1.08 bugs.

[Sabrax]

Okay, I've found 2 bugs that Ihave been able to replicate on seperate games in both the stock version and the balance mod.

1) Boarding does not work. At all! CK said it only added the boarding parties from 1 ship and not all but even a baseship loaded vs a frigate with no security stations still loses. I would appreciate someone else confirming this one for me.

2) Ruins disappear after 1 turn. You find a planet with ruins but they are gone when you process a turn.

I hope I'm not the only one getting these errors.

btw this game is GREAT!!! Although I do hate that most of my old strategies from se4 will need to be tweaked.

[cshank2]

Yeah. The Ruins thing extends beyond just the ruins. Stars with abilities, warp points, asteroids, storms, sectors. Their abilities just get up and leave after the first turn is processed. Sucky, huh?

(Though, blackholes seem to work fine >.<)

[Leodinas]

I created a fleet of about thirty ships with half of them being Missile Boats. The ordinance supply of the fleet hovered around 50k... plenty to fight numerous battles. However, my first combat with the fleet saw the retreat of my whole Missile Boat division. I noticed that they did not have any ordinance. When I got back to the main screen, I saw that there was a wopping 700 out of 50k ordinance left in my fleet. This has to be a bug... The missiles just vanished...

-Leo

[Tim_Ward]

Did you have fighters with your fleet? I've noticed that if they can't get their supplies/ordinance from their carrier, they just help themselves from the other ships.

[RonGianti]

Leodinas said:
This has to be a bug... The missiles just vanished...

-Leo



I've noticed the same thing. Built a fleet of missle ships, put in a Fleet and moved them. Ordinance went from Full, to half, to 0.

Finally, I refit all the missle ships to Beam weapons. Every single one, but didn't refit my fleet support ships, which had some extra ordinance on them. Their ordinance disappeared slowly too, even though not one battle was fought.

[RonGianti]

Other Bugs:

Stock (No mods at all) -

3) A neutral race built troops with no weapons at all.

4) I assualted said planet, he couldn't shoot my troops, but my troops couldn't do his any damage at all. The planetary assault just kept going on with no resolution and I couldn't get those troops off the planet either. I saw shots fired from my troops, they just did no damage. After a few turns of this stalemate, SEV crashed with the error "Out of memory". This is an AMD 3200 with 1.5 gig ram, XP home running as lean as can be, no overhead at all, up to date drivers, etc.

5) The documentation in game and paper says that 10 turns of emergency building at a space yard for 150% will lead to 10 turns of 50%. This is incorrect. It leads to 10 turns of 25%. In this case, its working correctly, imo, but documented incorrectly.

6) Trade agreements of technology seem to work correctly, but are reported incorrectly in the turn summary. If I research Sensors 7 and he researches missles 9, it says I gave him missles 9 and he gave me Sensors 7, when it fact, its the other way around.

7) Neutral race AI players cannot communicate. No treatys, no declaration of war. If you send them a message, they just ignore you.

Mod bugs:

1. Made a small mod that increased the Large Galaxy settings from 50 - 100 planets to 200 - 250. Out of 5 games played this way, 4 became unstable and would hang at the "processing end of all players turns". I left it for 1/2 hour once, it never finished and was using 100% processor.

[Spoo]

I have a "share technology" treaty with a race that has the organic racial trait (my race doesn't). Every turn I "recieve" tech level one in organic weapons and technology (or whatever they're called) but no benefits.

You can add ships to planet queues without space yards by usng "add to multiple" on the construction screen. I haven't tested if they'll actually be built.

The auto pathing for ships still uses undiscovered warp points.

[Leodinas]

So we are listing these bugs... will they be fixed in the next version, or are we just wasting air?

[RonGianti]

I have no doubt myself that these will get fixed.

In the meantime, we can help keep frustration to a miniumum by being neighborly and listing bugs and workarounds.

Also, if we put together a list of bugs, with screen shots, details and save games, we can email them to Malfador.

[Ed Kolis]

Also, at www.spaceempires5.com (http://www.spaceempires5.com), there is an issue tracker http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Phoenix-D]

..which, last I checked, was bugged. Aside from the perpetual problems loading the page itself, it wants you to select a version number. This worked fine at first, but at some point they removed 1.08 from the list, meaning there's nothing TO select.

[Ed Kolis]

Um, there is now a 5.1.08, which is rather silly, but whatever http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[RonGianti]

Does anyone have save games for these issues?

[RonGianti]

8) The shard cannon is broken. The forumla that calculates the increase in damage per level is set to 0. So a level 1 Shard cannon does the same damage as a level 100 Shard Cannon:

SHARD CANNON:

Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (15 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0)) - (([%Range%] / 10) * 0.00) - iif([%Range%] > Min(90, (([%Level%] - 1) * 20) + 30), 10000, 0)

MESON BLASTER:

Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (15 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 5)) - (([%Range%] / 10) * 0.00) - iif([%Range%] > Min(90, (([%Level%] - 1) * 10) + 30), 10000, 0)

I assume the (%Level% - 1) * 0 is supposed to be times... 10?

[Spoo]

Regular sized dreadnoughts are smaller than organic/crystalline ones (other ship sizes seem to be the same).

You can add more facilities than a planet can hold by using fill from list on the construction queue menu (I haven't tested to see if the extra facilities will actually be built yet).

[Ragnarok]

Spoo said:
You can add more facilities than a planet can hold by using fill from list on the construction queue menu (I haven't tested to see if the extra facilities will actually be built yet).



On a related note... If you attempt to add more facilities than the planet will hold by simply clicking on a facility to add it to the queue the message stating that there is no more room will appear. You must hit Close twice for this window to close instead of just once. If you hit escape while this window is open it will close the construction queue window instead of the warning message.

