Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (Full Version)

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AlPhi -> Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/16/2011 7:36:44 PM)

Hello all, my first Tech Sp post. I was recommended in the main forum to post this with a gamesave. I have uploaded the save as:
AlPhi Bug 16 Jun 11 Troops disappear fm Troopships.dwg

Whenever I load troops into Troopships etc and send them off to invade an enemy colony, the troop units slowly disappear one by one as the carrying ship moves along. No storms, no attacking ships, just a steady loss of Troop units.

In the save to help find things I have made one special fleet called Trooper containing one Troopship on its way to invade an enemy colony through clear friendly space. It started off with 7 units, it now has six, and if you watch the ship it will lose another unit down to 5 just as it passes NW out of the friendly colony scanner zone it is in. All my Troopships and military ships have this steady loss of loaded troops which is making invasions somewhat problematic as I hardly ever have any Troops when I get there.

Hope this helps find my bug!



cookie monster -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/16/2011 8:02:42 PM)

Right then MR!

I have looked at your save game and the troops do seem to disappear from your loaded transports while on route.

I also built some more transports and moved some of your Capital's troops. The two ship fleet started off with 12 troops and ended up with 6 before I decided I had seen enough and could confirm.

So CodeForce the games developer now have enough information to be able to patch out this bug.

As a workaround for your rare bug, you can add back the lost troops to your transports via the ingame editor.

Select the transport and add the troops.



AlPhi -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/16/2011 8:17:14 PM)

Cheers for the confirmation Cookie Monster. I wonder why no-one else has seen this - in fact many confirm they don't see it. It wouldn't be an effect of the specific size/tech of the Troop Compartment would it? Hmm, I'm unsure about the work around by edit as it rather negates the work put into building up Troop tech if I can magic up invasion forces as big as I want out of thin air. Thanks, anyway. I might just play it as another factor when planning invasions - pick up and get there fast before all your Troops die of space-scurvy or something!



cookie monster -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/16/2011 8:22:00 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: AlPhi

Cheers for the confirmation Cookie Monster. I wonder why no-one else has seen this - in fact many confirm they don't see it. It wouldn't be an effect of the specific size/tech of the Troop Compartment would it? Hmm, I'm unsure about the work around by edit as it rather negates the work put into building up Troop tech if I can magic up invasion forces as big as I want out of thin air. Thanks, anyway. I might just play it as another factor when planning invasions - pick up and get there fast before all your Troops die of space-scurvy or something!


No my guess is its a problem of the games code.

Where the troops location is not being stored correctly.



Data -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/16/2011 8:30:41 PM)

If that is the case than maybe a game restart would reset the faulty memory area. But if it occurs for you as well cookie when you load the save game than it's more serious than this.
AlPhi, does it happen in every game of yours? If you start a new one, you get it again?



AlPhi -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 12:11:26 PM)

Hi Data, if I start a new game and send a Troopship on a journey (no-one to invade at that stage!) then the Troops all survive the journey intact. I tried with both standard and massive Troop Compartments fitted, both seemed to hold the Troops without degradation. How odd that just my previous game shows this issue - I wonder what conditions may trigger it.



oxenshtrudel -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 1:26:25 PM)

Hm, did your ships in the "bugged game" have medical centers? They are supposed to heal the troops in route. Not sure but you might get degradation instead if you don't have any.



Data -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 1:40:15 PM)

He said earlier (or maybe in the initial thread) that he had them, even if he didn't the troops should still be there - just not recover strenght over time.
Based on this info I think you may hit a corrupt save problem, did you notice this from the very begining of the current game? Do you have other earlier saves that you can load and check this?



AlPhi -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 2:18:36 PM)

You are correct, the ships were properly equipped.

Yes I have a full save history and went back 3 saves to where the issue does not manifest. There were no changes or retrofits made to the Troopships etc between the save that is OK and the next that shows the Troop degradation, just my empire and fleets growing and developing further tech. Mind you the good save was in an uneasy truce and the further bugged saves were in war. Strange!



