v4.9 Bugs Thread (no longer current)

[nichaey]

I made fuel harvester, and set it to have the optional order of unloading 90% of its fuel then move to a  sodium giant.

It currently says in the event window: FH Gato 001 has been given conditional orders to unload 90% fuel at at NOT FOUND and move to a gas giant.


Then it gives me a order completion notice.

These things are a honky 100+t, and a pretty hefty investment.

this, only I tested it a bit further  

I emptied the fuel a bit by flying to pluto, then tried  to harvest sorium at jupiter (which didn't work because it jupiter doesn't have sorium deposit (another bug perhaps?))
but after succesfully harvesting at neptune the ships moved to earth, but didn't unload fuel or any of the subsequent steps.

hope this helps

So is happen because their initially full tanks are causing the bug? I will try this out. I'm not hurting for fuel have over a hundred million liters, but all the sodium I know of has been mine, so it'll be needed.

 well the problem is a mistype for the get_nearest_colony function in the sequence I'm pretty sure. All I managed to do was prove that the first part of the order still works


Also, hello from bay12

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Adding the "hyper-capable" attribute to a fighter engine makes the holding ship not-a-fighter.  Not sure if this is intended or not....

John

PS - if/when you fix this, could you add a reply to the "Fighter questions" FAQ pointing out that the definition of "qualifying engines" has changed?  Ditto if you take up the suggestion that allows any kind of engine in a fighter.  Thanks.

The problem was that the class design function treated a fighter as a ship with a 1 HS engine. Adding hyper capability made the engine larger than 1 HS. Now it accepts any engines smaller than 5 HS as a fighter engine.

I have added the following text to the FAQ

"EDIT from Steve: A qualifying engine in v4.91 or earlier is an engine of exactly 1 HS. A qualifying engine in v5.0 will be an engine less than 5 HS. Note that adding hyper-capability to an engine will increase its size, which means that hyper-capable 'fighter engines' in v4.91 will disqualify a ship from being a fighter. They will be fine in v5.0"

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

My understanding is that Aurora does NOT allow conventional, computer-controlled NPR - the AI involved in navigating the transition is too much for Steve to code up at this time.  My guess is that this is what's going on.

PS - While you're a new user, could you please post issues like this to The Academy, rather than to the bugs thread?  Aurora generally works, so if you hit a catastrophic failure like this then it's probably user error rather than a bug.  Thanks!

Oh...that could explain the part about ships and fleets...i suspected but i failed to see anywhere a warning about computer controlled NPR, so i needed confirmation.

But, as you said, i think that the NPRPopulation part it's related to something else. Moreover, in my previous game it appeared in the middle of a game, after I played about 10 years, and nothing i did could affect it, since, in that case, I hadn't created any NPR.
If it was a cpu-controlled conventional NPR that caused it, it was Aurora that put it there, so I think it classify as a bug.

Anyway, if i find out something else i'll post it first in the Academy section, just to be sure.

You can't have AI-controlled conventional Empires, although I agree this isn't mentioned anywhere. For v5.0, I have changed the Create Empire window so that selecting a conventional race disables the option to create as an NPR. I have also changed the NPR checkbox to read:

"Create as Computer-Controlled Empire (NPR) - not applicable for conventional Empires"

Steve

[Trueknight]

Thanks Steve...i suppose that means i've to abbandon the idea of a game with more Human Empires...i tried, but i just drive crazy to control all of them....not to mention that there's no more "fog of war". As much as i try to roleplay, i just can't play against myself.

Still, i encountered again the "Error in NPRPopPlanning" i reported before in another test game; just 2 years in the game this time, and again i've created no NPR, just the ones the game usually make at start.

Do you think that could be related with the fact i usually start as a conventional empire?

BTW every time I start a game as conventional, what kind of NPR is created? TN, i suppose...

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Haha, this is a good one. I copied an existing ship, striped it down and made it into a PDC as a precursor to making my new missile PDC. I then designed some components and began researching the PDC based missile launcher and beam fire control and I was going to finish the design as soon as I had the parts ready.

10 days later I see: "Civilian Construction: Iqbal Logistics has launched a new Guardian class Planetary Defence Centre"

Wait, what? The civilians launched a PDC? I go and look, sure enough they've launched a 50 ton "PDC" that contains nothing but a small crew quarters.

I guess now the civilians will be defending earth with a PDC crewed by 1 person as soon as I finish the design

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I thought they only built ships that were actually useful for something? Like cargo ships, colony ships, and luxury liners (or rather, ships with cargo bays, cryo storage, and room for passengers). They've never built my terraformers, troop transports, or gate construction ships.

In any case, this design was classed as a PDC - why should a civilian ever build a PDC, whether or not it has military components? What on earth would a civ do with an immobile defense base?

