3.2 Bugs

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I spent some more time on my 3.2 test game and I'm past the 20 year mark now.  I might have mentioned here somewhere that a couple large colonies I set up are increasingly sucking the life out of the Empire by demanding more and more infrastructure.  I long ago stopped sending colonists there but their own growth rate plus the efforts of the pesky civilian colonizer ships have them both over 60m pop now and growing at a rate the it takes most of the HW's production just to keep them supplied with infrastructure.

If you stop supplying them with infrastructure, they will stop growing . They might slightly exceed the capacity of the infrastructure at times but will then change to a negative growth rate. Civilian ships won't take colonists to a planet that has a pop exceeding its infrastructure.

I saw this train wreck coming quite some time ago and learned I need to terraform them so started work on that but terraforming takes a long time.  Each is up to about 5 net terraformers operating.  The problem I discovered is one of the worlds is actually showing worse habitability as the terraforming progresses.  The other has yet to show any reduction but started at 1.8x with some Oxygen in the atmosphere already so I think it just needs more time and more O2, and then once O2 is within limits work on the temperature.

Identifying the right planet for terraforming is very important. Planets without atmosphere will take a LONG time to terraform. Good candidiates are those that have the right temperature and have sufficient atmospheric density so that adding the required atm of oxygen won't take that oxygen over the 30% limit. Another good candidate is a planet with a breathable atmosphere where the temperature isn't a long way outside the tolerance zone. The best place to identify colony sites is the Available Colony window (Ctrl-A) which allows you to filter planets to find the best candidates.

The one that is getting worse instead of better I didn't notice for the first year or two.  Then when I noticed something fishy I recorded the habitability at 2.9803.  One year of terraforming later the habitability was up to 2.9853.  Unfortunately I didn't write down the other environmental specifications the first time.  Below is the only data I've recorded so far.  The planet started with zero atmosphere and hot (it is the inner most planet) but due to mineral resources was still worth colonizing even though it was near 3x.  Since there was no atmosphere at all I just started adding oxygen.  Why would going from no atmosphere to 0.0103 O2 cause the habitability to go down?  Is the O2 making the planet hotter?

Any increase in atmospheric density will increase the temperature slightly, although greenhouse gases have a much more noticeable effect. If the col cost is almost 3 then the temperature will be the major issue. Add anti-greenhouse gas to lower the temperature. Once the col cost stops falling at 2.0, the lack of a breathable atmosphere will be the main problem and that is the time to add oxygen.

Just for color and to perhaps help someone else out that decides to try something pre TN, I'll also add here that I have surveyed 30 systems and have yet to find a TN alien, which is O.K. (if a bit boring) since I've not yet invested a lot of resources in to the military.  

One of the problems I found with Starfire is that too many alien races bogged the game down very quickly so there are far fewer in Aurora. If you want to encounter more though you can increase the chance of alien races on the Game window. With v4.0 it will prove easier as the computer can control the NPRs.

The bulk of shipbuilding has gone in to freighters and refitting freighters to faster engines which is a long slow process.  I did encounter one pre TN alien very early on just 2 jumps from the home system, and decided rather than squash them to try to play them up to TN, but that is going extremely slowly.  After almost 20 years of effort they are still struggling to build an economy.  Duranium (sp?) shortage is stunting their growth severely so they've been concentrating on building mines but can only produce about 4 mines per year now (just recently reached the point where their Duranium production about balances their BP production for mines).  If they built more factories at this point it would just outstrip their Duranium production which is around 500 / yr now.  Their research is stuck at 400 RP / yr since they can't afford to add to their 2 starting research labs.  So despite almost 20 years of research they are just now researching the first engine tech and are about 1/3 through it.  Then I think they'll still need things like geo instruments before they can do much, and of course the 5,000 RP to research jump point theory is just a dream until they can finally afford to build at least a 3rd research lab.  But they are not going anywhere and don't take any real effort to run.  

It sounds like they have a fairly small population or they still have a lot of conventional industry. Have you converted all of their conventional industry to trans-newtonian industry?

