Auto-Refit Disable Overridden by AI

[Starke]

Hi, I'm playing a completely manual game of Distant Worlds. To sate my OCD, I'm custom designing every ship design, upgrading them all with new components manually, and have auto-refit OFF for everything that is not a freighter, passenger ship, or mining ship, as those are perma-automated. I have been steadily upgrading my mining station designs for roughly 20 years now without retrofitting the legacy stations to avoid getting spammed by "construction stalled" messages - freighters are currently very bad at/incapable of delivering supplies to upgrading stations, as documented in bug reports elsewhere. For reasons that are beyond me, a huge swathe of my mining stations (normal and gas) have suddenly decided to retrofit to the latest design. I have checked the current and all past designs, and have confirmed they were correctly set to disable automatic retrofitting; if I click on a mining station and click on the link to its design, it says it is disabled. And yet, if I locate the same station in this Ships and Bases screen and go to the Components tab, it says it has permission to auto-retrofit.

I will upload a save in the morning if I can, it is approaching 1AM here. =)

EDIT: I did a little more poking around and it turns out auto retrofit is ON in the Component tab even in saved games last played with 1.9.0.0, even when my designs state otherwise. But I've never encountered unwanted base or station retrofitting until this game, my first in 1.9.0.8.

[feelotraveller]

Any chance you just discovered a hyperdrive technology?

There was a bug that was meant to have been fixed in 1.9.0.7 which caused all mining stations to automatically retrofit to the latest design although all settings were set to manual retrofitting only which triggered on discovering (at least the early) hyperdrive technology. I'm still experiencing the 'bug' in my game (1.9.0.8 but started in 1.9.0.6) but thought that maybe the fix would not work on games already started.

[Starke]

No dice on the hyperdrive tech, but thanks for the response. IIRC the most recent design update was with the Standard series of storage components (fuel cells, cargo bays) instead of the Smalls. Then a couple of mining bases at a remote base started retrofitting, and it spread almost virus-like to a nearby colony, and then from there to my home system.

I was able to reload a save and prevent the retro-stall hell by manually changing :every: station to manual refit only. I've been doing the same with all new mining stations every year or two to play it safe. =/

[Kayoz]

I thought this was fixed a while ago?

[Rand alThor]

Whoops, I just started a new thread about this (I tried several searches but never thought to just scroll down the Tech support forum). I'm not allowed post the link apparently so the thread should be somewhere near the top, it's called,
'Can't stop mining station auto-retrofitting'.

Anyway, I can confirm this is happening to me as well. I haven't even researched Warp Field Precursors yet, although I have had intelligence agents successfully steal chunks of percentages of that tech and there's a fair chance that coincided with this issue.

It's a real pain though to have my luxury mining stations turn into basic ones.

[Rand alThor]

Just did some more testing on this and watched one of my problem luxury mining stations switch to retrofitting to a basic mining station. Seems to have been completely random, there were no research breakthroughs, successful steal research missions, construction events.... nothing that I can see.

I also tested to see if they were retrofitting because their current design had been listed as obsolete, so I left it as a viable buildable design. Still the same problem.

This is a bit of a show-stopper for me unfortunately. Hope it gets sorted soon.

[Starke]

I read your other thread; could you explain more clearly the "cumbersome workaround" mentioned there? I don't get it, does obsoleting and then un-obsoleting all the designs fix it?

Also, I've been able to continue my game via the method I mentioned - going to each and every new mining station in the Ships and Bases menu, and changed to manual retrofit only in the Components tab. I also tend to just nuke captured mining bases as well and rebuild the ones I actually want so I can be assured their designs are of the utmost quality. =P

[Rand alThor]

Hey, yeah the suggested workaround, uh, works.

Basically, design your mining station as per your preference and immediately set them as 'obsolete'. Then, whenever you want to actually build one, pause the game and KEEP it paused, open the design screen, uncheck 'obsolete' for the desired station design and order the available constructor to build it at the location of your choice. Once the constructor has it's orders, and while still paused, go back into the design screen and again set all mining station designs back to 'obsolete'. Then unpause.

This works because there's never a buildable mining station design for the A.I. to auto-retrofit your existing stations to. You will, unfortunately, have to put up with a warning message about there being no available designs every time you exit the design screen but that's just a small price to pay for totalitarian control over you empire!

Good luck!

P.S.
I actually never tried your method of setting actual individual mining stations in the stations list to manual upgrade only. Useful to know, thanks.

[Starke]

xD That's a hilarious workaround, nice thinking. Seeing I have an entire fleet of constructors to keep busy, though, I think I'll stick with mine. =P

[elliotg]

Thanks for this report.

This is fixed in the next update so that the Retrofit Stance setting is always properly applied to new ships and bases from their design (Default Retrofit Stance).

Elliot