3.2 Bugs

[Erik L]

I've encountered an issue with shipbuilding.  I have 3 ships 99.5% completed that should have been completed the following day.  Advance by one day and the ships are still 99.5% and due tomorrow.  I repeated a single day advance 4 times and still the task hasn't completed.  In the end I had to advance by a fifth day and the task then completed.  Is shipbuilding managed in 5 day increments?  If so why was the completion date reported as 4 days earlier?

I can't authoritatively answer your question and I will be interested in the official answer, but until Steve answers I can say that in my own limited experience there does seem to be some sort of 5 day breakpoints to the game.

The game setup, the 400,000 value controls this.

[Father Tim]

There is, however, a related bug in shipbuilding.  For some reason, the 'completion date' displayed for ships and shipyard tasks is actually the day before the actual completion date.  Extensive experimentation with advancing time an extra few hours (even to 23:59) before triggering a 5-day increment confirms that the displayed completion date is one day early, resulting in ships or tasks that are "99.9%" complete.  At 00:01 of the day following the displayed date tasks are complete.

[sloanjh]

I've encountered an issue with shipbuilding.  I have 3 ships 99.5% completed that should have been completed the following day.  Advance by one day and the ships are still 99.5% and due tomorrow.  I repeated a single day advance 4 times and still the task hasn't completed.  In the end I had to advance by a fifth day and the task then completed.  Is shipbuilding managed in 5 day increments?  If so why was the completion date reported as 4 days earlier?

I can't authoritatively answer your question and I will be interested in the official answer, but until Steve answers I can say that in my own limited experience there does seem to be some sort of 5 day breakpoints to the game.

The game setup, the 400,000 value controls this.

Economic activity doesn't update with every time step.  Instead, the game records the amount of time that has passed since the last update.  When that cumulative time passes ~5 days (the 400,000 seconds Erik mentions) an update happens, with the amount of production proportional to the elapsed time.  This has some weird side effects:

If you always advance using the "5 days" button, you can actually go ~10 days between updates.  If an interrupt (e.g. due to a new alien contact) happens during a movement sub-pulse just before the 400,000 seconds is up, your elapsed time will be ~5 days, but not quite enough to trigger an update.  Hitting the 5-day update button will advance the clock another 5 days, for a total of 10 days between updates.  This is not a catastrophe, however, since your factories will have produced twice as much stuff as during a typical 5 day update.

The incredible creeping completion dates     If you watch the "time left" box on ships while continuously hitting the 1-day advance button, you'll see the estimated completion date advance by 1 day 4 times, then jump back by 4 days.  This is because 4 of the 1-day advanced don't actually contribute any build points to the ship - all the build points for the 5-day span are contributed on the last day (when the update happens).

Officer promotions all happen simultaneously during an update, so when a major promotion takes place (e.g. R5 -->R6) the promotions will cascade through the officer tree over the course of the next few weeks.

I never found any of these features to be a problem, however, once I figured them out.

John

[welchbloke]

*SNIP*

Economic activity doesn't update with every time step.  Instead, the game records the amount of time that has passed since the last update.  When that cumulative time passes ~5 days (the 400,000 seconds Erik mentions) an update happens, with the amount of production proportional to the elapsed time.  This has some weird side effects:

If you always advance using the "5 days" button, you can actually go ~10 days between updates.  If an interrupt (e.g. due to a new alien contact) happens during a movement sub-pulse just before the 400,000 seconds is up, your elapsed time will be ~5 days, but not quite enough to trigger an update.  Hitting the 5-day update button will advance the clock another 5 days, for a total of 10 days between updates.  This is not a catastrophe, however, since your factories will have produced twice as much stuff as during a typical 5 day update.

The incredible creeping completion dates     If you watch the "time left" box on ships while continuously hitting the 1-day advance button, you'll see the estimated completion date advance by 1 day 4 times, then jump back by 4 days.  This is because 4 of the 1-day advanced don't actually contribute any build points to the ship - all the build points for the 5-day span are contributed on the last day (when the update happens).

