v1.12.0 Bugs Thread

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

V1.12.0

Disabling fuel refineries and maintenance facilities don't free up the workers for other activities. 

Is it by design you cannot disable other industries (like ordnance factories, etc) like you could in VB6?

Thanks

Yes it is by design. You can't shut down industry sectors in C#.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

1.12, decimal native. ~30 years in. Conventional start.

NPRs seem to have stopped doing research. Note that this is a 1/4 research speed game.

I have a share research deal with two of the starting NPRs in my game. There is a 3rd starting NPR, as well as 3 additional NPRs spawned since game start.

I have not received ANY research results from the deal, and so I got curious. The database shows precisely 0 paused or active research projects that don't belong to me. Furthermore, the GameLog table contains no research complete events that are not from my race id. However, there are ALSO no "inactive research facility" events for the NPRs in the log, either. Maybe they just don't get those? Intel indicates that all the NPRs HAVE labs. They just are not using them.

The weirdest part is that, at one point, they WERE using them. I have encountered ships from the starting NPRs with different levels of engine tech. So at least for a while they were researching new tech.

I had to go into the database to fix the screw up with multiple projects for auxiliary control, so it's at least POSSIBLE I broke something. But I'm pretty sure this issue predates any database edits, though I've only just now noticed it. In particular, the paused research table (the one I needed to edit to fix the doubled projects) only had stuff from my race even before I made any changes. Still, it would be nice if someone could confirm this!

The NPRs don't do research projects in the same way as players. Instead, they research groups of projects linked to their design theme. The cost and results of the research is the same and they still use the output from research facilities to generate research points, but it is handled in the background rather than via the UI, which means you won't see any NPR research in the DB. It also takes a while to research a project group, after which they get all the new techs at the same time.

[Droll]

I saved my game this afternoon and got this message. I kept playing, but eventually I started getting interrupts every two hours. This game has had a lot of interrupts from NPR activity, so I let it run for a while. When I came back and found that it still hadn't been resolved, I peeked into the database. These are the 100 most recent messages in the game log:

You can see that the civilian freighters are getting orders that they cannot complete. I've previously reported a similar bug where my civilian ships got orders to load cargo while they were already full. This seems to be the same bug, except that it is affecting the NPR's civilian ships rather than my own.

I don't know what is causing the bug. It most be relatively rare, so its probably some unusual combination of events. However, I can treat the symptoms even if I don't know the cause. I've added some code that deletes any existing NPR or civilian freighter cargo just before they load their new cargo. I've added a breakpoint to that code so if its triggers I can look into more detail and perhaps fix the underlying problem.

If it helps I encountered this issue with colony ships. I had conquered an alien NPR but forgot to immediately set the colony to not a source of colonists so the civilian colony ships got their order to load up alien colonists. The problem occurred because there was no other eligible colony in my race that would accept those alien colonists so the civilians just sat in orbit of the alien homeworld with bays full of aliens.

My fix was through DB editing, I found the colony ships and set their cargo status so that they have 0 alien colonists which worked - essentially mimicking your workaround.

My worry with the way this fix has been done is that in my initial attempt instead of deleting the cargo entry in the DB I had just set its value to 0 - this caused a problem during unloading in that the colony ships were not allowed to unload "0" alien colonists onto a planet. This issue might be because of my initial shoddy DB work and might not arise naturally during a normal game but maybe you should make it so that ship cargo entries that have 0 of an item are automatically deleted as they aren't right now.

If you are just going to delete the cargo inside the ship when this happens this could result in scenarios where colony ships just start to repeatedly space their colonists, depopulating worlds.

[db48x]

Minor issue with using Rank Theme Barsoom (E.   R.   B.    was a childhood favorite).   
In the Events Window, the ranks are referred to as R5, R7, etc, instead of the actual rank name shown in the Commander Window.   This seems to be only for the Commander Experience Event, Promotion Event shows Rank name.   
Ranks display fine in the Commander Window when examining the individual.   
Using 1.   12.   0, normal start, no mods.   
It's possible other rarely used Rank Themes have the same issue, but I haven't checked.   

Addendum:  The same R5/R6/etc shows up here and there throughout other windows when the Name Rank should show.