Edit: I forgot to add that if you chose to have warp points located anywhere in the system that sometimes they will be located too close to a star (where half the hex is covered by the star and the other half is exposed) and you can't warp through them. You can, however, come through them from the other side. In effect they are one way warp points.

[StarJack]

I still get access violation crashes after strategic combat. Is any body else having this problem?

WIN XP SP2
Pentium D CPU 2.8 GHZ
1 G RAM
Radeon X300 128 Meg
Over 200 gig of HD space

Save game available if wanted

[aegisx]

Point Defense won't fire at fighters (automaticlly in the sims anyways).

[StarJack]

StarJack said:
I still get access violation crashes after strategic combat. Is any body else having this problem?
WIN XP SP2
Pentium D CPU 2.8 GHZ
1 G RAM
Radeon X300 128 Meg
Over 200 gig of HD space
Save game available if wanted



I discovered this was caused by using a saved game from version 1.0. When using strategic combat in a game entirely from version 1.8 I am able to complete strategic combat without a problem. Mike from tech support provided fast and courteous support! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

RonGianti said:
I assume the (%Level% - 1) * 0 is supposed to be times... 10?

Note that you only looked at the MINIMUM damage.
The max damage could be increasing with tech level.

The fact that it does not do so in stock means that the tech only improves the range, not the damage...
Maybe it was intended, maybe not.

Dosen't really matter unless KwokStock has it that way too.

[Thomcat]

heavy bug by playing the game over tcp/ip in in a simultaneous mode!

a friend and me have buyed the game over steam. and start a multiplayer game. but only the host-player and the computerplayers can take the frist round! with the host player folds plays also unproblematically, but the connected player a computer still plays in the background. the minister and so are disabled! the computer change the science, shipmovent and so on. that is bull****.

[RonGianti]

Suicide Junkie said:
The fact that it does not do so in stock means that the tech only improves the range, not the damage...
Maybe it was intended, maybe not.

Dosen't really matter unless KwokStock has it that way too.



Ahh, I'll have to check that.

But I refuse to play KwokStock yet. All the beta testers have the advantage of experience with stock, so I'm sure it will be better, but I just got stock and I'm not ready to jump off it.

But I keep the latest KwokStock on my PC, so in the event of an emergency (I just get fed up with stock http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ) I can make the switch...

[Captain Kwok]

The stock damage formulae are more or less in the same form and weapons that don't have attenuation were just edited to result in 0 for the attenuation calculation instead of having it removed.

[wrongshui]

Odd bug, game hangs on processing all players turns.

Its odd in the fact that it always happens after a new empire rises up. On turn 2409.9 I have 9 empires in the game and it ends turn fine, on turn 2410.0 I have 10 empires and the game halts on processing. If I try to log in as that empire #I get an "access violation at address 006943A8.

[Slick]

Some of these are probably dupes...


BUGS:

"Fire on and destroy" doesn't work.

"Join up with fleet" doesn't work.

the simulator will sometimes lock up the game and then crash it with an access violation if you perform combat simulation a second time using ships that were damaged in the first round.

Upgrading ships engines will upgrade the existing engine to a higher level of the same kind but won't upgrade to a different, superior engine.

ministers don't seem to work. I only tried them on a custom empire setup, not existing empires. Example: created population transport, turned on global pop transport minister and individual minister on ship. Ship won't do anything.


semi-bugs or feature requests depending on your perspective:

in the fleet transfer screen you can't see ship damage so it is very cumbersome to remove damaged ships from a fleet

not being able to view previous levels of a component seriously hinders lots of areas of the game. Examples:

- you can't see the "bang for your buck" when researching higher levels of a component unless you happen to have used the previous comonent somewhere, in which case it is just very cumbersome.

- you pretty much are taking a shot in the dark when upgrading ships using the upgrade button. you can't tell if it is a worthwhile upgrade. a "better" option is to copy the design and then selectively decide about upgrading each component, in this case it is very tedious.

- to add ships to an existing fleet using the fleet transfer screen takes way too many clicks. you must click the fleet and click a non-fleeted ship to just to get the buttons to add ships to appear. the game should highlight the first fleet in the sector (on the right) and the first non-fleeted ship in the sector (on the left) when the window opens.

- treaties aren't saved for reuse.

- the option to fill a construction queue will delete (vice add to) existing items in the queue.

- there are no "move to top/bottom" buttons in the construction queue.

- I see reference to plasma shields in the data files, but they aren't in the game (or I haven't found them yet)

- the Log is still too cumbersome. the best solution would be a hotkey to "go to sector of next log entry (last turn only) and pop a window of what happened there". Log entries not associated with a particular sector could center on the most appropriate place or just your homeworld. That way you could repeatedly hit this hotkey to step thru the log and take action along the way if desired. To keep going back to the Log is very unfun.

- it's nice to be able to type in the amount of units in the cargo transfer screen. It's ludicrous that I have to hit "backspace" to delete the default "1" each time.

[MasterChiToes]

Slick said:
- there are no "move to top/bottom" buttons in the construction queue.



Doesn't replacing the top item in the queue cause the last turn's production overrun to be lost? If so shouldn't we want a "move to next/last" button instead of a "move to top/bottom" button?

[AngleWyrm]

It's ludicrous that I have to hit "backspace" to delete the default "1" each time.


Most of the modern visual languages make programming it not to do that (all-selected default) just a matter of clicking a checkbox/boolean list. Very easy fix.

[Slick]

AngleWyrm said:

It's ludicrous that I have to hit "backspace" to delete the default "1" each time.


Most of the modern visual languages make programming it not to do that (all-selected default) just a matter of clicking a checkbox/boolean list. Very easy fix.



