Automation and smuggling bugs...

[Gorofin]

I verify/found several bugs in 1.902 as pirate:

1. Automation for scouts is on, but not working. I saw that right after making a new game. Deactivating and activating automation fix this (for a time).

2. Same with private ships. That seems that this can be fixed with reloading. In this case the empire stalls too.

3. If I like to build a mining station or space port at an often from enemys visited place, it happens that than 2+ unfinished ports are build. I paid for every restart of building the port. So the automation never finish these project. I think i has to do with the star movement, the unfinished parts mostly laid in same distant to each other. I saw that in 1.7 too.

4. I saw and uploaded a problem with smuggling. I managed it to capture an empire space port and this planet offer a smuggling mission. A lot of free trader used it as base for the planet. I got 50K+ from that mission, but no money went to my balance.

5. The space port do not generate influence at th planet ...

[Gorofin]

Hi, I started again a new game with 1.903 as pirate.

I got stucked scouts, private ships and research again in the first game after starting DW.
I saved the game and wait a few month for changes. Nothing happend. Then I reloaded the savegame from within the game twice, no changes. I left the game to the main menu and loaded the savegame: the scouts started to scout, research is working. Problem is gone.

I loaded the savegame after restarting DW from the menu first, then 2 times from within the game, all stucked again. Left the game to the menu, load the savegame there and it worked again.

My conclusion, for the first game (new generated or loaded, doesn't matter) some automatic functions are not set up correctly.

[jomarmont]

Hello,

It is my first post but I have been watching for a while.
I have no words to describe the greatness of this game.
It is an excellent example of creative art.
That said I would like to mention that I am also experiencing the "private sector and escorts stuck" bug.
It is just as Gorofin describes above.
My system specs are:
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3GHz
4Gb RAM
ATI HD 6770
Creative Soud Blaster XFi Elite Pro

Cheers

[Bloodly]

It's still here, huh?[:(] I understand that the makers are likely working double-time to update and track whatever this is down. Even so, it's very frustrating on our end, too. It's the heart of the game, after all.

[Erik Rutins]

Hello Jomarmont,

Are you also updated to 1.9.0.3 and still seeing this with 1.9.0.3?

For those that are seeing this, is it only when playing as pirates or also when playing as a normal empire?

Regards,

- Erik

[Raap]

The only automation problem I seem to be experiencing( except suicidal ships), playing pirate mode, is that my gas extractor ships won't do any work. They'll just sit outside whichever station they were built at. My mining ships, which are of the same design just with mining instead of extraction modules, all work great. I've lots of fuel so it's not a practical problem for me, but it's still rather odd. Do they do some sort of check and stop working if you have 'too much fuel in storage'?

[jomarmont]

Hello,

Playing 1.9.0.3. Only happens when playing pirates.
One suggestion: I was playing a pirate game (saving and reloading to make the private sector work) and was able to run into a 200,000 plus debt and nothing happened. This happened while I successfully fixed an entire fleet of alien ships and ship maintenance spending blew up the roof. I kept the fleet in order to rain misery on rivals but it just looked weird that I was able to just run into debt and keep everything running smoothly (except building new stuff off course). After a while the game just crashed but it was fun while it lasted.

Cheers
Jomar

[jomarmont]

Hi,
Version 1.9.0.4. Automation bug is still there. Whenever I start a pirate game the private sector and explorers do not move until save/reload is done.

[Gorofin]

Hi,

I played with the bug a little bit in 1.903. To the old effects I found new one. I hope this help to hunt the bug down.

Old:
1. Automated ships are inactive.
2. Private ships are inactive -> No economy.
3. No automatic research.
4. Happens with the very first game (before going to the main menu), after loading DW, for pirate fractions only.

New:
5. Characters are not active, Intelligence Agents have "no mission", given missions will be never completed.
6. I left the game for almost 19 years alone, then I was raped by an empire. But, I never get contact to another pirate fraction. So it seem that every pirate fraction was not working, too. The normal empire fraction seems to work normal.

Short tests with 1.904 shows the same.

[AstroCat]

I have noticed that some animations (visual effects) and SFX do not play after you save and load a game, perhaps this is related? Maybe there is are some bugs in the save game file system in 1.9.0.0 and up. This behavior was not there prior to the Shadows release.

My post with a saved game that has the problem.

[Gorofin]

No, the animations looked ok for me. But i didn't played much in this situation...

[AstroCat]

Can you try zooming on a lightning strike (CTRL+left mouse click) and see if you here the thunder SFX play? As well the screen should be "foggy" in a storm cloud area and the screen should flash as the Thunder SFX is playing.

This works when you create a new game or play any game prior to Shadows. With Shadows when you save and load your new game these effects are missing. It's like they don't work on saves, only new games.

[Magnatude]

New update! cool... I just got on here to say I was having some problems with automation...
Upon starting a new game it was hit/miss if my freighters/miners would automate.
2/3 of the time they would sit and not take on the smuggling missions... or I try to make them do a mission and get no movement... dead.

I just downloaded the update so, I hope this works... the games that did have 100% automation were really cool.

[Magnatude]

OK...played for a bit with the new update.

Bummer... it killed my saves from the previous version.
As for the Automation problem, it appears to be taken care of.

But I did find a new "bug"... 1st Fleet seems to always get erased. Anything designated as 2nd or above works fine.
When I say erased, I mean the Fleet label detaches from the group of ships and ceases to be a "fleet"... the ships are ok. I've played 3 different games and all 3 had this incident.

[Bloodly]

Still here with 1.9.0.4. It's ONLY Pirate. Normal empires are fine. It's not 'just' automation, but events also-the first thing that usually happens when saving and loading is an event happens.

My processor is a Pentium Dual Core E5700.
2 GB Ram.
Nvidia GT660 graphics card.
Windows XP

[jomarmont]

Yep, it is as Bloodly says.
It is still very much there on pirate games.

[Erik Rutins]

FYI the updates don't kill your previous save files. Each version simply has its own save folder. To access your previous save files, just navigate up a folder and then to the previous version's save folder.

Thank you for the ongoing feedback on this. We've got this as our top priority right now, we were hoping 1.9.0.4 would address it but we'll keep working on it.

[Bloodly]

Frankly, I wish I could tell you more.

[Roughlove]

had this problem today as well, playing Pirates with the 1.9.0.4 version. Freighters never moved, tech never researched, intelligence agents never completed their missions (each agent's little "time left on mission" said that the mission was completed at the proper time, but they were never actually finished, no event notification.) I also noticed that in all the independent colonies I found, there were a bunch of private freighters doing nothing. I quit the game, never tried reloading. The game was a 10x10 on normal with 700 systems and 11 other races. My race was Kelvoran or whatever, the spy-badgers.

Edit: oh, was playing the Smuggler path, btw.

[Roughlove]

The bug is still there in 1.9.0.5

Every time I start as a smuggler, I have to save and reload the game from the main menu. Aside from what I already mentioned above, one thing I noticed is that when nothing is moving, my freighters are all tagged in my military colors, instead of the civilian grey. And I don't know if it's related or not, but about 1/2 the time I start a game, there's a space monster attacking my base. Even though none of my civilian ships will perform any missions, they always start out on escape missions away from the monster(after which they perma-idle.) And it's not just freighters, but also my construction ship.

And I still don't receive any events until I reload...once I reload the game, there's usually an immediate coup d'etat that ousts my leader as soon as the game loads, as well as a bunch of protection treaty suggestions.