Steve

[jfelten]

I don't know what caused it but I am now getting the below error when trying to display the System Map window.  It sounds like a duplicate key in the database but I've never encountered a DBMS that would actually allow you to insert a duplicate key.  

Do you have two fleets with the same name? The TreeView control in VB6 uses a string-based key, which is the fleet name in this case.

Steve

I'll double check.  I have ended up several times with two fleets with the exact same name due to the detach order or whatever it is called that splits a TF up in to individual ships (not the actual split order, the button to the right of that one).  I use that for my WP/Geo survey fleets when they go to work in a new system.

[jfelten]

If you stop supplying them with infrastructure, they will stop growing :). They might slightly exceed the capacity of the infrastructure at times but will then change to a negative growth rate. Civilian ships won't take colonists to a planet that has a pop exceeding its infrastructure.

But then their unrest rises and I assume at some point it will affect their production and perhaps they'll rebel?  I have let them run for a few months at a time short of infrastructure as I simply couldn't keep up, but not for too long at a stretch.  

Civilian colonizers might not add pop to a colony that is short of infrastructure but civilian freighters will add infrastructure making the colony for a brief time not over populated.  It isn't really what I would term a problem at present but I'm concern that since the civilian ships keep growing in number and have a mind of their own that eventually there will be hundreds of them running amok.  I can envision them grabbing population and infrastructure from the HW faster than I can grow/build it eventually, but it hasn't actually happened yet.  Fortunately a lot of them are currently busy hauling things to far off 0 pop "colonies" due to the 3.2 bug.  

Identifying the right planet for terraforming is very important. Planets without atmosphere will take a LONG time to terraform. Good candidiates are those that have the right temperature and have sufficient atmospheric density so that adding the required atm of oxygen won't take that oxygen over the 30% limit. Another good candidate is a planet with a breathable atmosphere where the temperature isn't a long way outside the tolerance zone. The best place to identify colony sites is the Available Colony window (Ctrl-A) which allows you to filter planets to find the best candidates.

Any increase in atmospheric density will increase the temperature slightly, although greenhouse gases have a much more noticeable effect. If the col cost is almost 3 then the temperature will be the major issue. Add anti-greenhouse gas to lower the temperature. Once the col cost stops falling at 2.0, the lack of a breathable atmosphere will be the main problem and that is the time to add oxygen.

This planet is in the home system with large mineral deposits so I figured it was worth colonizing despite the 3x cost.  I didn't realizae at the time that the infrastructure costs would eventually grow so large.  I was reluctant to have colonization ships sitting idle but should have shut them down earlier.  What I ended up doing was starting a new colony 2 jumps out to keep them busy but greatly reduce the colony growth rate, although that one is starting to get up around 10m already.  I've found plenty of 1.8x cost worlds to colonize but nothing below that yet except the one the pre TN NPR is on which I've left alone (Prime Directive?).  

Thanks for the feedback.  This is a learning game and I don't really understand terraforming fully yet.  What exactly is an anti-GH gas?  What is the 30% O2 limit?  Currently the O2 is 100% since I started with vacuum and have been adding O2.  Is O2 > 30% what is causing the attrition rate to increase?  Should I switch to adding Nitrogen for awhile?  

One of the problems I found with Starfire is that too many alien races bogged the game down very quickly so there are far fewer in Aurora. If you want to encounter more though you can increase the chance of alien races on the Game window. With v4.0 it will prove easier as the computer can control the NPRs.
 

No, I agree.  I was mostly just stating that I've managed to get by so far producing so much infrastructure because there has been no incentive to invest in the military.  Of course I hope to eventually encounter a TN NPR so there will be more to do.  