I understand that. Since it is so easy, why was it released that way? In a single game, things like this will make players pull their hair out due to the sheer number of unnecessary clicks, keys and steps to get something simple done.

There are only 2 things standing in the way of making SEV a really great game: A small handful of bugs that cause the game to crash, which I'm sure will be fixed and a very cumbersome UI, which really drains a lot of the fun out of the game. I sure hope that the UI gets basically overhauled, using a player perspective as a guide, to give the player an intuitive, easy and efficient front end UI. Right now, unfortunately, it's none of those things and as a game progresses, they manifest themselves much more.

[Yimboli]

Slick said:


In a single game, things like this will make players pull their hair out due to the sheer number of unnecessary clicks, keys and steps to get something simple done.

There are only 2 things standing in the way of making SEV a really great game: A small handful of bugs that cause the game to crash, which I'm sure will be fixed and a very cumbersome UI, which really drains a lot of the fun out of the game. I sure hope that the UI gets basically overhauled, using a player perspective as a guide, to give the player an intuitive, easy and efficient front end UI. Right now, unfortunately, it's none of those things and as a game progresses, they manifest themselves much more.





SLICK I LOVE YOU can I have your baby?

If enough people agreed, I'd hold out hope for just such an overhaul...

[StarJack]

Well said slick. I'm still kind of dumbfounded that fleets are still useless, expending all of their ordinance in 1 turn sitting still.

[Slick]

I'm composing an email to MM with some proposed UI suggestions. After I send it, I'll post it here.

@ Y: That won't be necessary.

[Slick]

Strategic combat still crashes sometimes. If saved just prior to the crash, reloaded, and redone in tactical with auto-everything, no crash. Wierd.

Similar components aren't next to each other in the ship designs screen. Examples: engines are scattered, colony modules are scattered. Yes, at the cost of even more clicks, I can filter the list, but again, it should be better organized for the player in the first place.

[Jeku]

When I made a trade to an Ice race to get the Ice tech for my Rock tech, the log displayed that it was a successful trade but I already had Rock tech. Basically it switches the Give and the Get items around.

This was already reported, but it was said that the log was incorrect but the trade still went through. This isn't the case when I made the tech trade, as I still didn't have the Ice colony tech in my inventory.

Hope that makes sense http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Phoenix-D]

Slick said:
Similar components aren't next to each other in the ship designs screen. Examples: engines are scattered, colony modules are scattered. Yes, at the cost of even more clicks, I can filter the list, but again, it should be better organized for the player in the first place.



Its organized just like SEIV. Except by default its filtered alphabetically. Go into Empire Options; I don't remember exactly where but there's an option to return it to normal sorting.

[Slick]

Thanks. Found it. What an "interesting" place to put that.

[Fyron]

You can also fix the alphasorting malfeature in Settings.txt (lines 450-451), eliminating the need to do it for every game you start.

Default Empire Option Sort Components By Name := TRUE
Default Empire Option Sort Vehicle Sizes By Name := TRUE

Best to get both, so ships are sorted by size too (that's how they are ordered in the vehiclesizes.txt file, more or less).

[Kamog]

Do you find that SEV runs slower and slower the longer you play it? I find that after an hour or two of playing, the ships move slowly in the system view, so I have to change the system icon movement speed from 'medium' to 'high' and then to 'very high' but eventually that becomes slow too. The different windows in the game open more slowly too. To fix it, I have to quit the game and restart.

[Devnullicus]

Yeah, that's known as a memory leak.

[Jeku]

And that's what usually happens before it crashes or locks into a forever loop after all the AI players have made their moves.

[Jeku]

Also, the credits look a bit funky ingame--- I don't know if it's by design though. It just shows a bunch of photos, with no names. Does anyone else get that too?

[Raapys]

I think there's a memory leak with ship movement. The longer 'routes' you make, the slower they actually move through that route, graphically. If you set up a 20-turn route going through several systems it gets really bad indeed.

[phalzyr]

StarJack said:
I discovered this was caused by using a saved game from version 1.0. When using strategic combat in a game entirely from version 1.8 I am able to complete strategic combat without a problem. Mike from tech support provided fast and courteous support! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif



No 1.0 save games here. I never crashed in 1.0 in combat but then I never attack planets before upgrading. new game started after that. This is the ONLY time strategic happens for me, When BOTH a planet and ship are in battle it crashes. I can do a ship or planet by themselves but not together or....CTD

Actually anything with a planet causes crash, planet has to be solo or I have to go tactical.

[RonGianti]

Suicide Junkie said:

RonGianti said:
I assume the (%Level% - 1) * 0 is supposed to be times... 10?

Note that you only looked at the MINIMUM damage.
The max damage could be increasing with tech level.

The fact that it does not do so in stock means that the tech only improves the range, not the damage...
Maybe it was intended, maybe not.

Dosen't really matter unless KwokStock has it that way too.



Just to clarify, I went back at your suggestion and checked the Max range forumla as well. They both multiply by 0, so this has to be a bug...

[Suicide Junkie]

Might you have a problem with your fonts, causing all this text to not show up?

[AngleWyrm]

Raapys said:
The longer 'routes' you make, the slower they actually move through that route, graphically. If you set up a 20-turn route going through several systems it gets really bad indeed.



This could also be caused by a path-finding algorithm that is being run each time the ship moves. If that is the case, then a workaround would be to break the trip into several shorter destinations. That way thinking about the best hex to move into only has to consider a smaller number of possible routes.

[Slick]

Yes, if you have ever seen the "stutter step dance" (SSD)(tm) this makes sense.

