4.1 Bugs

[Beersatron]

I have 4 SS ships sitting in a type 6 nebula system and out of fuel, with auto increment this meant it was going at 5secs (I think) but I changed the sub-pulse to 1 day and it was doing 1 day pulses. I have some better armored and bigger fuel tank ships in system crawling over to them for manual refuel and I had managed to get one back up and running before my GE ships woke up the bad guys (mentioned in above post) and quite possibly triggered another auto-pulse-stop thingy.

Now, even though the bad guy contacts are gone from my system map in the GE system, I can only pulse at 15minutes (judging by the clock on system map screen).

I have me GEs moving to the exit JG and I still have 3 SSs to refuel, suffice to say its taking a while  :oops:

[Charlie Beeler]

My GeoSurvey fleets have a magic secondary order to go to a trade location! See the attached screen

Are these fleets which were once assigned that default order and then you unset it, or have they never been assigned that particular default order?

Steve

This looks very much like an issue I reported in 4.0b.  I suspect that Events is picking up a 'phantom' secondary order from a task group that was previously processed and an control flag isn't being initialized when a new TG is processed.

[Erik L]

Got one under 4.1 coming up intermittent. Error in NPCPlacePop(?) Not sure on the exact sub as I'm trying from memory. But it did deal with NPC's finding planets or placing populations.

If you click the show error box on the Events window, it should show you any recent error messages.

Steve

The error message is Error 91, but it doesn't say what sub. I ran for about 10 years after that message and no repeat. If it pops up again, I'll check the popup for the sub.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

A quick question. Am I right in thinking that maintenance failures for commercial ships have been switched off so that you only need one engineering bay per ship? Otherwise my commercial ships are going to need a lot of maintenance bays.

Yes, that's correct. The only reason you might add additional maintenance storage would be to repair combat damage.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

My GeoSurvey fleets have a magic secondary order to go to a trade location! See the attached screen

Are these fleets which were once assigned that default order and then you unset it, or have they never been assigned that particular default order?

This looks very much like an issue I reported in 4.0b.  I suspect that Events is picking up a 'phantom' secondary order from a task group that was previously processed and an control flag isn't being initialized when a new TG is processed.

It does sound like something along those lines, although the code in that area has been completely rewritten. The Fleet information, including special orders, are now loaded directly from the database into objects in memory and those objects are created as the information is loaded so there is no old information. When the special orders are checked, the program cycles through the fleet objects and look for those where the special order properties are set. Those without a special order are not even checked so there should be no holdover.

I think in this case Beersatron mentioned some of his fleets were assigned that order early in the game. Once a trade location is set, it stays set until civilian trade is loaded. As the geo survey ships can't actually do that the trade location will remain set forever for that fleet. During each movement phase, there is some code directing civilian ships to their assigned trade location. I suspect that code was activated for any non-civilian ships that ended up with an assigned trade location (that they then could not get rid of).

EDIT: I have added an extra check so you can no longer assign that particular special order to non-civilians.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Yeah, I didn't remove the default orders so they are still trying to move. I will remove them when I get home and see if that helps. I just find it weird that before my GE ships made 'contact' with the bad guys I was able to increment by 1 day even with the fuel warnings but now I can not.

Sometimes in v4.1 you will not be able to advance time very much because something is happening elsewhere in the universe that requires shorter increments.

I think it is an NPR and not a Precursor, I was sleepy last night and did not notice that it was a Colony Cost of 0 world (I though it said 2!) otherwise I wouldn't have just let the GEs go about their business.

Is it a hostile act if my ships do a GeoSurvey on an NPR homeworld?  

It is hostile in the sense that your relations will drop during every 5-day increment that you are detected by an NPR in one of their populated systems (unless you are friendly to them or it is a commercial ship and a trade treaty exists)

Steve

[sloanjh]

1)  I'm doing a conventional start, and all three civilian lines had built freighters before I even had my first survey vessel built.  Maybe a test for two populated worlds within the empire before the civies start building?

