Post by: Kurt on November 23, 2007, 01:26:51 PM
I have established a major colony on a planet in the same system as my home planet. After some minor terraforming, the colony planet is a 0.00 colony cost planet, and I have removed the infrastructure originally placed there so that other planets could utilize it. The colony has a 22.62 million population.
In spite of the fact that the colony has a 0.00 colony cost, it has a negative population growth, -0.11 percent to be exact, and the political stability modifier is falling at a steady, if slow, rate. After some experimentation, I've figured out why.
At first I thought it was because it was undefended, but the colony planet is in the same system as the home planet, and thus enjoys the somewhat dubious benefit of being covered by the home planet's defense bases, and so has an actual protection level of 896, compared to its requested protection level of 15. As a test I shifted several warships from their orbits over the home planet to the colony, to see if that changed anything, but it didn't. The political stability modifier continues to fall and the growth rate remains negative.
Finally, out of desperation, I shifted some infrastructure back to the planet, and sure enough the pop growth rate immediately went back to positive numbers, and the stability modifier started increasing.
Based on that, I think that the colony cost is not actually 0, but is instead some very small number, like 0.001. Aurora is reporting that it is 0.00 but it obviously isn't.
Kurt
Post by: SteveAlt on November 24, 2007, 03:28:09 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
The situation is as follows:
I have established a major colony on a planet in the same system as my home planet. After some minor terraforming, the colony planet is a 0.00 colony cost planet, and I have removed the infrastructure originally placed there so that other planets could utilize it. The colony has a 22.62 million population.
In spite of the fact that the colony has a 0.00 colony cost, it has a negative population growth, -0.11 percent to be exact, and the political stability modifier is falling at a steady, if slow, rate. After some experimentation, I've figured out why.
At first I thought it was because it was undefended, but the colony planet is in the same system as the home planet, and thus enjoys the somewhat dubious benefit of being covered by the home planet's defense bases, and so has an actual protection level of 896, compared to its requested protection level of 15. As a test I shifted several warships from their orbits over the home planet to the colony, to see if that changed anything, but it didn't. The political stability modifier continues to fall and the growth rate remains negative.
Finally, out of desperation, I shifted some infrastructure back to the planet, and sure enough the pop growth rate immediately went back to positive numbers, and the stability modifier started increasing.
Based on that, I think that the colony cost is not actually 0, but is instead some very small number, like 0.001. Aurora is reporting that it is 0.00 but it obviously isn't.
Aurora rounds to two decimal places on the summary view so its definitely possible. A value of 0.002 for example would show as 0.00. I'll change it to 4 decimal places to avoid that in future.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on November 24, 2007, 12:11:17 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"The situation is as follows:Aurora rounds to two decimal places on the summary view so its definitely possible. A value of 0.002 for example would show as 0.00. I'll change it to 4 decimal places to avoid that in future.
I have established a major colony on a planet in the same system as my home planet. After some minor terraforming, the colony planet is a 0.00 colony cost planet, and I have removed the infrastructure originally placed there so that other planets could utilize it. The colony has a 22.62 million population.
In spite of the fact that the colony has a 0.00 colony cost, it has a negative population growth, -0.11 percent to be exact, and the political stability modifier is falling at a steady, if slow, rate. After some experimentation, I've figured out why.
At first I thought it was because it was undefended, but the colony planet is in the same system as the home planet, and thus enjoys the somewhat dubious benefit of being covered by the home planet's defense bases, and so has an actual protection level of 896, compared to its requested protection level of 15. As a test I shifted several warships from their orbits over the home planet to the colony, to see if that changed anything, but it didn't. The political stability modifier continues to fall and the growth rate remains negative.
Finally, out of desperation, I shifted some infrastructure back to the planet, and sure enough the pop growth rate immediately went back to positive numbers, and the stability modifier started increasing.
Based on that, I think that the colony cost is not actually 0, but is instead some very small number, like 0.001. Aurora is reporting that it is 0.00 but it obviously isn't.
Steve
I think the "maximum population" field on the summary view will show as "unlimited" if the colony cost is truly 0.
John
Post by: Kurt on November 24, 2007, 03:10:27 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "SteveAlt"I think the "maximum population" field on the summary view will show as "unlimited" if the colony cost is truly 0.Quote from: "Kurt"The situation is as follows:Aurora rounds to two decimal places on the summary view so its definitely possible. A value of 0.002 for example would show as 0.00. I'll change it to 4 decimal places to avoid that in future.
I have established a major colony on a planet in the same system as my home planet. After some minor terraforming, the colony planet is a 0.00 colony cost planet, and I have removed the infrastructure originally placed there so that other planets could utilize it. The colony has a 22.62 million population.
In spite of the fact that the colony has a 0.00 colony cost, it has a negative population growth, -0.11 percent to be exact, and the political stability modifier is falling at a steady, if slow, rate. After some experimentation, I've figured out why.
At first I thought it was because it was undefended, but the colony planet is in the same system as the home planet, and thus enjoys the somewhat dubious benefit of being covered by the home planet's defense bases, and so has an actual protection level of 896, compared to its requested protection level of 15. As a test I shifted several warships from their orbits over the home planet to the colony, to see if that changed anything, but it didn't. The political stability modifier continues to fall and the growth rate remains negative.
Finally, out of desperation, I shifted some infrastructure back to the planet, and sure enough the pop growth rate immediately went back to positive numbers, and the stability modifier started increasing.
Based on that, I think that the colony cost is not actually 0, but is instead some very small number, like 0.001. Aurora is reporting that it is 0.00 but it obviously isn't.
Steve
John
You are correct, and this was what first gave me a clue as to what was going on. Instead of saying unlimited, it said N/A after I removed the infrastructure from the colony.
Kurt
Post by: ShadoCat on November 25, 2007, 02:14:53 PM
Error 3163 was generated by DAO.Field
The field is too small to accept the amount of data you attemted to add. Try inserting or pasting less data.
I had created the homeworld with a 1000m pop and had converted all ordinance and fighter factories. I don't know if that had naything to do with it.
Post by: Kurt on November 25, 2007, 02:32:48 PM
Quote from: "ShadoCat"
I was starting a new game and got this error message right before it asked me if I wanted to name the home planet:
Error 3163 was generated by DAO.Field
The field is too small to accept the amount of data you attemted to add. Try inserting or pasting less data.
I had created the homeworld with a 1000m pop and had converted all ordinance and fighter factories. I don't know if that had naything to do with it.
I've had this pop up as well. It doesn't do it every time, and I haven't been able to connect it to anything I've done. I was wondering if it was something Aurora is doing in the background, like assigned a randomly generated name that is too long for the field it is going into.