SJW: The experience event (and some other areas) uses the abbreviation for the rank name instead of the full rank. When no abbreviation exists for a rank, Aurora uses R1, R2, etc.. You can set the abbreviation by renaming each rank. Keep the name and enter your preferred abbreviation.

Steve, this confusion would crop up less often if the rank abbreviation was included next to the rank in the tree. It would be nice if it were in the minimum/maximum rank fields as well.

SJW: Added for v1.13

[xenoscepter]

- The function number
 --- N/A

 - The complete error text
 --- N/A

 - The window affected
 --- No window per se, but rather a mechanical bug.

 - What you were doing at the time?
 --- Testing this bug specifically.

 - Conventional or TN start
 --- TN Start

 - Random or Real Stars
 --- Random

 - Is your decimal separator a comma?
 --- Decimal

 - Is the bug is easy to reproduce, intermittent or a one-off?
 --- Both very easy and quite simple to reproduce.

 - If this is a long campaign - say 75 years or longer - let me know the length of the campaign as well
 --- Fresh Game, default settings, whatever race settings it generated from the start, only the bare minimum SM needed to set up.

- I have had two bugs so far. The first is fighters (again), they will pick up colonists but won't unload them. It should be fairly easy to reproduce, just build a fighter, add an emergency cryo (or two), load it up and try to unload it. They won't. The second is Future Prototypes, again easy to reproduce. They won't be available to research even if you have the tech. I encountered the Future Prototype bug in v1.11 as well. Sorry for the short, lazy report I don't have the databases and I'm using the recommended settings.

 - I.E. decimal separator etc. I haven't run a 75+ year campaign for either of these bugs in v1.12, but I did encounter the Future Prototype bug in a 75+ year game and non-75+ year game in v1.11 fwiw.

 --- This bug is the fighter bug. I have gone through the checklist for bug submissions and will have an attached DB too. After some testing, this bug prevents fighters from unloading colonists at colonies without Cargo Shuttle Stations, as well as prevents the 'Load Colonist Order' from appearing on any that lack them. The file included is what I tested it with, there are colonies on Luna, Mars, Venus and Mercury. All have sufficient infrastructure. Two have populations, two do not. One without population has a Cargo Shuttle Station, one with population also has a Cargo Shuttle Station, the others do not. When SM removing the Cargo Shuttle Station AND the Spaceport from Earth, the option to 'Load Colonists' disappears...

SJW: Fixed

[Potat999]

Through a strange turn of events, I finished my first Sorium harvester before I had completed my system survey.   

I set a standing order to move to gas giant with Sorium, although I had not yet surveyed any such bodies, figuring the harvester would move after I found sorium. 

On the next tick, I find my harvester is already on course for planet II - which I have not yet surveyed. 

It seems the standing order does not take survey status into account.    I assume this is not intended

SJW: Fixed

Thanks for the quick fix on the standing orders issue.   Thinking back, I forgot to mention a second related issue (?) - not only did the harvesters move to an unsurvey body, they also harvested successfully.   

I just tested by manually sending a harvester to various un-surveyed gas giants and advancing time, and found that harvesters will harvest from un-surveyed bodies.

I'm not 100% sure this is a bug per-se.   I guess if you had a sorium scoop and were in orbit on an un-surveyed gas giant an industrious captain might just try to scoop and see what happens? 

If this was already fixed at the same time you bopped the standing order bug or is intended, sorry  

[db48x]

I just tested by manually sending a harvester to various un-surveyed gas giants and advancing time, and found that harvesters will harvest from un-surveyed bodies.

I'm not 100% sure this is a bug per-se.   I guess if you had a sorium scoop and were in orbit on an un-surveyed gas giant an industrious captain might just try to scoop and see what happens? 

If this was already fixed at the same time you bopped the standing order bug or is intended, sorry

This is some great QA work, deliberately going out of your way to find cool bugs. I like the industrious captain idea, it would make for an obscure but rewarding message in the game log. Get enough of those written and the game could get a reputation similar to Nethack, where "the DevTeam thinks of everything".

[Kalkkis]

Affects Create Research Project window.   Decimal separator is comma. 