Officer promotions all happen simultaneously during an update, so when a major promotion takes place (e.g. R5 -->R6) the promotions will cascade through the officer tree over the course of the next few weeks.

I never found any of these features to be a problem, however, once I figured them out.

John

Thanks for the explanation.  Same as you, now that I know the underlying mechanism I don't think I'll have a problem with these features.

[Randy]

This creeping days thing is why I usually use 86,400 instead of 400,000 (1 day instead of 5 days).  Especially for shipyard related tasks. You can't start building a new ship until the previous one completes. And frequently you would end up with less than a day needed, but need to wait 5 days to complete, also forcing a delay in the start of the next ship...

   Minor if it doesn't bother ya, and configurable if it does

[welchbloke]

This creeping days thing is why I usually use 86,400 instead of 400,000 (1 day instead of 5 days).  Especially for shipyard related tasks. You can't start building a new ship until the previous one completes. And frequently you would end up with less than a day needed, but need to wait 5 days to complete, also forcing a delay in the start of the next ship...

   Minor if it doesn't bother ya, and configurable if it does

I hadn't really noticed the game setting for construction cycle but now that I know I think I might set it to 86 400 as well.

[sloanjh]

This creeping days thing is why I usually use 86,400 instead of 400,000 (1 day instead of 5 days).  Especially for shipyard related tasks. You can't start building a new ship until the previous one completes. And frequently you would end up with less than a day needed, but need to wait 5 days to complete, also forcing a delay in the start of the next ship...

   Minor if it doesn't bother ya, and configurable if it does

I hadn't really noticed the game setting for construction cycle but now that I know I think I might set it to 86 400 as well.

I would recommend something a little less, e.g. 86000.  If you set it to be exactly the span of an update cycle (i.e. "1 day") then you're going to be sensitive to whether Steve used ">" or ">=" in the code (i.e. there's a chance you could actually update every two days - see the "interrupt" scenario above).

One other thing I just remembered - the way that the uncertainty of the exact length of an update cycle (i.e. somewhere between 5 and 6 days due to interrupts if you're doing 1-day updates) is most tricky is when you try to gauge the burn rate of minerals; a 6 day cycle will make the deltas 20% bigger than a 5 day cycle.

John

[welchbloke]

I would recommend something a little less, e.g. 86000.  If you set it to be exactly the span of an update cycle (i.e. "1 day") then you're going to be sensitive to whether Steve used ">" or ">=" in the code (i.e. there's a chance you could actually update every two days - see the "interrupt" scenario above).

One other thing I just remembered - the way that the uncertainty of the exact length of an update cycle (i.e. somewhere between 5 and 6 days due to interrupts if you're doing 1-day updates) is most tricky is when you try to gauge the burn rate of minerals; a 6 day cycle will make the deltas 20% bigger than a 5 day cycle.

John

I hadn't thought the implications of the 86400 setting through; I shall go with a lower number thanks for pointing out my fuzzy thinking.

[jfelten]

Thanks.  And now that I know to look for it, I found the "View Tech" button that opens a window to let you do that.  I marked those "nameless" engines as obsolete and now it doesn't pester me with 3 errors every time I open the class design window.  I think the best "fix" would be to make the input field smaller so the user couldn't enter name that is too long, although it wouldn't hurt to truncate it to the maximum length of the field as well just in case.  

Before I did that, I had a very weird thing happen when I restarted Aurora.  When I first opened the Class Design window I received no errors but the Class Design window showed no Engines whatsoever.  Apparently those "blank engines" caused it to ignore all engines when I restarted it.  Fortunately marking those 3 "blank engines" as obsolete has worked around that as I restarted Aurora after marking them as obsolete and I do see engines now.

I've seen this one too and I still haven't figured out the problem. I don't think its related to the engines you mentioned. I think Aurora is listing components for PDCs rather than ships but I am not sure yet why it occasionally does that.