Kurt
Post by: sloanjh on November 26, 2007, 07:30:56 PM
John
Post by: sloanjh on November 26, 2007, 09:35:56 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
I think there's a bug in wealth calculation when a research project ends - I suspect the cost of running the research facilities is being applied twice in the update cycle (once for the old project that just finished, once for the new). The reason I suspect this is that I get dinged for an extra 150 units of wealth or so every time I complete a project on my homeworld (~40 labs).
John
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.
Thanks,
John
Post by: sloanjh on November 27, 2007, 10:04:39 PM
John
Post by: SteveAlt on November 29, 2007, 03:01:12 PM
Quote from: "ShadoCat"
I was starting a new game and got this error message right before it asked me if I wanted to name the home planet:
Error 3163 was generated by DAO.Field
The field is too small to accept the amount of data you attemted to add. Try inserting or pasting less data.
I had created the homeworld with a 1000m pop and had converted all ordinance and fighter factories. I don't know if that had naything to do with it.
I have seen this too but I haven't pinned it down yet.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on November 29, 2007, 03:02:44 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
I think ground unit training outside of PDCs might be broken. I've not seen any morale increases, even though I've got a CO with a very high training rating in an HQ
That's a feature rather than a bug. You can only train ground units that are based in PDCs. This is to allow you to train much more specifically as you can put a HQ into a PDC along with the units you want it to train. Each PDC can use a different HQ to train.
Steve
Post by: Kurt on November 30, 2007, 01:21:39 AM
First off, I got an error message when I ordered my ground units to stop attacking the enemy - "Error in cmdCeaseGroundAttack_Click".
Secondly, I'm not sure ground combat is working right, the battle was between 1 mobile infantry and three garrison units on one side, and three heavy assault divisions, three mobile infantry, two assault divisions, two garrisons and an HQ on the other side. To further unbalance things, the side with the eleven divisions had researched ground unit strength 14, while the weaker side only had the basic level (10, I think). After three combat rounds, the weaker side had lost the mobile infantry division and one garrison, while the stronger side had lost the following:
Heavy Assault: 2
Assault: 1
Mobile Infantry: 2
Garrison: 1
While certainly within the bounds of possibility, it seems that this result is highly unlikely.
Finally, preceding the ground battle, orbiting cruisers initiated a general bombardment, just to teach the rebels a lesson. The results were gratifying, especially given the outdated weaponry used (thermal torpedoes). The results were so good, as a matter of fact, that I stopped the bombardment after just one round. The problem is, every time I run a turn more damage is being done to the planet, even though all of the ships ceased fire a long time ago. In fact, I moved them away from the planet just to eliminate them as a possible cause, and at this point they are far beyond the range of their weapons. Even so, I continue to get the following message in the Event screen:
suffered 1 hits for a total of 4 points of damage. Casualties...
Note the blank at the start. I think that relates the name of the rebels. After the resolution of the battle I deleted them, but for some reason Aurora is continuing to bombard them. The above message is followed by another indicating that the loyalist population on the planet has also been hit for the same amount of damage. The radiation level increases every turn as well.
This is very perplexing. I'd appreciate any insight you might have.
Kurt
Post by: Kurt on December 01, 2007, 12:20:31 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Steve- I've just finished fighting out my first ever ground combat, and several weird things popped up.
First off, I got an error message when I ordered my ground units to stop attacking the enemy - "Error in cmdCeaseGroundAttack_Click".
Secondly, I'm not sure ground combat is working right, the battle was between 1 mobile infantry and three garrison units on one side, and three heavy assault divisions, three mobile infantry, two assault divisions, two garrisons and an HQ on the other side. To further unbalance things, the side with the eleven divisions had researched ground unit strength 14, while the weaker side only had the basic level (10, I think). After three combat rounds, the weaker side had lost the mobile infantry division and one garrison, while the stronger side had lost the following:
Heavy Assault: 2
Assault: 1
Mobile Infantry: 2
Garrison: 1
While certainly within the bounds of possibility, it seems that this result is highly unlikely.
Finally, preceding the ground battle, orbiting cruisers initiated a general bombardment, just to teach the rebels a lesson. The results were gratifying, especially given the outdated weaponry used (thermal torpedoes). The results were so good, as a matter of fact, that I stopped the bombardment after just one round. The problem is, every time I run a turn more damage is being done to the planet, even though all of the ships ceased fire a long time ago. In fact, I moved them away from the planet just to eliminate them as a possible cause, and at this point they are far beyond the range of their weapons. Even so, I continue to get the following message in the Event screen:
suffered 1 hits for a total of 4 points of damage. Casualties...
Note the blank at the start. I think that relates the name of the rebels. After the resolution of the battle I deleted them, but for some reason Aurora is continuing to bombard them. The above message is followed by another indicating that the loyalist population on the planet has also been hit for the same amount of damage. The radiation level increases every turn as well.
This is very perplexing. I'd appreciate any insight you might have.
Kurt
By way of an update, the continuing infliction of damage stopped after I closed out Aurora and restarted it.
Kurt
Post by: Brian Neumann on December 01, 2007, 07:32:13 PM
Quote
The above message is followed by another indicating that the loyalist population on the planet has also been hit for the same amount of damage. The radiation level increases every turn as well.
This is very perplexing. I'd appreciate any insight you might have.
This raises a question. Should there be any radiation from bombardment by energy weapons?
Brian
Post by: SteveAlt on December 03, 2007, 05:04:17 AM
Quote from: "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
Post by: Kurt on December 07, 2007, 08:04:38 PM
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
Post by: SteveAlt on December 08, 2007, 06:36:57 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
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
Post by: SteveAlt on December 08, 2007, 12:42:15 PM
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
Post by: sloanjh on December 08, 2007, 04:44:38 PM
John
Post by: sloanjh on December 08, 2007, 09:08:36 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "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.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.
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.
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).
Post by: Father Tim on December 09, 2007, 03:40:43 AM
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.
Post by: sloanjh on December 09, 2007, 12:49:44 PM
Quote from: "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.
This is my suspicion as well. I was producing about 250 RP/Increment for that planet, I think.
John
Post by: Kurt on December 09, 2007, 01:31:19 PM
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
Post by: sloanjh on December 09, 2007, 04:34:47 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
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
Post by: sloanjh on December 09, 2007, 04:37:47 PM
John
Post by: Kurt on December 12, 2007, 10:35:43 AM
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
Post by: Kurt on December 12, 2007, 08:48:17 PM
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
Post by: sloanjh on December 15, 2007, 07:24:12 PM
John
Post by: Kurt on December 22, 2007, 07:10:51 PM
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
Post by: SteveAlt on December 23, 2007, 01:34:19 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
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
Post by: SteveAlt on December 23, 2007, 01:36:15 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
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.