It sounds like they have a fairly small population or they still have a lot of conventional industry. Have you converted all of their conventional industry to trans-newtonian industry?
Steve

I don't recall their population but I think a good bit of it is unemployed.  I did convert all of the conventional; just didn't watch the mineral stockpiles close enough and should have converted more of it to Mines instead of Factories than I did.  They built a small missile armed PDC as early as possible due to fear of the aliens (trying to role play them a tiny bit) which burned up some of their starting mineral stockpiles.  Basically they just started so small it was hard to get things jump started.  There was no way they could produce the 2400 BP or whatever it is for a 3rd research lab early on.  So they built up their industry to where they are producing about 500 BP / yr, but their mines were only producing about 400 Duranium / yr which was the new limiting factor, so they've been building mines.  But that only yields about 4 mines / yr which is slow going.  I would like to build their industry and mining up to about 1,200 / year so they could build a 3rd research lab in "only" 2 years of game time.  If they had started with larger stockpiles or a 3rd or even 4th research lab, it would have dramatically increased their jumpstart speed.  I don't think a pre TN should be able to leap to full TN in just a few years, but it would be nice if they could do so within a reasonable game time frame, say 5-20 years or something like that.  Of course in Starfire you had pre industrial races that had no hope of getting anywhere on their own within the time frame of the game.

[Brian Neumann]

I don't recall their population but I think a good bit of it is unemployed.  I did convert all of the conventional; just didn't watch the mineral stockpiles close enough and should have converted more of it to Mines instead of Factories than I did.  They built a small missile armed PDC as early as possible due to fear of the aliens (trying to role play them a tiny bit) which burned up some of their starting mineral stockpiles.  Basically they just started so small it was hard to get things jump started.  There was no way they could produce the 2400 BP or whatever it is for a 3rd research lab early on.  So they built up their industry to where they are producing about 500 BP / yr, but their mines were only producing about 400 Duranium / yr which was the new limiting factor, so they've been building mines.  But that only yields about 4 mines / yr which is slow going.  I would like to build their industry and mining up to about 1,200 / year so they could build a 3rd research lab in "only" 2 years of game time.  If they had started with larger stockpiles or a 3rd or even 4th research lab, it would have dramatically increased their jumpstart speed.  I don't think a pre TN should be able to leap to full TN in just a few years, but it would be nice if they could do so within a reasonable game time frame, say 5-20 years or something like that.  Of course in Starfire you had pre industrial races that had no hope of getting anywhere on their own within the time frame of the game.

It sounds like a large part of the problem here might be their very small starting size.  At a guess they had around 200million population.  If you think about it, that is actually quite small for an industrialized planet to have.  My own games have started out with between 1-3 billion popuplation.  This helps in two ways.  There are a lot more bp available from the conventional industry which while it takes longer to convert gives more flexability.  I learned about half way through the conversion process that I needed more mines than I was building.  The second point being that the number of reasearch labs is 1 per 100million population roughly.  At 1billion population I started with 10 reasearch labs.  That let me reasearch things a whole lot faster, which in turn let me build an early generation survey ship fairly quickly.  This in turn found me another source of minerals before I had run all of mine out (the moon luckily enough) and so the benifits increased.

Brian

[Charlie Beeler]

I spent some more time on my 3.2 test game and I'm past the 20 year mark now.  I might have mentioned here somewhere that a couple large colonies I set up are increasingly sucking the life out of the Empire by demanding more and more infrastructure.  I long ago stopped sending colonists there but their own growth rate plus the efforts of the pesky civilian colonizer ships have them both over 60m pop now and growing at a rate the it takes most of the HW's production just to keep them supplied with infrastructure. <snip>

Not sure about your terraforming issues.  But the way to stop the civilians from sending more colonists fairly easy to do.  On the Economics screen (F2) open the Ind Status/Civilians tab.  Lower left is the Civilian Colonization Status flag.  I'm betting that it is set for destination.  Change that to source and the civilian should stop sending colonists.

[Cassaralla]

And the simple way to stop the unrest being a problem?  Martial Law.  Land a couple of Garrison Divisions (or cheaper if you still have some Pre TN units) and they will sort out the unrest in no time.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

If you stop supplying them with infrastructure, they will stop growing

This planet is in the home system with large mineral deposits so I figured it was worth colonizing despite the 3x cost.  I didn't realizae at the time that the infrastructure costs would eventually grow so large.  I was reluctant to have colonization ships sitting idle but should have shut them down earlier.  What I ended up doing was starting a new colony 2 jumps out to keep them busy but greatly reduce the colony growth rate, although that one is starting to get up around 10m already.  I've found plenty of 1.8x cost worlds to colonize but nothing below that yet except the one the pre TN NPR is on which I've left alone (Prime Directive?).  

