Bug Report: Patrol Helicopter napalm consistently kills chickens, bypassing an exhaustive set of TruePVE rules and advanced configurations

Plugin: TruePVE
Version: 2.3.3
Server Version: Protocol: 2594.270.1 (Release Branch)

Issue Description:

The Patrol Helicopter's napalm/fire attack consistently kills chickens (simplechicken.entity) that are located inside a Chicken Coop (chickencoop.deployed). This occurs despite a meticulously configured TruePVE setup designed to prevent all forms of damage to farm animals. The issue appears to be a fundamental inability of the plugin to correctly identify or intercept the Area of Effect (AOE) fire damage entity created by the helicopter's rockets.

This bug makes it impossible to maintain protected farm animals on any server that wishes to have both PVE elements and active Patrol Helicopters.

Exhaustive Troubleshooting Chronicle:

We have undertaken a multi-stage, systematic process to diagnose and resolve this issue, ruling out every common configuration error. The following is a detailed log of our attempts:

Phase 1: Initial Setup & Basic Rules

1. Objective: Create a basic protection rule for farm animals.

2. Action:

   • Set "defaultAllowDamage": false in the primary ruleset.

   • Created an Entity Group named farm with members: "simplechicken.entity, FarmableAnimal, ChickenCoop".

   • Added rules: "heli cannot hurt farm" and "fire cannot hurt farm".

3. Result:FAILED. Chickens continued to be killed by the helicopter's fire.

Phase 2: Ruling out Metabolism Damage

1. Hypothesis: The damage might be internal (hunger/thirst) rather than external.

2. Action:

   • Enabled tpve.trace to capture damage events.

   • Trace logs initially showed Initiator is thirst or hunger; allow and return.

   • Set "Allow Thirst And Hunger Damage To Farmable Animals": false in the configuration options.

3. Result:PARTIALLY SUCCESSFUL. Chickens no longer died from starvation. However, they were still killed by the helicopter's napalm attack, confirming the external threat.

Phase 3: Resolving Potential Rule Conflicts (NPCs)

1. Hypothesis: Chickens are also NPCs (BaseNpc). A broad rule like "anything can hurt npcs" might be overriding our specific farm protection rules.

2. Action:

   • Explicitly excluded all farm animal prefabs from the npcs entity group to isolate them.

   • Modified npcs group:"exclusions": "simplechicken.entity, FarmableAnimal, chicken, chicken.entity"

   • Added a proactive rule "npcs cannot hurt farm" to protect against other wildlife.

3. Result:FAILED. The helicopter's fire attack continued to bypass all protections. This confirmed the issue was not a simple rule conflict with the npcs group.

Phase 4: Expanding Entity Group Definitions

1. Hypothesis: The prefab names used for the entities might be incomplete or aliased.

2. Action:

   • Expanded the farm group to include every conceivable prefab name for chickens: "members": "chicken, chicken.entity, simplechicken.entity, FarmableAnimal, ChickenCoop".

   • Created a custom, highly-specific helifire group containing every known projectile and fire prefab associated with the Patrol Helicopter: "members": "oilfireballsmall, heli_napalm, rocket_heli, rocket_heli_napalm, napalm, oilfireball2".

   • Added a new rule: "helifire cannot hurt farm".

3. Result:FAILED. Even with these exhaustive entity groups and a dedicated rule, the napalm damage was not blocked.

Final Configuration Summary (Still Not Working):

• Global Option:"Allow Thirst And Hunger Damage To Farmable Animals": false

• Entity Groups:

  {
    "name": "farm",
    "members": "chicken, chicken.entity, simplechicken.entity, FarmableAnimal, ChickenCoop",
    "exclusions": ""
  },
  {
    "name": "npcs",
    "members": "...",
    "exclusions": "simplechicken.entity, FarmableAnimal, chicken, chicken.entity"
  }​

  
  

• Ruleset Rules:

  "rules": [
    "heli cannot hurt farm",
    "fire cannot hurt farm",
    "players cannot hurt farm",
    "npcs cannot hurt farm"
  ]

Conclusion & Request:

After a thorough and multi-layered investigation that rules out user configuration error, rule conflicts, and incorrect entity definitions, we have definitively concluded that this is a bug within TruePVE.

The damage-dealing entity created by the Patrol Helicopter's napalm is fundamentally invisible to or unmanageable by the plugin's current logic. It bypasses the OnEntityTakeDamage hook or its initiator is not identified, rendering any protective rules against it completely ineffective.

We formally request an investigation into the damage logic of the Patrol Helicopter's fire/napalm prefabs. Please examine how these entities are spawned and how they apply damage, and update TruePVE to correctly intercept and process this damage type according to user-defined rules. This issue is critical for the viability of PVE servers that utilize the Patrol Helicopter event.

hi, thank you for the report, but there's no such issue. heli, napalm and rocket damage to a chicken, chicken coop or beehive is blocked irrespective of rules. other plugins can override this behavior by telling TruePVE to allow it.