SSD = a ship moves into sensor range of a warp point, sees an enemy on the warp point, decides that he doesn't want to engage, moves 1 sector toward another warp point and now out of sensor range of the original warp point, now can't see the enemy, realizes that the original warp point path is shorter, moves 1 sector back toward the original warp point, again sees the enemy, wash, rinse, repeat. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[Baron Munchausen]

Slick said:
Yes, if you have ever seen the "stutter step dance" (SSD)(tm) this makes sense.

SSD = a ship moves into sensor range of a warp point, sees an enemy on the warp point, decides that he doesn't want to engage, moves 1 sector toward another warp point and now out of sensor range of the original warp point, now can't see the enemy, realizes that the original warp point path is shorter, moves 1 sector back toward the original warp point, again sees the enemy, wash, rinse, repeat. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif



Now that one I have never seen. Talk about stoopid! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif It's bad enough when ships change course to a different a much longer route because a WP several systems away is temporarily blocked by a non-ally ship. But this is completely ridiculous.

[Slick]

I have it happen all the time, especially with lone colony ships, if I send them 2-3 systems thru areas that might be being explored by other empires (that don't have a peace treaty with me).

[Shadowstar]

I tried to launch satellites from a planet while the planet and a ship that couldn't launch units were both selected, but after launching a few I tried to recover one because it was launching the wrong satellites, and the game crashed. In other words, it crashed because I tried to recover a satellite with a ship that couldn't recover them. EDIT: corrected this

The AI will send me technologies as part of a standing treaty, even if I don't have the requisite technologies, but I won't actually get them. The log says that I've researched them, but they're not there. It does this with every turn.

Occasionally the sound in combat will stop for a while, even when there is alot of shooting going on, then start up again. Along these same lines, sounds sometimes play way too loudly.

The way names and flags are displayed on the system map is somewhat odd, especially if you have more than one information toggle turned on. Names will often be displayed over other names, resulting in unreadable garbage. I'd suggest having ship names display seperate from planet names and if there is more than one ship or planet in the sector, have it say something like "multiple ships" or "multiple planets", instead of a pile of letters. In top-down mode, the flags cover names and other info, and it is sometimes difficult to see the selection indicator (especially if it is pointing at a planet with a ring and you are zoomed out somewhat far, the ring will cover the indicator). I'd suggest making the selection indicator display superimposed and translucent over the 3d display, so that it is always visible.

The mouse control seems occasionally slow and choppy, making the process of moving the mouse pointer around and clicking a bit more cumbersome than it would otherwise be. I think this is partly why people are complaining about having to click too much. When it takes 2-3 times longer to operate the interface than what we're used to, people tend to feel that the game is a bit lethargic. A minor issue, perhaps, but if it can be fixed it should be - at some point.

All in all, SE5 is one of the most impressive independent games I've ever seen. I'm not surprised to see some bugs this close after release, but the fact that it was rushed is evident, some bugs are okay but there are quite a few here. No doubt the publisher is to blame for that, eh... Well, at least it runs.

Kudos to the dev team who I know is already hard at work fixing stuff.

[Dejavuproned]

I have an issue Inoticed. When I have two types of pop on a planet, one that breathes the atmosphere of the planet and one that doesnt, and I try to take all of the non atmosphere breathing population off via transport to get rid of the "dome" over my colony and unlock the full storage and facility room of the planet it wont let me! I can take all of the population up to the last 1k despite that fact that there is still thousands of the other population on the planet so it would not be "abandoned"! This worked in the demo, I dont get why it doesn't now...

[Shadowstar]

It seems that there is something with planet cargo that got broken in 1.08

I also noticed that when deploying satellites from a planet, you can't deploy specific satellites, it will deploy the one at the top of the list each time. If the satellite you want is at the bottom (such as a sensor sat), and you choose to launch it, it will launch the one at the top of the list (which in my case was a weapon sat).

[RonGianti]

Dejavuproned said:
When I have two types of pop on a planet, one that breathes the atmosphere of the planet and one that doesnt,



There was a bug in 1.00 that would allow you to remove the entire population of a planet. It happened by mistake if you built a colonizer, then told it to colonize a planet, it could take all the population off the current planet and leave it lifeless.

1.08 made it so you can't remove the last 1 mil population, but now 2 races are forced together... In the meantime, you can actually scrap (!) population or jettison them so only the race that breathes the atmosphere is left.

Tiny cruiseships come by and pick them up and take them on an interstellar vacation, in case you are concerned. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Moriarty]

A bunch of 1.08 bugs. Several are dupes but it can't hurt to re-iterate them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Oh and I agree that the interface needs work. There are far too many places where its not intuitive.

Note: A couple of days ago I sent an email to malfdor with a whole bunch more bugs. A couple of these reference bugs in that e-mail

Anyhow, the bugs


1) - I was being attacked by a non-treatied player. 5 Frigates attacking my undefended world. Using strategic view.
Problem is that both my planet AND the enemies 5 ships were all in the "defenders" column together.
Note: A different planet was attacked by a different player, but in that case both parties were in their correct columns.

2) - I recieved a treaty proposal from the AI that had:
Share Resupply
Share Commucations
It had a few other elements, but these two were broken because they didn't actually have any of their sub-elements selected. i.e. They did not specify whether it would affect both empires, or one specifically. They were blank, both in the "view" and when replying with a counter-offer and altering the treaty elements.

I later recieved a different treaty proposal which had the element "mutual defence aid" checked but with a blank sub-section. This is odd because the MDA clause only has one sub-section. :?

I did manage to agree to a treaty with the non-existant clauses and the game didn't crash, so that's something. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

3) Pathfinding bug - Although this is also a mapping issue. "Seeing all systems" is off, and I have not traded any mapping data with any other races. Basically I have to explore the "old fashioned" way. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
There are two systems which are connected. Except that neither system has been fully explored and I cannot yet see the warp points which are connecting them in EITHER system. The problem is twofold:
a) On my galaxy map it is clearly showing that the two systems are known to be linked together.
b) I have a ship plotting its course through this unexplored warp-point and coming out at the other unexplored warp-link. The pathfinding line goes into the red (unexplored) area in one system, stops, and then pops up in the next system in another red area.


