using the Xeno multi limpet controller.

Will keep doing this, I will also try with Interceptors, and other Scout heavy instances, to see if I am being lucky or if there's some inconsistency.

 

[Jmanis]

I was aware of this potential bug, so I have tried to do some tests myself.
I have gone to a NHSS 4 and started gathering samples from the last Scout in the instance, and I have had a 100% success rate (10 limpets out of 10 managed to collect the sample). I was using the Xeno multi limpet controller.

Will keep doing this, I will also try with Interceptors, and other Scout heavy instances, to see if I am being lucky or if there's some inconsistency.

So this was exactly my experience last night. My first 26 limpets got samples from scouts 100%. Since then (the next day), it's been <50% on most occasions.

 

[Brrokk]

My most amusing failure last night: having the wrong fire group selected, and blasting the Cyclops with multicannons instead of launching limpets.

 

[HRDiagram]

I have tried again, with more limpets in my cargo.
Out of 50 limpets, 38 returned a sample.
I am using the xeno multi-limpet controller, which supports 4 limpets at a time.
When I sent a single limpet, it always returned the sample.
When I sent two or more (up to 4 at the same time), results varied, but the returns were generally poor (half or less).
Then I tried shooting them one at a time, waiting for the Covas to confirm successful limpet engagement before sending the next one, and therefore going on a rotation, where there were always 2 or 3 limpets attached to the Scout at the same time. Even then, there were some failures, but not as frequent as sending them all at the same time. I would say that about 75%.

On my next run, I will try the rotation the whole time, to see how random it gets.

In any case, I have added my contribution to the issue tracker.

 

[HappyMoonMonkey]

I have tried again, with more limpets in my cargo.
Out of 50 limpets, 38 returned a sample.
I am using the xeno multi-limpet controller, which supports 4 limpets at a time.
When I sent a single limpet, it always returned the sample.
When I sent two or more (up to 4 at the same time), results varied, but the returns were generally poor (half or less).
Then I tried shooting them one at a time, waiting for the Covas to confirm successful limpet engagement before sending the next one, and therefore going on a rotation, where there were always 2 or 3 limpets attached to the Scout at the same time. Even then, there were some failures, but not as frequent as sending them all at the same time. I would say that about 75%.

On my next run, I will try the rotation the whole time, to see how random it gets.

In any case, I have added my contribution to the issue tracker.

Perhaps the sample only spawns one at a time on the scout and we have to wait for the next to spawn before engaging the next limpet. Interesting science there.

Possibly intended behaviour. Not necessarily a good game mechanic though.

 

[HRDiagram]

Perhaps the sample only spawns one at a time on the scout and we have to wait for the next to spawn before engaging the next limpet. Interesting science there.

Possibly intended behaviour. Not necessarily a good game mechanic though.

That's what I was wondering, although I seem to understand that this was never reported before, so it could be a glitch indeed, or a secret nerf.

 

[Raxiel]

My most amusing failure last night: having the wrong fire group selected, and blasting the Cyclops with multicannons instead of launching limpets.

Well you have to show it who's boss!

Perhaps the sample only spawns one at a time on the scout and we have to wait for the next to spawn before engaging the next limpet. Interesting science there.

Possibly intended behaviour. Not necessarily a good game mechanic though.

That was my theory. It may not be an intended delay, perhas there's some script or code that needs to run and it trips over itself if too many copies are run at once, IDK.
After a few more NHSS with a 7A universal controller, I'm still seeing better returns (33-35 samples from 50 limpets, or ~66-70%) when finding a group of four scouts and keeping no more than one limpet on each at a time. I have seen 100% returns, but only over the first few limpets, It's never held beyond that.

Keeping 8 limpets out at all times, whether on four scouts or just one was averaging out around 50% sample returns. In terms of the time taken though that's still a faster method. There may be a sweet spot between the two I've not found.

This was from the other day, I've not seen much variation since though:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkPaijgJ6w4

The sad thing is: Neither will this get hotfixed before Thursday, nor will the CG be cancelled.

Whether its a problem for the CG though entirely depends on where the thresholds get set. Whether it's intended to be 100% or not, compared to most of the resource farming in this game its far from the worst. I've never seen it return fewer than 50% on scouts.

Interceptors are a different story, In my experience they can be much lower (and higher), and limpets can be actually destroyed rather than just come back empty. I don't plan on doing any more testing against them though.

Edit: This is the build I'm using

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

 

[Brrokk]

BTW if you want a better place than a NHSS to practice on interceptors, try the "Distress Call" near Delphi 6. There's loads of stuff which the interceptors hang around scanning, so you get longer and they're busy.