Civilians build ships based on their type. such as freighter, colony ship, etc. There must have been something about this design that caused the class design code to classify it as a cargo ship or colony ship. The extra check about not buliding PDcs should avoid anything similar in future. I have also added a check to prevent civilians building ships slower than 100 km/s in case they try and build a half-completed design.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Ok, Ive encountered a sensor issue that might be a bug.
I had a survey ship in my neighboring system that had grav sensors only. While being quite far outside the system I suddenly picked up lots of strengh 1 explosions in the center of the system. Also a mass of life pods popped up on my system view. Im not sure if I shouldnt have been too far away from them to spot them?
But the strangest thing was that I left the system asap and when the system was empty (my only ship there left) I still saw explosions and more pods spawing in this system. Bug?

Life pods and explosions can be seen by any ship in a system, regardless of sensor capability. The ability to see explosions without a ship in the system sounds like a bug. Did you have any colonies in the system, even a listening post?

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I emptied the fuel a bit by flying to pluto, then tried  to harvest sorium at jupiter (which didn't work because it jupiter doesn't have sorium deposit (another bug perhaps?))

Only a few gas giants have Sorium

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Fixed the size of the Hide Events list on the Events window. Also fixed the problem with the list jumping back to the top after you hide an event.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

While you can not assign scientists to research technologies you don't have perquisites for, you can however queue such technologies  (with the "all projects" radio-button), no matter how far down the line they are (without queuing previous ones).

Fixed for v5.0

Steve

[VariousArtist]

Ok, Ive encountered a sensor issue that might be a bug.
I had a survey ship in my neighboring system that had grav sensors only. While being quite far outside the system I suddenly picked up lots of strengh 1 explosions in the center of the system. Also a mass of life pods popped up on my system view. Im not sure if I shouldnt have been too far away from them to spot them?
But the strangest thing was that I left the system asap and when the system was empty (my only ship there left) I still saw explosions and more pods spawing in this system. Bug?

Life pods and explosions can be seen by any ship in a system, regardless of sensor capability. The ability to see explosions without a ship in the system sounds like a bug. Did you have any colonies in the system, even a listening post?

Steve

No Steve, there was only that one ship in the system that I had withdrawn - no other assets.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Trying to start a campaign with 21 player nations on earth.  When I start the game up, I get this error ...

[attachment=0:3lpzro1v]Error.jpg[/attachment:3lpzro1v]

I think it might have to do with the number of player nations because if I delete one of the nations and re start, I do not get this error.

I created an array to hold the IDs for player races for the new checks on interrupts (so I didn't have to check the database). It only has 20 slots . I have changed it to 50 for v5.0

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Another aspect of officer assignment being broken:

I recently had precursors blow up survey ship A, commanded by Ethan OConnor.  The commander made it to a life pod.  This was on July 20.  On August 4, he was rescued by ship B commanded by Patrick Matthews, which arrived back at Earth (to a hero's welcome) on August 18 (now).

If I look at ship B's task group in the Officers/Misc tab of the F12 screen, it says that both OConnor and Matthews are on board, with Matthews being unoccupied.  So far so good.  The fun came when I went to try to get OConnor off the ship - according to the Leader (F4) screen, OConnor is already in command of another ship!  His log says that he was assigned command of ship C on July 21 (while he was sitting in a life pod) and assigned to ship D on August 1.  I strongly suspect that the July 21 assignment was an auto-assign - Aurora saw he wasn't doing anything better :-)

3)  I shouldn't be able to assign a commander in a lifepod to another ship, even if "all locations" is turned on

I have encountered something similar myself. The problem was that commanders are auto-assigned if they are not already assigned or in a team. Lifepods were not being checked so I have corrected that for v5.0. I have also greyed out the Assign button on the Commanders window if a commander is in a lifepod

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Steve,

There appears to be an issue it the routine for calc'ing fighter engine power output, specificly when applying efficiency/power tech.  Example: Ion fighter engine base power is 36.  Set E/P to -30%/+15% power becomes 42.  (36*1.15 = 41.4) I'd been assuming the rounding was to next integer.  Set E/P to -40%/+20% expected result was 44, instead it remains 42. (36*1.2 = 43.2).  

I using a modified v4.91 database.  None of the changes are to power systems only turret tracking speed, gauss cannon size, rate, and velocity.

Engines in question also have thermal reduction 35% and fuel efficiency .6 techs applied.  Neither should affect actual power output if my understanding is correct.

There was some sort of weird rounding effect going on. I have changed engine power to be a currency variable instead of an integer and everything is working fine. It also allows engines to have fractional power in v5.0

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

v4.91

Error 3077 was generated by DAO.Recordset
Syntax error (missing operator) in expression.

Got this error after trying to retool a ship with new jump drive.  Pops up every turn now.

Does the ship name or the class name contain an apostrophe?

Steve