2.41 Bugs

[Kurt (OP)]

Minor bug -

On the Task Group Screen, orders section, the box for inputting the number of units to pick up at a location is greyed out when picking up jump gate components.  

Kurt

[SteveAlt]

Minor bug -

On the Task Group Screen, orders section, the box for inputting the number of units to pick up at a location is greyed out when picking up jump gate components.  

Fixed for v2.5

Steve

[SteveAlt]

A new bug I just encountered which players need to be aware of.

If you get one type of contact on an enemy ship, for example a thermal contact, then lose that and get a new contact type on the same ship, perhaps an active contact, then any attempt to follow that ship will follow the oldest contact type and will home in on the lost thermal location instead of the current active location. It should be rare and is fixed in v2.5, but you might run across it in v2.41

Steve

[sloanjh]

A minor one:  It looks like the "Location" dialog box on the F4 screen is not being updated for commanders of HQ - it looks like it just stays with whoever the last one is.  Not sure if this applies to other ground units too.  Note that the HQ in question is in a PDC, so that might be the problem.

John

[sloanjh]

Aha!!  I think it might just be that the new project was in the specialty of the governor and the old wasn't.  I hadn't realized that the wealth cost was proportional to the research points generated, rather than the number of labs.

Hmmm - could you (Steve) change things so that this doesn't happen?  It doesn't feel right that research (and mining, construction, etc) effienciencies obtained through tech or governor don't result in any cost advantages.

Currently the commander bonuses increase the speed of construction rather than reducing its cost. So a new shipyard costs the same whether you have a bonus or not but the bonus helps you build it more quickly.

However, I do think you have made a good point and that better management is likely to reduce wealth cost if the ship or installation is built more quickly. I have changed the code for v2.5 so the extra production gained by commander bonuses in installation construction, ordnance production, fighter production, research, shipbuilding, etc. does not cost any extra money. This means you can build/research things more cheaply (in wealth terms) if you have a governor with bonuses. However you will still use up the required minerals for construction projects.

Steve

Thanks, Steve - that sounds good.

Getting back to the original bug report, I still think there's something weird going on when a research project finishes.  I just completed "Wealth Creation 56" on my Homeworld and started on Jump Effieciency 5 - it cost me an extra 170 wealth or so, even though the research rate didn't change (the Governor specializes in defense).

[Father Tim]

How many research points did your planet produce that increment?  I have a suspicion that wealth for research is getting charged twice when you complete a project (once for the project you complete, and again for the new project you start).  Or maybe it's just the portion spent on the new project that is getting doubled.

I.E. If your 30-day increment generates 243 research points, and it takes 112 to finish your current project, I think Aurora might be charging you either 486 wealth, or (243+112) 355 wealth.

[sloanjh]

How many research points did your planet produce that increment?  I have a suspicion that wealth for research is getting charged twice when you complete a project (once for the project you complete, and again for the new project you start).  Or maybe it's just the portion spent on the new project that is getting doubled.

I.E. If your 30-day increment generates 243 research points, and it takes 112 to finish your current project, I think Aurora might be charging you either 486 wealth, or (243+112) 355 wealth.

This is my suspicion as well.  I was producing about 250 RP/Increment for that planet, I think.

John

[Kurt (OP)]

Another minor but annoying bug.  

I designed a ship that ended up being 10,000 tons.  I went to retool a 10,000 ton capacity yard to begin constructing that ship, but found that the class wasn't one that the shipyard could be retooled to build.  

After some checking, I realized that in spite of the fact that the class design window showed the class tonnage as 10,000 tons, it was actually more than 10,000 tons.  10,010 tons, to be exact.  I had added a GB quarters to the design to accomodate the 1,025 crew that I needed, rather than adding another full sized quarters.  

After playing around with the design, I realized that when I added the gunboat crew quarters, which as I understand it masses 10 tons, sometimes the total tonnage would jump up by fifty, and sometimes it wouldn't.  For instance, on one design, adding one GB quarters would immediately increase the total tonnage of the design by 50, even though it was really only adding 10 tons.  Adding the next four GB quarters appeared to be for free in this case, as the total tonnage wouldn't increase again until the sixth.  For other designs, like the one that caused the problems with the shipyard, no apparent tonnage increase occurred until I added the fifth GB quarters, at which time the mass jumped by fifty tons.  In this case it appeared that I got the first four for free, although obviously Aurora was tracking the actual tonnage as it wouldn't let the 10,000 ton shipyard build the 10,010 ton ship.  

At any rate, as there are now systems in the game that mass less than fifty tons, could you change Aurora so that it displays the actual tonnage rather than the the tonnage rounded to the nearest fifty tons, as it is now?  

Kurt

[sloanjh]

At any rate, as there are now systems in the game that mass less than fifty tons, could you change Aurora so that it displays the actual tonnage rather than the the tonnage rounded to the nearest fifty tons, as it is now?

I have a similar request - could you display hull sizes in increments of 0.1 on the design screen (which I think is 5 tons)?  Since there are systems that are 0.5 HS and others that are 0.2, you can get any multiple of 0.1 for ship size.

