That's not a bug, its a feature.

AI invasion behaviour seems to be buggy or at least not very well thought about.

In my last game the Korx were at war with the Torians.
They had a stack of 5 Death-Knights and 8 Transports right next to the last planet of the Torians.
They would not attack the single defender of that planet because, as I think, the Death-Knights all had been given the task to protect the Transports!

Easy to see, that not wiping out the defender and invading the planet is kinda stupid.

If there is no threat for the transports, they really shall not use so much of their forces to protect them.

By not quickly conquering their much weaker enemies, the AI-Topdog will not stay competative in the long run.

I just finished an AP game on medium map, crippling difficulty, and rare tight cluster. During one of the colonizing events, I had a choice to lose 6 PQ, stay the same, or gain 6 PQ. Since the planet was only a 14 to begin with, losing 6 to take down to 8 and lose my colony ship did not seem like a good choise, so I chose the evil choice and was supposted to gain 6 PQ. In fact, the event went away but nothing happend to my PQ. I am pretty sure that I hit the third choice and not the middle choice. Perhaps the links are wrong?

It's not a +6 PQ Gain/+6 PQ Loss... it's a PERCENTAGE gain lost. So that was +6% PQ Gain/+6% PQ Loss. On a PQ 14 planet, neither choice would matter as 1.06 * 14 = 14.86 which is still PQ 14 after the decimal part is dropped. And 0.94 * 14 = 13.16 which would have been 13 after the decimal part was dropped. By choosing Evil, you gained nothing. By choosing Neutral, you gained nothing. By choosing Good, you would lose 1 PQ off the planet.

You have to do a little math with the +/- PQ events to see if you gain enough to make it worthwhile.

Do you still have the save game and the mods so that I could try reproducing it from the save game?

I don't know either. I'd have thought it'd be the other way around.  I'll see if I can reproduce it from my copy installed off SDC. 

It's probably there, if you hit the little down arrow, in the fleet space. But you're saying that it doesn't still have focus? you can't move it with the keyboard?

If you have a save game that shows this, please send it to me along with any mods that you are using.

Yes, I do want it.

Looks like you're using the wrong exe.

Yes.  It should be encoded at 128 kbps 44 KHz. 

Do you have a save game that reproduces this? It would be under your Data\Campaigns\Altarian Prophecy folder.

I'm going to be making the changes to show campaign saves in the normal load/save game dialogs.  Also, the reset button CAN reset the campaign.  You just choose the Restart campaign button.  It is also reset in that the game automatically picks your latest save game, so the game you pick when you hit reset may be reseting it to earlier in the campaign. The word "Load" would have been misleading because you aren't immediately loading it when you hit that button.  "Change" or "Select" is vague.  If you can come up with a better word that will fit in that word, I'll certainly use it.

I've caught up on this thread and recorded all the bugs listed here.   

 

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related Menu-Crash

I think this bug is not reproduceable on a PC other than mine because if it was, I think lots of people would have complained about it, since when you don't know the Ctrl+Q Hotkeys you have a problem...

My therory is that it has to do with the victory-conditions since those are not in the campaign, where it worked for me, and they probably call functions that could have an endless loop that for some reasons only appears on my computer.

It not so much the labeling of the button that I find to be "odd", its the existence of this button itself that I find to be "unusual". I would expect to be able to save and load from the same screen. Can't save and load campaign/scenario be listed like save and load normal game instead of using this "reset" button?

Um, I already said that I was going to make it also work through the normal save/load dialog.  But the reason that the reset button is there is because the Select Campaign screen gives you status on how far you are along in the campaign. 

AIL.ST,

Do you play with the victory conditions enabled or disabled?

I understood this. It just seemed to make "reset" button redundant.



Thanx for clarifying the reset button's function. This makes more sense to me! Status info will become more important once there are several campaigns available.

@Carielf:
They are all enabled.

When once, for some reason I don't understand, the menu worked (only in one game, I have a savegame where it works o_O) the Alliance and Tech-Victory percentages showed wrong values:
Alliance was at 100% but I was only allied with one of five races (the other three however where allied aswell).
Tech-Victory-progress showed over thousand percent.

AIL.ST: Hmmm.  Do you have any tech mods? Maybe it's getting stuck trying to calculate how far you are in the tech tree.

I remember having installed something that should remove the UP-Issues... I'll try to figure out what it was and how to get rid of it...

CariElf:

I tried repeatily to get the "no displaying of non-stacked ship in same grid square as stacked/grouped ships" to repeat, and couldn't do it. So at this point, it is a resource issue or just plain user error. IF it occurs again, I'll report it and keep a save to see if it happens after a clean reboot and reload.

Possible bug:

Was allies with the Kroth. One turn, both their worlds culturally defected to me. I turned around and immediately gave them their worlds back (I wanted to keep them as a trade partner). But... they were no longer listed after that. To talk to them, I had to click on their worlds or their ships.

