Substitute being ignored even when health is dangerously low! Please Help!

[MoltresRider]

I am having an issue with my side project game all of a sudden and I have no clue what could be the issue!

The game all of a sudden is frequently ignoring the substitute status effect!

It was working just fine all up to this point, and I have not added any scripts since it was working but now the game treats it as nobody has a substitute flag.

I have a skill called "protect" and it sets a substitute flag on the user for five turns. and it worked great for the first few bosses, but now it is being ignored 100% of the time! Despite the fact that the other character only has a minuscule of health left and the strong character does indeed have substitute, the strong character never covers the character with low health. Any time the character with low health gets targeted, he takes damage and dies. The strong character never covers him.

I know that the stronger character does indeed have cover because I added a shield icon to the state and the shield is displayed by the character's name so the cover status effect was indeed applied.

This creates one of the biggest problems in my game, there is a boss fight (that I am about to test) where the weaker character cannot die. He must survive the entire fight without taking a single death. The whole point of this fight is to prove that this dragon character truly loves her human partner. There is story explaining why you just cannot resurrect him.

If cover is failing to work, this creates a huge problem as cover really needs to be on at all times for the entire fight.

It just stopped working today. It was fine yesterday for the last boss. Now it never works.

This is the cover state


And this is the skill that adds this state.


There is only two characters in the party and even when the weaker one has only 1% health, and the dragon is 100% health, the dragon does not cover him.


Does anybody know what the problem could be?


Edit: The game is ignoring the provoke state as well. Provoke sets the dragon's target rate to 1000%! That too is being ignored! With both cover and provoke on the dragon at the same time, there should literally be zero reason why the weaker human should even be targeted but he is still being targeted and killed.

The Provoke state is definitely being applied as there is a monster icon for it and the dragon does definitely have both icons.

 

[SpyroFan67]

Hmm..well, sometimes stuff in RPG Maker gets randomly corrupted for no reason. Perhaps you could try duplicating the status effect, or maybe take all the traits of the status effect and put it in another you make from scratch. When I have done this, I have found it can fix the problem, because the problem is the file of the status effect or whatever randomly stopping working. It (the engine) occassionally does weird things like that. Don't know if that is helpful advice but it's just my personal experience. And it might not be reliable since I use RPG Maker MV and not VX Ace, but I just wanted to at least try to help.

 

[kyonides]

If you reduce the MP cost, does it cover the human partner?
EDIT
The default Cover skill has a Special skill type. Is Skill the same type as Special? Just curious about it.

 

[MoltresRider]

Are you saying it costs MP to cover each turn?

It costs 10 MP currently and the dragon has quite a bit. like over 100 when it fails.

 

[kyonides]

The default Cover skill has a Special skill type. Is Skill the same type as Special? Just curious about it.
Perhaps the whelp can't cast any skill with the Skill skill type at that moment. Is it getting blocked by some script or some common event or troop event?

 

[MoltresRider]

I changed the skill type to "Skill" for cover as you can see in the screenshot for the skill named "protect" I have skill, magic, dragon, and E skill, as skill types.

as I said I added no scripts since it was working so scripts are not the problem. No common events exists in the game yet. and no troop events as it also fails with random encounters with no troop events.

It was working yesterday.

It has nothing to do with being unable to cast the cover spell as I already said that the state is being applied, the dragon is just not covering.

The state has a shield icon and the shield icon is there after the skill is used.

 

[kyonides]

I've been testing the default Cover skill and state features. So far, I can say it works... most of the time. Plus there's a condition for the whelp should have more HP left than your human hero. What this means is that some attacks COULD ignore the Cover aka Protect skill and state at will while merely basing its decision on probabilities and nothing else.

 

[MoltresRider]

We're comparing a dragon, a large powerful fire-breathing creature, to a human, of course the dragon has more HP. The two started at a 1:10 difference and will cap at about a 1:7 difference.

Rarely the dragon has less unless she was instant shot.

 

[TESTOSTERONE]

I don't know about VXAce, but in MV by default, the substitute trigger needs to meet two conditions:

1. The action cannot be certain hit
2. The target needs to have HP < 25%

 

[MoltresRider]

I don't know about VXAce, but in MV by default, the substitute trigger needs to meet two conditions:

1. The action cannot be certain hit
2. The target needs to have HP < 25%

Both those conditions are being met.

 

[bgillisp]

On the target rate: That only sets probabilities of being hit, and your actual probability is based on the sum of everyone's target rate. Even at the max of 1000% the other will have 100% TGR still which still works out to 1000 + 100 = 1100, or 100/1100 or 1/11 chance of being hit.

From what I remember on substitute, it also will not cover AOEs, and in my experience a hit that would kill the one substituting they would refuse to block. But its been a while since I did this in ACE so memory could be a little off on that last one. But I do remember its a little wonky in ACE sadly, might be better off doing the battle differently.

 

[MoltresRider]

Actually, it does seem to cover AoEs. Because a previous fight when it was working, the boss has both "blow fire" and "blow ice" which targets everybody. Instead of both being hit, the dragon took two hits.

Maybe that is because there are only two in the party, but I don't know. This game is about an unusual love couple out to prove that they love each other so the entire game is just the two of them.

 

[bgillisp]

It might, you could be right. I did experiment with an enemy using it and it would sometimes cover it. But key word was sometimes.

Too bad this is in ACE, there are taunt systems for MV and MZ that could handle the TGR problem, and I think they handle the cover too in an indirect way by making the enemy always target the taunter. But I don't know of any versions made in ACE.

It *might* exist though. Maybe someone else will know of it? Just note if it is a script you will probably find it doesn't work well in battle test (battle test in ACE is poor and often doesn't load scripts I found) and you may need to not load a saved game for testing but test with new game.

 

[MoltresRider]

I only use battle test to check out formulas, attacks, and to experiment with battle commands.

Testing boss fights I do in game