BUG With fleet ship management

[Acceleratex]

Here are the save files:
https://fastupload.io/c18b8e797883e91b

Issue: 3rd Fleet has the template Attack Fleet - AP, which has 2 types of destroyers. Both have the regular Destroyer Hull, but are different variants.
I also have Fleet ship management set to ON
For some reason, when I update the Destroyer templates, Fleet ship management buys new ships to fill the fleet instead of just retrofitting them.
I added 2 save games, one just before this happens, one just after. The version is 1.2.7.1.

Thank you!

[MaximKI]

Thanks for the feedback. Just to be clear, what you're reporting is that after updating the ship design of one of your destroyers in a fleet and after giving a retrofit command, instead of retrofitting the older design to new ones the automation just builds new ones?

How many ships are supposed to be in your fleet based on your template? How many do you get after clicking the retrofit button? Have you checked your retrofit paths?

[AKicebear]

Thanks for the feedback. Just to be clear, what you're reporting is that after updating the ship design of one of your destroyers in a fleet and after giving a retrofit command, instead of retrofitting the older design to new ones the automation just builds new ones?

How many ships are supposed to be in your fleet based on your template? How many do you get after clicking the retrofit button? Have you checked your retrofit paths?

I don't think he is clicking the retrofit button. Rather, he is letting the AI manage fleet top up and retrofit.

This is a long reported issue. I (and I think most users) expect the AI fleet manager to retrofit what ships it can, and then top up what gaps remain against the revised fleet template.

Instead, the AI fleet manager typically will eject old ships using an old design, and build new ones, rather than retrofitting them. This is evident from a steady stream of ships in fleet to ships not in fleet, despite me no ordering them. There are similar complaints on the Steam forums and these forums over the years. I believe one or two responses in the past were this is working as designed - it's more of a design disagreement rather than bug (I think).

[Acceleratex]

AKicebear is correct, I am not clicking the retrofit button.

The steps are like this:
- Turn on Fleet Ship Management
-- So this means fleets should automatically build ships to fill the template they are assigned
- Turn on Automatically Retrofit Automated Fleets
-- So this means when new versions are available, the fleets should retrofit automatically
- Create two destroyer versions, both of them from the destroyer hull, Preator v5 and Preator-A v5
- Create Attack Fleet - AP template that has 10 Preator v5 and 10 Preator-A v5
-- Both ships in the fleet template are specified by hull and version
-- The fleet has Auto-Upgrade Obsolete set to On
--- So this means when I update a ship, the template automatically updates itself to use the latest ship version in the updgrade graph
- Build an Attack Fleet -AP fleet, named 3rd Fleet
- Update the destroyers to v6, so now I have Preator v6 and nd Preator-A v6
- Attack Fleet - AP template automatically updates itself to use Preator v6 and nd Preator-A v6 (because Auto-Upgrade Obsolete set to On)
- 3rd Fleet goes to a spaceport to retrofit

Result:
- As soon as the retrofit starts, Fleet Ship Management tries to replace all the ships in the fleet with new ones, it start buying Preator v6 and and Preator-A v6 instead of retrofitting the existing Preator v5 and Preator-A v5 to the v6 version

Expected Result
- The existing ships should retrofit to the template version (which in this case is the v6 version of both ship types)

[fruitgnome]

I mean Distant Worlds 1 and 2 had ever the problem to work with two different designs with the same ship hull. Remove one destroyer template of the fleet template and see if it works better.
In the design screen shows the obsolet design to which version it will update?

Or wait till this is better programmed/fixed.

I test your save.

[Acceleratex]

I mean Distant Worlds 1 and 2 had ever the problem to work with two different designs with the same ship hull. Remove one destroyer template of the fleet template and see if it works better.
In the design screen shows the obsolet design to which version it will update?

Or wait till this is better programmed/fixed.

I test your save.

I know it will work better with one hull. But this is an issue I had been aware of for a long time, but never bothered to report. I actually took a long pause from playing and returned now because of the new release. I was disappointed when I saw that this has not been fixed, since this is something that should come up during the QA process. It is clear to me that the dev team, even though they created a wonderful game that I really like to play, does not have the manpower to test and fix the issues, so now I just report all the issues I come across. I cannot help with the fixing, but at least I can help with the reporting. It would be great if they could implement some automated regression testing that goes thorough all the features, since that would certainly catch most of the issues we come across, but I know that is a long and difficult process for a small team.

There are other issues a saw and I will probably post more when I have time. Some examples: the defense fleet seem unwilling to attack pirates in systems other then where they are posted (though this is unstable, sometime it seems to work, sometimes not; Auto-Spy on explores does absolutely nothing, I have no idea what this feature is supposed to do, but ships with this setting just sit around.

[fruitgnome]

I tested your savegame.
Good news: I know how it works as you want. But this later on in this post.

Problem is that retrofit to specific design not works even not with only one design. Tested it, I removed one design out of fleet template and also marked one design to obsolet and only one or two ships get retrofitted others get build. <- BUG

Here the solution (only a workaround till fied):
set in fleet template both types to latest design for largest ship hull as of you specified in both ship desings to what they should retrofit -> they will be retrofitted to your wanted designs -> result: 10 A v6 and 10 v6

I do not work in anyway for this game I only want to have this best 4x game bug free finally.

Edit: General workaround till fixed:
If you design a new fleet template with two different ship designs for the same role you have to set in fleeet template the specific designs and if you updated one of this ship designs you have to switch in fleet template it to latest.

[MaximKI]

@Acceleratex - I'm having trouble downloading your save. Do you mind reuploading through a file-sharing services like Google Drive or WeTransfer. Alternatively, you can send it directly to this address at maxim.k@slitherine.co.uk.