The required rank for a task force commander is either 3, or one higher than the highest ranking staff officer, whichever is higher. The required rank for a staff officer is anything up to one rank below the task force commander.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on December 23, 2007, 01:55:31 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"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.
I have checked and there are quite a few places where the class size is assumed to be a whole number of HS. Trying to change all of them would be a lot of work and there is a very good chance of missing some because so many fields in the database are called "Size" that tracking down just those that refer to ship size and not component size, missile size, etc. is going to be difficult. However, to make design easier, while the Class Summary display still shows the tonnage used for all game mechanics, the Class Size field in the Primary Information section has been renamed Exact Class Size and will show the precise number of HS or tons for the current design.
Steve
Post by: Kurt on December 23, 2007, 02:39:26 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"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
That might solve the problem. I have noticed a lot of weirdness with fractional sized systems. Sometimes Aurora rounds up, sometimes it doesn't, a lot of the time when it does round up it won't go back down until you remove systems that put it under the next lower rounding point.
Kurt
Post by: Kurt on December 23, 2007, 02:41:09 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"Steve -The required rank for a task force commander is either 3, or one higher than the highest ranking staff officer, whichever is higher. The required rank for a staff officer is anything up to one rank below the task force commander.
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.
Steve
Ah, that must be the problem. A staff officer must have gotten promoted to R7, which meant that the commander had to be an R8.
That should be easily resolved. Thanks.
Kurt
Post by: SteveAlt on December 23, 2007, 02:47:28 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
That might solve the problem. I have noticed a lot of weirdness with fractional sized systems. Sometimes Aurora rounds up, sometimes it doesn't, a lot of the time when it does round up it won't go back down until you remove systems that put it under the next lower rounding point.
Introducing the fractional systems was a little risky because up to that point whole numbers were assumed throughout the design process. However, the fast attack craft add so much to the game that I don't want to go back to the old system. In any event, I think I have fixed the rounding problems for v2.5 (I hope).
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on December 24, 2007, 05:49:51 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"That might solve the problem. I have noticed a lot of weirdness with fractional sized systems. Sometimes Aurora rounds up, sometimes it doesn't, a lot of the time when it does round up it won't go back down until you remove systems that put it under the next lower rounding point.Introducing the fractional systems was a little risky because up to that point whole numbers were assumed throughout the design process. However, the fast attack craft add so much to the game that I don't want to go back to the old system. In any event, I think I have fixed the rounding problems for v2.5 (I hope).
Steve
I haven't checked this carefully, but my impression has always been that this (hysteresis in ship size) is due to the armor calculation. I've found that changing to another class and then back in the F5 fixes the display - I suspect the armor calculation is done as a "delta" when a system is added or removed.
John
PS - Any chance of fractional (in units of 0.1 HS) armor size when calculating ship size? That would give finer granularity of armor (important for gunboats) and allow small systems to fill up the amount needed to get to an integer HS.
Post by: Kurt on December 24, 2007, 08:21:11 PM
A rather problematic bug just popped up in the Quad-System campaign. The valiant <un-named to protect the innocent> fleet was attacking the <un-named to avoid giving away the dastardly bad guys> fleet. The attacking fleet scored first blood by slamming a couple of torpedoes into the other side's gunboat squadrons. While Aurora was resolving the turn where the torpedoes hit their targets, Aurora generated an apparently endless number of error pop-ups. The error pop-up said - "Error in ApplyDamage, Error 3021 was generated by DAO.field. No current record". I had to cntrl-alt-delete out of Aurora, then I restarted it
After restarting, I pulled up the "Event Updates" screen to figure out what had happened. The events screen showed that a total of six gunboats were hit by torpedoes, two by two torpedoes, and four by one torpedo. However, only two gunboats showed that damage were resolved against them. The first gunboat suffered moderate damage from the one torpedo that hit, but the events screen showed that the second gunboat was destroyed by the two torpedoes that hit it. The events screen stopped with the destruction of the second gunboat, even though four more gunboats were hit, so I figured that the destruction of the second gunboat was the key event that derailed Aurora.
I then went to the ships [F6] screen and checked the other ships that had been hit. None showed damage, so Aurora definitely did not get to their damage. Interestingly enough, the ship that had been destroyed, where Aurora apparently locked up, was still extant, although heavily damaged. I manually destroyed it, then began manually applying damage through the "ship" screen. Everything went alright until I got to the second gunboat hit by two torpedoes. When I tried to apply 8 points of damage to the gunboat, Aurora again generated an apparently infinite number of "Error in ApplyDamage, Error 3021" messages and I had to exit out again.
While I haven't destroyed a ship in this campaign yet, I have in other games and haven't had a problem, so I suspect that the problem is with the fact that this is a gunboat design.
The design is:
Luhu Mk 2 class Gunboat 1000 tons 97 Crew 143 BP TCS 20 TH 92 EM 0
4600 km/s Armour 1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/0/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 5
Magazine 60 Replacement Parts 1
GB Nuclear Pulse Engine (1) Power 92 Engine Efficiency 11.7 Armour 0 Exp 36%
Max Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres Range 7.4 billion km (18 days at full power)
PB Missile Launcher (5) Missile Size 3 Rate of Fire 900
GB Missile Fire Control (1) Range: 200k km
GB Missile Mk 2 (20) Speed: 6,000 km/s Endurance: 40 secs Range: 240k km Warhead: 2 Size: 3
GB Active Sensor (1) GPS 200 Range 2m km Resolution 20
Kurt
Post by: SteveAlt on December 25, 2007, 06:27:49 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
I then went to the ships [F6] screen and checked the other ships that had been hit. None showed damage, so Aurora definitely did not get to their damage. Interestingly enough, the ship that had been destroyed, where Aurora apparently locked up, was still extant, although heavily damaged. I manually destroyed it, then began manually applying damage through the "ship" screen. Everything went alright until I got to the second gunboat hit by two torpedoes. When I tried to apply 8 points of damage to the gunboat, Aurora again generated an apparently infinite number of "Error in ApplyDamage, Error 3021" messages and I had to exit out again.
While I haven't destroyed a ship in this campaign yet, I have in other games and haven't had a problem, so I suspect that the problem is with the fact that this is a gunboat design.
