Next ship selection fails.

from Stardock Forums
I am starting a new thread on this problem because I have now seen this in a situation that eliminates being on autopilot as a factor. What I am seeing is more of a "next ship" selection problem in appearance than the other threads had described. I had 5 ships, the "USS Discovery", two scouts I had built, and two scouts I had discovered (via anomalies). None of them were on autopilot, or ever had been on autopilot. I suddenly reallised that I was seeing only one ship selected each turn, a condition that I think had been going on for a few turns.

I would like to note that the ship list update problem appears to have been corrected, at least in the forms of the problem that I could have detected thus far. I am opening another thread on a specific problem I am seeing with this build, one that is not as serious as the next ship selection problem.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Along with what you are describing I am still having problems with ships on autopilot not moving. Not as bad as in previous BETA Releases, but it stil happens.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Arrrgghhh...I'll check into it.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
After what I just saw after downloading todays update (can we continue a game started after Fridays build?) I am more convinced than ever that all of the ship movement problems are due to failure of the "next ship" algorithm.

The behaviour has changed!! (This should be considered a GOOD sign because it should (theoretically) lead to what is going wrong.)

Before today's upgrade the ship selection would continue to the next ship after exiting the planet screen when colonizing a planet. Now it no longer continues selecting ships after leaving the planet screen when colonizing a planet.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks, LJ, for the messages on this thread. Reliable ship-movement efficiency has been my pet peeve since July. I'll focus on that for the next few days to observe how it now works out, with autoturn set at on (my preference). While testing an internal build beyond Beta 1Z, the procedure appeared to me fixed and flawless. I can't believe Beta 2 is afflicted by new ship-movement quirks. To echo our caring Admiral : Arrrgghhh.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm not sure about being able to load previous saved games...I haven't had any trouble with my saved games, but maybe that's because mine have been updated as the changes were made...

I was trying to get rid of redundant calls to select and center on ships, because it's slow, but apparently I got rid of too many.

I've only been able to reproduce the bug where only one ship moves once, but I made a change that will hopefully fix things...
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
the one huge factor about Auto-pilot is that it moves AFTER your turn is over. If you move a ship to its limits during a turn, you have moved for that turn. Even if you put the ship into Auto-Pilot you won't get any more movement points until the end of the next turn. i.e. hit turn twice, once to end the current turn (after all you've used your movement points) and then once to end the next turn which allows the auto-pilot to run.

Its pretty annoying sometimes I have to say. Perhaps the Auto-Turn should fire at the start of a turn rather than the end of a turn?

Not sure if still there in current build but the preBeta2 if you told a ship to move x points and it started moving and you selected another ship before it finished the original ship stopped moving and dropped to auto-pilot mode :-(
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Ships on autopilot move after you manually move one ship. That's always been the way it works.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
To clarify, they move after all manual ships have been moved. If you don't have any ships on manual at the start of the turn, you have to hit turn to get the autopilot ships to move. This is so that you can move ships out of orbit, cancel autopilots, change what your colonies are building, etc, before the end of your turn.

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Cari,

I just wanted to let you know how far I have gotten with my testing on this problem. With a clean install from scratch and a new game on the new code, I have over 40 ships on autopilot all behaving nicely EXCEPT when a colony ship reaches its destination at a tile adjacent to a star and I colonize a planet. Then the next ship selection fails. I should note that it also fails next ship selection of a ship not on autopilot with moves left as well after colonizing a planet.

In any case, once this last problem is solved (when we receive the fix you mentioned above?) then all of the ship movement problems should be gone.

Good work.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
As an append to Lucky Jack's report, the same behavior occurs with constructor ships upgrading a Starbase (but not initially building one).

The rest of the code appears to work perfectly.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Arturus Magi's post and one other thing strengthens the logic of my idea that the remaining "next ship selection" problem is centered around a ship being destroyed (via colonization, star base upgrade, and one other test I did, simply disbaning a ship that reached its destination) that the code somehow fails to return to the "next ship selection" algorithm during the autopilot phase or fails to return to the autopilot processing.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Ok, it works for after colonization now, and also for constructors. Yay!

--Cari
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Wonderful. How soon will we see the fix?
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Cari,

Did this fix get into 2A? If so, it does not look like it works. I have yet to construct star bases but colonization still disrupts next ship selection during the autopilot phase.
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't have that problem here anymore with either starbase upgrading or colonization.

The selection code does keep switching between autopilot and manual ships with no observable regularity, though, which Cari indicated earlier should not be the case.
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
Ummm...on your options screen, do you have "End Turn Skips Moves Left" set to ON (default) or OFF? If you have it turned off, and your autopilot ship reaches its destination but still has moves left, it will stop and let you move that ship more, and then go to the next ship on autopilot.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
It is turned off, and it's not just ships that reach their destination.

Anytime after a ship has been created and destroyed (not nessiarily the same ship), autopiloted ships can start moving before all manual ships have been moved. The more ships that are destroyed, the more often autopilot ships move earlier, but I have not seen it occur before at least one ship has been created.

Saving the game and reloading appears to temporarily correct this.
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
Umm...well, that's weird. Can you please send me your Prefs.ini file (from your Data directory)?

And to reproduce this behavior, I just set some ships on autopilot, build a ship, delete a ship and an autopilot ship will start moving?
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
It may have something to do with my usual playstyle too. I generally only build Freighters and Constructor ships (and colony ships, but only before I find any of the other major races) and use diplomacy or anomolies to get the rest.

That seems like it should work to reproduce. I'm not sure if the total number of ships influences it or nbot, because I didn't know it wasn't the intended behavior, and as such didn't pay much attention to it until you mentioned that it was not.

In the past, it usually started moving autopilot ships as soon as you moved or skipped the first manual ship.
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
I just wanted to mention that the good work Cari has done has corrected part this problem at the Beta 2A level. I had over 80 ships on autopilot and in a turn where none of them reached their destination they all got selected and moved.

On the Beta 2A level, which Cari says will be fixed in a future build (Beta 3 on Friday?) I still see:

1) actions that cause the destruction of the ship (colonization, disbanment, SB upgrade, maybe even killed by an enemy) during the autobuild phase causes a disruption to the autobuild process MOST of the time. Sometimes the autobuild phase continues.

2). Sparatic movement of ships on autopilot (one or more ships, maybe as many as five) before all ships on manual have been moved. I still have not detected a pattern to this that I can report. What I am watching for is does it only happen when a ship is destroyed (colonization, etc.)? That is my current feel for the problem but I need to watch it some more to be sure there isn't some other factor involed.

Also, it is possible that Cari has already solved this problem as well.
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
The one place where I put "autobuild" should be "autopilot". ;p
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
'2). Sparatic movement of ships on autopilot (one or more ships, maybe as many as five) before all ships on manual have been moved. I still have not detected a pattern to this that I can report. What I am watching for is does it only happen when a ship is destroyed (colonization, etc.)? That is my current feel for the problem but I need to watch it some more to be sure there isn't some other factor involed.'

After watching this for a while, I've found that the destruction of a ship isn't specifically what causes it, just what makes it possible for it to occur. It can happen any time, but I have not seen it happen before something destroys a ship (of any race) since loading/creating the game.
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
Cari,
This problem (the subject of the origination of this thread) is still in the latest build (Friday 10/11/02). I got it right away having only 5 ships, the "hero", a scout, and three colony ships on autopilot. As soon as the first colony ship arrived at its destination tile next to a star I colonized the planet manually. The other two colony ships had not yet moved, and after leaving the planet map the next ship selection did not function.