Greetings. I'm new to Aurora but have played Starfire since the original TFG editions in the early 80's. I tried Aurora 3.2 for the first time this weekend. For some odd reason I can't post to here from home (it always times out when I hit "Submit" which is really weird) so I don't have all of the problem details handy, but I'll do my best to explain them.
I always get an error from the Galactic Map that it can't find the 'Flags' directory, even though the Flags sub-directory exists and has the flags files in it. Since nobody else has reported this, I assumed I did something wrong when I installed, but I've double checked everything and I was wondering if perhaps everyone else upgraded from 3.1 and I'm the only one to do a clean install so far? The odd thing is that the error isn't that it can't find a particular file, but that it can't find the Flags sub-directory which is clearly there.
If a ship is max speed zero (either no engines or all engines damaged) I get errors on the Task Force window. It may have to do with whether the 'center on system map' check box is checked on the TF window.
Sometimes I get errors on the system map for freshly explored systems. It seems to go away after awhile as surveying continues. Sorry I don't have the exact error here to paste in but if that is needed I can write it down the next time I encounter it.
Perhaps not strictly a bug, but it would be nice if when transferring ships between TF's that it didn't deselect the destination TF every time forcing you to manually reselect it each time.
I keep running in to an oddball problem with ships being overhauled. I'll order them to move to Earth and then start an overhaul. Then I forget about them for awhile until I noticed they are falling apart. I'll check and although they show as being in overhaul status, the clock keeps increasing. Apparently they are not exactly at Earth despite the orders telling them to move to Earth first. If I manually move them to Earth, then the clock starts decreasing. This can be quite frustrating when I don't notice it until the clock is up to 7 years for example. Then I have to wait another 3.5 years for that ship to be available.
I've also seen a few times where a ship ordered to make several transits and move to Earth and begin an overhaul, spontaneously goes to overhaul status in some distant start system in deep space. Of course the clock keeps increasing and the ship will eventually fall apart. I can find no way to cancel an overhaul. If there is a way to cancel an overhaul, someone please let me know. The only solution I've found for this is to manually teleport the ship to Earth via SM mode. I've not figured out what causes this situation because it only happens now and then. The orders are still there for it to make the journey back to Earth but it seems to skip those and execute the last order (which is to being overhaul, even though it is not at Earth yet).
Tied in to the above, I do not think ships undergoing overhaul should continue to fall apart. It is very annoying for an intact ship to start a long overhaul, then during the overhaul enough things fall apart that it runs out of maintenance parts and then things start breaking for real. So when the overhaul finishes, the ship then has to spend months or years in a shipyard being repaired. If it is being overhauled, it should not keep falling apart. I thought the maintenance system was a wonderful detail/feature but after playing awhile I'm thinking of joining the no maintenance crowd because it becomes a time sink to micro manage it. If the failure rate was cut by a factor of 5x or 10x, I think it would be a nice "random event" feature I would use. Perhaps an option could be added in addition to no maintenance to allow a multiplier to how often failures occur? I just can't see running a big empire with the current maintenance system but I hate to not use it because it is so well done otherwise.
A few times research completions where not mentioned in the events list. I've gone back and double checked this.
For someone that reported a problem with not being able to un-minimize a window, it may be that that windows is just "off screen". I had several windows start off-screen when I first started the game. If using microsoft windows, you can right click on the program in the task bar and select "move", and then you must use the arrow keys to move the window (not the mouse) on to the screen.
An asteroid with nothing but automated mines on it somehow spawned a fraction of a population unit and started bitching about not having enough infrastructure. I didn't go digging back through the events to see if a civilian colonizer put them there. I kind of tune out the civilian events as clutter so could have very well missed it, but I'm 100% certain that I didn't send any pop there.
Once a civilian non jump capable freighter went through a one way jump gate (no jump gate on the other side) then apparently got stuck. Fortunately they then offered to sell it to me so I bought it and sent a jump ship so it could come home.
Things not really bugs; more like wishes, so maybe they should go somewhere else on this BBS?
I wish ships in a TF would pool their maintenance parts (MSP's).
When the events window references a ship (such as when something falls apart), I wish it would also list what TF that ship is in. Otherwise what I have to do to find it is look in the Individual Unit window to find what TF it is in (maybe this information is elsewhere?) then go open that TF. I'm guessing there is a better way but I've not found it yet.
I wish there was some way to edit orders. Sometimes I enter a long list of orders and then realize I made a mistake early in the list and have to redo them all.
I wish for the conditional order to refuel when fuel gets down to a certain percentage, in addition to 10%, 20%, and 30% options, that there was a 50% option so I could have ships turn around when they reach the half way point.
I wish for an additional conditional order to return home (or the nearest stockpile) for more MSP's once they get below a certain percentage similar to the fuel percentage conditional order.
I wish that I could set defaults for new TF's such as to accelerate to max speed. It would save repeating the same clicks every time I create a TF.
If ships are going to continue falling apart when being overhauled, I wish there was a way to load or transfer MSP's to them.
Finally, I want to thank Steve for sharing his creation the same way he shared Starfire Assistant.
