Exploration Ships don't return to planets to survey after upgrading survey component

[reck0]

Game version 1.2.7.7

Distant Worlds Problem.zip

Save game

(6.85 MiB) Downloaded 9 times

I have planets surveyed up to lvl15 and are still yellow, I fitted all my exploration ships with advanced survey module to allow to scan up to lvl 25 but none of them are returning to the planets to continue scanning. The ships are sat doing nothing.

I've attached a save game where it's easy to see the issue. I'm only in the starter system and still on skip drives so not much to look at.

[reck0]

I've also submitted this issue via the bug report form

[Xmudder]

This usually means that there is nothing under level 25 to find. Try manually sending them to survey and see what happens.

[reck0]

There is still stuff left to find as the exploration number on the planet is yellow, in this case a yellow 15 which was the highest I could scan up to until I upgraded me ships survey component.

I’ve confirmed the issue by manually sending an exploration ship to survey and it works fine. The issue is the AI not auto surveying partially scanned planets and finishing the job once the ships scanners have been upgraded.

[MaximKI]

We recently released a public beta v1.2.8.8. Have you tried this new version? Are you able to reproduce this issue on 1288?

[reck0]

I've just loaded the save into 1.2.8.8 and the behaviour's the same, the exploration ships are just sitting there and not exploring the partially explored planet.

If I select one of the ships and take manual control and right-click the planet and tell it to survey it works ok and surveys up to its current max level, exploration lvl 25, so it does appear to be a bug with the AI/Auto-mode not acting on partially surveyed planets.

I am a new player though so maybe i'm missing some automation policy that should be turned on to get the AI to survey partially surveyed planets, is there some setting I should check?

[Xmudder]

I've just loaded the save into 1.2.8.8 and the behaviour's the same, the exploration ships are just sitting there and not exploring the partially explored planet.

If I select one of the ships and take manual control and right-click the planet and tell it to survey it works ok and surveys up to its current max level, exploration lvl 25, so it does appear to be a bug with the AI/Auto-mode not acting on partially surveyed planets.

I am a new player though so maybe i'm missing some automation policy that should be turned on to get the AI to survey partially surveyed planets, is there some setting I should check?

Did they find anything on their way up to 25? Auto explore does not survey if they can't find anything, unless you set automation "Send survey team -> Always" in the left most tab in the upper screen, then the rightmost sub tab.

[reck0]

The ships are not just on auto-explore, they are on fully automate.

I tested changing the automation setting to send survey team -> always and it made no difference.

[reck0]

OK I’ve been testing some more with 1.2.8.8 and started a new game and I was able to reproduce the same issue, in fact auto-surveying partially explored planetsseems to be completely broken, unless I’m not understanding something. I’ve tested it out on two new games now as well as the initial game I was playing and it never works.

Anyone can see this by playing the attached save game in the first post. Its only the first starter system and you’ll be able to see a lvl 15 planet that never gets surveyed/explored.

Repro Steps
1. Start a new game.
2. Research skip drives so the exploration ships can move quicker across the starter system.
3. Build a bunch of exploration ships which at this point will only have the basic survey scanner installed, which means they can only survey up to lvl 15.
4. Put the game on max speed and let them survey the whole system until there’s nothing else for them to do and they just sit there. Hopefully by the end of it you’ll have a planet or two that still has a yellow exploration level, which means there are still things to find.
5. I researched exploration scanners next which gives you the resource scanner.
6. After it was researched the AI automatically created a new design that added the resource scanner and the ships and then the AI automatically sent all the ships to be retrofitted to the new design.
7. The exploration ships still just sit there and do nothing.
8. Next research planetary exploration which gives you advanced survey module.
9. The AI automatically created a new design where it replaced the basic survey module for the advanced one. Although the AI created the new design this time the ships did not automatically go to retrofit like they last time. I had to send each one manually to be retrofitted, so seems like another bug here.
10. Ships are retrofitted to the latest design which includes the advanced survey module which can scan up to lvl 25 but again they just sit there and don’t do a second pass on the yellow lvl 15 planets.

So the two issues are ships aren’t automatically retrofitting to the advanced survey module even though the design has automatically been created and the original issue where the ships don’t auto explorer/survey the partially surveyed planets.

I had two planets stuck on lvl 15 and after waiting for a while I selected one ship and told it to explore one planet, and then told another ship to survey the other planet, in both cases they explored/surveyed up to lvl 25 as they should have done automatically.

What’s the difference between right click→ explorer and right click – survey as it looks like it did the same thing for both planets and brought there exploration lvl up to 25 and then stopping?

[reck0]

I noticed there's been a new update released. Are there patch notes to look at to see if this is one of the things that was fixed?

In addition to this forum post and the one of Steam I also sent off a bug report on the official form along with a save game. Hopefully all this ensures it gets fixed in this update cycle.

[MaximKI]

Thanks for the info. We're investigating.

[reck0]

Thank you MaximKI.

Please let me know if you need more information or want me to test anything. I can send you more save games etc. Basically anything I can do to help you fix the bug.

[KasenMorlen]

Thank you so much for the info, it helped me.

[Xmudder]

That would explain it... I play Technocracy, so I get the advanced scanning and survey modules quickly and they upgrade simultaniously before I have(m)any survey ships. But I have seen this behaviour when in the past when I play other government styles. In fact, this is one of the reasons I switched to Technocracy. I have also seen similar odd behaviour when I upgrade to enhanced resource scanning and multi team exploration (40).

I really wish we got pop ups when the surveyors find something. Knowing if the new research deposit was between 15 and 25 or 15 and 40 would be great. The pop up "something is here, but we don't know what" is kinda pointless.

And being able to choose "survey all planets to maximum value if unknown items present" would be a nice automation choice.