That's a good idea. I have added a check for at least two worlds that have either population or infrastructure before any civilian ships can be built.

You might want to also restrict civie builds to the size of the largest commercial SY available.  It turns out that I was wildly optimistic as to the size of commercial ships I could build right away (my freighter design was ~40Kton; initial SY size is only 10Kton), but that didn't stop the civies from making these behemoths

John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

1)  I'm doing a conventional start, and all three civilian lines had built freighters before I even had my first survey vessel built.  Maybe a test for two populated worlds within the empire before the civies start building?

That's a good idea. I have added a check for at least two worlds that have either population or infrastructure before any civilian ships can be built.

You might want to also restrict civie builds to the size of the largest commercial SY available.  It turns out that I was wildly optimistic as to the size of commercial ships I could build right away (my freighter design was ~40Kton; initial SY size is only 10Kton), but that didn't stop the civies from making these behemoths

Did you only get Naval Shipyards as part of yor starting setup. If so, you need to build a commercial shipyard

Steve

[sloanjh]

Did you only get Naval Shipyards as part of yor starting setup. If so, you need to build a commercial shipyard

Yes - One Naval SY for the initial conventional start (which seems a bit odd - you'd think it would be commercial).  I built a commercial SY after I'd converted about 75% of my industry, but like I said it was only 10K tons capacity so it would take a while to grow.  My first commercial design was a tiny little colony ship with 2 colony modules and 3 engines (I could have fit 4 if I'd wanted to wait a few weeks for a 500 ton upgrade to the yard).

On a different note:

I just started a 4.2 campaign (same basic setup: conventional start + 3 NPR), and I'm getting a 3-4 "Error in GetBodySuitability" errors with every 5-day update (from the very first).  I assume it's an NPR who's in a funny system, so I'm going to go look for the problem.

John

[sloanjh]

I just started a 4.2 campaign (same basic setup: conventional start + 3 NPR), and I'm getting a 3-4 "Error in GetBodySuitability" errors with every 5-day update (from the very first).  I assume it's an NPR who's in a funny system, so I'm going to go look for the problem.

Oooh - that was fun.

It looks like it's the "Sedan Republic".  When I made them the default race, their homeworld population (on the F2 screen) showed up as a "mining colony".  They look like they've got all the standard facilities (e.g. factories etc.) but no population.  I assume there was something wrong with their homeworld, and it turned out un-inhabitable for them.  I can't look at it in the F9 screen, though, since Aurora throws another couple errors then crashes with a divide by zero.  Looking at the race window (ctrl-F2), their ideal oxygen and maximum deviation are both 0.0atm - I'll bet that's what's causing the divide-by-zero.  I'll try a bit longer to get a look at their homeworld, then just obliterate them.  I'll let you know if I find anything more.

John

**EDIT** Ok - I was able to get into the home system by giving knowledge of it to another race.  It looks perfectly normal - home planet shows up as colony cost 0.0 (for the other race) and O2 is 29% (.23 atm).  In particular, there's no methane or other dangerous gasses in the atmosphere.  It looks like Aurora burped during NPR creation and set the race to not tolerate O2 (max pressure is at 0.0 as well) and the zero in the O2 range is probably dividing something.  Could it have been trying to make this a race of methane breathers?

Two more things I noticed:

1)  When I go to the SM "compare systems" screen and look at all the races' home systems, their IDs are labeled 1, 2, 3, 4 (my race + 3 NPR).  The same ID shows up on the F9 screen and on the galactic map.  Did we lose the random distribution of NPR (i.e. are all 3 NPR right in my back yard and likely to show up as adjacent), or have you hidden the "true" system number?

2)  The "adjust WP connectivity" SM dialog seems to have gone away.  Or is that controlled through the F9 screen (that I was having trouble getting into) now?