 

[St0rmFury]

FWIW, here are my results from using 224 limpets (about 5 are used for collector & repair).

So roughly 37% success rate.

 

[Sleepyman]

NHSS 4 60 limpets fired off, 6 samples returned

Method: killed 3 Marauders. throttled down and tanked the attacks from the last. tried single collectors and spamming as many as my 7A universal would control. Results terrible. Reset and repeated, similar results.

 

[Sleepyman]

Edit: This is the build I'm using https://s.orbis.zone/i_ly

I assume the 7A collector limpet controller was actually a universal 7A

 

[Raxiel]

NHSS 4 60 limpets fired off, 6 samples returned

Method: killed 3 Marauders. throttled down and tanked the attacks from the last. tried single collectors and spamming as many as my 7A universal would control. Results terrible. Reset and repeated, similar results.

That's pretty bad, I wonder if its pure luck or there's some variable that's different.
Since my earlier post I've had another 4 runs, with more than 30/50 each time. 2 with 4 scouts alive, one with two, and one with a single scout.

What ship are you in?
Are you evasive flying or sat still?
Do any of the limpets get a "failed" alert from COVAS?
Do you see each limpet coming back?
Do you see the samples on the returning limpets on the scanner and/or contact while in flight?
Did you happen to get any recordings?
Horizons or Odyssey?
Open/PG/Solo? (Doesn't seem like it should matter but who knows?)

I assume the 7A collector limpet controller was actually a universal 7A

Oh for f...

You saw nothing! Yes, fixed, thanks.

 

[Sleepyman]

That's pretty bad, I wonder if its pure luck or there's some variable that's different.
Since my earlier post I've had another 4 runs, with more than 30/50 each time. 2 with 4 scouts alive, one with two, and one with a single scout.

What ship are you in?
Are you evasive flying or sat still?
Do any of the limpets get a "failed" alert from COVAS?
Do you see each limpet coming back?
Do you see the samples on the returning limpets on the scanner and/or contact while in flight?
Did you happen to get any recordings?
Horizons or Odyssey?
Open/PG/Solo? (Doesn't seem like it should matter but who knows?)


Oh for f...

You saw nothing! Yes, fixed, thanks.

Cutter build linked here
Sat still
No failed alerts
Saw them come back
On the successful returns saw the samples and on the unsuccessful saw that they had no samples with them
No recording
EDO
PG

I did have the scout targeted the whole time

Honestly I got a better return targeting a Cyclops in a CZ

Addendum

Was only sampling the surviving scout, so maybe an internal cooldown was coming in to play

 

[Raxiel]

Cutter build linked here
Sat still
No failed alerts
Saw them come back
On the successful returns saw the samples and on the unsuccessful saw that they had no samples with them
No recording
EDO
PG

I did have the scout targeted the whole time

Honestly I got a better return targeting a Cyclops in a CZ

Addendum

Was only sampling the surviving scout, so maybe an internal cooldown was coming in to play

That's just bizarre, most of what you're doing is the same as me, none of the differences seem like they should matter, yet we have wildly different results.

I assume they were different signal sources with a rearm/repair stop in-between?

Builds are slightly different, but not in a way that should matter, and I'm in solo. Otherwise the same. I've not kept track of how many NHSS' I've done so far, but at least three of them I reduced the population to one and was still getting over half back.

Earlier I did think there might be some kind of internal cool-down, but I'm loosing confidence in the idea as I collect more data and average away the outliers.

I just uploaded my most recent run, with 2 scouts in an NHSS threat 3, here. It's pretty typical of what I've seen all day (forgot to glance at the panel at the end of the recording but it was 33/50).

 

[Sleepyman]

Watched your vid. The 2 differences I spotted were:

1. You launched a number of limpets at each target
2. I only had marauders, you had a regenerator. Could it be that the different types of scout have a different success rate of sample returns?

 

[Raxiel]

Watched your vid. The 2 differences I spotted were:

1. You launched a number of limpets at each target
2. I only had marauders, you had a regenerator. Could it be that the different types of scout have a different success rate of sample returns?

I've had other instances where I didn't place more than one limpet on a target at the time (see the other video earlier in the thread). At first it seemed to give slightly better results but with more data it's starting to look like that's not actually a factor.

The regenerator wasn't typical, most of the time it's 2 or 4 marauders. on the odd occasions the others spawn I usually kill them quickly to avoid missiles. (On a slide note, decon limpets seem to be Incredibly fragile now, one time I did get caustic damage, it took about ten of them to remove it)
That was the only time I've taken more than one sample from a non-marauder and it didn't seem any different.

Only other variable I can think of is Geographical location and/or time of day. Like if it's a server load thing. Feels a bit of a reach but Occam's razor and all that.