Later on, both of their worlds defected AGAIN... only they didn't have any ships for some reason. I was not then able to contact them and give them any more worlds. Poor little fellas...

Other strangeness: The Drengin, thoroughly conquered early on, became "Good" via the sudden philosophy shift. I just wondered where the survivors were living... most have been motels on my worlds.

Cari-

I noticed an interesting glitch. I was playing with cultural victory on - and I just got the message that I would win in 12 more turns. The same turn I attacked the Yor.

After that, the game CTD the following turn - no matter what I did. Interestingly enough - I had a previous save for a few turns prior (before the Cultural Victory message) and it started to CTD the next turn.

I tried both autosave and previous autosave - same thing.

Luckily, the remaining four races were close or friendly and I was able to form an alliance - which ended the game before the end of my next turn.

I've occassionally had games that went bad (this is maybe the 3rd such game in the 10 months I've been playing), but I've always been able to reload a different save of that game and go forward.

This is so strange, I don't now if you're interested in the same game - but I can send it to you if you want. My email address is [email protected].

I'm leaving the Cultural Victory condition on (and I don't think most of the metaverse players play with it on) - and I'll tell you if this is a one time occurence or if it happens again.

Cheers,
Cypher / Michael

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I have seen this more than once, and I checked the text to be sure. I have been offered "trades" from the AIs, but there is nothing on the AIs side. I can try to reproduce from saves if you want.

I have just DL'ed 1.49K, and the game I am playing is not a holdover from the last version, but is the same save from the last version. Don't know if that would effect anything.

Odd behavior.

Had a CTD while playing scenario 1. After restarting AP and reloading the auto-save, no repeating CTD. However, the anomalies that had been on the map prior to the CTD (and they had to be manually targetted, as auto-survey would not target them) where missing after the reload. All were of the new variety recently added to GC.

This was all with the version of AP beta prior to today's (March 27, 2004) release.
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I cannot submit alliance victory games to the metaverse from the latest beta build. It keeps saying that this is "still currently in beta testing" and i would not be allowed to submit the game. It says it is a scenario, but it is not, i successfully submitted a military conquest game using the EXACT SAME starting specs as the alliance victory, save for alliance victory being checked.

I get the same errors as black Shade, when trying submit from the latest build (k).

Save game sent

OK this is slightly involved but hopefully I can explain it...it is possible to bypass the victory condition of any of the campaign levels and move onto the next mission if you do the following:

When the mission starts up, click on all the done buttons and then retire before the first turn is complete, then click on go to next mission which will restart you on your current mission. This time follow the same procedure but before the first turn completes click on the return to main menu option. There you can click on the Campaign button and you will find yourself at the start of the mission *after* the one in which you quit.

Hurrah! I finally found a real bug!

I've encountered a bug which is new to Friday's update, (3-27-04). I tried to submit a standard random game w/o anything changed (eg. dark earth, etc.) but when I submit, it tells me you cannot submit a campaign senario. I have submitted many games before with 1.49 but this is the 1st game since yesterday's patch. Anyone else having this problem?

Nevermind, I've read others are having similiar issues. And yes, the game was a alliance victory, huge map, for 60k.
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ok im not sure, but i THINK (im almost done with this game, ill try submitted in the morning) that the problem lies with the custom rules section:

All the games that i cannot submit have a blank under custom rules, not NONE. There is simply nothing selected, but since i have not selected NONE on the custom rules, the metaverse submission MIGHT consider this as using custom settings....... well test out in the morning (or unless anyone has 30 mintues to waste and wants to do it themselves).

I still have the mods, but I do not have the save game anymore. Didn't think to copy it before trying to reproduce the crash.

~SDC~

Observations of a long night:

1st: This game must be sending me some hidden messages to not quit it! I have played it for 8 hours non-stop and after that really couldn't imagine that it was that long! Maybe you shall reintroduce the disappearing-ships-bug to force one to save and quit from time to time...

Now on to the real bugs...

I am quite certain now, that the menu-crash is caused by the calculation of the tech-victory because it first did not work as always but after the Torians researched Final Frontier I could open the menu and it would say Disabled or sth. like that.

The Alliance-Victory-Percentage, as well as its description (if you cklick the little "?" next to it) are wrong! It says "You need to be allied with everybody you are not currently at war with." The percentages act as if this was true (me and my ally at war vs Torians = 100%, peace vs Torians = 50%) But we know that this cannot be true because the Alliance victory would be very easy then (find an ally and declare war on everyone else).

Don't know if you have tried to fix the AI-Issue that they do not stop spending money on research when there are no techs left. However, I want to report that this is still case. They really should stop because that makes the late-game too easy! If the Torians spent that money on Excaliburs it would be far tougher!

Question to all: What do I have to do, to be certain my tech-folder is clean? What files do I have to delete/keep? (Because of "Do you have any tech mods? Maybe it's getting stuck trying to calculate how far you are in the tech tree.")