Convoy point production

[joshuamnave]

This one has been around for a while - when producing a convoy point, it should take 4 turns to produce. Instead, cp's are produced randomly between 1 and 6 turns out. As far as I can tell, no other units have this issue - just convoy points.

[joshuamnave]

This is important for a few reasons - The obvious reason is that if you need convoys, waiting extra turns for their production can seriously damage both resource transportation networks and supply networks. The less obvious reason is that only one CP per turn can be placed in aligned countries. If you're trying to set up pipelines in remote parts of the map, producing 1 cp per turn in an aligned country is important. With this bug, oftentimes the CP's will appear in batches of 2-4 instead of trickling in 1 per turn. After 4 turns, instead of being able to place 4 CP's in your aligned country, you might only be able to place one or two.

This is currently happening in my game where I'm trying to set up a convoy chain out of the Philippines with the US and out of East Africa with the Italians. In both cases it's taking longer than it should because of CP production bunching up as well as leaving me with spare CP's in places where I don't particularly need them.

[AxelNL]

ORIGINAL: Zartacla

This is important for a few reasons - The obvious reason is that if you need convoys, waiting extra turns for their production can seriously damage both resource transportation networks and supply networks. The less obvious reason is that only one CP per turn can be placed in aligned countries. If you're trying to set up pipelines in remote parts of the map, producing 1 cp per turn in an aligned country is important. With this bug, oftentimes the CP's will appear in batches of 2-4 instead of trickling in 1 per turn. After 4 turns, instead of being able to place 4 CP's in your aligned country, you might only be able to place one or two.

This is currently happening in my game where I'm trying to set up a convoy chain out of the Philippines with the US and out of East Africa with the Italians. In both cases it's taking longer than it should because of CP production bunching up as well as leaving me with spare CP's in places where I don't particularly need them.

I have good hope that Steve is able to start on production issues such as this next week. Will depend a bit on what we all think of the supply calculation times. Should Steve invest time in more optimisation? Could take another 2-3 weeks for that as that is very complex coding and generates regression bugs which need to be ironed out. Or should we wait for the next supply public beta release before discussing that - as I think Steve might be getting rid of the pick-up calculations again this week. He might have started on production issues already in that case, would be a shame to ask him to drop that again.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: AxelNL

ORIGINAL: Zartacla

This is important for a few reasons - The obvious reason is that if you need convoys, waiting extra turns for their production can seriously damage both resource transportation networks and supply networks. The less obvious reason is that only one CP per turn can be placed in aligned countries. If you're trying to set up pipelines in remote parts of the map, producing 1 cp per turn in an aligned country is important. With this bug, oftentimes the CP's will appear in batches of 2-4 instead of trickling in 1 per turn. After 4 turns, instead of being able to place 4 CP's in your aligned country, you might only be able to place one or two.

This is currently happening in my game where I'm trying to set up a convoy chain out of the Philippines with the US and out of East Africa with the Italians. In both cases it's taking longer than it should because of CP production bunching up as well as leaving me with spare CP's in places where I don't particularly need them.

I have good hope that Steve is able to start on production issues such as this next week. Will depend a bit on what we all think of the supply calculation times. Should Steve invest time in more optimisation? Could take another 2-3 weeks for that as that is very complex coding and generates regression bugs which need to be ironed out. Or should we wait for the next supply public beta release before discussing that - as I think Steve might be getting rid of the pick-up calculations again this week. He might have started on production issues already in that case, would be a shame to ask him to drop that again.

I see nothing in the code that would cause this.

If it can be reproduced, I would like to know how.

[joshuamnave]

That's tricky... It happens on a regular basis in every one of my games, but there's no way to point at a saved game and say "See! There it is!" because there's no way to verify when a CP was built. I'm also not certain if they are going on to the spiral correctly and then being delayed, or going on to the spiral incorrectly to begin with. What I can say is this - I build cp's for naval powers in regular patterns (generally 2 per turn for the CW for most of the game, 1 per turn for the US for the first 2 years or so, and 1 per turn for Japan for the bulk of the game), but the cp's do not come off the spiral in the same way. They come in surges. I might get 6 cp's for the CW one turn, then nothing for a few turns, etc... When it happens, it seems to happen to every country's cp's at the same time.

[joshuamnave]

Maybe this save will help.

