Official v5.20 Bugs Thread

[martinuzz]

I found a bug with transferring scientist from one (player) race to another.
I posted it here originally:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2873

[Andrew]

Error in Execute orders

Error 5 was generated by Aurora
Invalid procedure call or Arguemnt

It's a fatal error as it comes up constantly. I don't have any idea what caused it I don't think I was doing anything unnusual or had issued any new orders.
Database available

[martinuzz]

Possibly related to the disappearance of ground units mentioned earlier, but the workaround does not aplly, since the ground units disappeared completely.
Summary:
begin situation:
-1 colony on Mars, with empire population status
ground forces present: 4 Heavy Assault + HQ, 4 Engineer + HQ, 1 Garrison, 1 Replacement, all at full readiness
-1 colony on Mars, human archeological dig, formed automatically by Aurora when defeating some robotic guardians previously
no units/structures present
-1 freighter fleet (5 ships) in orbit of Mars
-1 civilian freigther in orbit of Mars

event 1: robotic guardians disturbed
event 2: player interaction: order ground forces in Mars colony to attack non-PDC(unknown race)

end situation:
-1 colony on Mars, vanquished population status
no ground units. They disappeared without mention in the event log.
(second colony was deleted automatically by the program)
-6 freighter fleets (1 ship). The civilian freighter had come under player control.

link with screenshot of event log here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2875

[martinuzz]

And.. Yet another bug:
orbital bases (ships without engine) do age on their mainenance clock, and suffer mainenance failures.
However, they cannot be overhauled at maintenance facilities of the planets they are orbiting.
They *do* get the 'overhaul' status in their TG window, but instead of going back, the mainenance clock keeps ticking.
Unlimited replied to my original post, telling me that orbital bases should not require maintenance at all.
More info in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2878&p=28214#p28214
Excuse me for posting a lot of bugs in the Acadamy first, but when I'm not sure if something is a bug, I have to ask there first.

[martinuzz]

update on last post: since my 'orbital base' I was talking about here, was a mere sensor sattelite, it was below 500 tons.
So, even though it is no fighter, is it possible that the program classifies it as a fighter for maintenance purposes? That would explain why it's impossible to maintain / overhaul them. Still does not explain why it does suffer maintenance failures, while it's design says it has a 0% chance of breakdown.

[Vanigo]

Still does not explain why it does suffer maintenance failures, while it's design says it has a 0% chance of breakdown.

IIRC, the percentage given is after one year; as the maintenance clock ticks up, failure chance gets higher and higher.

[Kurt]

Steve -

I was playing around with 5.20 and noted something when I poked around in designer mode.  One of the two NPR's had approximately 15+ research programs set up.  Almost all were only partially staffed with research labs, some with only one or two labs each.  When I started going through the research projects, I noticed that there were no less than four duplicates, i.e., two research projects under different researchers for the same technology.  In one case there was research on both an old tech and a newer tech - both fuel efficiency 4 and 5 were being researched at the same time.  

It appears that any time a research lab or two was available Aurora started up a new research project rather than staffing others already active.  I can't imagine how the duplicate projects happened, though.  I suspect that the older/newer research issue happened when there were duplicate fuel efficiency 4 projects, one finished and went on to fuel efficiency five while the duplicate continued.

Kurt

[Andrew]

Steve -

I was playing around with 5.20 and noted something when I poked around in designer mode.  One of the two NPR's had approximately 15+ research programs set up.  Almost all were only partially staffed with research labs, some with only one or two labs each.  When I started going through the research projects, I noticed that there were no less than four duplicates, i.e., two research projects under different researchers for the same technology.  In one case there was research on both an old tech and a newer tech - both fuel efficiency 4 and 5 were being researched at the same time.  

It appears that any time a research lab or two was available Aurora started up a new research project rather than staffing others already active.  I can't imagine how the duplicate projects happened, though.  I suspect that the older/newer research issue happened when there were duplicate fuel efficiency 4 projects, one finished and went on to fuel efficiency five while the duplicate continued.

Kurt

I have noticed the same issue. Also poor scientist choice in several cases there has been a researcher with a 0% modifier while a spare scientist has 25 or 30% in the same field

[gunkan]

Actually got 2 errors playing a 5.20 game and attempting to board [spoiler:29vqnmta]The Invaders[/spoiler:29vqnmta] ships. Boarding went well, but then everyone died, oh well. But I actually got the opposite of the disappearing unit bug in that a few weeks after combat i started getting morale reduction noticed... apparently all my Marines companies dying to a man made them really sad. Clicking on the 'Show all Ground Units" button lets them show up and disband them, but they are listed as being in an Unknown System.... and probably not heaven based on the marines I know.

[edit] haven't been able to reproduce yet, unless it has something to do with the destruction of the mothership...

The other error happened in the same fight, but I haven't found a workaround yet. My fighter Carrier/Flag Bridge ship was taken out when someone accidentally turned off the Hyper drive that was letting us outrun the enemy [spoiler:29vqnmta]torpedoes, which cannot be shot down with Counter-Missiles it seems.[/spoiler:29vqnmta] Now I have the ghosts of the flag bridge (direct hit, all hands lost) gumming up my Fleet Command Task Force. I cant relocate the task force from Unknown Sector even if I retire all the ghosts (with pensions!) and I've never figured out how to assign Task Groups to new Task Forces. I've made a back-up of the DB file if that helps anything.

[Vanigo]

I just had a civilian passenger liner ship colonists to an old archeological dig on an uninhabitable world, where of course they promptly died. There was infrastructure there recovered from a recovered installation, which is probably why they thought they could live there.

[georgiaboy1966]

IN this version and several previous, I have had combat ships under AI  control, drop the weapons assigned to firecontrols. Therfore leaving the ship/base undefended.

[Caplin]

The button in the Events window to export to a text file puts some events out of sequence chronologically, making digestion of what's going on somewhat more difficult than it needs to be.

[Vanigo]

Civilian ships are still sometimes taking stupid routes when moving from system to system if there are loops in the jump gate network. Shouldn't it be pretty easy to use A* for this? Edit: Or just Dijkstra's Algorithm, since I have no idea what kind of heuristic you'd use and there aren't many nodes anyway.

IN this version and several previous, I have had combat ships under AI  control, drop the weapons assigned to firecontrols. Therfore leaving the ship/base undefended.

Were they box launchers? I've seen this happen with box launchers, and I figured it was intended behavior. Definitely a bug if it's happening with other weapons, though.

[georgiaboy1966]

georgiaboy1966 wrote:
IN this version and several previous, I have had combat ships under AI control, drop the weapons assigned to firecontrols. Therfore leaving the ship/base undefended.

Were they box launchers? I've seen this happen with box launchers, and I figured it was intended behavior. Definitely a bug if it's happening with other weapons, though.

No, they were size 1 and 2 missile launchers, and rof 5 lasers

[Father Tim]

Automated fire is not point defense, and point defense is not automated fire.  The two do opposite things with the same weapons, and try to do it at the same time.  As a result, the one causes the other to drop or reassign targets.