4) - For some reason it's not possible to adjust the width of columns in listings. I.e. on the colonies list it would be nice to be able to change the widths so that you could make the ones that are too large (like planet name) smaller.

5) - On a related note - Why doesn't it remember your custom layouts between games? It doesn't remember your empire options between games either. In fact it remembers damn little (nothing to be exact).

6) - Why do I have to give my treaties names? At least against the AI this is pointless and just results in me constantly forgetting and having to spend an extra 10 seconds editing my treaty proposals.

7) - I received several anomalous event logs pertaining to research. Namely I recieved the following 4:
New Tech Level
Tech 1 - Energy streaming
Tech 1 - Torpedo weapons
Tech 1 - Smaller weapons
Tech 1 - Shield damaging weapons
The problem was that this was after researching contra terrene engines lvl 4.
I suspect these are because my ally is sharing his research with me. So why don't the messages say they are courtesy of my allies? Its confusing seeing messages about research you've not conduced (initially I thought it was another bug).

8) - Anyhow there is still a bug proper there. Because I get those messages EVERY TURN. I'm pretty sure its because I don't have the necessary pre-requisites (i.e. "Military Theory" for torps). Them being given every single turn is just silly.

9) - In my e-mail I reported a bug about a ship going forwards and backwards repeatedly forever, turn after turn.
Well that's happened again (twice). But now I think I know the cause. I gave the ship orders to go to another system. This involved it passing through a hex that it later (as in when it came into sensor range) found out was occupied by an enemy ship. For some reason rather than just stopping (or re-pathing around), it decides to go back and forth indefinately, even after the ship that was in the way has gone.

10) - why does the paused strategic combat screen have a framerate of 12fps (about the same as when its unpaused!)? On average I'm getting abut 30, but the strategic combat screen doesn't include any 3d stuff at all that I can see.
And when I open the ship-report panel that shows a ships components, it plummets down to 4fps!!! -
Note - In tactical if I open the ship report panel, the frame rate plummets to 4fps too.

11) - I somehow managed to get the cheat-code entry text to come up. But now I can't get rid of it. not escape, not return (both pressed repeatedly), not random bashing on the keyboard, it simply won't go away. As such I now can't use keyboard shortcuts until I restart the game or maybe just end the turn. Nope, even when I end a turn it's still there on the new turn!!!! HOW DO I GET RID OF IT? In the end I had to re-load the game. Not good.

12) - If I research 6 levels of something in one turn (i.e. "Starship Resupply" lvls 1 to 6), why do I get six messages telling me that I've completed these six levels of tech, PLUS I get six messages telling me that a new facility (Resupply 1-6) has just been developed. Wouldn't it be neater to only show the top level that was researched (i.e. lvl 6)? Especially in relation to the facility seeing as you can't actually use the lower level ones.

13) - The game doesn't seem to want to let me load my pre-saved empires when creating a new game. I get: "This empire cannot be added because it has used more racial points than are allowed."
Problem is, its not. This has happened to both my saved empires, and they are both using 3,000racial points.
But even when I set the racial point count to 5,000 for the game it still won't let me load those empires.
The weird thing, is that if I load up a saved game type which has 3,000 Racial points set, it will let me use those pre-saved empires.

14) - When I load an empire from file and go to edit it, it gives me 476,000 technology points to use. Which is wrong because I've never used tech-points (always leave it off). When I create a new empire manually this number is at 0.
The really really bad thing is that you can then use those 476,000 TP in a game where the rules say you should have 0 (I just tested it). Obivously this gives you an unfair advantage.

15) - I played a game where I had turned off inteligence. There are two bugs here:
a) I was able to research intelligence stuff still.
b) The AI not only researched intelligence things but also built them!

16) - I wanted a weapon platform. I auto-designed it and it had several supply pods and ordanance storage pods. But I couldn't manually add those pods to it. Similarly it came with a medical bay (why?) but its not available on the component list for me to add manually. The filter is set to "show all components".



Hmnm, 16 bugs. Not bad. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Moriarty]

Slick said:
Yes, if you have ever seen the "stutter step dance" (SSD)(tm) this makes sense.

SSD = a ship moves into sensor range of a warp point, sees an enemy on the warp point, decides that he doesn't want to engage, moves 1 sector toward another warp point and now out of sensor range of the original warp point, now can't see the enemy, realizes that the original warp point path is shorter, moves 1 sector back toward the original warp point, again sees the enemy, wash, rinse, repeat. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif


As pointed out in my bug list, this continues to happen even when the route the ship wanted to take becomes clear.

[tmcc]

Regarding number 14 this happened to me, but only when I messed with the data files after saving the empire. Also if you notice your starting tech levels will all go to zero, so you don't really have 476K extra points to use, but actually need to buy back your starting technologies, at least that is what happened to me. A clear bug there though is that if, as an example, you don't buy back lvl 1 of projectile weapons and leave it at zero you will still have the DUC lvl 1 component available at the start.

[Spoo]

Moriarty said:
11) - I somehow managed to get the cheat-code entry text to come up. But now I can't get rid of it. not escape, not return (both pressed repeatedly), not random bashing on the keyboard, it simply won't go away. As such I now can't use keyboard shortcuts until I restart the game or maybe just end the turn. Nope, even when I end a turn it's still there on the new turn!!!! HOW DO I GET RID OF IT? In the end I had to re-load the game. Not good.



Hit ` (the ~ key)

[Raapys]

It appears impossible to Accept/Reject a Form Alliance counter-proposal?