Thanks for the feedback.  This is a learning game and I don't really understand terraforming fully yet.  What exactly is an anti-GH gas?  What is the 30% O2 limit?  Currently the O2 is 100% since I started with vacuum and have been adding O2.  Is O2 > 30% what is causing the attrition rate to increase?  Should I switch to adding Nitrogen for awhile?  

An anti-greenhouse gas (one example is sulfate aerosols) will lower the temperature of a planet if you add it to the atmosphere because it reflects or block sunlight. The 30% O2 limit is the maximum amount of O2 is terms of percentage (rather than density) that is breathable. Beyond that limit it becomes dangerous to humans and the atmosphere is classed as non-breathable. It's also not a good idea to light a cigarette in that atmosphere either

The best gas to add depends on the situation. If you look at the colony cost factors in the lower left of the System Generation window (F9), you will see various numbers relating to different environmental concerns. The colony cost of the planet will be equal to the worst of these numbers so that's the one you should try to remedy first. If the colony cost is greater than 2.0, then its usually based on temperature or there is a dangerous gas in the atmosphere, such as ammonia. If its is a dangerous gas, get rid of that first. If it's temperature, then use a greenhouse oranti-greenhouse gas to modify the temperature, depnding on whether you want to raise or lower it. Once the temperature cost factor falls below 2.0 but the overall colony cost is still 2.0 then its usually because the atmosphere is not breathable. In that case, add oxygen until it reaches the lower limit of the racial tolerance (shown in the Environmental Tolerances in the upper right) or in rare cases, remove oxygen until it drops to the upper limit. Once that is done, check that oxygen levels are not above 30%. If they are, add a different gas. Either a greenhouse or anti-greenhouse if you want to modify the temperature further or nitrogen if you are happy with the temperature.

Steve

[jfelten]

The unrest rise should be very small. if you want to eliminate is completely, put a ground units on the colony. Even one small unit will be enough to remove the minimal unrest.

Good to know.  It is small.  Of course now I'll have to design and build a troop transport . . .  Might be faster to build a troop training facility and build the troops there.  

The infrastructure from civilian freighters is free - you don't have to build it and it doesn't cost you any wealth or minerals. It's picked up by the freighters from a civilian space centre. One of the advantages of civilian ships it that they allow you to colonise worlds without worrying about the infrastructure cost or the fuel cost (which is also free for civilians).

That is much better.  I was afraid they were helping themselves to the government stockpile.  

If the civilians do start running amok, you can always shoot them :)

What!?  The peace loving Romulan Star Empire fire on civilians?  Nothing but vicious rumors spread by a few malcontents I assure you.  Official investigations proved lax civilian maintenance was to blame in every instance of disappearing civilian ships.  

An anti-greenhouse gas (one example is sulfate aerosols) will lower the temperature of a planet if you add it to the atmosphere because it reflects or block sunlight. The 30% O2 limit is the maximum amount of O2 is terms of percentage (rather than density) that is breathable. Beyond that limit it becomes dangerous to humans and the atmosphere is classed as non-breathable. It's also not a good idea to light a cigarette in that atmosphere either :)

Given the current pressure, smoking isn't going to be a problem.  It will be a long time before that is a danger.  

The best gas to add depends on the situation. If you look at the colony cost factors in the lower left of the System Generation window (F9), you will see various numbers relating to different environmental concerns. The colony cost of the planet will be equal to the worst of these numbers so that's the one you should try to remedy first. If the colony cost is greater than 2.0, then its usually based on temperature or there is a dangerous gas in the atmosphere, such as ammonia. If its is a dangerous gas, get rid of that first. If it's temperature, then use a greenhouse or anti-greenhouse gas to modify the temperature, depending on whether you want to raise or lower it. Once the temperature cost factor falls below 2.0 but the overall colony cost is still 2.0 then its usually because the atmosphere is not breathable. In that case, add oxygen until it reaches the lower limit of the racial tolerance (shown in the Environmental Tolerances in the upper right) or in rare cases, remove oxygen until it drops to the upper limit. Once that is done, check that oxygen levels are not above 30%. If they are, add a different gas. Either a greenhouse or anti-greenhouse if you want to modify the temperature further or nitrogen if you are happy with the temperature.