Data -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 2:39:12 PM)

Atm, based on what we know so far, I don't think there are ingame events that have caused this. I think the save game got corrupted by an external event and the problem got carried over the next ones.
We could check this by playing again from the last good save to the first bad save point in time to see if it reproduces at least; than take a closer look. But this may be too complex.

Better upload the last good save also so that Elliot can compare the two.



AlPhi -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 5:02:34 PM)

OK I went back to the seemingly good save and played on from there for another 2 hours (even managed to subjugate the enemy!). After a while I noticed that the issue was back. It seems that, with that game at least, once I get beyond a certain time/empire size/tech level then the issue manifests itself.

I have uploaded a Save that seemed good from a hour or so before the bug seems to show up called:
AlPhi Maybe Good Save 17 Jun 11 before Troops Disappear .dwg



Data -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 7:00:29 PM)

Well done, AlPhi....now it's on and we know this is something ingame / code related. If it's what you suspect I think we can use the editor to set back the tech level and check if the issue still reproduces then.



Data -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 7:19:20 PM)

Ok, loaded first the save with the bug. Noticed indeed troops dissapearing, wanted to check if the same occurs on planets (it doesn't) but managing the troops I hit the "leave automation on" message. So I put this on manual and.....no more troops dissapearing. Can you guys check this as well?
If you can confirm this than we might have a problem with this part of the code, maybe creating troops above a limit determines the code to somehow reduce them from other places.

Or it may be related to the automated attack mission, there is a recent bug spotted by Volcano where the behavior is similar but for a construction ships of a CS. In our case it may be that the game does not eliminate the troops but somehow puts them on the attacked planet before the troop transport ever gets there; or at least it thinks it puts them there, I'll check this next.



Data -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 7:36:15 PM)

Definitly the troops don't get teleported to their destination, they just dissapear. Did several more tests without conclusive results:

1) Left troop recruitment on auto but stopped one of the troop transporters, it seems (but I'm not sure) that this prevents the troops from dissapearing.

2) Put a troop transporter on auto; funny thing is that it rushed to get more troops while the ones it already had continued to dissapear.

3) Lifted a blockade to see if this affects it, no luck.

4) Finally, after stopping the transporter observed two things:

4.1) When a target presented itself and the transported auto attacked it it began to loose troops again

4.2) When I manually ordered it to attack a planet it began again to loose troops.

So atm it seems that any kind of activity (auto or manual, offensive or not) causes this to happen. Seems like code mismanagement but why it doesn't occur for all of us? I never used many troops, I'll edit out half your current numbers and see if this impacts this issue.



Data -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 7:43:42 PM)

Arghh, the editor is not friendly enough for this and it's too late here. You have around 500 troops in total anyway so they're not that many, it's unlikely that this is the cause.



cookie monster -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 7:50:23 PM)

If he has auto troop management and a cash flow problem maybe the program is disbanding troops

I remember he had 3 million in the bank, but Im not sure about the cashflow



AlPhi -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 7:57:37 PM)

@ Data: Thanks for all this work. Go take a well-earned power-nap or recharge.

@ Cookie: Yes the cashflow is temporarily rather negative because of all the offensive fleets, troops and defensive facilities I'm using for this little brushwar. However even then it is usually pretty much offset by bonuses and, as you say, I have a healthy 3.5M cash credit so any auto-drawdown based on expenses is illogical - also why hit Troops in-flight on attack missions rather than Troops standing idle in colonies?



Data -> RE: Troops steadily disappearing from Troopers (6/17/2011 8:03:51 PM)

Good points both of you, I had to do another test to see the tech level hypothesis. Edit it to starting again but the troops continued to dissapear.
Not sure how relevant it is though as all the techs that are currently in use began to be researched and completed immediately.
That's it, I'm really am going now. Really looking forward to Elliot's bug sqashing session to see what is wrong here and in Volcano's case.

I'll not mention you, cookie, you're the classic bug poster [:)]

Good night (or day) gents.



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