Also, ships/fleets regularly get *stuck* in suns. Basically they drive all the way up to them and stop there until given new orders that take them away from the sun.

[dmm]

Slick said: Yes, if you have ever seen the "stutter step dance" (SSD)(tm) this makes sense.


Sounds like my management is running your ships.

[dmm]

Moriarty said:
13) - The game doesn't seem to want to let me load my pre-saved empires when creating a new game. I get: "This empire cannot be added because it has used more racial points than are allowed."
Problem is, its not. This has happened to both my saved empires, and they are both using 3,000racial points.
But even when I set the racial point count to 5,000 for the game it still won't let me load those empires.
The weird thing, is that if I load up a saved game type which has 3,000 Racial points set, it will let me use those pre-saved empires.



This is being done on purpose. In the original demo, you could get rid of all the default techs, which gave you lots of racial points to spend on other stuff. Then when you started the game, you had all the default techs anyway. So a change was made to prevent this, which results in the behavior you are seeing.

[Raapys]

I sort of found one(two) bugs...No idea how I managed this feat though. Super-technology breakthrough? Screenshot attached. It's not a fake.

[Slick]

At extreme magnification you can just make out the bumper sticker "We Brake For Nobody"

[Barnacle Bill]

tmcc said:
A clear bug there though is that if, as an example, you don't buy back lvl 1 of projectile weapons and leave it at zero you will still have the DUC lvl 1 component available at the start.



That's because it always goes by the "start level" on the tech in techareas.txt.

Not exactly a bug, but caused by the same thing...
I was experimenting with racial trait-dependent techs. I discovered that you can set them to a higher starting level than 0 and your race with that trait will srart at that level of the tech. However, so will all the races in the game that DON'T have that racial trait. They can't research further levels of it, and it doesn't even show up on their research screen, but it shows up in their empire report and they can build whatever is allowed by the level(s) of the tech they receive this way. It turns out all the racial trait-dependent techs in stock start at 0 - guess that's why. That might be exploitable somehow for a mod - everybody gets level 1 but only the special races can research higher.

[Barnacle Bill]

I encountered another couple of bugs using remote mining...

On the Empire Options screen, it adds in resources from remote mining twice - once under "ships" and once under "remote mining". This total is then used to calculate your "net". However, you don't really get double output. So, let's say that you have 100,000 minerals being produced by other methods and 10,000 being produced by remote mining. The report will say you have 120,000 coming in, even though you really only get 110,000. Let's say you are spending 115,000. The report will say you have a net gain of 5,000, but really you have a net loss of 5000. So, your stored minerals will go down 5,000 every turn and you are wondering why when the report says you have a net surplus... Of course, you'll never see this except in the specific circumstances where you have a net deficit that is <= your actual (not doubled) remote mining production. Any other circumstance will give you a net with the right sign on it at least, and you'll only notice something is amiss if you add up the numbers manually.

In the planets screen, if you select the "Value" layout and the "Asteriods" filter, it doesn't fill in the values in the columns. Interestingly, sorting by the columns via clicking on the column heading still works. However, you can't see what the values are. This is a pain, when you are trying to intelligently place remote mining ships...

On that subject, although not a bug, it would be nice if there was a stock ship design type "remote mining ship" and the ability to dispatch them from the planets screen like colony ships (only the ones having no orders & not currently remote mining would respond), and to be able to see from this screen which planets/asteroids have a remote mining ship present/in route.

[MisterBenn]

Hi all,

I have had what appears to be an issue in the map generation - on the demo, and also in my current game on v1.08 with Balance mod 0.92.

In both cases, I have a warp point in my home system, which when I travel through, delivers me to a different warp point within the same solar system. If I have a scout set to "Explore", he chooses warp point A, travels through, and then arrives at warp point B within the home system still. The order to explore means the scout reassesses and decides he needs to warp through point A once again, and I have to intervene to stop him looping endlessly like this.

Has anyone else seen this? The offending warp point is a "Large, stable" one and I'm *fairly* sure that no properties can exist on warp points which cause this.

I have a saved game to illustrate this at home which I can follow up with soon if required.

Loving the game though!

[Yimboli]

Wow! do you mind uploading that? I'd really like to see it. I assume the warp point was auto-generated?

[Raapys]

Tell me if you find a warp point large enough for my ships O_O

I have another bug'ish issue: I build a ship with a Space Yard on it. It's a level 1 Space Yard, which supposedly can construct with 1k each of Minerals, Organics and Radioactives each turn. I have 10% and 25% racial trait construction bonuses.

But when I enter the building queue for that Space Yard Ship, it can actually build with 4,900 M, O & R each turn! That's about 3 times more than it should.

[MisterBenn]

@Yimboli: I'll post the save game tomorrow. It was an autogenerated galaxy, and I didn't touch the warp point options so I imagine the option was "all connected". Also, I started the game without previewing or generating the galaxy first, if that matters. And since it was early game, I haven't tried anything like finding the other end of it and coming back through!

[Phoenix-D]

Raapys: you don't happen to have the +25% spaceyard racial trait, do you? Its being added twice at the moment.

[Dizzy]

I have a treaty with a race that allows for resupply at each others bases. When I select my colony ship and hit the resupply at the nearest base button, it will move toward the allied race's planet, but it stops short of moving into that hex so it doesnt resupply. I cant even get it to move into the hex when I speciafically select it. It just will not.

What am I doing wrong? Is this a bug?

[Phoenix-D]

Do you have non-aggression? Because if you don't, you can't move onto the same hex as your ally without attacking them..