John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

**EDIT** Ok - I was able to get into the home system by giving knowledge of it to another race.  It looks perfectly normal - home planet shows up as colony cost 0.0 (for the other race) and O2 is 29% (.23 atm).  In particular, there's no methane or other dangerous gasses in the atmosphere.  It looks like Aurora burped during NPR creation and set the race to not tolerate O2 (max pressure is at 0.0 as well) and the zero in the O2 range is probably dividing something.  Could it have been trying to make this a race of methane breathers?

Is the colony cost 0.0 planet definitely the homeworld of the NPR? You can check by looking on the pop table for the SystemBodyID of the NPR capital and then create a pop for the viewing race on the assumed homeworld and see if they match

Steve

[Thorgarth]

Steve,

Downloaded the 4.2 patch. On first empire generation attempt with the program assigned to select tech and design ships, received.
Error 3021 was generated by DAO.Recordset
No Current Record

Then received twice:
Error 3020 Update of CancelUpdate without Addnew or Edit

Then a repeat of all three messages.

Deleted this game.  Next time I did not assign the tech selection to the program
Received the 3021 error again.

[sloanjh]

**EDIT** Ok - I was able to get into the home system by giving knowledge of it to another race.  It looks perfectly normal - home planet shows up as colony cost 0.0 (for the other race) and O2 is 29% (.23 atm).  In particular, there's no methane or other dangerous gasses in the atmosphere.  It looks like Aurora burped during NPR creation and set the race to not tolerate O2 (max pressure is at 0.0 as well) and the zero in the O2 range is probably dividing something.  Could it have been trying to make this a race of methane breathers?

Is the colony cost 0.0 planet definitely the homeworld of the NPR? You can check by looking on the pop table for the SystemBodyID of the NPR capital and then create a pop for the viewing race on the assumed homeworld and see if they match

Steve

Aha!!  Good Call.  What I called the homeworld is Sedan-A II; it's the only pop of the NPR and the capital, but it's NOT the homeworld that was used to generate the NPR.  That distinction belongs to Sedan-A I - the reason I know is that the NPR's ideal temperature is 96.4 and ideal gravity is 2.59, which just happen to be the temp and gravity for Sedan-A I.  You might have noticed the gravity's a bit high - that's because Sedan-A I is a Gas Giant.  I'll bet the race tried to generate on Sedan-A I, and then got confused when it realized it was a gas giant and jumped to Sedan-A II.  That or some weird off-by-one error.

Note that I just looked at the second race's characteristics to make sure they matched their homeworld.  They do (phew!), but the weird thing is that the situation looks very similar to Sedan.  The homeworld is Iijima-A III, Iijima-A II is a gas giant, and there is no Iijima-A I.  The only difference that jumps out at me (other than the shift out by one) is that Iijima-A II has moons while Sedan-A I doesn't.

John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Have you thought about having an alternate mechanism for deploying changes of type #2?  For example, you might distribute a tiny "fixup" executable that will just run a few SQL queries that look for the records in need of repair and poke the correct values in.  An alternate possibility might be to distribute two databases - one of "configuration" information/tables like "PlanetaryInstallations" and one with "game instance" information/tables like "Ship" or "Population".  (Not working with databases much, I don't know if this is actually practical - if not, the configuration DB could be used by the update executable to stomp the corresponding tables in the Stevefire DB.  I suppose this idea could even be extended to handle minor changes to table layout if you were feeling really enthusiastic.)

Good idea. As you suggested, I have released a small update program that runs a few SQL queries to fix the data problem causing this bug. I'll try to use the same method in the future when possible. However, be aware that it won't fix any games that are already affected; it will only fix new games or games that haven't been affected by the bug yet. It's a vaccination, not a cure . Two databases isn't that practical because you often need to run queries across both and the code isn't setup for that.

Steve

[rdgam]

I was trying some ground combat.  I get this error every update cycle.
Error in BombardmentResults
Error 91 was generated by Aurora
Object variable or With block variable not set

By the way, even with my ships at the planet with active sensors on I don't get any idea of the combat values of the enemy.
In the older versions you would see the total combat value, which would give you an idea of how many troops you would need for the fight.