Very important ship-movement question

from Stardock Forums
My question will probably brand me as an incompetent tester, but since I have started playing the Beta (in mid-July), I have always experienced a major problem with the correct procedure in moving ships, from the very start of the games! Perhaps other newbies have also experienced those quirks.

During the early stages of a game, when there are not many ships around, I prefer to manually move them and micro-manage them. My major problem is that the automatic turn-generation process does not allow me to always move each and every ship! Sometimes, the program will allow me to move each ship by jumping its selection from ship to ship until every one has spent its movement points...But on MANY turns, the automatic selection-process simply ignores a few of my ships..and generates the end of the turn without having given me a chance to manually move everybody.

For example. Yesterday, I started a new game, and after a few turns, I had 3 ships on the map: the initial survey-ship, a free ship it had found, and a new colony-ship. I manually moved the latter, expending its 2 MPs...but then, the turn ended and the colony-ship found itself with 2 new points while the two other ships had not had their chance to move the previous turn! Worse: they were ignored for 3 more turns, as if they did not exist!

This OFTEN happens. Sometimes, quite a few turns can pass with only one ship being selected to move. You're going to tell me: at the start of a new turn, ignore the initially selected ship and go select another one. That's risky, because if I do that, the initially selected ship can itself become the victim of the "ignore" process--not a pleasant situation when the ignored ship is a colonizer I was aiming at a distant star.

For me, since mid-July, it has been my major problem with GalCiv: manually moving ships, even when there are very few of them, is a tedious chore...that does not even seem to work properly!

Since other gamers are not reporting that, I have come to the conclusion that I'm incompetent, that there must be something procedurally obvious that I am missing.

Please enlighten me because I am sick and tired of that faulty chore. By what procedure can one be certain that each and every ship will be allowed to move each and every turn--without the automatic turn-generation mechanism jumping the gun? :notsure: >:( :VOMIT:
185 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I have had all sorts of problems moving ships.

I would suspect all sorts of tools to micro manage ship movement will be released in later BETAs and lots of bugs will be resolved.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
First, turn off autoturn. With the continuing problems with ship autopilot and next ship selection this is the only way to even get a chance at discovering whether all ships are getting their moves.

Second, do not restart on 1Z a game that was saved on 1Y (I don't think this applies to you in this case). Brad has warned us about some severe compatibility problems due to new features.

Third, after the next ship routine thinks it has run out of ships to select click the find button. This will sometimes cause an unmoved ship on manual to be selected. Sometimes not.

Fourth, use the ship list at the end of each turn (remember, autoturn MUST be OFF to do this) to verify that each ship has competed its moves.

When using the ship list be aware that the data in it is most likely that from the beginning of the turn. That is, a ship that was built this turn and/or moved out of orbit will show a status of "orbiting", a ship that was on autopilot and reached its destination with 0 moves left will show a status of "autopilot", and a ship on autopilot that completed its moves will show all of its move points left. So click on any ship that has a status you don't expect and see if the status changes. When you find one that is still has moves that is on autopilot go to the main screen (the ship will be centered automatically but not selected) and click on it. If you find a ship that is not on autopilot that still has moves left the ship will be centered on the main screen and selected. Move the ship one turn and, if it was on autopilot, redesignate its destination.

All of the above is quite a pain to do but it is all that I can find to get around the bug until they get it fixed.

Good luck.

P.S. to Brad: :sniff!: No, it is NOT fixed on 1Z and I suspect there are coding errors involved.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
My PS to Brad should state that I suspect there are multiple coding errors involved. I don't know how the word "multiple" fell out. I know I put it there.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks, Citizen Technician: you make me feel that I am not alone, stranded like an incompetent fool in the deep, dark abyss of infinite Space. ;)

Thanks a lot, Lieutenant: I will dutifully apply all of your recommendations, and I shall post some feedback on how things thereafter turned out. :notsure:
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Cari just informed me that she had fixed this problem but the fix apparently did not make it into the build. She is checking into what happened to it.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Wednesday, 0948pm. TO: Lt. Lucky Jack.

I turn off autoturn as you suggested. Here is what happened. I could move my colony ship. But then, when I selected the two other ships, I saw that they had their full movement-points allowance left, but...they refused to move and to spend their points! Instead, I saw something appear that I had never seen: when I right-clicked in space to move each ship, instead, green rings appeared where I wanted them to move, and the ships were branded by a label called "automove" (or something like that). I don't want them to automove, I want to manually move each and every one of them as I please. So, that's what happened when I did as you suggested: turning off "autoturn" deprived me of the power to move 2 of my 3 ships. What the hell is happening? Perhaps I'm incompetently messing up a movement procedure which has become second nature to most of you.

For me, since mid-July, manually managing ship-movement has been a tedious chore...and, one way or another, the program never allows me to move each and every ship on each and every turn (see my long message above). >:(
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
CyberMage,

I just re-read my post and I see a point where there could have been a missunderstanding. I could have been more specific. Sorry.

I should have said that if your ship had been on manual move it manually as you wish after you got it selected. If the ship had been on autopilot locate it by clickiing it on the ship list then click the ship on the main screen, then move it manually at least one tile, then redesignate its destination. Due to the code error a ship that was not selected automatically by the "next ship" routine will not get moved without manual intervention.

Autopilot will, when the code works correctly, move your ship right to where you right clicked until it arrives there. If there are move points left in the turn it arrives at the destination you will, when the code works correctly, get the opportunity to move the ship further during the same turn until all of the move points are expended.

The problem here is that the code is NOT working correctly and we testers have been learning how to get around the problem. Cari says she has a fix, so hopefully we will see an improvement in the next build.

I wouldn't worry about your compentence either. What you are experiencing is the same the rest of us have run into, except that much of the discussion about this problem has been in threads that have rolled off of this forum. What I tried to do to help you was to try to summarize what I have worked out as a bypass, and frankly, I did not get my description accurate. You may wish to add what I included in this post and see if it helps. If not, describe what you ran into and I will do what I can to clarify it further.

Good lucki..
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Thursday, 8pm. TO Lt. Lucky Jack:

Thanks a lot for taking the time and trouble of explaining the situation at length. To make it simple, what I conclude is this: we are in an early beta and some code is not working properly (or has not been fully implemented)...so that would explain why the ship-movement procedure is hindered by tedious and faulty quirks. That reassures me: I might not be as clumsy and incompetent as I believed in this beta-testing adventure.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
CyberMage,

The Beta for GC is a much longer one than with other PC products and is something unique to Stardock (as far as I have seen). It gives us more of a chance to help form the game than with other games and is one reason I am willing to subscribe to Drengin.net for a product that is so far from ready.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I have noticed that sometimes at the end of the turn when I click on ships that have been missed by the 'find the next ship' code I cannot move them by right clicking. No matter where I click the ship goes on autopilot. But, if I use the keypad to move them, they will move fine.

Someone 'splain that one to me.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
When a ship is caught in the autopilot glitch, no other ship can autopilot until a ship is manualy moved or the turn is ended.

Manually moving a ship causes the autopilot code to rescan, presumably in case you changes a ship's prior course or added a new one.

When you manually forced the ship to move, the autopilot code rescaned the autopilot ships and starts moving them again.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Thursday, Midnight. TO: LT. Lucky Jack.

I totally agree with your most recent reply. I have no complaints against Stardock's original approach to early-beta development. I am very happy with the whole process...even though I can be irritated by the tedium of moving ships around. As you suggest: let's be patient and assist the development process. For once, our input really counts. I'm not in a hurry: I don't mind if GalCiv goes gold in December 2003.