[Moriarty]

Spoo said:
Hit ` (the ~ key)


Heh. That was probably the only key I managed to miss in my random bashings try to get rid of it. Thanks. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



dmm said:
This is being done on purpose. In the original demo, you could get rid of all the default techs, which gave you lots of racial points to spend on other stuff. Then when you started the game, you had all the default techs anyway. So a change was made to prevent this, which results in the behavior you are seeing.


That doesn't make sense. I have spent exactly 3,000 racial points (the ones it gave me) so why won't it let me load this previous Empire?



dizzy said:
When I select my colony ship and hit the resupply at the nearest base button, it will move toward the allied race's planet, but it stops short of moving into that hex so it doesnt resupply.


I didn't think you needed to actually go to the planet itself to resupply, I thought it was provided system wide. That's what the manual says (just looked) and the in-game text under "system modifiers" in the top left.

[Moriarty]

16 bugs in my last one. Let's see how many this time shall we?


17) What is the trigger for combat finishing? Because its certainly not obvious. I know it ends at 5 mins, but I've had it end at 20 seconds when both parties were running away from each other too.
Anyhow, the bug is that several times combat has concluded prematurely. I think it was because one of the ships ran away whilst the others stayed to fight.
So I'm squaring up to kill the ship thats headed straight for me and then BAM. "Combat finished"!

18) I've got my game set to "team play". I.e. all the AI's are supposed to ally themselves against me. Gee, that doesn't work. EVERY TURN (give or take) I have them BEGGING me to accept this treaty or that. If I accept they'll go and declare war on me two turns down the road.

19) I sent the AI a treaty. It was a nice simple affair and it had exactly one clause - I would give the AI ALL of my technology. That's it. One clause.
The AI refused!!!!!!???
(note: I did this because the AI is so incredably retarded it's still only got light cruisers whilst I'm running around with lvl 10 dreadnaughts).

20) I autogenerated a Boarding ship. It has no weapons. Fine. So why does it have insane amounts of ordanance storage?

21) I have tech 18 Master computers. Why does the auto-generate insist of using my tech 1 crew / living / bridge stuff?

22) Whats the difference between a cargo transport and a troop carrier? They're identical when using auto-generate.

23) Select a weapon mount. Say a massive mount. Now if you right click any component (even one that can't use a mount) to get its detailed info up, it will tell you that it's structure and mass are triple what they should be. Though when you actually put said component onto the ship it'll be fine.

24) Inspite of #19 I did eventually get a research sharing treaty with the AI where the AI got my current research.
Anyhow, we agreed to the treaty and it definately took force, I recieved all of his tech (which consisted of tech 1 in things I'd never bothered with), and I recieved a message saying that I'd sent a huge list of tech to him.
So next turn I go to look at the scores, problem is his tech level is STILL down where it was. No spike on the graph showing his rapid ascent of the tech tree. Nothing.
Now I'm going to have to come up with another way to try to give the AI lots of tech. :?

25) I've turned on the "colony ship" minister. I decide to build a whole flottila of colony ships at a load of planets and have "all new ships go under minister control". But nothing happened. My colony ships just sat around. They had the ministerial icon next to them, but they did nothing. This inspite of the fact there were tons of worlds to colonise, many breathable.

26) I recieved a combat report stating that the enemies' starting forces consisted of large numbers of ships. These ships included lots of small drones + fighters that were classed as "100% damaged - Normal". How do you get a 100% damaged vehicle at the START of combat?

27) I recieved several combat reports. For "starting forces" they didn't have anything written down under the "status" column - the other columns were fine. The finished forces status column was fine. It didn't show the status for the ships of either side.

28) When you go to the Empire Comparisons screen, there are the three options "Score, Victor conditions, Graphs". The little blue dot doesn't actually show up next to whichever of them is selected when you first enter the screen.

29) Why does the "recon satellite" have more than one "basic sesnors"? They aren't cumulative. And why does the AI build so many? One around each planet is more than sufficient. Four around the same planet is overkill

30) My research is off the chart. And I mean that quite literally (see the attachment). I've got 1,096 tech levels and the chart seems to only be graphing up to 1,000.

31) Sort of related to the above - When a score reaches 8 digits (i.e. 10 mil + ) the left-most character goes over the border.




That'll do for now. I don't think I'll bother reporting any more. Between this lot plus my initial email as well as a few I've not documented I figure that's about 50 bugs.

I think it's pretty obvious this game should have been in beta testing for a few more months - I guess they rushed it out to meet chistmas. Oh well, just have to wait for all the patches. :?

[Dizzy]

How's this one:

After moving a task force on top of my planet that has a resupply base, a fighter group inside the task force was not resupplied with ordinance. I had to remove the ftr group from the task force, move it off and back unto the planet before it resupplied. I then added it back to the task force.

THEN, the next turn I send the task force off to kill an enemy ship group. I notice one of the two ftr groups in my task force flee from combat. I check them and they had zero ordinance...

I reload the saved game from before I ended the last turn and it appears that somehow the turn break steals their ordinance. In order to get it full, I have to detach them from the task force, move them off and on the planet.

fracking ridiculous.

[Dizzy]

More problems with ftrs. After gasing up as above, I send them out to kill 2 lowly enemy colony ships.

What do my ships do? Some flee the others sit there.

In this screenshot, it appears that the enemy colony ships are in the defenders slot with me, or I'm there with them. Isnt someone supposed to be in the other side?

Same thing happens when I attack planets. The planet and my ships are on the either the attacker or defender sides, not both. Is this a bug? Or are we supposed to be on the same side? Is this why i cant kill enemy ships and planets?

http://home.satx.rr.com/spiderwebs/SEV-1.jpg


Edit: And after fruitless attmpts at attack, I discover one of the ftr groups now has no ordinance. How is that possible? No one fired a shot.

[Moriarty]

Dizzy said:
In this screenshot, it appears that the enemy colony ships are in the defenders slot with me, or I'm there with them. Isnt someone supposed to be in the other side?

