Absolute Ignorance!

[Omnius]

I'm playing on version 1.3.0.3 with 4 DLC's installed and no mods. I ran into an incredible set of truly ignorant events that make me wonder if I should have ever bought this game in the first place. I'm a big fan of the original DW, sans the U. I've been waiting like ten years to finally meet and greet the Shakturi. A year ago I started a game in 1.2.2.0 and found too many bugs to consider this worth playing after about 50 hours.

I'm playing along and I trigger one of the ruin events that gives me a new lost colony of Humans (that's my race). At first I looked at the Independent Colonies tab thinking they were one of those but didn't see it there immediately. It took a little while before I saw it was one of my colonies. The colony was at least a third of the way around the galaxy from my current set of systems and way beyond the range of my tech, I'm at the first Gerax drive stage. I decided to try an experiment with the Game Editor to see if I could make this idiotic placement work.

Since the colony started with zero resources and 1 scout I tried adding a space station near the planet as well as giving it a nice stock of resources for a Continental planet so it could develop those quickly. I even put mining stations around several planets and moons and buffed their resources as well to try to give this new colony as many local resource options as I possible could. I built mining ships and cargo haulers so that I'd have a local civilian shipping presence. I even placed a small fleet of warships as well as some construction and other scouts to try and make this colony viable.

A few months down the road I check back on the progress of this new out-of-the-way colony and find Absolute Ignorance. I find the civilian ships heading to my area of systems with resources instead of them staying local moving resources intelligently from the nearby planets and moons to the colony. Absolute Ignorance! One of the mining ships was stupidly headed to a system nearby the new colony system but didn't bother to stay in the colony's system to work the local resources and routes. I don't think a single civilian ship I placed there stayed in the new colony system. I didn't check to see if any ships were headed from my set of systems back to this new colony but it's reasonable to assume the ignorance went both ways.

Why were all of these Artificial Ignorance controlled ships doing runs that were vastly beyond their fuel range? This is why the Artificial Ignorance truly reeks, why last year I saw plenty of instances of ships running around outside of the galaxy boundaries. When doing trade runs ships should not be allowed to run beyond their normal fuel range. It's one thing to have a newly repaired abandoned ship have to limp to the nearest port when it lacks sufficient fuel to get there at normal speed. Why don't repairing ships refuel those abandoned ships as part of the repair process?

First and foremost is the idiotic placement of that newly found lost colony. An interesting idea ignorantly programmed. There needs to be some intelligent limits as to the placement of these colonies so that they fit into the area where the race has it's capital and planetary systems and are within range of the current tech level of the race. I suggest removing this absurd event so that this ignorance doesn't afflict human or AI players. If you can't intelligently program this event to work in a reasonable way then ditch it until you can. Please do us and the AI's a favor.

After witnessing how truly absurd the AI handled this situation it shows that the devs are wasting too much time on garbage like pirates and not enough time fixing the AI Abomination. The more I'm playing again the more I see just how pathetic the AI is in so many ways. It's no wonder I keep switching things to manual control after seeing the botched efforts of the AI.

My final solution was to go back several months to a save file that is where I first noticed the new colony was actually mine. I removed the idiotic colony and lone scout ship despite losing many hours of game play I'll now have to redo. I lost a fleet of abandoned ships from another later ruin discovery but that's better than the alternative of keeping the colony and watching my civilian shipping being dragged through so much unexplored space that's no doubt got enemies in between.

Instead of having fun playing I now have to write up a series of bug reports detailing the absurd way the AI controls things. I like this game and want to see it made better, I want to actually enjoy playing rather than grinding my teeth at the absurdity of the Artificial Ignorance. I never saw such nonsense as this new colony event placement in the original DW but definitely put most things on manual control since I did see so many other things poorly programmed. I've never seen such nonsense in any space game ever, not even stellaris which I abhor.

I do have a saved game file I'd like to share. I know it's too big for email. I have Dropbox and would be happy to drop it in there and give you access.

[Omnius]

I forgot to mention that I'm playing in a large 10x10 spiral galaxy so the distances involved were considerable.

After removing the ignorantly placed colony I'm moving along in my game and now know how to deal with this unfortunate situation in the future. I hope this will serve as a warning to others who might find themselves with a similarly poorly placed new lost colony and how to best resolve the problem before it becomes a big one.

[Omnius]

I got this idiotic Trojan Horse Poison Pill nonsense again yesterday while playing, not just once but twice in less than an hour of play. This time I made sure to use the Game Editor to erase those Ignorantly placed lost colonies plus out-of-fuel scouts as soon as they appeared.

This is the most idiotic feature I've ever seen in a game. The way it should work is put a lost colony in somewhere on one of the habitable worlds that's already in an empire's list of potential colony worlds. That would keep the lost colony in a reasonable position so that ships could venture there easily.

[Parrius]

It's a lost colony, it could be anywhere in the galaxy. That's the beauty of the game, you never know what you're going to get.

[Cauldyth]

And what I do is just immediately grant the colony independence if it's too far away. No need to use the editor.

[Omnius]

I finally figured out the problem. It's ruins that have the lost colony event that tells of a lost colony somewhere far, far away. The problem is that the Artificial Ignorance will send a scout pretty much regardless of distance, if it can reach the colony on a one way mission it'll go investigate the "ping". This is truly absurd to have a new colony too far away for reasonable development. Poor AI programming for our scouts that certainly should be improved.

I started by using the game editor to remove the colony and the scout ship when found. In my final test I did see a new colony that actually lined up to my empire's network of colonies that wasn't too far away, 1 of 6 occurrences. I also figured out they were my scouts on long missions after removing one and seeing my total scouts fall below 100.

My final solution is whenever I see one of those lost colony events happen is to immediately check out where that colony is on the map to see if it's viable or not. If too far away I go back to the save before the event and I find the ruin and remove it. That way there'll be no lost colony event and I won't have to worry about a scout going on a wasted long travel or a new colony popping up that I have to remove anyway. That way if that colony really is inhabited it stays that way until I do get within reach of it.

[thegreybetween]

It is a random event designed to add variety and emergent narrative to the game. It works as intended and actually adds value to the game for players who want that sort of flavor. It is also totally optional - you can disable such events at game creation without having to use the editor at all if you prefer a more deterministic empire building experience.

Also, a scout making a "one way" trip to a point of interest, especially one that it knows is capable of refueling it, is generally desirable behavior - especially when you have more than 100 scouts and are not invested in micromanaging them.

It sounds like you've found a solution that works for you, and the game has provided all of the tools you need to execute your solution, so yay! But nothing about this event chain is a design failure or a display of "artificial ignorance". It is a random event that is sometimes a boon, sometimes a hindrance, and sometimes dismissed - a reason to pay attention and a welcome source of immersion, and the way the AI handles it is logically consistent with everything else, regardless of how much it may conflict with your preferences. Luckily, you have the tools to enforce your preferences, so no harm done.