I think you are probably right, although I am having trouble recreating it. I have some very similar gunboats in my current campaigns and I am blowing them up on the F6 window without any trouble, except a "No Record of Ship in cboShip_Click" error which doesn't crash the game and I have now corrected.
Error 3021 means a missing record, which is understandable if you have blown something up, its been deleted and the program is looking for the record. Its almost as if one part of the program has destroyed it and another part of the program doesn't realise that and is still looking for it. Just to confirm the GB theory, could you save your database, then blow up a regular ship to see if that works OK? Could you also create a second gunboat design and see if that has the same problem, just to check whether there is a problem with that specific class or GB in general.
Could you also confirm that this was Error in ApplyDamage and not Error in ApplyInternalDamage. Just checking because the fractional systems do not matter until the program gets to internal damage.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on December 25, 2007, 06:30:34 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
PS - Any chance of fractional (in units of 0.1 HS) armor size when calculating ship size? That would give finer granularity of armor (important for gunboats) and allow small systems to fill up the amount needed to get to an integer HS.
That's a good idea in principle, although tricky to handle because it would introduce the idea of a fractional number of systems. Armour is currently a 1 HS system so to have 1.5 armour you have have 1.5 components. Although small crew quarters are only 0.2 HS, they are still a whole system, not 0.2 of a 1HS system. I could handle it by making armour a 0.1 HS system though and having 10x as much. Let me see what's involved and I will get back to you.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on December 25, 2007, 06:57:35 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
PS - Any chance of fractional (in units of 0.1 HS) armor size when calculating ship size? That would give finer granularity of armor (important for gunboats) and allow small systems to fill up the amount needed to get to an integer HS.
This is now working. I changed the code to allow fractional amounts of armour only. Of course this means I now need to check all the ship designs in my current campaign to squeeze in a few fractional systems
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on December 26, 2007, 10:45:56 AM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "sloanjh"PS - Any chance of fractional (in units of 0.1 HS) armor size when calculating ship size? That would give finer granularity of armor (important for gunboats) and allow small systems to fill up the amount needed to get to an integer HS.This is now working. I changed the code to allow fractional amounts of armour only. Of course this means I now need to check all the ship designs in my current campaign to squeeze in a few fractional systems
Steve
Thanks!! (for all the enhancements/fixes over the last few days - not just this one)
Merry Christmas!!
John
Post by: Erik L on December 26, 2007, 11:40:40 AM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"I then went to the ships [F6] screen and checked the other ships that had been hit. None showed damage, so Aurora definitely did not get to their damage. Interestingly enough, the ship that had been destroyed, where Aurora apparently locked up, was still extant, although heavily damaged. I manually destroyed it, then began manually applying damage through the "ship" screen. Everything went alright until I got to the second gunboat hit by two torpedoes. When I tried to apply 8 points of damage to the gunboat, Aurora again generated an apparently infinite number of "Error in ApplyDamage, Error 3021" messages and I had to exit out again.I think you are probably right, although I am having trouble recreating it. I have some very similar gunboats in my current campaigns and I am blowing them up on the F6 window without any trouble, except a "No Record of Ship in cboShip_Click" error which doesn't crash the game and I have now corrected.
While I haven't destroyed a ship in this campaign yet, I have in other games and haven't had a problem, so I suspect that the problem is with the fact that this is a gunboat design.
Error 3021 means a missing record, which is understandable if you have blown something up, its been deleted and the program is looking for the record. Its almost as if one part of the program has destroyed it and another part of the program doesn't realise that and is still looking for it. Just to confirm the GB theory, could you save your database, then blow up a regular ship to see if that works OK? Could you also create a second gunboat design and see if that has the same problem, just to check whether there is a problem with that specific class or GB in general.
Could you also confirm that this was Error in ApplyDamage and not Error in ApplyInternalDamage. Just checking because the fractional systems do not matter until the program gets to internal damage.
Steve
I had this issue in the last game I ran. Forgot about it, and started up the Remnants game on the same db file. The errors still occur, even though the previous game is not active.
Post by: Kurt on December 26, 2007, 04:28:31 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"I then went to the ships [F6] screen and checked the other ships that had been hit. None showed damage, so Aurora definitely did not get to their damage. Interestingly enough, the ship that had been destroyed, where Aurora apparently locked up, was still extant, although heavily damaged. I manually destroyed it, then began manually applying damage through the "ship" screen. Everything went alright until I got to the second gunboat hit by two torpedoes. When I tried to apply 8 points of damage to the gunboat, Aurora again generated an apparently infinite number of "Error in ApplyDamage, Error 3021" messages and I had to exit out again.I think you are probably right, although I am having trouble recreating it. I have some very similar gunboats in my current campaigns and I am blowing them up on the F6 window without any trouble, except a "No Record of Ship in cboShip_Click" error which doesn't crash the game and I have now corrected.
While I haven't destroyed a ship in this campaign yet, I have in other games and haven't had a problem, so I suspect that the problem is with the fact that this is a gunboat design.
Error 3021 means a missing record, which is understandable if you have blown something up, its been deleted and the program is looking for the record. Its almost as if one part of the program has destroyed it and another part of the program doesn't realise that and is still looking for it. Just to confirm the GB theory, could you save your database, then blow up a regular ship to see if that works OK? Could you also create a second gunboat design and see if that has the same problem, just to check whether there is a problem with that specific class or GB in general.
Could you also confirm that this was Error in ApplyDamage and not Error in ApplyInternalDamage. Just checking because the fractional systems do not matter until the program gets to internal damage.
Steve
Okay, I've done as you asked. I recieved he same error when applying damage against a regular ship, and just to check, I applied damage against a different race's ship, and received the same error. Apparently the problem is not in the fractional ship systems.
I can confirm that the error was in ApplyDamage, not ApplyInternalDamage.
THis appears to happen any time a ship is destroyed, so it is odd that you cannot recreate it.
Kurt
Post by: SteveAlt on December 26, 2007, 04:50:13 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Okay, I've done as you asked. I recieved he same error when applying damage against a regular ship, and just to check, I applied damage against a different race's ship, and received the same error. Apparently the problem is not in the fractional ship systems.
I can confirm that the error was in ApplyDamage, not ApplyInternalDamage.
THis appears to happen any time a ship is destroyed, so it is odd that you cannot recreate it.
It isn't happening in my campaign as several ships have been destroyed without a problem. However, its entirely possible I have inadvertently fixed something because quite a lot of code has changed since v2.41. Erik mentioned he had the same problem in his game so it's possible it is a general problem with v2.41, although that version has been around a while and no one else has reported it. If anyone else is reading this please could you try destroying some ships to see if you have the same errors.
