Argh! What's happening?

[martinuzz (OP)]

In the year 2074 (from Conventional start) I ventured out into the unknown. I built a second generation gravsurvey vessel, and entered Jump Point #1 in Sol.
It took me to Alpha Centauri, where I discovered a population of Alpha Centaurans.
I set my diplomacy team to work on them.
My strenght 44 passive EM and Thermal sensors soon picked up a *lot* of alien ships, from a *lot* of different classes, and I began getting intelligence reports on them, giving me info on their speed. They did not seem to attack me though, so I let my gravsurvey ship continue it's survey work in Alpha Centauri.

Now, I pressed the 30 days turn button.. (automated turns are on)

The game processes very slowly now. Every 10 seconds (on average) the screen flashes, and the gametime progresses 1 minute.
This has been going on for 14 minutes now.

At this pace, I need to let my computer run for 5 full days, to process a 30 day turn o_0

I guess that's not normal, right?
I'm running on a 3.2 gHz dual core AMD Turion64x2, it's not brand new, but it shouldn't process turns *that* slowly, right?

What could be happening here? The alien race must be doing *something* that is making the game run in 1-minute subpulses that take 10 seconds each to process..

[martinuzz (OP)]

Finally, after 1 hour and 10 minutes (RL), the game started running the turn at a decent speed.
It didn't complete 30 days though.. Looking in the event report, I have 200+ entries telling me the last time increment was 60 seconds, an then one entry telling me the last increment was 1 day.

Only reference to the aliens in the event log is:
Neutral contact update: A strenght 960 thermal contact associated with Claymore 001 has been lost
Neutral contact update: An active sensor contact (Active Sensor S63/R63) associated with Claymore 001 has been lost
Neutral contact update: An active sensor contact (Active Sensor S126/R20)associated with Claymore 001 has been lost
Attempting communications with Alpha Centauri Aliens #1019: Major Progress: +10 to future communication rolls.

It leaves me confused..
Why the 60-second time increments?
Why the single 1-day time increment at the end?

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, you should probably not have automated turns on while in a contact situation.
Also, you can generally expect NPRs to dislike it if you have ships in their systems without a friendly rating.
Might actually be they declared War on you and just don't catch your ship for some reason, or track you on actives but don't do anything.
Though I think normally the game should still stop in that case.

Did you try Alt-F4 + restart?

[Andrew]

Finally, after 1 hour and 10 minutes (RL), the game started running the turn at a decent speed.
It didn't complete 30 days though.. Looking in the event report, I have 200+ entries telling me the last time increment was 60 seconds, an then one entry telling me the last increment was 1 day.

Only reference to the aliens in the event log is:
Neutral contact update: A strenght 960 thermal contact associated with Claymore 001 has been lost
Neutral contact update: An active sensor contact (Active Sensor S63/R63) associated with Claymore 001 has been lost
Neutral contact update: An active sensor contact (Active Sensor S126/R20)associated with Claymore 001 has been lost
Attempting communications with Alpha Centauri Aliens #1019: Major Progress: +10 to future communication rolls.

It leaves me confused..
Why the 60-second time increments?
Why the single 1-day time increment at the end?

Almost certainly 2 NPR's were interacting hence the 60 seconds impulses and then after 1 additional day an event occurred which interrupted your turn and gave you something to react to

[martinuzz (OP)]

So.. having to wait over an hour for 2 NPRs to interact with each other is a normal part of the game?
Ouch.

[martinuzz (OP)]

I pressed the 1 hour button.. Time progresses at 10 RL seconds per game minute again.
I haven't seen any ships of a second race on my passive sensor (I have no active sensor).
I just see a *lot* of different ships from that one race. I counted 80+ ships in the contact list.

I guess they're fighting Precursors. I started this game with only 1 NPR race, and NPR generation on.
However, since I have not explored any system yet (Alpha Centauri is my first trip outside of Sol), there can be no more than that 1 civ yet, right?

New NPR's will only have a chance of spawning when I discover new systems, right?

[martinuzz (OP)]

*I wish this forum would let me edit my own posts*

I was mistaken in my last post. The game is progressing at a pace of 10 RL seconds per game hour now.

This is definitly a bug, since I pressed the progress game time by 1 hour (only once)

[randal7]

I pressed the 1 hour button.. Time progresses at 10 RL seconds per game minute again.
I haven't seen any ships of a second race on my passive sensor (I have no active sensor).
I just see a *lot* of different ships from that one race. I counted 80+ ships in the contact list.

