Can't Colonize Independent Colony in Nebula - says it's too far away but it isn't

[molkemon]

Title really.

There is a nebula well inside my empire borders with a friendly independant inside, but I can't colonize it, it says beyond allowable colonization range.

I tried slapping some ion shields on the colony ship, but no dice.
I am blue.



Halp?

[Erik Rutins]

What kind of nebula is it? If it's an Ion Storm or Gravitic Storm, the colonization ship shouldn't go in without some kind of decent Ion damage protection as well as shields.

You'll also want to make that independent more friendly or your coloinzation will likely fail.

[molkemon]

No it's a normal Nebula, only effect is slow travel inside. However, I now colonized an absolute trash planet in Rinatasea, after that I was able to colonize the good independant planet. Apparently, distances count is "farther" when ships have to travel through a Nebula.

It's not an ideal solution though, I now have a useless colony (allthough I could just make them rebel for independance, I guess that is the optimal solution here). It would be nice if a colony could be abandonded (allthough what I just did kinda shows why that would be unbalanced lol).

[thetick]

I am also having a similar issue.

I added Ion shields and ion armour to a colony ship and flew it right up to the independent world, but was unable to colonise it. It is not out of range at all, however the game says it is.

I am not sure what type of nebula it is, I do not know how to find that out, but it looks like a gravitic storm. And possibly a regular nebula on top of that.

The game is not very helpful with resolving this kind of issue.

[Jorgas]

I'm having the same issue, there is a solar system around 50 away, inside a normal nebula, my colonization range is 200, however, it's still too far away.

[Gnorok]

Same problem...

I should be able to colonize in the Othares Rift and Sol-System. My tech is ok, in Othares Rift Colony-Ships are waiting at the planets.

Save is attached

Ackadus - Ackdarian - 2833-06-11.zip

(7.84 MiB) Downloaded 22 times

[DeepOne]

I think, the main issue is the "strange" (actually, broken) routing inside nebulae: Ships often plot insane round-trips to other systems, outright refusing to move in straight line to a destination inside a nebula. Even for intra-system jumps! It results in very long effective point-to-point distances and max colonization range applies where it definitely shouldn't.

[DeepOne]

Here is a routing example. Yothlis is inside a tiny yellow nebula. Commanding a ship to Neioth results in a remarkable route. Also, I can't colonize a planet in Yothlis, as it's, effectively, "out of range" (although I have two colonies nearby). At the same time, I can send ships to somewhere in the middle between the two systems and then command them normally.

[DeepOne]

And here's another example: Anything I send to Omgal goes north first + intra-system jumps are broken. Also, the territory around that system has an unusual configuration (non-euclidean space? ).

I've attached my save file. A little to the west, I can see a very remarkable system surrounded by a green nebula - but of course it's completely "out of range" as well

[Nalim27]

I have the same problem. I even manually modified design on colony ships and added Ion shield but it did not help. I build colonies in near start, just to allow to colonize that Continental planet .... but it not works. I'm pretty late in game, I have many technologies but I can't colonize that dammed world.
I will ignore it ... but it was Sol system with lost Terra planet (and Mars etc.) so it was part of Human storyline. I hoped that with new technologies I will colonize it sometime but nope. No success.
Then I manually sent colony ship with human colonist to that planet .... it reached it (slowly because of that Nebula storm) but still not possible to colonize planet

I still do not have Reactive Armor technology as Galactopedia says (I have no idea when I will have it) but I have Super Armor/Stellar armor and Advanced Hyperdrives/Torrent drive components.

Here of screenshot, mine empire is blue - I colonized the nearest start but still can't reach that Sol system.
I'm playing with default start conditions, so colony distance limit is 200M (default one) if I remember it correctly.

[DeepOne]

After inspecting more of the problematic nebulae in my game, I would speculate that ships (or, generally, routes / all types of path calculations) try to minimize the time spent in nebulae at all costs. That is, ships seem to look for the closest nebula edge and select a suitable system in that direction - or something like that. Similarly, on the outside, ships avoid "touching" any nebulae.

In general, it does make sense, at least for actually damaging / disruptive nebulae (like the green disabling storm). It even does make sense for grey (slow) zones, in case a detour is actually faster that a direct, slow route through the nebula.

But the algorithm seems to overdo it dramatically, or maybe it treats all nebula types in the same way, not actually optimizing the travel time but simply avoiding them if possible. Interestingly, issuing an attack order seems to override this logic and ships start to travel in a straight line.

These issues get quite severe by the mid-game, with empires taking most of the "normal" space between the nebulae and fights / maneuvers taking place exactly inside the hexed regions...

[Llamageddon]

Something might have changed in the new patch, but this example seems to be the only exception. Suddenly, I can colonise Ackdara in the QN683 system. Only change is that I colonised Maxus started a war and captured Cappa.

QN683.jpg (84.58 KiB) Viewed 1896 times

There seem to be other examples where, with two identical nebula types, I can colonise something in one that is further away than one I can't colonise in another.

Edit: For example, I colonised Camenu that is over 10x the distance from my nearest colony than the above example.

Camenu.jpg (41.2 KiB) Viewed 1894 times

[DeepOne]

@Llamageddon
How do the actual travel routes look like if you send a ship to these two systems? As the max colonizing distance seems to apply to that automatically calculated route - and not point-to-point distance.

But I guess the main issue (or rather the argumentation for why it works like that) goes much deeper: Even if you manage to colonize that system in a nebula (force-sending a colony ship there in a straight line and assuming the distance limit would apply to p2p distance), all other automated ships (military, civilian) would still always take the calculated "optimal" route (effective route / distance between worlds), which, currently, is not optimal at all, as any nebulae along the way get a huge negative routing weight - or something like that. Somehow, half the speed inside a gray nebula loses vs. four times the distance for a crazy detour, which is counter-intuitive.

Gray nebulae should only contribute to travel time calculations, effectively "bending" the routes a little (via nearby stars) in order to optimize the time.

Damaging nebulae, on the other hand, should be avoided if possible, for sure - but not if starting or ending point is inside a nebula! Here, some different kind of logic should apply, as you cannot avoid something you're already in or have to visit. Strictly minimizing the time spent inside a damaging nebula results in routes always pointing towards the nearest nebula edge, which can be any random direction, potentially opposite to where you're actually trying to send the ships. A reasonable compromise between time spent inside a nebula vs. additional distance for a detour is needed. Let's just hope it can be fine-tuned via weight params

[Llamageddon]

Travel routes seem to be OK, but I know what you mean, something very strange is going on there (though patch notes imply it might be fixed now). The first colony I could make in a nebula, that seemed way further away than all the others I couldn't build in, would let me send a colony ship to it. Travel route was in a normal straight line, but I noticed a while after unpausing the game, the ship had decided to literally travel in a wide circle across half the galaxy to enter the nebula from a completely different direction. Would keep doing this even after I corrected it.

In the end, I manually sent it to move right next to the colony then ordered it to colonise when it got there, and that worked. Was quite early in my first game after release, and I didn't think to take a screenshot or post a report. I'll be keeping an eye out for it in future though, but I am hopeful it seems to have been fixed as I have just colonised two nebulas fine.

The seemingly arbitrary distance calculations between identical types of nebula seems to still be an issue though, in fact it seems even worse than before (though more forgiving, also more random).

Edit: I just properly read the last part of your post above, the bit about it trying to enter a nebula from the edge with the shortest distance to the destination sounds like exactly what it is doing a lot of the time. In that case, it is possible the problem hasn't been fixed, and I just haven't noticed. I'll keep an eye out and update here if I see something similar in future.