To be honest, I am stumped. I have been through the ApplyDamage code looking for places where an infinite amount of 3021's might occur if a ship is destroyed. There are only two loops within that section. One checks for officers on the destroyed ship and the other looks for parasite ships. I don't think either of those is the problem, although if I have already accidently corrected the code I will never find anything. I'll give it until tomorrow to check if anyone else posts on this problem and then I will take another look.
Steve
Post by: Kurt on December 26, 2007, 11:33:11 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"Okay, I've done as you asked. I recieved he same error when applying damage against a regular ship, and just to check, I applied damage against a different race's ship, and received the same error. Apparently the problem is not in the fractional ship systems.It isn't happening in my campaign as several ships have been destroyed without a problem. However, its entirely possible I have inadvertently fixed something because quite a lot of code has changed since v2.41. Erik mentioned he had the same problem in his game so it's possible it is a general problem with v2.41, although that version has been around a while and no one else has reported it. If anyone else is reading this please could you try destroying some ships to see if you have the same errors.
I can confirm that the error was in ApplyDamage, not ApplyInternalDamage.
THis appears to happen any time a ship is destroyed, so it is odd that you cannot recreate it.
To be honest, I am stumped. I have been through the ApplyDamage code looking for places where an infinite amount of 3021's might occur if a ship is destroyed. There are only two loops within that section. One checks for officers on the destroyed ship and the other looks for parasite ships. I don't think either of those is the problem, although if I have already accidently corrected the code I will never find anything. I'll give it until tomorrow to check if anyone else posts on this problem and then I will take another look.
Steve
Steve -
I installed a fresh 2.41 version of Aurora (fortunately not on top of the Quad-System Campaign <G>) and applied some damage to a ship in your Romanov campaign. I got the same error as before.
This either means it is a problem unique to my computer, or a general problem with 2.41 that you've since fixed.
Kurt
Post by: SteveAlt on December 27, 2007, 06:45:33 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
I installed a fresh 2.41 version of Aurora (fortunately not on top of the Quad-System Campaign <G>) and applied some damage to a ship in your Romanov campaign. I got the same error as before.
This either means it is a problem unique to my computer, or a general problem with 2.41 that you've since fixed.
That was a good idea. I can't see how your computer could have a fault external to the programme that could cause this so it must be a problem with v2.41. Unfortunately I don't keep the code for past versions (altough maybe I should) so I don't think I am going to be able to fix this
All I can do is try and get v2.5 finished over the holidays but that isn't going to help your current situation.
Steve
Post by: Kurt on December 27, 2007, 10:01:20 AM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"I installed a fresh 2.41 version of Aurora (fortunately not on top of the Quad-System Campaign <G>) and applied some damage to a ship in your Romanov campaign. I got the same error as before.That was a good idea. I can't see how your computer could have a fault external to the programme that could cause this so it must be a problem with v2.41. Unfortunately I don't keep the code for past versions (altough maybe I should) so I don't think I am going to be able to fix this
This either means it is a problem unique to my computer, or a general problem with 2.41 that you've since fixed.
All I can do is try and get v2.5 finished over the holidays but that isn't going to help your current situation.
Steve
I can manually resolve damage that results in a kill, but this can't be good for the database. I will have to think about this.
Kurt
Post by: Kurt on December 27, 2007, 10:19:30 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Quote from: "SteveAlt"Quote from: "Kurt"I installed a fresh 2.41 version of Aurora (fortunately not on top of the Quad-System Campaign <G>) and applied some damage to a ship in your Romanov campaign. I got the same error as before.That was a good idea. I can't see how your computer could have a fault external to the programme that could cause this so it must be a problem with v2.41. Unfortunately I don't keep the code for past versions (altough maybe I should) so I don't think I am going to be able to fix this
This either means it is a problem unique to my computer, or a general problem with 2.41 that you've since fixed.
All I can do is try and get v2.5 finished over the holidays but that isn't going to help your current situation.
Steve
I can manually resolve damage that results in a kill, but this can't be good for the database. I will have to think about this.
Kurt
Okay, I've been playing around with the battle that was underway to see how big a problem this is going to be. I'm afraid it is rather larger than I thought, and will likely make this version of Aurora unplayable.
As I stated before, I had to exit out of Aurora to escape the endless error messages. Once I re-entered, I determined which ships were hit and for how much damage, and which damage got applied before Aurora entered the loop. I then manually applied the remaining damage. I figured that this might be an acceptable stop-gap measure, but I wasn't sure that this would be workable in the long-term. Whether or not it is workable in the long-term now appears moot.
When I opened the system map, I noticed that neither race now showed any alien contacts at the battle-site, only their own units and missiles. The Battle Control window also showed no target contacts what-so-ever. I figured that this would clear up after I advanced the time, but it was troubling, especially if this was going to happen every time a ship was destroyed.
At this point I advanced the time by five seconds, and Aurora immediately went into an endless error loop over allocating damage, as before, even though I was pretty sure that all weapons were recharging. I exited out and restarted, and checked the error log, and it appeared that Aurora was trying to apply the damage that happened during the last time advance, after the endless loop. To check this, I restored the database from the backup, ordered all ships to cease fire, and advanced the time again. Yet again Aurora went into an endless damage allocation loop, and checking the event log verified that it was allocating damage that occured during the previous turn, but which went unallocated because of the loop.
It appears that Aurora keeps a tally of damage that needs to be allocated, so even though it fails out on one, all of the other damage is still listed someplace, waiting for a new time advance so that it can be allocated.
At this point this appears to be a fatal error for the campaign. While manual damage allocation is possible, it won't work if Aurora keeps trying to allocate damage from past turns. I don't see any way to rectify this, short of some sort of fix, but that doesn't appear to be possible.
Kurt
Post by: SteveAlt on December 28, 2007, 08:20:24 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
It appears that Aurora keeps a tally of damage that needs to be allocated, so even though it fails out on one, all of the other damage is still listed someplace, waiting for a new time advance so that it can be allocated.That's correct. This is because all firing is simultaneous so I can't apply damage until all ships have fired. The damage records are in tthe FireResult table so I guess you could delete them before applying damage manually but that is hardly ideal.
Quote
At this point this appears to be a fatal error for the campaign. While manual damage allocation is possible, it won't work if Aurora keeps trying to allocate damage from past turns. I don't see any way to rectify this, short of some sort of fix, but that doesn't appear to be possible.
