3.2 Bugs

[SteveAlt]

I've just had a civilian non-jumpp capable survey ship suddenly come up for sale in a new system.  Two new systems have been created and I have not built my first jump tender yet.  One of the systems showing on the Galactic Map is not connected to any JP in my home system (the only system my race was aware of until this glitch).  Any ideas what caused it?  I'd just run a 5 day step after starting running the game for the first time today.

I've not seen that but I had something odd happen recently with civilian freighters.  Early on in my test game a couple civ freighters came up for sale in an adjacent system.  They were not jump capable and at that time the adjacent system was accessible via a 1-way jump gate.  I'm guessing they wandered through, couldn't get back, so then came up for sale.  For the next ~25 years of game time not a single civilian ship came up for sale.  Then suddenly there was a civilian ship fire sale.  I think about 20 came up for sale within a 1-2 month time frame.  All in the home system so they were not "trapped".  Since MCr are a lot easier to come by IME than minerals I started scarfing them all up.  But after buying more than a dozen I got more choosy and only bought the cheaper ones since the price seemed to vary by a factor of about 2.  I have no idea what triggered this civilian fire sale.  It came out of the blue and then soon stopped.  Most of them I have to refit so they'll still cost me most of the cost of a new freighter (upgrading engines which are the biggest cost of a freighter) but I save a few minerals at the expense of a lot of MCr.  I'm not 100% certain it is a good deal.  Has anyone ran the numbers to check whether it is more economical to scrap and rebuild rather than refit in such a situation?  When refitting do I get any credit for the old engines that are being replaced?  

I have yet to notice a civilian geo survey ship actually do anything useful.  I see them moving around a lot but I've never seen one survey anything.  Perhaps I just missed it but they seem totally useless as is.  

Civilian ships will go on sale when they cannot find anything to do. For freighters and colony ships this may happen when you have no eligible colonies for colonist or infrastructure delivery. For geosurvey ships it will happen when there are no more system bodies to survey. When new colonies became available or you build a jump gate to create access to one, they  will be withdrawn from sale and begin operations again.

While working with NPRs I found a bug in the code that checks out routes though multiple systems, which means that some systems are never checked. Its fixed for v4.0 but it will occasionally affect civilian ships in v3.2

Steve

[SteveAlt]

The civilian spaceport in a dead-end system built a (non-jump-capable) geo survey vessel which, having nothing to survey, moved through the jump gate into the next system.  Since this system is also fully geologically surveyed, it then turns around and goes back.  This ship spends all its time going back and forth through the same jump gate rather than continuing across this second system to the next jump gate 168 million km away.

Yes, I have come across this bug in my own game. It's fixed for v4.0 and civilian (and NPR) geosurvey ships are now acting more rationally

Steve

[SteveAlt]

A minor display bug:  I had a cybernetic team restore a Mass Driver on Mars.  The event window text just says "... Cybernetic Team has restored an abandoned on Mars".  The text "Mass Driver" is missing.

Fixed for v4.0

Steve

[SteveAlt]

JFelton and I just found a bug in the missile design screen.  You can't make a missile with any em sensors.  No matter how much space you allocate or your em sensor rating the actual em sensor rating for the missile/buoy stays at 0.

Fixed for v4.0

Steve

[SteveAlt]

I found I can build ships and add slipways/capacity to the same shipyard at the same time.  Is that a bug or should it be allowed?

No, that's allowed. However, once you start retooling a shipyard, you can't start building new ships of the class for which it is currently tooled.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

Something else I don't know if it is a bug or just the way things work.  I keep getting scan reports of my race's civilian ships with some really weird numbers such as speed capabilities of 42 Km/sec.  The number is all over the place but is often ludicrously low.  In any event it should only report the speed scan if it is higher than the best known speed for that class.

The speed reported for a contact, be it a civilian ship or an alien ship, is based on how far a ship moved during the last increment. So if the increment is 5 seconds and the ship moved 10,000 km. the speed will be reported as 2000 km/s. Sometimes, a freighter or colony ship will spend most of an increment loading or unloading or may appear through a jump point close to the end of an increment. In that case, the distance traveled during that increment will be relatively small and therefore the average speed reported will be low. If you observe it moving for the whole increment, you will get an accurate rating. Only higher speeds than previously seen are reported, so if you see a very low speed it is likely for a class of contact for which you have no previous speed information.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

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.

I do need to get around to moveable terraforming installations at some point. Now that research labs can be moved in pieces and (in v4.0) shipyards can be towed to other planets, it is something of an abberation that terraforming installations can't be moved. As they are larger than regular factories though, how about requiring a double-size freighter (10 cargo holds) to move one?

Steve

[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.

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

I've been using 86000 for a couple of game years now and I have no issues with the time taken for each increment.

[welchbloke]

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.

I do need to get around to moveable terraforming installations at some point. Now that research labs can be moved in pieces and (in v4.0) shipyards can be towed to other planets, it is something of an abberation that terraforming installations can't be moved. As they are larger than regular factories though, how about requiring a double-size freighter (10 cargo holds) to move one?

Steve

This seems reasonable to me, but it still leaves the question of what is the advantage of a TI over a TM?

[welchbloke]

I've encountered what appears to be a display bug.  In one of my systems there is a JP with a Jump Gate, this JG appears in the task groups window with a [JG] after it; however, on the system map there is no square around the JP.  For aother systems with gated JPs the square does appear, it is just this one system.  Any ideas?

[Erik L]

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.

I do need to get around to moveable terraforming installations at some point. Now that research labs can be moved in pieces and (in v4.0) shipyards can be towed to other planets, it is something of an abberation that terraforming installations can't be moved. As they are larger than regular factories though, how about requiring a double-size freighter (10 cargo holds) to move one?

Steve

Or break them into components like research labs.

[welchbloke]

I've encountered what appears to be a display bug.  In one of my systems there is a JP with a Jump Gate, this JG appears in the task groups window with a [JG] after it; however, on the system map there is no square around the JP.  For aother systems with gated JPs the square does appear, it is just this one system.  Any ideas?

Ignore this, a precursor JG has suddenly appeared on the map  

[SteveAlt]

This seems reasonable to me, but it still leaves the question of what is the advantage of a TI over a TM?

Assuming that you can move TIs, the three options have the following advantages/disadvantages

Terraforming Installation
A: No maintenance required. Can be moved
D: Requires manpower

TM on a ship
A: Flexibility in terms of location. No manpower required
D: Requires maintenance and overhauls, plus the supporting systems on the ship.

TM on a PDC
A: Cheapest way to build them. No manpower required. No maintenance required.
D: Can't be moved once built

Steve

[SteveAlt]

Or break them into components like research labs.

I have decided go with this suggestions. In v4.0 terraforming installations can be moved in the same way as research labs. As they are smaller they only have five components, compared to twenty for research labs.

Steve

[jfelten]

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

TTBOMK that did not happen.  It always starts with a default name so I would have had to have blanked that out but not entered one which I did not do, at least not willingly.  But putting a trap in for blank names is a good idea.  

I do like to append descriptive tags such as "(Pwr=80, Str=12, Range 1.2Gm)".  Perhaps some "special character" is causing something to choke, although I use similar successfully so that seems unlikely to be the cause as well.  I also thought perhaps I was entering names that were too long but that also didn't seem to be the case when I tried to reproduce the problem.