wierd pre-assigned build queues

[para (OP)]

New player, new poster.  Hi y'all.  I'm not certain this is the right subforum to post this question in, but I did my best.  Here goes:

I've run into a very strange behavior on newly claimed worlds.  When I 'create colony', sometimes a build queue in the industry tab is generated. . .  and it often builds missiles, ship parts and such I've never seen before, much less designed.  For example: "Orion Drives" and "Heatseeker Missiles".

There are no installations to process these queues, no populations to run the installations, sometimes no minerals.  There are no ruins and no aliens for sectors around.  There is no logical reason for these queues to exist, yet despite logic and common sense, they do.

Why?

I want to add that in the absence of exposition on this topic, I'm planning to set up a population and import the minerals to let these queues build, especially the ones with odd designs, and see what comes of it.

My current operating theory is that my assigned sector governor is celebrating her unbirthday with tea and impossible dictates given as gifts by a March Hare.  He gives her a new impossible idea on every day whose second-to-last letter is 'a'.  These instructions are to be carried out by an army of Harveys.  I'm open, however, to better explanations.

[para (OP)]

I'll add that I've posted a Xenology team on one of these worlds to see if they dig up anything. . .  they haven't been there long, but I'm not hopeful.

[MarcAFK]

I'm interested to see what happens here, however I'm guessing it's some kind of database corruption, perhaps in Steve's test game from the last update the same body you've colonized was producing those items and there's been crossover there?

[para (OP)]

That's a thought I had too, but something about it doesn't scan - how would the database cross-reference those records used to corrupt it?  A corruption this. . .  specific and with the game still functional, still needs a pointer for each instance of demonstrated error and somewhere accessible to point to.  I don't think just a planet name would work, it'd have to be something like planet name + name of society. . . the database would need to somehow not be compartmented - using different tables with prefixes instead of a different database for each game, for example, might allow a mistake like this to happen unless it's actually opening a connection to an entirely different database but it just. . .  I dunno. I don't know if that's it. Besides, database corruption usually means everything stops working.  The record is written as gibberish. . . this isn't gibberish, exactly. This feels. . . intentional somehow.     

Now, if the abstraction layer is somehow hard-coded to use specific pointers for specific planet names initially, I could buy that. But that'd be an executable issue, not a database issue (unless its a 'SCiD' (source code in database) or something, in which case it would technically be the database's fault (but still wouldn't be corrupted, just in error. )) Pre-populated fields that are easily fixed in game (If I choose) does not strike me as database corruption.     

Not to mention that at least one of the build queues is trying to convert from Newtonian to Trans-newtonian tech. A different one is, I think, using tech more advanced than mine. So it would have to be corruption from different games, or a game with multiple societies (which goes back to how the pointer would need to have both planet and society specific references. )

If somehow an alien race was partially generated - up to the point where its tech is defined, its build queue is set, and then the rest of the civilization is deemed unworthy by the generator logic and wiped - that also might do it. Maybe. It's reaching.   

Edit: speaking of odd program behavior, why is the forum adding spaces after each period? It's disconcerting.

[Narmio]

I had something like this too, when I established a colony on Mars there were some facilities being constructed and some Firestarter Missiles being built.  The colony had no factories, so those items were not really doing much, but I deleted them ASAP just in case.  I suspect that the "corruption" we're seeing here is actually records being copied across from another saved game, or having been previously stored in the database from a saved game of Steve's and not cleaned out. 

They seem to be harmless if you delete them before continuing, but this is most-definitely something we should copy into the bugthread.

[sloanjh]

That's a thought I had too, but something about it doesn't scan - how would the database cross-reference those records used to corrupt it?  

It's actually not that hard.  Steve uses a TON of tables, and not all records have the gameID in them (or not all queries filter on the gameID).  So if he's using an index for the colony that isn't a principle key in the colonies table (i.e. can be replicated) to bind the queus this this can happen.  It's rare, but IIRC we've seen similar things before.  More typically the problem is that e.g. design names "leak" through from other games, again because he's not filtering on gameID when he should.

BTW, we encourage these sorts of questions in The Academy, rather than Mechanics, because we want to keep the thread noise down in Mechanics (since that's where Steve tends to post major rules changes).  I've moved the thread.  For more details, please read the "where should I post?" thread in the FAQ.

John

[para (OP)]

BTW, we encourage these sorts of questions in The Academy, rather than Mechanics, because we want to keep the thread noise down in Mechanics (since that's where Steve tends to post major rules changes).   I've moved the thread.  

Cool.  Couldn't find it at first, I used my profile's 'latest posts' function to find it again, but it makes sense.

[Bgreman]

Yeah, I just checked the DB of my save, and there are industrial projects still present from like 3 other games.  This indicates that this table isn't cleaned up when a game is deleted.  Probably what others have posted about that gridview filtering only on PopulationID and not GameID are correct.