I guess they're fighting Precursors. I started this game with only 1 NPR race, and NPR generation on.
However, since I have not explored any system yet (Alpha Centauri is my first trip outside of Sol), there can be no more than that 1 civ yet, right?

New NPR's will only have a chance of spawning when I discover new systems, right?

New NPRs can also spawn when discovered by the initial NPR, or by any NPR discovered by them, or any other NPR. If you've played almost 50 game years, you are actually kind of lucky to only just now have run into one of these NPR vs. NPR combats. The NPRs seem to be more agressive explorers, or at least more agressive than me.

I usually keep a book handy for when the game turns get longer; if I hit one of these combats I'll just go do something else for a while. Apparently this feature has driven some people away from the game. I find the game worth working around the delays.

[martinuzz (OP)]

Instead of progressing 1 hour, as I ordered, the game progressed 4 days and 15 hours, at 1-hour increments, according to my log.

Do I misunderstand the 'automated turns' options perhaps? All this trouble started when I turned that on.

As I understand,the automated turns option is supposed to do this:
prevent your time-increment of being interrupted by an event that does not directly involve you (NPR-NPR combat)

[randal7]

I think it's more like "run intervals of the selected length until an interrupt affecting you occurs" which really breaks down to "keep running until an interrupt affecting you occurs". There may be some subtlety I'm missing, however.

[Caplin]

Hi,
The automated turns checkbox does pretty much as said above: keep running the interval you specify until an interrupt impacts you.
So your situation is not a bug, just a misunderstanding of the feature.
Hope this helps,
Zack.

[Andrew]

Instead of progressing 1 hour, as I ordered, the game progressed 4 days and 15 hours, at 1-hour increments, according to my log.

Do I misunderstand the 'automated turns' options perhaps? All this trouble started when I turned that on.

As I understand,the automated turns option is supposed to do this:
prevent your time-increment of being interrupted by an event that does not directly involve you (NPR-NPR combat)

No it does not.
It just keeps trying to run the turn length you selected until an interrupt effects you, this means you do not have to click to progress the game while npr's shoot missiles at each other

[martinuzz (OP)]

Thanks for fixing the confusion

That was mostly what was happening. I guess it was the active sensors that the alien ships were using that caused the interrupts then indeed.
I say mostly, because there was some buggy behaviour involved as well.
When I turned off automated turns, both the 1-day, 5-day and the 30-day button increased my time by 1 day only.
No events that would interrupt that happened..
Quitting and restarting the game fixed it (the 30-day button gives me 30 days of time progress again)

There's a rather large alien fleet hanging around one of my mining asteroids in Sol now, theire doing some active sensor pinging, but that's all they do.
They don't seem to attack me. They've been exploring my system for 6 months now, first hanging in orbit around earth, then they checked out my terraforming operation on Mars, and now they're admiring an asteroid.

[martinuzz (OP)]

Oddness.. Same bug again. I explored a new system, and now, when I press a 30-day turn, The game progresses only 1 step of 60 seconds. No event messages.

I turned on automated turns now, and now I get the same behaviour as before.. The game progresses at 60-second steps every 10 RL seconds. I pressed the 1 day button, So I guess I'll have to wait another few hours, if I'm unlucky, before I can quit and restart the game to fix this behaviour.

[randal7]

I've never had a situation where I found a vastly superior, apparently benign next-door NPR that flooded my system with ships. I would guess that many if not all of your interrupts were from their superior sensors picking up new contacts (of your ships) when still out of your ships' range. As I said, never had the situation but I think that's what's happening. You may continue to get interrupts as they gain/lose contact with your ships until you reach a close enough relationship with them that they don't count you a potential threat (and I don't know what level that is). In short, random chance may have rendered your game much more interesting but possibly unplayable, depending on your patience level. Do you have an earlier save to revert to? If the NPR generated when you entered that system, the system will be different and likely unoccupied next time you go through that warp point for the first time. However, if you hit the original NPR's system, or an NPR they found, that won't work. I learned to make regular save backups, particularly before going through a warp point, after a similar incident.

However...

All that being said, if you have just started exploring a new system and just got another interrupt with no message, something interesting may be about to happen there...