Steve

It must be the temperature then.  The planet is hot but no poisonous gasses (started as a vacuum) so I'll switch the terraformers to working on anti-GH gases.  The current O2 is 100% but the pressure is very very low so can't be dangerous.  

I assume once the temperature is lower I'll have to remove the anti-GH gasses to avoid an ice age?  

Would it be hard to add an automatic option to terraforming to automatically do what was best?  Or at least a suggestion box.  It sounds like there is only one best course so why bother the player most of the time?  Plus you'll want that for your automated NPR's anyway.  

For some reason I have found a wealth of planets with 1.8x attrition but none below that.  Plenty above that of course.  1.8x must be some sort of attrition plateau.

[Brian Neumann]

The 1.8 cost for planets sounds like you have reasearched the 10% reduction in colony cost.  (the first line of the racial reasearch page.  10% is the second level and costs 20000 points normally.)  The standard cost for a planet without a breathable atmosphere is 2.0  It only goes to 3.0 for some nasty gasses (sulfer dioxide?) and can be any amount based on the temprature.  If the temp. factor is less than the breathable then the gasses are the controlling amount.  If the temprature is the larger then that is what the cost will be.  

Also untill you get some more gasses in the planet to bring the O2 level below 30% it will be considered a toxic gas.  Once it is under 30% it is just fine.  Currently you will need to keep track of the temprature to make sure the temp does not go to far in one direction by accident.  I usually put the greenhouse or anti-greenhouse gas setting to be double that of the O2 setting, and then adjust based on where that comes out at.  Doing it this way means that when the message of terraforming ending is posted that the atmosphere is not quite breathable, but close enough that it doesn't take much more work.  If the temprature is in the habitable range then I use N2, if it is still outside that range then the appropriate greenhouse gas is used instead.

Brian

[jfelten]

The 1.8 cost for planets sounds like you have researched the 10% reduction in colony cost.  (the first line of the racial research page.  10% is the second level and costs 20000 points normally.)  The standard cost for a planet without a breathable atmosphere is 2.0  It only goes to 3.0 for some nasty gasses (surfer dioxide?) and can be any amount based on the temperature.  If the temp. factor is less than the breathable then the gasses are the controlling amount.  If the temperature is the larger then that is what the cost will be.  

Also until you get some more gasses in the planet to bring the O2 level below 30% it will be considered a toxic gas.  Once it is under 30% it is just fine.  Currently you will need to keep track of the temperature to make sure the temp does not go to far in one direction by accident.  I usually put the greenhouse or anti-greenhouse gas setting to be double that of the O2 setting, and then adjust based on where that comes out at.  Doing it this way means that when the message of terraforming ending is posted that the atmosphere is not quite breathable, but close enough that it doesn't take much more work.  If the temperature is in the habitable range then I use N2, if it is still outside that range then the appropriate greenhouse gas is used instead.

Brian

You are almost certainly right about the 1.8.  I didn't think of that.  

How do you achieve the perfect greenhouse gas balance once you get the temperature right so that it doesn't drift up or down?  Or are you constantly tweaking it for the rest of the game?

[Brian Neumann]

You are almost certainly right about the 1.8.  I didn't think of that.  

How do you achieve the perfect greenhouse gas balance once you get the temperature right so that it doesn't drift up or down?  Or are you constantly tweaking it for the rest of the game?

The temprature is static based on the proportions of gasses.  just because there are greenhouse gasses does not meen that the temprature will keep shifting over time.

Brian

[Father Tim]

On the terraforming front, two thoughts:

1.  It appears that Terraforming Modules can be built into PDCs.  This means they can be pre-fab'd and sent to another planet for assembly (by Engineering Divisions if necessary).  This makes them better than actual terraforming ships in some cases (the primary being no maintenance required, secondarily the lack of shipyard time/space - and possibly skipping shipyards entirely), though they're immobile once assembled.

