4.0b Bugs

[SteveAlt]

More on Auto-Assign:

Something is screwed up with the "end-of-tour" logic - it looks like it's trying to update all commands, not just those which are made vacant due to the end of a tour.

I've got tour length set to 24 months.  I hit an update that should have gotten about 70% of the commands (because I'd reassigned some stuff by hand).  Instead it looks like it hit everything.  I went back to a saved database, and found, for example that 5th Captain Jorndon Hennes had been in command of ICBM base 034 for about 6 months less than "everyone else", so he shouldn't have auto-updated.  Instead, he was prematurely relieved of his command and someone else was assigned to it.  The good news is that he seemed to know that he'd been relieved.  I also checked that the unit thought that he was its commander - it did, so I don't think that there's a second commander whose tour is finished that's marking the base for update (although I could be wrong).

Its not a bug, I just changed the way it works. Now everyone changes their job at the same time. The reason is that in v3.2 as officers become free, they don't really get chance to move to different, better ships as those are already commanded by someone else. In v4.0b, all the commands are reassessed at the same time, which makes it far more likely that officers will be assigned appropriately. Some modern navies have a similar principle where a lot of command changes happen at once. The tour length now determines how often this happens.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

The "R0 Unassigned" in the officer screen (F4) shows "25th Drengr Richard Cesares" as the officer assigned to "unassigned".  I suspect that this is database leakage from your campaign into mine.  Note that I deleted your campaign right off the bat.

I don't have any races with that rank structure so it sounds like it might be an officer from an NPR in your campaign. I've checked the code and there is a bug causing it to grab a random commander for unassigned. Fixed for the next version.

Steve

[sloanjh]

The pesky civilians just build a freighter.  It's showing up as a hostile contact even though I've got the transponder setting to "on" in the system (F9) window.  I don't have any active sensors anywhere - just planetary sensors and default sensors on my various ships.

If you go into the Alien Classes window, you can set the 'civilian race' as friendly

Ah - so it's "pesky alien civilians"

I guess the "transponder on" part explains why I can still see it when it's offloading at Mars (even though that's outside my sensor range).  One annoying feature - when it moves into range I get a "new contact" event for a new thermal contact, even though the message says "(Existing)" (presumably because I held the transponder.

[Pause while trying instructions]  Ummmm actually, no I can't.  If by "Alien Classes" you mean the one reached through the last button on the System Map (F9) screen whose mouse-over says "Intelligence on Alien Classes" and whose title is "Tactical Intelligence", then there's something wrong - the civie is not showing up at all on any of the tabs.  In particular, there is no civilan race (or any other race) in the pulldown.  BTW, is "TP:1730" the transponder ID?

John

[sloanjh]

The "R0 Unassigned" in the officer screen (F4) shows "25th Drengr Richard Cesares" as the officer assigned to "unassigned".  I suspect that this is database leakage from your campaign into mine.  Note that I deleted your campaign right off the bat.

I don't have any races with that rank structure so it sounds like it might be an officer from an NPR in your campaign. I've checked the code and there is a bug causing it to grab a random commander for unassigned. Fixed for the next version.

Cool - I guess I'll have to give my fleet's Intelligence staff officer a medal for very cleverly figuring out something about the alien race that we don't even know exists (except for strange, random slowdowns in the Galactic Standard Clock at 6-hour intervals that our scientists have speculated might mean that there's another race somewhere in the galaxy which is pulling its timing signals from the same source).

[sloanjh]

Its not a bug, I just changed the way it works. Now everyone changes their job at the same time. The reason is that in v3.2 as officers become free, they don't really get chance to move to different, better ships as those are already commanded by someone else. In v4.0b, all the commands are reassessed at the same time, which makes it far more likely that officers will be assigned appropriately. Some modern navies have a similar principle where a lot of command changes happen at once. The tour length now determines how often this happens.

Oh, yeah, I remember that thread going by.  I actually liked the old system - I was micromanaging the important assignments, and letting the rest go catch-as-catch-can in previous versions.

I suspect this change might be behind my double-commander issue.  Several times I've pushed the "auto-assign" button on the F4 screen, thinking that it would do an old-mode assignment (only assign to a few slots that I'd opened up after micro-management).  I'm pretty sure it did change things, and suspect that the changes it made are the source of the bug.  It's reasonable to suspect that the code behind the auto-assign button would have rotted since it's bound to the "old mode" assignment system.  

John

[SteveAlt]

The pesky civilians just build a freighter.  It's showing up as a hostile contact even though I've got the transponder setting to "on" in the system (F9) window.  I don't have any active sensors anywhere - just planetary sensors and default sensors on my various ships.

If you go into the Alien Classes window, you can set the 'civilian race' as friendly

Ah - so it's "pesky alien civilians" but you can change them. I seem to recall I might have done something to the civilian races so it automatically gives it the right class name on the basis that your race would know that.

The new contact event is actually telling you have a new thermal contact and that is associated with an existing transponder contact. I guess it might more properly be an updated contact event.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

Its not a bug, I just changed the way it works. Now everyone changes their job at the same time. The reason is that in v3.2 as officers become free, they don't really get chance to move to different, better ships as those are already commanded by someone else. In v4.0b, all the commands are reassessed at the same time, which makes it far more likely that officers will be assigned appropriately. Some modern navies have a similar principle where a lot of command changes happen at once. The tour length now determines how often this happens.

