2 Colony Ships-Population Vanishing Bug

from Stardock Forums
(this bug may have been noted b4??, if so please ignore)

I have found a bug where the colony ship does not launch but you colony's population goes down as if it has.

I've been able to reproduce this bug a many times by doing the following.

On the first turn, take your colony ship and colonize a local system.

After colonizing, rush production of a colony ship on the 2 planets you now control.

Next turn, go to one of the new colony ships, click on the ship, then click on the green up arrow (leave orbit?) button then launch the ship. Everythings fine so far.

Now, go to the second colony ship you have, WITHOUT clicking on the ship, click on the green up arrow, (this will bring up the "boarding screen", which it should probably not be able to do), then the LAUNCH button without changing the population boarding the colony ship.

This effectively makes half the population of the planet dissapear without launching the ship. You can keep trying to launch the ship, as described above, and eventually reduce the planet to 0 population.

I don't know if this will happen under different situations. I tried it with one ship and it did not happen and it will only happen to the second ship you try to launch.

Has anyone else noticed or reproduced this bug?

I can send a save game to anyone interested. You can witness the bug by doing what was describe above to the new planet. You can continue to do this until the population reaches zero. But I suspect anyone can recreate this on their own.

302 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Just curious as to if anyone else have noticed this, or if the Devs care about this bug???
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Sorry that I haven't responded before this, but I've been a bit behind.

I'll see if I can reproduce this. Thanks for the report.

--Cari
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Alien13c,

When I first read your post I was very confused, so I did not post a comment. Here is what confuses me;

1). Clicking on either the ship (requires a double click) or clicking on the "leave orbit" icon brings up the "loading" window with half of the population designated to be loaded onto the ship by default. So pressing the "launch" button at that point SHOULD reduce the populatio of the star system by half UNLESS you change the slider before pressing "launch".

2). You stated that population halving only happens when launching two colony ships and only on the second ship. But the number of people loaded onto a ship has to come from the planets of the system so, if you do not change the slider, the population should halve for every colony ship or transport.

3). You stated that clicking the LAUNCH button without changing the population fails to launch the ship. The ship should launch unless you zeroed the "boarding" slider.

---- I have never seen what you described, but have yet to get to that point on 1Z. I suspect, if there is a problem here, that it is new on 1Z and you may have zeroed onto it much faster than the rest of us. When I get a chance, I will see if I can get this behavior as well.

Cheers,
Jack
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Alien13c,

Another question just occured to me. When you say "colonize a local system", do you mean colonize another planet in the SOL system? The number of habitable planets in any system is randum, so if this is a requirement for the behavior you are seeing then not everyone will see this behavior in their first game on 1Z.

Cheers,
Jack
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
John,

Replies to your questions-

1)Click on the "leave orbit" button without first clicking on a ship usually does not do anything. Unless you do what I desribe in my first post.

-The population reduces by half but the ship is not loaded and does not leave orbit after pressing the green arrow.

2)The two colony ships are from two different planets. Everything works fine for the first ship you select. The problem occurs on the second ship on the other planet.

-With the second ship, the planet population reduces as if being loaded, but the ship does not recieve the population and does not launch. (if recreated as I described in my original post)

3)I have tried doing this some more and the half population has nothing to do with it. With the second ship, you can choose whatever populaion you want, click the green arrow launch button, the ship will not launch, and the population is no longer on the planet or ship.

"colonize a local system"- I have only tried it with different star systems, not SOL only.

I have recreated this a few more times. It does not have to be within the first two turns. It seems to happen when I rush the production of two colony ships and do what I describe in my first post.

You can do this with non-habitable planets also, so you can recreate the bug within the first two turns.

I'll be glad to answer anymore questions and If anyone needs me to reclarify what I'm doing to create this bug, I will.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Noticed something else-

The two colony ships do not have to be created on the same turn. Just have two colony ships on different systems. Load one normally. Go to the other system with the colony ship. Do NOT click on the ship icon. Instead click on the green arrow launch button. This will bring up the load screen- which it should not be able to. After trying to load and clicking launch, the ship does not launch and you loose the popluation you just loaded.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
OK. I can create this too.

Cari,

To recreate this you MUST use the de-orbit icon. Here are some things to watch for. 0). All of the actions I took to recreate this were during the project completion cycle. 1). The de-orbit icon does nothing unless a ship is selected. 2). Select the ship and use the de-orbit icon on the first planet's completion screen and launch the ship. Everythink looks normal here. Then click "next". 3). The second colony ship is already selected when the second planet's screen is presented (this is different from the first planet's screen, where the colony ship was NOT already selected when the screen was presented). 4). Clicking the de-orbit icon brings up the "loading" window with the default amount of colonists to load. 5). Clicking on "launch" without changing the "loading" slider halves the star system's population without launching the ship and leaves the ship with no occupants. 6). If you continue to alternately click the de-orbit icon and launch button you can run the population to zero and still have the colony ship in orbit, just like Alien13C descrbed.

Perhaps the biggest reason noone else saw this before (good catch, Alien13c) is that: 1) most of us are used to de-orbiting by double clicking the ship (the de-orbit icon joined the game much later) and 2) most of the time we move the slider to get just the number of colonists we want (Alien13c, I would suggest loading approximately 100M colonists on any colony ship. So far, I have found this to be the optimum number of colonists to successfully start a new colony. I have found only a few cases where I deliberately select a lesser number, and none where I select more. However, YMMV (Your Milage May Vary).).

Cheers,
Jack