2.  Terraforming Modules cost 400 to build (200 duranium, 200 boronide), whereas an actual Terraforming Installation costs 600 (again, half duranium & half boronide).  Adding a Bridge & Crew Qurters to the PDC version means an 'armoured TI' costs ony 450ish instead of 600 for the civilian version.  Thus, once Terraforming Modules are reasearched the standard TI is obsolete.


Okay, so maybe this isn't a bug.  Maybe 'Terraforming Modules' should be considered a newer, more advanced system that rightfully make their predecessor obsolete.  I'm okay with that, as long as the tech system description mentions it.  TMs cost two-thirds as much and requir no workers - that's quite an improvement.

[jfelten]

On the terraforming front, two thoughts:

1.  It appears that Terraforming Modules can be built into PDCs.  This means they can be pre-fab'd and sent to another planet for assembly (by Engineering Divisions if necessary).  This makes them better than actual terraforming ships in some cases (the primary being no maintenance required, secondarily the lack of shipyard time/space - and possibly skipping shipyards entirely), though they're immobile once assembled.

2.  Terraforming Modules cost 400 to build (200 duranium, 200 boronide), whereas an actual Terraforming Installation costs 600 (again, half duranium & half boronide).  Adding a Bridge & Crew Qurters to the PDC version means an 'armoured TI' costs ony 450ish instead of 600 for the civilian version.  Thus, once Terraforming Modules are reasearched the standard TI is obsolete.


Okay, so maybe this isn't a bug.  Maybe 'Terraforming Modules' should be considered a newer, more advanced system that rightfully make their predecessor obsolete.  I'm okay with that, as long as the tech system description mentions it.  TMs cost two-thirds as much and requir no workers - that's quite an improvement.

Great idea.  I could not fathom why pretty much every installation in the game could be moved by freighter but not terraforming installations, especially considering you could build one small enough to fit in a spaceship.  And there they sit useless after a world is finally fully terraformed.

[jfelten]

I don't know what caused it but I am now getting the below error when trying to display the System Map window.  It sounds like a duplicate key in the database but I've never encountered a DBMS that would actually allow you to insert a duplicate key.  

Do you have two fleets with the same name? The TreeView control in VB6 uses a string-based key, which is the fleet name in this case.

Steve

Steve, that turned out to be the problem.  I had accidentally named two TF's with the same name and didn't realize it.  You might want to add a check to the rename TF button to prevent name collision.

[jfelten]

I had a ship flagged as a "tanker" and had the conditional order set for its TF to "Refuel at colony or tanker with 4 jumps" if its fuel fell below 30%.  That ship did fall below 30% fuel and I received notice that the TF was going to refuel from itself.  Please exclude the ship in question from the list of valid refuel locations when this conditional order is triggered.

Later I had this different and very strange problem occur.:  I had a different ship/TF also fall below 30% fuel and trigger automatic refueling.  This time the ship in question was not a tanker and it correctly identified a tanker in the adjacent system to refuel from.  I thought it was neat that this was going to work well.  I checked the TF's orders and indeed its orders had been replaced with the proper orders to transit to the adjacent system (the TF was jump capable) and refuel from the tanker there.  Then I went on playing.  A good while later I received a warning that that TF was below 10% fuel.  That shouldn't have happened so I investigated and this is the odd part.  The TF was showing as moving towards the appropriate WP at full speed, but as I advanced time the TF never moved on the System Map.  It has the "vector tail" showing it should move to the WP in the next time increment, but it never moved.  It still had fuel and velocity and was consuming fuel but it was stuck in space.  I deleted its orders and re-entered them but it wouldn't budge.  Finally I got it unstuck by having another TF that was fortunately nearby "Join" it.  Then the newly combined TF moved normally and I was able to move it to the tanker in the adjacent system and refuel it.  The only thing I can think of is perhaps some sort of conflict between the standing orders for it to survey and the conditional orders for it to refuel.  But that shouldn't have made any difference once the new conditional orders were entered for it to transit to the adjacent system and refuel.  And I saw no evidence of such conflict in the event log.