As a final test I have downloaded Aurora from this site on to a clean computer and destroyed a ship. I got the same error so it is definitely a problem with the program and not your PC. I can't believe I released it with so fundamental an error or that its taken so long to encounter it. I was playing a campaigns while coding it so it must have been something I introduced between the last time a ship was destroyed and the release of the code. It also must have been something not directly related to ship destruction or I would have tested it. I also started a new campaign after v2.41 was released because I made some significant code changes for v2.5 so I didn't destroy any ships in the short term and before I did destroy a ship I obviously fixed whatever the problem was without realising it.
I'll try and get v2.5 released as soon as I can, probably early in the new year. On the bright side, there is a lot of really cool stuff in v2.5
Steve
Post by: Kurt on December 28, 2007, 09:13:35 AM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"It appears that Aurora keeps a tally of damage that needs to be allocated, so even though it fails out on one, all of the other damage is still listed someplace, waiting for a new time advance so that it can be allocated.That's correct. This is because all firing is simultaneous so I can't apply damage until all ships have fired. The damage records are in tthe FireResult table so I guess you could delete them before applying damage manually but that is hardly ideal.QuoteAt this point this appears to be a fatal error for the campaign. While manual damage allocation is possible, it won't work if Aurora keeps trying to allocate damage from past turns. I don't see any way to rectify this, short of some sort of fix, but that doesn't appear to be possible.As a final test I have downloaded Aurora from this site on to a clean computer and destroyed a ship. I got the same error so it is definitely a problem with the program and not your PC. I can't believe I released it with so fundamental an error or that its taken so long to encounter it. I was playing a campaigns while coding it so it must have been something I introduced between the last time a ship was destroyed and the release of the code. It also must have been something not directly related to ship destruction or I would have tested it. I also started a new campaign after v2.41 was released because I made some significant code changes for v2.5 so I didn't destroy any ships in the short term and before I did destroy a ship I obviously fixed whatever the problem was without realising it.
I'll try and get v2.5 released as soon as I can, probably early in the new year. On the bright side, there is a lot of really cool stuff in v2.5
Steve
That is pretty much what I thought. I have been thinking about this since last night, and I think I can recreate the Quad-System campaign in a fresh 2.5 version of Aurora without too much trouble. After all, by the year 42, where the first battle occurred and Aurora freaked out, New Iowa had only explored three systems. All I really need to do is create a new quaternary system with one or more habitable planets, and several that can be terraformed, and go from there. I'll need to "modify" what I've already posted to conform to the new reality, but that shouldn't be too difficult.
Of course, I'll need 2.5 to do all of that. No pressure <G>.
Kurt
Post by: Charlie Beeler on December 28, 2007, 09:13:42 AM
Quote
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 9:21 am Post subject:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Has anyone been having problems with movement orders and damage allocation after a ship is destroyed in combat?
I've been doing some quick and dirty games to play with beam v missile and beam v fighter/missile combat. So my problems may be of my own making.
When no one responded, I just figured it was something I was doing wrong and it would shake out as I discovered my many functional mistakes.
I'll endeavor to be more detailed in reporting issues I'm having moving forward.
Charlie
Post by: SteveAlt on December 29, 2007, 07:19:13 PM
Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"
When no one responded, I just figured it was something I was doing wrong and it would shake out as I discovered my many functional mistakes.
I'll endeavor to be more detailed in reporting issues I'm having moving forward.
I still haven't got through all the bugs reports for v2.41 so I would have got to them eventually
More detail always helps though as I tend to tackle the bug reports with the most information first as they are usually the easiest to replicate and track down. Error numbers and messages are very useful, as is exactly what you were doing when the error occured.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on December 31, 2007, 09:44:22 AM
This one's a bit witchy, so you might have trouble tracking it down.
Every now and then, my construction queue gets messed up - it's not building the thing it says it's building. In the most recent example, it's supposedly 80% done building a mine, but during the update cycle it's eating tritanium and when I look at the installations in SM mode, I see 80% of an ordnance factory. My recollection is that if I delete out the corrupted job(s) and re-queue them, the problem goes away. The only two clues I can add are that in the most recent case I had just finished building a spaceport and that I think I've seen it last through more than one completion of a queued item (automated mines) in another case. Could spaceports be having some sort of long-term corruption effect?
If you can't track the problem down, you might see if the same query is being used during the update cycle to decide what to build and during display of the construction queue - that way the corruption would be obvious when it happens.
Thanks,
John
Post by: Charlie Beeler on December 31, 2007, 09:59:09 AM
Quote
Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 2:34 pm Post subject:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)
Error in MoveFleets
Error 3265 was generated by DAO.fields
Item not found in collection
3 times per time advance for each fighter group in flight.
2) Fighters will launch missiles while on board ship if ceasefire isn't initiated.
3) If I don't have sub-pulses activated, slower ships will over take faster ships even though the faster ships have been given greater standoff ranges. (ie 1800kps with min of 50 will over take a 3000kps ship with min of 1000)
Post by: Erik L on December 31, 2007, 10:27:06 AM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Kurt"It appears that Aurora keeps a tally of damage that needs to be allocated, so even though it fails out on one, all of the other damage is still listed someplace, waiting for a new time advance so that it can be allocated.That's correct. This is because all firing is simultaneous so I can't apply damage until all ships have fired. The damage records are in tthe FireResult table so I guess you could delete them before applying damage manually but that is hardly ideal.QuoteAt this point this appears to be a fatal error for the campaign. While manual damage allocation is possible, it won't work if Aurora keeps trying to allocate damage from past turns. I don't see any way to rectify this, short of some sort of fix, but that doesn't appear to be possible.As a final test I have downloaded Aurora from this site on to a clean computer and destroyed a ship. I got the same error so it is definitely a problem with the program and not your PC. I can't believe I released it with so fundamental an error or that its taken so long to encounter it. I was playing a campaigns while coding it so it must have been something I introduced between the last time a ship was destroyed and the release of the code. It also must have been something not directly related to ship destruction or I would have tested it. I also started a new campaign after v2.41 was released because I made some significant code changes for v2.5 so I didn't destroy any ships in the short term and before I did destroy a ship I obviously fixed whatever the problem was without realising it.
I'll try and get v2.5 released as soon as I can, probably early in the new year. On the bright side, there is a lot of really cool stuff in v2.5
Steve
Just so you know, this affects the db as a whole. A new game started on the same db/version will be affected also...
Post by: Erik L on December 31, 2007, 11:51:00 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Just so you know, this affects the db as a whole. A new game started on the same db/version will be affected also...
Just for grins, I made a backup of the database, and then deleted all games other than the Remnant game. I then incremented 5 seconds and got some combat spam on 6th Jan 3000 for the previous game (id'd by ship names). These showed up only on SM View and got listed under the SM Race.