I would like to go even further - have any system for which it makes sense use increments of 0.1 HS rather than 1.0.  I think that this makes sense for lasers and turrets - my recollection is that they get fractional size increases due to tech advances.

John

[sloanjh]

Ships aren't immediately removed from the "available for refit" list as they're given refit tasks.  For example, if I have Viper 01 and Viper 02 in orbit and have a shipyard with two slipways that I want to use to refit them to Viper-B, then both of them show up as possible refit candidates even after I've given a refit order for Viper 01.  I don't know what happens if I try to give duplicate refit orders to Viper 01.

John

[Kurt (OP)]

A rather annoying bug from a recent battle:

1.  4xPDC on the homeworld of a despicable alien race;
2.  Each PDC has fifteen missile launchers and three missile tracking systems;
3.  Ten valiant human ships attack the despicable alien world (yea!);
4.  The four PDC's allocate five missile launchers to each tracking system, and then split their fire among all attacking ships, resulting in two ships targeted by two tracking systems (ten launchers) each, while the other eight ships are targeted by one tracking system each;
5.  The PDC's launch.  The first hint of trouble is that the resulting missile salvoes show up on the map as 4x15 missile salvoes, instead of 12x5 missile salvoes;
6.  The 4x15 missile salvoes attack four human ships (booo!) with fifteen missiles each, instead of eight ships with five missiles, and two ships with ten missiles each.

After the combat was resolved I checked the weapons allocation and targeting assignments on the battle management screen.  The launchers were properly assigned, five to a tracking system, and each tracking system was assigned a different target.  They certainly weren't targeted all on the same four ships.    

This is the first battle using missiles in this campaign.  I don't know if it is PDC specific, or if this would happen with a ship as well.  

FYI, the valiant humans were lucky that the despicable aliens couldn't hit the broadside of a terraformer ship.  

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

Two more bugs related to the recent battle:

1.  I have attempted to have damage control repair damaged systems after the battle on three human cruisers.  All three ships have both a damage control system and spares.  I received multiple error messages during the turn resolution after I pressed the time advance, but the Event Update window showed that all three ships had been successful in repairing the system I told them to repair.  However, when I went to the ship display, no damage had been repaired.  

2.  This one is kind of perplexing.  During the battle, the Event Update window kept displaying ship names that were not the correct ship names.  The details are as follows:
1.  As originally designed, my human cruisers were the Cleveland class, so designated by Aurora.
2.  I let Aurora auto name the new builds, so they were named Cleveland 001, 002, and/or Cleveland Mk 2 001, and so on.  
3.  At some point, I decided that naming the CLASS the City Class made more sense, so I renamed the class to the City class, and then set the name type on the class window to "Cities".  
4.  After doing that, I had Aurora grab names for each of the cruisers, all of which ended up with "A" names like Atlanta or Auckland.  All eleven cruisers were renamed, none kept the old names.  
5.  During the battle, the Event  Update screen consistently displaying the following message: "24th July 39 04:12:16,Terran,New York,Cleveland Mk 2 006 - Main Fire Control targeting Luhu 003 at 405,200 km: Base Chance to Hit: 0% (Fire Control To Hit: 0%  Modified by Crew Grade: 0%)".

The name mentioned in the above message only for targeting messages like the one above, for damage or any other purpose the correct name displayed.  

I am at a loss.  I checked the ship window, the class window, the task group window, and none show any ships with the name Cleveland Mk 2 006.  I even cracked the database open and checked the "ship" database, and there were no ships named Cleveland there either.  I don't know where Aurora is digging this up, but it appears to be in the targeting routine.  

Kurt

[sloanjh]

I'm getting several cboRace_Click error when I open the Fuel Report (ctrl-F12, I think).  I think it's because I've got some terraforming ships without engines - they get towed everywhere.

John

[Kurt (OP)]

Steve -

This isn't really a bug, or at least I don't think it is, but in the end the effect is the same, so I thought I'd post it here.  

I'm not sure how the required rank for fleet commanders is calculated, but I think it is somewhat off.  For example, when I create a new fleet, the required rank is R3 (I think).  This is fine, however, over time the required rank seems to increase far too much.  In the Quad-System campaign, my home system naval command currently has eight task groups assigned to it, for a total of twenty ships, all of which are under 7,000 tons.  At this point, the required commander grade to command the home system naval command is an R8, which is a higher rank than anyone in my officer corps can hold, since my officer corps only goes to R7.  

Two things - first off, I think you need to look at how and why the required rank is increasing so much.  Secondly, I'd really, really like to have someplace where I can edit the required rank, as with the required rank for ship commanders.  The Task Froce Organization screen would seem to be the appropriate place.  

Kurt

[SteveAlt]

At any rate, as there are now systems in the game that mass less than fifty tons, could you change Aurora so that it displays the actual tonnage rather than the the tonnage rounded to the nearest fifty tons, as it is now?  

I could, although I am not entirely sure that wouldn't cause any problems. At the moment, class sizes are stored as whole numbers and if I store them as fractions, it could have unforeseen consequences for any code that is assuming an integer. The tonnage is just for display purposes as all sizes are stored in hull spaces. I could show the rounded up size though with any fractional size shown in parentheses to avoid the problem you mentioned.

Steve