Slow progress and no event updates

[Dulkan (OP)]

Hello everybody,

First of all, this should fit more in the bugs section, but I can't post a topic there, sorry.

I discovered Aurora about 3 months ago, I'm now about 90 years into my first campaign and I have encountered some problems, which really hamper my enjoyment.

For about 10 in-game years the game slowed down to a crawl.  Sure, there is a lot more to calculate than at the start.  But when I hit 5 day or 30 day increments with activated auto-turns, the game usually proceeds only 4-12 hours and then halts, despite absolutely nothing happening to me.  I can understand the low increments, but why is it stopping despite auto-turns being on?


What's worse, my event updates window is no longer accessible.  When I open it, it appears in the taskbar, but it just isn't there.  Even with no other windows active I cannot get it to appear.
There is no error message and I already tried resetting window positions, restarting the game and the machine as well as reinstalling the game.  Additionally the event updates window works fine when I start a new game, so it seems to be a problem with the save.  Any way to fix this?

Finally, in case I have to start a new game, what would be good settings to avoid such a hefty slowdown? I started with the default settings and I think 1000 systems is far too many.

Regards,
Dulkan

[Erik L]

The slowdowns occur when the program has to calculate for not only your moves, but your civilians, the NPRs, the NPR civilians, the spoilers, etc. Every time a ship moves into a new system, there is a chance for a new empire to be found (or the spoilers). This adds to the slowdowns.

Try looking at the event window in SM mode to see if the reasons for the stoppages are listed. If there is a battle going on outside your system, and you are not involved, you'll have to wait out the small increments.

If the event window is not visible, resetting window positions should fix that. If it doesn't and there is an icon on the task bar, click the icon, hit ALT-Spacebar, select Move, hit any arrow key once, then use the mouse to position. If that doesn't work... Not sure.

For starting, limit the number of NPRs. Turn off extra spoilers. This limits the slowdowns/extends the time before they appear. If you decrease the system count, then you will get JP collisions more often as you have a smaller pool to link to.

And finally, the Bug forum is set to reply only since Steve uses the official bug threads as a filing system for reports. If they are not there, he reads them and may not recall them.

[Dulkan (OP)]

Thank you for the response.

I understand why the game runs slower.  What vexes me is that the game halts every couple of ingame hours.  The description of auto-turns says it continues to increment time until an interrupt for a player race happens.  I assume my empire is the only player race in a single-player campaign, right?
Yet, it frequently stops after just a few hours of game time.  I wouldn't mind running the game in the background and waiting 5-10 minutes until something happens, but having to press 5 days every 30sec just to get 4 hours ahead is really annoying.


The Alt+Spacebar didn't work.  When I hover over the Event updates in the taskbar the little preview (I'm using win 7) only shows a blank wihte sheet.  I think there is more behind this than only no visibility.

[Erik L]

Did you enable any of the spoiler races?

[Hawkeye]

re. invisible event:
Resetting the windows possition (from the main game menue, I believe) only works, at the very start.

i.e., you start Aurora and then, as the very first thing you do, you click "reset windows possition". If you have the window already open, it won´t work.

Other than that, I can´t help, unfortunately.

Oh, it could be possible for some aliens to be in a system where you are too (survey ship, small outpost or something).
So the game could stop because there is a _possible_ intereaction between the aliens and you, but either the aliens see you, but are not interested to come to you, or both of you are not even aware of each other being in that system.
Yes, a long shot, I know.

[Dulkan (OP)]

If, by spoiler races you mean prescursors, invaders and swarm.  Then yes, all of those are turned on.


But shouldn't possible interaction not count? I've had two system surveys, where the game only halted when my scouts sensors actually detected the alien ships there.

[Steve Walmsley]

Just to confirm, is this v6.3? There were problems in earlier versions caused by spoiler mines.

[Dulkan (OP)]

No, I'm on 6. 21

[Steve Walmsley]

No, I'm on 6. 21

There is a problem in pre v6.3 games where there are mines on a jump point that have launched their sub-munitions. When an alien ship comes through, time stops so that both sides can set new orders. If the ship is constantly going in and out of the system, this can cause a lot of pauses.

I'll send you a PM with a suggestion how to sort this out

Steve

[ollobrains]

upgrade the game to 6.3 and steve should have 6.4 out to us before new years so anyway im playing 6.3 and am about 25 years in and the game is doing quite well

[amram]

are these pauses required for the NPR's to function properly?

As a new player, this is the one thing I despise.    i've got a dozen games so far, and each, including on the latest posted version, has ended the same way, hour after hour of real time wasted on hundreds to thousands of 5 second steps.    Sure the rare full day makes its way in there, the occasional hour, but seeing a 5 day step is like winning the lottery once I get a few years in, not even a decade.   Version 6. 3 for the last couple games, same result, though it went further.   They went to war(saw one complaint in the SM log about an invalid SY target) so it seems a planet was being attacked.

When I have nothing that will require my attention for the next week, and that is looking likely to take as much as 42 hours of real time to achieve given current rate of advance, i find myself rather disinterested, you know?

Is there any hope of being able to temporarily force an interrupt to be ignored so the NPR's can do their thing while I do mine?  Understandably then at the risk that im going to get glassed 1 day into my 30 day timestep.    At least the end of that game is my fault then. 

[JacenHan]

I would recommend trying out zero starting NPRs, then turning up the spawn rate for random ones. It's probably likely that you wouldn't have seen that pre-generated NPR at all through the game, and in that case all they would do is run around causing slowdowns.

Also, if you use the Real Stars option, then there is no system limit, it is limited to the amount of stars in the database (and even then, it might start generated fake ones?).

Another thing that might help, up in the top right corner with the turn buttons is an option labeled "auto time increments" or something. This forces the game to run a selected amount of increments, without stopping for anything.

[amram]

yeah, I can try without spawning an NPR off the bat, but then aren't I essentially giving that NPR no chance of competing when i do allow it to spawn and we meet?  I mean, i'd have a 20 year advantage on them if it was 20 years before I spawned one, wouldn't I?  Or do they get a healthy dose of research and construction points to go spend and get on track with me.    Though even still, they'd lack colonies so they couldn't afford to compete the same as if they had expanded all that time.  Im all for getting my ass kicked, its a good way to learn what does and doesn't work, already expect my first excursion to be wholly inadequate, and dysfunctional due to design issues, in other words, my own damn fault.

yep, using real stars, I just went with the basic settings for the most part I can try disabling that. 

The autoincrements was the only thing that let me even attempt to play through the slowdowns.    The one attempt got me 20 hours game time in 4 hours real time, almost entirely at 5s intervals, I just punched in 1000 increments and hit go for 1 hour steps so it wasn't a disaster if I missed when it got going good.    Then I launched VLC and started watching TV in a window so I could keep an eye on the log.    I was just in the early stages of preparing to go hunting too.    I had started my military build up, and needed to wait for the military ships to be completed, which was not any time soon, especially at that time rate. 

At this point, i'd kill for a don't even stop for the NPR button, but I assume that would break the NPR's ability to do what it does?

[Hawkeye]

I can´t find the quote at the moment, but iirc the generation of NPRs takes the time you have been playing into account - somewhat. So a NPR generated after 20 years of playing will be stronger than a NPR generated at games start.

[Kof]

This has happened to me before. It is incredibly annoying.

Look for some poxy little base on a moon somewhere. 1 or 2 Deep space tracking stations. It can be a ship either. If I can't find a base, it could be an alien ship and I abandon the system until I have better sensors so I can find it.