I followed this with a couple more time increments, and no errors.
So if you don't have combat, this will work to get things moving.
Post by: Father Tim on December 31, 2007, 04:35:34 PM
Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"
3) If I don't have sub-pulses activated, slower ships will over take faster ships even though the faster ships have been given greater standoff ranges. (ie 1800kps with min of 50 will over take a 3000kps ship with min of 1000)
I expect the problem is arising from commander initiative. That is, the faster ships are moving first to their longer stand-off range, and then the slower ships are closing up the rest of the distance.
The solution, as you have noted, is to increment time by smaller amounts. Keep in mind, however, that the best you can ever do against a slower opponent with superior initiative is (your chosen range + 5*his speed in the direction of his choice). If you're trying for 300,000 km for missile launches i'ts not a big deal, but if you're trying for point-blank range for your energy weapons, you could easily end up 15,000 km away in the wrong direction. Curse those wily Federats and their Picard Maneuver!
Post by: Charlie Beeler on January 01, 2008, 03:46:55 PM
In the interim, I've gone to way points, micro-managing the speeds and living with thumping enter (a lot) to keep fast carriers at loyter ranges while fighters strikes overrun targets.
Post by: sloanjh on January 02, 2008, 12:15:20 AM
John
Post by: Kurt on January 09, 2008, 08:09:31 PM
I posted this before, but it disappeared. Not to rush you, but do you have an ETA for 2.5?
Kurt
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 13, 2008, 03:33:10 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Steve -
I posted this before, but it disappeared. Not to rush you, but do you have an ETA for 2.5?
Probably 2 weeks. Next Saturday I have a poker game so although I am going to look at Aurora I probably won't be able to get enough done to release it until the following week. The problem at the moment is that I am getting up at 6am for work and not arriving home till 8pm, giving me a couple of hours to eat and relax before going to bed. As you can imagine, weekends are fairly busy too. Once I (finally) sell the house and move nearer to work my life will get much easier.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 18, 2008, 01:02:53 PM
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 20, 2008, 06:17:48 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Steve- I've just finished fighting out my first ever ground combat, and several weird things popped up.
First off, I got an error message when I ordered my ground units to stop attacking the enemy - "Error in cmdCeaseGroundAttack_Click".
Fixed this one. It was caused by me trying to update a field that didn't exist in a database recordset.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 20, 2008, 09:47:09 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Secondly, I'm not sure ground combat is working right, the battle was between 1 mobile infantry and three garrison units on one side, and three heavy assault divisions, three mobile infantry, two assault divisions, two garrisons and an HQ on the other side. To further unbalance things, the side with the eleven divisions had researched ground unit strength 14, while the weaker side only had the basic level (10, I think). After three combat rounds, the weaker side had lost the mobile infantry division and one garrison, while the stronger side had lost the following:
Heavy Assault: 2
Assault: 1
Mobile Infantry: 2
Garrison: 1
While certainly within the bounds of possibility, it seems that this result is highly unlikely.
Just to check, were the defending units in a PDC?
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 20, 2008, 09:54:40 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Finally, preceding the ground battle, orbiting cruisers initiated a general bombardment, just to teach the rebels a lesson. The results were gratifying, especially given the outdated weaponry used (thermal torpedoes). The results were so good, as a matter of fact, that I stopped the bombardment after just one round. The problem is, every time I run a turn more damage is being done to the planet, even though all of the ships ceased fire a long time ago. In fact, I moved them away from the planet just to eliminate them as a possible cause, and at this point they are far beyond the range of their weapons. Even so, I continue to get the following message in the Event screen:
suffered 1 hits for a total of 4 points of damage. Casualties...
Note the blank at the start. I think that relates the name of the rebels. After the resolution of the battle I deleted them, but for some reason Aurora is continuing to bombard them. The above message is followed by another indicating that the loyalist population on the planet has also been hit for the same amount of damage. The radiation level increases every turn as well.
I haven't been able to reproduce this problem and I have carried out a planetary bombardment in my current campaign. Its possible this is something else I have fixed inadvertently since v2.41. The repeating damage may be caused by a record remaining in the FireResult table, although this should be deleted after it has been applied.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 20, 2008, 09:56:06 AM
Quote from: "Brian"
This raises a question. Should there be any radiation from bombardment by energy weapons?
That's a good question. I think for the sake of gameplay the answer should be yes to avoid painless (for the attacker) bombardment.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 20, 2008, 10:09:25 AM
Quote from: "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.
It's s problem for commanders of all ground units based in PDCs. Fixed for v2.5
Steve
Post by: Kurt on January 20, 2008, 10:56:20 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Kurt"Secondly, I'm not sure ground combat is working right, the battle was between 1 mobile infantry and three garrison units on one side, and three heavy assault divisions, three mobile infantry, two assault divisions, two garrisons and an HQ on the other side. To further unbalance things, the side with the eleven divisions had researched ground unit strength 14, while the weaker side only had the basic level (10, I think). After three combat rounds, the weaker side had lost the mobile infantry division and one garrison, while the stronger side had lost the following:Just to check, were the defending units in a PDC?
Heavy Assault: 2
Assault: 1
Mobile Infantry: 2
Garrison: 1
While certainly within the bounds of possibility, it seems that this result is highly unlikely.
Steve
No, there were no PDC's on the planet. In addition, IIRC, most of the attackering units had commanders, many of whom had combat bonuses, while the defenders largely had no commanders. This should have been an additional bonus to the attackers, but as I noted, the attackers suffered disproportionate losses before winning.
I wish I had more detailed information to give you, aside from a report of seemingly inconsistent results.
Kurt
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 20, 2008, 10:56:41 AM
Quote from: "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.
Fixed for v2.5
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on January 21, 2008, 05:46:56 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
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.
I have reproduced this by setting up a similar situation. The problem occurs when a ship shoots the same type of missile at two targets at the same time using two different fire control systems. I have fixed it for v2.5.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on January 21, 2008, 06:20:35 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
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.
The name is also being held on the FireControlAssignment table. I added the name field for ease of data retrieval during a battle but longstanding assignments will result in the problem you described. Therefore I removed this field for v2.5 and changed the code to retrieve the correct ship name when it is needed.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on January 21, 2008, 06:50:43 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
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.
Fixed for v2..5. Damage control is now working as it should.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on January 21, 2008, 07:58:03 AM
Quote from: "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.
That probably would cause divide by zero errors. I have changed the code so that no range calculations are performed on ships without engines.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on January 21, 2008, 08:17:22 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
This one's a bit witchy, so you might have trouble tracking it down.