When you check 'Show Next Tech' checkbox to create a future prototype, min and max engine power for engines and max size shields don't use next tech, only current tech. 

Also, "Point Defence Weapon" checkbox when designing STO units is only active for weapons that can be on a turret, it should really only be active for weapons that ARE on a turret.  Also, checking the database, Rakha seem to have a design for STO Point Defence Plasma Carronade.  They shouldn't really bother since it's not on a turret.

[Zap0]

In 1.12, when making a new game with two player races and giving one of the empires a proper name of two characters or less results in a few errors when you first progress time and they encounter each other on Earth.

Errors are in sequence:
1957
1953
1948
1957
1948
460

[Zap0]

In 1.12, when invading another empire you end up with two populations on the same body. If there are any orbital habitats present when you have two colonies on the same body, each one gets the population cap increase from the habitat, making the habitat essentially provide twice it's capacity.

In this case I invaded a pop with an orbital habitat over it, which surrendered to the invading empire that then ended up with it and the two colonies.

Replicated DB attached.

SJW: Fixed

[Droll]

In 1.12, when invading another empire you end up with two populations on the same body. If there are any orbital habitats present when you have two colonies on the same body, each one gets the population cap increase from the habitat, making the habitat essentially provide twice it's capacity.

In this case I invaded a pop with an orbital habitat over it, which surrendered to the invading empire that then ended up with it and the two colonies.

Replicated DB attached.

I was wondering if this was the case since I have some similar situations in my game, there might be a need to have a special command for fleets with orbital stations called "orbital colony" which explicitly assigns the habitats to a specific population to avoid this.

[db48x]

Assign New Labs

An 'Assign New' button has been added to the Research tab of the Economics window. This is used to toggle an 'Assign New' status to one or more research projects, indicated by (N) after the project name.

When new research facilities are constructed, or become available through completion of other projects that do not have associated queued projects, those facilities will automatically be assigned to projects flagged as 'Assign New' in descending order of existing facilities. Each project in the list will be assigned available facilities until it reaches maximum, then any remaining available facilities will go to the next project in the list, etc.

I have some feedback on this one. While it usually works great, there is one scenario where it can be annoying. When your Power & Propulsion scientist is working on the next engine upgrade (which I think we can all agree is the most vital tech to research) and then decides to retire, all of their labs get silently reassigned to whatever project happened to be marked (N) at the time. That's certainly a boon for the scientist running that project, but a few years go by and you discover that the vital engine upgrade still isn't available…

I think that a nice refinement would be for the game to track the reason why the lab is unassigned. It could be a new lab, or it could be that the queue it was assigned to has been completed (both are mentioned in the post). However, it could also be due to retirement or untimely demise of the scientist. In that case, I think it would be better to either not reassign the labs or to automatically assign the next scientist of the appropriate speciality to the same project using the same number of labs.

This would not need to be state that is saved to the database, or even persisted from one increment to the next.

[Drakale]

1.12 , Decimal separator is comma.

One of my NPR sent a pair of scout ships in my territories and started to send me the usual get out of here message. I eventually got annoyed and sent a boarding party to seize one of the offending scout, but I never officially declared war.  The boarding party managed to land with heavy losses and captured their ship(military scout). The funny thing is that they did not react and did not turn hostile, the relation status in the NPR window show 0. A few days later I fire a few missiles at another scout and then as expected they properly turned hostile and started to shoot my buoy I had around their planets.

TLDR, I do not think boarding ships is properly registered as an hostile act. I will test further if I find another NPR as I unfortunately saved after I went hostile. 

SJW: Fixed

[Norm49]

When creating a swarm in SM it doesn't take in consideration the planet you selected and all ways put it on the same planet.

[db48x]

Steve, I don't know if you will count this as a bug, but measuring distances is a little bit annoying at present. The distance is easily obscured by other information on the map, and it's often hidden by the mouse cursor as well.

Could you move the label a bit further away from the cursor, and give it a different color scheme? If it were placed north of the cursor position, then it would be unlikely to ever be hidden by it. And if it were dark text on a light background, which was drawn to the screen last, then it would never be obscured by other text.

Thanks!