Crashes to desktop seem to happen...

from Stardock Forums
when focus is returned to the user but the game is still working on various different things and it gets confused with what it is doing and the user is doing.

For instance the next Turn sequence kept throwing me for a loop yesterday. Control was returned to me and I started to do things, like check research or tell a ship that was displayed on the screen, (that hadn't been the focus before the turn button was pressed) to go somewhere. Only belated did I realize that the turn processing wasn't over. Not only is this very very annoying as a ship on the other side of the galaxy starts moving, when you didn't mean that one to move at all, or the research page gets replaced by the 'i built this last turn what do you want me to build next' screens it leaves the system open to crashes.

A number of times I've seen it crash when dealing with research. The music is still playing from the successful research of something or other and you are clicking on the available options to see what you get and it can't keep up, ouch dumped to desktop.

Planets colonizing during the Turn processing or starbases being upgraded during Turn processing also seem to be the cause of a number of aberations in behaviour. I've had to stop the auto-pilot from colonizing planets the next turn to prevent it crashing. I can then manually colonize the planet.

Cheers,

Dominic
243 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Do you have the "End Turn Skips Moves Left" option turned off?

I'm not sure what's causing the lag between the research news screen and the research screen, but I will look into it.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Which should it be to avoid that? I do the same thing--choose a destination for the ship I can see and the game skips to another screen while I am pushing down the mouse button and my click ends up setting up a destination for the wrong ship, or I get ready to set a destination or scroll the playing area and am interrupted by a dialog or a planet status screen.

I would agree that input should either be turned off if the screen is only going to switch away or all the movement saved until the end of the turn and then the user allowed to either select a new destination for each ship or hit some kind of "next" button to go on to the next ship's movement.

Perhaps turn processing should happen in an easily identifiable non-interactive "mode" that looks different so you know not to try to respond unless prompted, and then you should be prompted for each ship move or have the choice of just watching all the moves and reviewing the ships manually with the "find" button. Either way, something would be visually different to make it clear you cannot do anything interactive until it is done.

-Robert
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh yeah, and, as previously suggested, if you could set some rules on when you are interrupted by social and military projects, particularly if you could turn the rules off and on quickly (modal buttons?) and distinguish between ships and social projects. Another way to do it would add status info and check boxes (or buttons) to the summary of what is completed so that you can see what's next and choose to intervene for specific planets.

And, if you could do the same thing for research--set up the order you want things to be researched using something like an interactive tech tree to pick and choose. Also, it would be nice to be able to set up simultaneous tracks of research that alternate between turns and take twice (or three or whatever) times as long.

Okay, I'll shut up now... :)

Alright, one more--perhaps the way to indicate turn processing would be to let the star map fill the screen. That is, hide all the control and status panels while a turn is happening.

And just one more, really...

Please add the planet name to the planet projects dialog (sometimes you don't have a planet or system list or the hightlight is not clear).

Okay, I'm just going to go to bed.

-Robert