Okay guys, I'm having a problem. The last update posted to this campaign was only completed by using the automated time advance throughout most of it, and every economic turn took a lot of time to get to, because each time advance was approximately 15-30 minutes. Without the automated feature, I wouldn't have been able to do it at all.
With all of the talk on the board about NPR issues causing these problems, I decided to crack the database and see if I couldn't dig out the problems, or at least identify them so that Steve could explain enough to me to fix the issues. Unfortunately, I found multiple errors that had nothing to do with the time advance issues, but ultimately would have been very problematic. For example, I found that the NPR that was set up at the start of the game somehow got screwed up during race creation. The NPR was created on an oxygen world, but was set as a methane breathing race that required 0% methane to survive, witha spread of 0%. This meant that there were no planets that were hospitable for this race, including its home planet. By the time I cracked the DB I found that the race was reduced to about 18 million in population. Ouch.
In addition, I found another error which has been mentioned on the board. Two NPR's, both of which were activated by other races, had "lost" systems. They both had one warp point in their home system, connecting them to an adjacent system, but they were unable to see the adjacent system and any ships sent through the warp point were "lost".
After consulting with Steve, I was able to determine what the problem was and fix it for all three races listed above, although neither I nor Steve have been able to determine the cause. As this is a 4.46 game Steve may have inadvertently fixed this problem since and thus cannot reproduce it.
I then searched for whatever might be causing the time advance problems, and found several geo-survey ships and one precursor that appeared to be the cause of the issues. I fixed those and started the campaign again. And immediately received error messages indicating that one of the NPR's had again had the problem where they cannot see a system. When I cracked the DB I found that one of the two NPR's that had had the problem before was apparently poised to probe a warp point in the system they couldn't see, but because they couldn't see the system or the ships in it, they couldn't order those ships to probe the warp point. Once I fixed that and they could see the system and the ships, they ordered the ships to probe the warp point and immediately "lost" the new system and the ships that jumped into it.
Now, I can fix this fairly easily now that I know what to look for, and I can probably deal with NPR time advance issues, but from the looks of the posts on the board the time advance issues for version 4.46 are huge and continuing. It appears that Steve has eliminated or reduced most of them for version 4.7, but if I try to continue with this campaign I'm going to be fixing this kind of thing continuously. Worse, these problems are likely to cripple most of the NPR's whether I fix them or not.
Therefore, I am ending this campaign at this point. I'm sorry, as I liked where this was going, but I see no viable alternative. I have decided to transport part of this campaign to my next, though. There was another race in this game that was going to be introduced at some point in the future, probably when they ran into the Allied Principalities, and I think I'll use them for the center-piece of my next campaign. I'm going to wait a little while, though, to make sure that Steve swats a few more bugs before I start the next one.
Kurt