Every now and then, my construction queue gets messed up - it's not building the thing it says it's building. In the most recent example, it's supposedly 80% done building a mine, but during the update cycle it's eating tritanium and when I look at the installations in SM mode, I see 80% of an ordnance factory. My recollection is that if I delete out the corrupted job(s) and re-queue them, the problem goes away. The only two clues I can add are that in the most recent case I had just finished building a spaceport and that I think I've seen it last through more than one completion of a queued item (automated mines) in another case. Could spaceports be having some sort of long-term corruption effect?
If you can't track the problem down, you might see if the same query is being used during the update cycle to decide what to build and during display of the construction queue - that way the corruption would be obvious when it happens.
I can't reproduce it so far but intermittent problems are always a pain to track down. Production during the update cycle is handled as a large case statement so that shouldn't get confused, which means any error must be in the data it is using. I have tried creating a long queue of items to construct but there weren't any errors. However, I think I fixed a problem with PDCs in the installation queue for v2.5 so I might have also fixed the above problem too. Let me know if you encounter it after v2.5 has been released.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on January 21, 2008, 08:20:28 AM
Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"
I've long since killed the game that the example came from. But, the intent was to have a carrier standoff around 1m km and launch fighters. Since the carrier's speed is 3000kps and the targets is 1800kps this should be doeable. I'd turned off the sub-pulses do the the movement errors I'm getting when fighters move. I was more than a little surprised to find (think after 5 minutes) that the slower ship was something like 15k away from the carrier and pounding it into scrap. Oh and the fighters speed was something like 12k kps and about 500k km away from the fight.
In the interim, I've gone to way points, micro-managing the speeds and living with thumping enter (a lot) to keep fast carriers at loyter ranges while fighters strikes overrun targets.
Definitely something weird here. I haven't been using fighters in the last couple of campaigns so errors may have crept in due to changes elsewhere and I haven't noticed. I'll need to setup some fighter battles and try and reproduce these problems (or just play my campaign more until I get some fighters
)Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on January 21, 2008, 08:32:17 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Not sure if this is a bug or feature, but it looks like trade convoys aren't taking distance into account when calculating payoff. I've been running a 1-jump convoy and getting 10% of the smaller population's wealth as a payoff. When I switched to a 3-jump convoy, it was still just 10% (rather than the 30% I expected).
Its a feature. I originally had 2% per jump but changed it to 10% per trip of any length that included at least one jump. This was for a couple of reasons. Due to enemy held systems or just creating unnecessarily long trade routes, a trade run could be made more profitable than it should be. Secondly, the real measure should be distance rather than jumps, as two systems could be closer together in terms of time and distance than a second pair but much further apart in terms of jumps. I decided to go for the 10% one-off instead as the real payoff is finding high value populations with which to trade, regardless of distance. The requirement is at least one jump to distinguish from intra-system trade, although maybe I should add some type of lower trade value for automated civilian traffic between two pops in the same system.
In fact, going further I wonder if I should start adding more civilian elements, such as small private sector spaceports that can spring up by themselves and support intra-system traffic such as trade convoys to other pops in the same system, prospecting ships, maybe even civilian-generated colonisation and mining colonies. Hmm! - Intersting
Steve
Post by: Laurence on January 21, 2008, 10:10:53 AM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
In fact, going further I wonder if I should start adding more civilian elements, such as small private sector spaceports that can spring up by themselves and support intra-system traffic such as trade convoys to other pops in the same system, prospecting ships, maybe even civilian-generated colonisation and mining colonies. Hmm! - Intersting
Steve
If you did that, then perhaps you could eventually have them go to interstellar civilian things as well? Imagine the fun if the Slaaz Empire suddenly has a colony in a system I claim, but their excuse is that it's just civilians and not an "official" venture. Of course they wouldn't let you just drive them off, though...
You could let the empire set "rules" on what the civilians are allowed to do, or mark systems or certain bodies as "nogo" areas. For grins, marking a valuable moon as "nogo" might only reduce the chance, and unless you ran a ship by to check on them you might not see one of your own civilian companies mining those resources you were saving for a rainy day.
Laurence
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 21, 2008, 12:24:16 PM
Quote from: "Laurence"
If you did that, then perhaps you could eventually have them go to interstellar civilian things as well? Imagine the fun if the Slaaz Empire suddenly has a colony in a system I claim, but their excuse is that it's just civilians and not an "official" venture. Of course they wouldn't let you just drive them off, though...
You could let the empire set "rules" on what the civilians are allowed to do, or mark systems or certain bodies as "nogo" areas. For grins, marking a valuable moon as "nogo" might only reduce the chance, and unless you ran a ship by to check on them you might not see one of your own civilian companies mining those resources you were saving for a rainy day.
Good idea!
(thinking out loud and rambling now)
The interesting question becomes whether civilian traffic is visible to the 'owning' player. Is that sensor contact an alien invader or an intrepid civilian mining expedition. Players might get used to the regular trade convoys but the sudden appearance of a civilian-financed colony expedition might send a few shivers through the equivalent of NORAD. It also raises the question of how 'civilian' colonies interact with state-sponsored colonies. An easy option would be for civilians to only migrate to existing colonies (using 'civilian' colony ships rather than the Empire's own colony ships) and then immediately become part of that population. Another option is independent colonies that are not under player control (although they might share a planet with an state-sponsored colony) and are treated almost like alien empires, except the player gets some tax income, perhaps trade income and maybe some sensor data if the colony has sensors. Players could 'nationalise' the colonies but there would have to be some penalty for doing so. A civilian colony expedition might decrease unrest as dissatisfied citizens leave their current planet and 'nationalising' a colony, or even attacking it, would raise unrest across the Empire.
Perhaps the chance of colonisation is determined by government type with democracies having a much greater chance of spawning civilian traffic and colonies than say a Stalinist Communist regme.
I guess this could also become the basis of 'pirates' if a new, out-of-the-way colony built a shipyard and a few raiders
. It would probably take a long time for that though under the regular rules so there have to be some coporate financing involved so the 'pirate base' could be established reasonably quickly. Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 21, 2008, 12:44:53 PM
Quote from: "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.
I have found the problem. When you completed a project partway through the increment you were getting charged an amount equal to research for the whole increment. Any queued research was then being charged for the remaining time. So if you completed a project 12 days into a 30 day increment, you were charged 30 days research for that project and then 18 days for the second project. Fixed for v2.5
Steve
Post by: ZimRathbone on January 24, 2008, 04:11:50 AM
On selecting the SM race two errors are reported in GetSpeciesPercentage, error 94 (invalid use of Null) and error 6 (Overflow).
Slainthe
Mike