Open it up and look at the production pools. In Jul/Aug, there are 2 Japanese CP's and 4 British CP's. Problem is, half of those were built in Sep/Oct and half were build in Nov/Dec. I checked the previous turn, and the Sep/Oct builds correctly were placed in the May/Jun reinforcement pool. After producing CP's again in Nov/Dec, the May/Jun cp's moved to Jul/Aug with the new CP's.

[joshuamnave]

And here's an autosave from the previous turn. If you look at the production spiral, you'll see the CP's in the May/Jun pool

[joshuamnave]

Oh, and you can disregard the original post where I said random 1-6 turns out. That was based on getting my CP's in bunches rather than evenly distributed and at the time I though some were coming early and some late. After watching more carefully, it appears that all CP's are going on to the spiral correctly, but then something is causing some of them to get pushed back each turn. When it happens, it appears to happen to all CP's that should come out on a given turn.

I'll try to find a pattern for it, but here are a few quick possibilities based on the save games I just provided. Possibility 1) In Sep/Oct and again in Nov/Dec, Japan built a single CP. Maybe the game is treating that as half of a build, and waits for an even number of CP's then combines them. Possibility 2) In Sep/Oct, Japan and the CW both built CP's. In Nov/Dec, Japan, the CW and the US all built CP's. Maybe the US joining the club somehow pushed them back.

[AxelNL]

Did you save and reload just before placing the CP's? Sometimes the units left on the spiral are skipped when reloading at that phase.

[joshuamnave]

No. And it's only the CP's that were pushed back a turn. And it happens frequently, without any intervening saves.

[joshuamnave]

For the love of all that is holy, either delete the post asking us to provide save games when we report bugs, or download the saves we provide. Especially if you specifically ask for them.

[AxelNL]

ORIGINAL: Zartacla

For the love of all that is holy, either delete the post asking us to provide save games when we report bugs, or download the saves we provide. Especially if you specifically ask for them.

Eh......above saves were downloaded 35 times?

[joshuamnave]

In the last 24 hours. None before that.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Zartacla

For the love of all that is holy, either delete the post asking us to provide save games when we report bugs, or download the saves we provide. Especially if you specifically ask for them.

Sorry about that.

I work my way through the Tech Support and other open forum threads every week or so. In this case I was deep in Production Planning bugs at the start of the month and have only gotten around to reading through all the recent posts in the Tech Support threads over the past few days. When I find a posted saved game I download it.

Tech Support threads are only 1 of my main 3 sources for bug reports. I also get emails and the beta testers post in the separate Development forum. It's a lot to keep track of, and when I am working on changes to the code I let my bug report tracking task slide. Modifying code at this point is very dangerous since the program is mostly working and any change has the potential of fixing one problem while causing a new one. I need a clear head and a thorough understanding of the code before making a change. And then I need to run a bunch of (alpha) tests to make sure I haven't messed anything up with an unexpected side effect.

[joshuamnave]

I get that.

Here's my problem - if we post about bugs without including a save game file, we're asked for the saves. There's a stickied post going over why you need the saves. Saves are not super convenient to post, since they are about 5% larger than the max file size for the forums. If we don't post saves, we're basically told, in not so many words, that there's nothing anyone can do to help us. So I post saves.

I posted multiple saves specifically for the missing Japanese BP, at your request. Apparently they're gone. I posted multiple saves detailing various examples of the phantom convoy bug. A few months later we're told that you need save games for that bug. This is the second time I've posted saves in response to a direct request from you, both within a day of your post, that have gone 2 weeks without being downloaded or acknowledged. Given that, why would anyone go through the hassle of posting saves?

I don't think it's your fault. You're a software engineer (or coder, or whatever the correct term is), not an office manager. Matrix doesn't want to spend the money it would take to put a QA team at your disposal, and the beta testers have full time jobs elsewhere. But you need some kind of office manager, volunteer or otherwise, with good organizational skills who can make sure that saves are being downloaded and looked at if for no other reason than to ensure people like me continue to provide saves.

And to Matrix I say this - this is a PR issue. You've already pretty much burned your bridges with me, but others are more patient. That won't last forever.

I haven't installed the new beta yet. I'm a bit burned out and disillusioned and have been playing other games lately. I wish you continued success in quashing bugs and hope that you will reconsider a complete overhaul of the production manager screen once the major bugs have been dealt with.