Steve

This has happened again.  I tried to look for clues that might help track down the bug.  I didn't see much that looked useful but here is what I saw.:  

<Ctrl>F7 Technology Report
Select Engines
Have 3 blank ones with this error 3 times:

---------------------------
Error in PopulateEngines
---------------------------
Error 94 was generated by Aurora
Invalid use of Null
Please report to stevewalmsley@btinternet.com
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

This was after researching new engines
Magneto-plasma Drive E6 (Pwr 80, Fuel 0.6)
and
Magneto-plasma Drive (Pwr +15% 92, Eff -30%, Fuel 0.6)
Those were there O.K. so I don't know if they caused the 3 blank ones or if those happened earlier.  I don't know when the last time I opened Engines in the Technology Report window so they could have been there quite some time.

See graphic.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[jfelten]

In the Ships screen (F6) you should be able to transfer the team using the cargo/ground units tab.

Thanks.  That worked but is there any way to disband a team?  That team was formed when the pre-TN race was very "young" so only has a rate of 69 which isn't very good and they have much better teams now.

[Father Tim]

Not in 3.2, but its been added for 4.0.

[jfelten]

I encountered a bug that I think someone else posted about somewhere.:  

"Cybernetic team has recovered  on Pompeii-A II"

Since there was already a variety of installations there, I have no idea what the blank one became or even if it created anything new.

Also, while trying to get to that text, I ran in to another problem.  I used the "Text File" button to create a new SMEventLog.txt file, and after 28 years of game time, the event log seemed to have become confused.  Note the 15 day jump in dates here despite my using the "5 Days" button every time.:  

9th May 2038 22:27:01,Romulan,Romulus,Contact Re-established with Hrothgar #1029 - Hrothgar (Romulus Aliens #663), TCS 100  T280
(Existing)  (TP: Hrothgar) (Existing)
24th May 2038 22:27:01,Romulan,Romulus,Contact Re-established with Hrothgar #1055 - Hrothgar (Romulus Aliens #663), TCS 100  T280 (Existing)  (TP: Hrothgar) (Existing)

And the text log completely stopped after about 28 years.  None of the new events were in the log.  The file was only 6,375 KB so wasn't huge.  I used whatever the button is to delete everything prior to the last year.  That seemed to work O.K.  But there appears to be some some sort of limit after which point it becomes confused and then stops logging.  The actual event window itself was still showing events of course.  Only when saving to a text file did I notice these problems.

[SteveAlt]

This has happened again.  I tried to look for clues that might help track down the bug.  I didn't see much that looked useful but here is what I saw.:  

<Ctrl>F7 Technology Report
Select Engines
Have 3 blank ones with this error 3 times:

---------------------------
Error in PopulateEngines
---------------------------
Error 94 was generated by Aurora
Invalid use of Null
Please report to stevewalmsley@btinternet.com
---------------------------

The only way I can think of for this problem to occur is if you create research projects without a name in the Ctrl-F6 Create Project window. Could that have happened in this case? I have added some code to the Create Project window so that you will get a warning and no project will be created if the name field is blank.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

This creeping days thing is why I usually use 86,400 instead of 400,000 (1 day instead of 5 days).  Especially for shipyard related tasks. You can't start building a new ship until the previous one completes. And frequently you would end up with less than a day needed, but need to wait 5 days to complete, also forcing a delay in the start of the next ship...

   Minor if it doesn't bother ya, and configurable if it does

I hadn't really noticed the game setting for construction cycle but now that I know I think I might set it to 86 400 as well.

The reason it is set for 5 days is because the construction cycle takes a lot longer than a normal increment. If you set it for one day, then that much longer increment will happen every 24 hours. If that doesn't bother you, then setting for one day should be fine.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

Is there any way to abort a refit?

Yes, just click the Delete Task button on the Shipyard Tasks tab.

Steve