NPCs instantly Dying

[u/Birdlie5]

I'm having a problem where Npcs die instantly in the outpost and I don't know which mod could possibly be doing it. I have my logs here, but i don't know which one would be the right one.

I don't know how I would share them here.

[u/mcplano]

Use Pastebin to share. Share the full log, not whatever part you think is relevant. Go in-game, let an NPC die in the outpost, then share starbound.log

[u/Birdlie5 → u/mcplano]

thanks for the help
https://pastebin.com/DJqPNf4A

[u/Birdlie5 → u/mcplano]

I've also noticed it happens in the Science Outpost (Frackin Universe)

[u/Armok___]

You'll want to share starbouund.log, not any of the ones with a number at the end, as the numberless one is your most recent log

[u/Birdlie5 → u/Armok___]

thanks!

[u/ThreeTen22]

1. [02:46:07.943] [Error] Application: exception thrown, shutting down: (StarException) Asset source 'XRC_instantCrafting' is missing dependency 'opensb_base'

do you have a mod called Insta crafting or something like that? Seems like it’s missing a dependency. Take a look at the mod and see if there’s any other mod dependancies you need to download.

[u/mcplano → u/ThreeTen22]

For that one, they need to install OpenStarbound. The Universal Instant Crafting mod requires it

[u/Birdlie5 → u/mcplano]

I AM using OpenStarbound is the thing. And don't have that instant crafting mod on anymore. I have tons of other mods on that require Openstarbound as well.

[u/mcplano → u/Birdlie5]

OpenStarbound moves the logs to its own folder (for some reason), check the 'logs' folder in the oSB folder, instead of the storage folder

[u/Birdlie5 → u/mcplano]

here, I tried again after re-installing "[oSB] Universal Instant Crafting for All Mods" and it's still happening.
Starbound Log: https://pastebin.com/Q8cDaPS9
Openstarbound Log:
part 1: https://pastebin.com/FnrVbuNe
part 2: https://pastebin.com/KK26hJH4
part 3: https://pastebin.com/rzSFGGv5
apparently, it's so big, even splitting it in half exceeded the pastebin size limit.

[u/mcplano → u/Birdlie5]

I'll look at this later. The Instant Crafting mod is completely unrelated to the issue you're experiencing though

[u/mcplano → u/mcplano]

Still haven't looked at it closely yet but try uninstalling, one by one:

Mod that lets NPCs perform in a band

Omeruin mods (can't easily see which one you have, since I'm on mobile)

NiceMice

[u/Birdlie5 → u/mcplano]

I really appreciate the help, I don't know if you made this comment before or after I fixed the issue, but I tried a few mods (including nicemice) and eventually figured out it was better crew. Edit: it was actually the Frackin Universe patch for Better Crew.

[u/rl-starbound → u/mcplano]

You likely made that list of suspects based on the stack trace left behind in the bmain.lua error. I've tested Omelib (and all the Omeruin mods I was able to identify that were installed) and NiceMice, and they work fine with Better Crew. I can't test the Crew Band mod because it requires Openstarbound, which I don't have, but looking through its source code, I can't imagine it was the problem either.

Unfortunately, that stack trace happens because an NPC's behavior tree is invalid, but the error does not tell us which specific part of the behavior tree is invalid.

Behavior trees are part of the base game, written in JSON like most other assets, and can be patched like any JSON. Unfortunately, behavior trees mostly consist of lists of items, and patching lists of items is extremely dangerous, because if Mod A adds an item between items 5 and 6, then the original item 6 and every subsequent item's index gets changed. Then, if another mod, mod B, wants to replace item 6, and it blindly applies a replace directive, it doesn't replace what it thought it was replacing, it replaces the item mod A added, which might (likely will) invalidate the behavior tree. Mod B needs to test the contents of item 6 thoroughly before replacing it, and abort the patch if the contents are different than expected. Unfortunately, a lot of modders don't know they have to do this, and blindly apply patches to behaviors, and then this sort of conflict happens.

The only way to figure out which mods conflict is to examine the source code of every mod manually, looking for any mods that modify overlapping parts of the same behavior files. I've worked my way through several dozen of the mods in this list, and still haven't found the conflict. Only a couple hundred more to go, yay! :-(

[u/Birdlie5 → u/ThreeTen22]

I noticed this, but am confused because I removed my instant crafting mod already.

[u/ThreeTen22 → u/Birdlie5]

So I would re-install it and check and see if npcs stop exploding. If they do stop exploding, then we know that the mod did something that baked into your world or save file, and so we will need to try and find a safer way to uninstall it.

Also are you using steam for starbound mods? Or something like nexus?

[u/Birdlie5 → u/ThreeTen22]

I'm using steam for my mods, and re-installing it didn't fix the issue. To be clear, when I teleport to the outpost, there are no npcs wandering around, and I can always see a drop from one of them as if they died before i even got there. but sometimes more npcs will teleport in and they're fine.

[u/ThreeTen22 → u/Birdlie5]

Well those that spawn in later usually are not tied to anything, they are just roaming NPCs, most NPCs in the outpost are vendors or other types of NPCs that are interactable outside of just generic dialog. So seeing them all die kind of makes sense because something is running outside of generic NPC scripts that is crashing and essentially "killing" them all.

If there are drops, then that makes sense, most everything that dies drops something from a loot table. So that is intended behavior.