Oh, yeah, I remember that thread going by.  I actually liked the old system - I was micromanaging the important assignments, and letting the rest go catch-as-catch-can in previous versions.

I suspect this change might be behind my double-commander issue.  Several times I've pushed the "auto-assign" button on the F4 screen, thinking that it would do an old-mode assignment (only assign to a few slots that I'd opened up after micro-management).  I'm pretty sure it did change things, and suspect that the changes it made are the source of the bug.  It's reasonable to suspect that the code behind the auto-assign button would have rotted since it's bound to the "old mode" assignment system.  

I haven't tackled the double-assign yet (as it sounds like it is going to be involved ) but this sounds like you are on the right lines.

Steve

[sloanjh]

Switch on an active sensor to detect the ship and everything should be created.

Ummm what active sensor?  Guess I'd better go build one

(LATER)

I just deployed a PDC whose only system is an active sensor.  I can turn it on and off in the Battle Control Window (F8), but whenever I select it I get several invalid query errors (e.g. invalid property array index).  I suspect this is because the base doesn't have a missile fire control - by mistake I put one in a base that's supposed to be pure barracks and that design doesn't have the same problem.

John

[sloanjh]

The new contact event is actually telling you have a new thermal contact and that is associated with an existing transponder contact. I guess it might more properly be an updated contact event.

Yeah, that's kind of what I meant, especially if we could filter specific event types (such as "updated contact info") away - it's a signal-to-noise thing.  I've got my "new contact" event color-coded red, and mars is only a 7-day round trip.  I can imagine that having 10 civilians shuttling back and forth will begin to swamp the event window.  I've already declared it as a friend, and that doesn't keep the "new contact" message from appearing.

The other thing I just realized is that the event generates an interrupt, which messes with my nice, clean, 5-day updates.  So I guess what I'm requesting is a way to treat "updated contact" events as non-events (i.e. don't generate interrupts and don't show up on the event screen).

Another option would be to have a different tab in the event screen for civilian events - that way they could be filtered out of the military notifications.

John

[sloanjh]

When copying a ship design in the Class Design (F5) window, I've noticed that the PDC systems are displayed.  You have to explicitly choose "ship" to get the ship systems (e.g. engines)

John

[Andrew]

On the system map , when you are in SM Mode and there are precursors in the system you get the option to switch between empire views . The precursor view shows what the precursors can detect of the player race and the missiles they have launched but not their ships.

If in precrusor view you click on technology you get an error 91 in populatelasers which will not go away

[Steve Walmsley]

On the system map , when you are in SM Mode and there are precursors in the system you get the option to switch between empire views . The precursor view shows what the precursors can detect of the player race and the missiles they have launched but not their ships.

If in precrusor view you click on technology you get an error 91 in populatelasers which will not go away

That shouldn't be possible (switching to precursor view) - an oops on my part. I'll fix it for the next version.

Steve

[sloanjh]

Those Pesky Civilians are stealing my ship sequence numbers!!!  My freighter class is called Africa Queen.  I was merrily popping them out from my shipyard (using auto-numbering, e.g. Africa Queen 001, Africa Queen 002, ...), until one day I noticed something weird - I had "forgotten" to build Africa Queen 007; I had just built 008, but there was no 007!  I thought it was my fault, so I slotted the next 2 freighters to be 007 and 009.  What was really going on was the civies built a freighter, named it Africa Queen 007 (and another one that was 009), and bumped the counter up.  (I figured this out a posteriori by peeking in the data base - there's an Africa Queen 007 that's not mine, and it's in the civie fleet, at which point the light bulb went off in my head.)

This wouldn't be a big deal, except the civilian ships are showing up as potential commands in the F4 screen.  I realized something was wrong when I finished building "my" 007 and 009 and found their names doubled in the F4 screen, at which point I peaked in the database.

John

[xtfoster]

On the system map , when you are in SM Mode and there are precursors in the system you get the option to switch between empire views . The precursor view shows what the precursors can detect of the player race and the missiles they have launched but not their ships.

If in precrusor view you click on technology you get an error 91 in populatelasers which will not go away

That shouldn't be possible (switching to precursor view) - an oops on my part. I'll fix it for the next version.

Steve

On a related note: Are you supposed to be able to Communicate with the precursors? Non-intercourse? Non-Aggression (19% chance currently)? Trade (1% chance)?

[jfelten]

Those Pesky Civilians are stealing my ship sequence numbers!!!  My freighter class is called Africa Queen.  I was merrily popping them out from my shipyard (using auto-numbering, e.g. Africa Queen 001, Africa Queen 002, ...), until one day I noticed something weird - I had "forgotten" to build Africa Queen 007; I had just built 008, but there was no 007!  I thought it was my fault, so I slotted the next 2 freighters to be 007 and 009.  What was really going on was the civies built a freighter, named it Africa Queen 007 (and another one that was 009), and bumped the counter up.  (I figured this out a posteriori by peeking in the data base - there's an Africa Queen 007 that's not mine, and it's in the civie fleet, at which point the light bulb went off in my head.)

This wouldn't be a big deal, except the civilian ships are showing up as potential commands in the F4 screen.  I realized something was wrong when I finished building "my" 007 and 009 and found their names doubled in the F4 screen, at which point I peaked in the database.

John

That sounds annoying.  I remember in 3.x a couple times I unintentionally paid to refit some civilian ships because the names were the same.