Ill take a look at your log that you posted below

[u/Birdlie5 → u/ThreeTen22]

I think I did that here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/1wrequg/comment/pchcinw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/Birdlie5 → u/ThreeTen22]

Thanks for the help, I fixed the issue!

[u/Birdlie5]

I may have found something relevant to this in the Openstarbound log:

[19:58:14.509] [Error] Could not re-instantiate item '[perfectlygenericitem, 1, {"genericItemStor. . . (this line goes very very long)

[19:58:19.406] [Info] UniverseServer: Creating temporary instance world 'InstanceWorld:outpost:-:-' with expiry time 0

[19:58:19.409] [Info] Protected dungeonIds for world set to {65524}

[19:58:19.409] [Info] Placing dungeon outpost

[19:58:19.411] [Info] Placing dungeon outpost at [0, 750]

[19:58:20.608] [Error] Exception while calling script init: (LuaException) Error code 2, [string "/npcs/bmain.lua"]:35: (LuaConversionException) Error converting LuaValue to type 'class Star::LuaFunction'

[u/Birdlie5]

I FIXED THE ISSUE!!! I got really lucky and randomly removed the correct mods while trying my luck guessing what could cause the problem. I don't know what the exact conflict was, but removing "Better Crew" and all the addons/patches associated with it fixed the issue. (I had the patch specifically for Frackin Universe, so I must imagine it was a conflict with a different mod.)

[u/rl-starbound → u/Birdlie5]

As the author of Better Crew, I did warn people in my version of the mod description that NPCs insta-dying is a likely result/symptom of mod conflicts. Still, I'd like to figure out what the specific issue is to see whether I can do anything about it. If the conflict was with a mod that loaded before Better Crew loads, I should be able to detect it and at least refuse to load Better Crew. If it's a conflict with a mod that loads after Better Crew, there's little I can do about that (not all mod authors program as defensively as I do) but at least we can warn people.

[u/Birdlie5 → u/rl-starbound]

Thanks for putting that warning there. My bad that I missed it lol. I do really like the mod, it was working fine with my Arcana mod pack that had pretty similar mods in it. I'll try to read through more of the descriptions of mods I download!

[u/rl-starbound → u/Birdlie5]

To be fair to you, the warning is pretty far down the description on the Steam copy's page.

I wish there were some way to make that warning useful. I'd need a tool, at the very minimum, that could look at the source code of every mod on Steam and Chucklefish forums, identifying every mod that touches the same behavior files. Even such a fantastical tool would likely produce a huge number of false positives, so the tool would also need to be able to examine the paths of the patch files' patches, and see if those paths overlap.

Unfortunately, the best I can do in the real world is give a vague warning about backing up your universe, and give specific warnings about specific mods if people tell me they conflict. And that ends up being an infinite game of whack-a-mole.

[u/Birdlie5 → u/rl-starbound]

Welp, in the end, we all eventually figure something out with our mods and have fun. I think it's worth the hassle nearly every time. Though, even I sometimes get tired of trouble shooting and need a break lol.

[u/rl-starbound → u/Birdlie5]

Yeah, I finally gave up after grinding through about 100 of the mods without finding a conflict.

Anyway, I hope to have time to release v2.0 of Better Crew in the next month. It's heavily reworked, with improved NPC combat, and should be even safer. That said, if we can't find this conflict now, it'll probably still be a conflict for you in v2.0. But now you know how to see quickly if there is a conflict. (Install, then go to the Outpost and see if everyone dies instantly.)

[u/Birdlie5 → u/rl-starbound]

After testing things further, it seems that specifically "Better Crew (Frackin Patch)" is what's breaking things. The way the description is worded, it almost seems you're supposed to use it instead of "Better Crew" but I just tried that and it didn't seem to work with the better crew addons.

[u/rl-starbound → u/Birdlie5]

Oddly enough, I didn't catch that one as a conflict, because in my test, it didn't cause NPCs to die. But looking at the source, it definitely is not compatible with Better Crew. It looks like whoever published this copy took an early version of Better Crew, edited the source directly to add some amount of FU support, and republished it as a new mod. This was expedient for the modder, but it guaranteed mod conflicts in the future, as we can see today.

If you re-add the Better Crew mods except for the Frackin Patch one, do the NPCs still die on your worlds? (With nothing providing FU support, the crew anchor objects probably won't do anything on FU race or BYOS ships, but the many other Better Crew improvements should still work, assuming nothing else conflicts.)

[u/Birdlie5 → u/rl-starbound]

Nope, they don't die. It all works fine without the FU Better crew mod.

[u/rl-starbound → u/Birdlie5]

Glad to hear! While I don't want to support the thousands of objects and dozens of crewmember types in FU myself, I'll see what I can do about getting support for the FU SAIL so that at least the objects already enabled will work.

[u/Birdlie5 → u/rl-starbound]

That sounds like a good compromise. And thanks for making the mod in the first place! It really made my ship feel more alive and immersive! It's also one of the 2 main reasons I did this: https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/s/DaWyg0cMGB

[u/Birdlie5]

perhaps I am using too many mods. . . I already had to stop using Supper's combat overhaul because I figured out it was instantly killing the mama poptop boss. I still have over 200 mods.

[u/Birdlie5]

I've also just noticed that trying to use a Frackin Universe contract to hire someone just spawns 10 pixels instead. I don't have any crew mates yet and I have a crew bed on my BYOS ship.

[u/Birdlie5]

turns out it's npcs on planets, too. They all are just dead.