Same thing happens when I attack planets. The planet and my ships are on the either the attacker or defender sides, not both. Is this a bug? Or are we supposed to be on the same side? Is this why i cant kill enemy ships and planets?

http://home.satx.rr.com/spiderwebs/SEV-1.jpg


Edit: And after fruitless attmpts at attack, I discover one of the ftr groups now has no ordinance. How is that possible? No one fired a shot.


I've had attacking ships in the same column as a defending planet. They still attacked the planet and levelled it.

On the matter of no ordinance - I thought that was a commonly known bug. I've been attacked plenty of times by the AI only to have him instantly run away because of no ordanance.

Thinking about all these bugs I've come across, I realise that there are still sizable areas of the game I've not even bothered to touch: fighters, starbases, troops, etc (nothing except starships for me), intelligence, ministers, planetary combat. It really is a very complex (and good if you ignore the bugs) game. Just unfortunate it didn't get the testing it deserved.

[Raapys]

Granted it needs *alot* more patches, but with the history of SE IV I'm more than willing to give Malfador benefit of the doubt, especially with the great modders here working on the game too. And even with all these faults, I'm still having fun with SE V.

Raapys: you don't happen to have the +25% spaceyard racial trait, do you? Its being added twice at the moment.

I do have it. However, my best planet has 3100'ish construction rate, and a planetary construction facility has 2k original construction rate at level 1, while ship space yard only has 1k orginal. Yet both my construction ships have 4900 rate? O_O Something's very fishy there.

Also, isn't that trait only supposed to work for *planetary* construction yards? To my knowledge it actually says '25% Planetary construction bonus' or some such.

[Zereth]

Has anybody else, after trying to conquer a planet with a few troops and a bunch of fighters (because the troops can't navigate to save their lives and mostly spin around in circles) had more ground combat occuring at "Fighter Group <number>", consiting of an empty city surrounded by blackness? I'm tryign to figure out what's going on here. It wasn't a big deal before, since I was getting attacked by one milita fighter, which my fighters (which I _think_ were actually on the planet just conquered) killed it off easily, but the latest time I tried, it was on a planet without a resupply depot, so my drained fighters got slowly picked apart by this lone milita fighter over several turns.

[Tim_Ward]

If you have a non-aggression treaty with an empire, and you enter a sector with both the allied empire and a third empire, your ships and the allied empires ships will still attack each other.

[Suicide Junkie]

Are you sure it wasn't one of the "we won't fight in neutral territory" ones?

The "peace, but we'll kick your *** if you invade our space" treaties are very nice.

[Tim_Ward]

Yes, quite sure. It was a Non-agression (Colonise each other systems). Also, it was neutral space.

They had a couple of lovely rock-oxygen planets in their space, and I had a big gas carbon dioxide gas giant I wasn't using. Yeah. \m/

[Moriarty]

Ok, so I said I wouldn't report any more bugs. I lied, I find too many of the damnable things. :-/


32) The shield regenertor says it'll regen 52 shields per second (or whatever it is depending on your tech level). But in combat its only doing about 2/s.

33) I added an afterburner to a fighter. Yet its speed kept being reported at 21, 21 (18 quantum engines + 3 bonus).

34) In combat the fighters actual speed is 44. This also happens to drones - they go much faster than they say. I'm guessing this is intended, but they still mis-report their speed.
- Also if the speed is double then that means the fighters speed as actually 22 and thus the afterburner was being taken into account. It just wasn't reported as such on the design screen.

35) I had fighters with lots of different types of weapons, many of which used ordanance. They went chasing after some drones to kill. Thing was that when they reached the drones they stayed back and used their longer-range weapons rather than got close. This was a problem because they eventually ran out of ordanace, yet remained too far away to use their non-ordanace weapons. They were set to "optimal fire range".

36) Why does a minefield that just been cleared get marked? SHouldn't it only mark minefields if there are still mines and remove the mark when they are cleared?

37) FATAL ERROR - Game died. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif - Strategic Combat. The enemy came through a warppoint that I had a dreadnaught on the other side of. Two ships that I could see. 8x speed. Game crashed.
I can't give a memory address for the error because SEV wasn't willing to show it (even though I know there was an error dialog behind the grey screen).

38) ANOTHER FATAL ERROR - I was trying to recover fighters (no idea how to, just learning), and clicked "recover unit" on launch-recover - the game died. Again no memory address.



That'll do. I know I won't report any more because I won't play SEV any more until its been heavily patched - those two fatal errors cost me a good hour or so of gaming (I don't use autosave - as saving takes FOREVER in this game). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Phoenix-D]

34) isn't a bug. SE5 just doesn't tell you combat speed. For ships that doesn't matter because its the same; fighters work a little bit differently..

[Dizzy]

Bug: I have a resupply alliance with another race and when trying to resupply at one of their planets, my ships stop on an adjecnt hex and refuse to go into the planet hex.

Bug: Far too often I am allied in the defenders column with a race I'm at war with and neither tactical or strategic combat will let my ships fire at the enemy. This has happened multiple times and I have several save games showing it. This is a game killer for me.

Bug: Fleeted ftr groups occasionally have to be detatched from their fleet and move out and back into a planet w/resupply base to resupply ordinance. The following turn the ordinance is gone/stolen by the planet again. Sometimes units in fleets are not resupplied moving into a planet unless 1st detached from fleet when moving in.

Bug: One of my Ftr groups inside a fleet will lose all ordinance after an enemy engagement in which no shots are fired.

[Raapys]

Bug: I have a resupply alliance with another race and when trying to resupply at one of their planets, my ships stop on an adjecnt hex and refuse to go into the planet hex.

You don't need to go onto the enemy planet hex to get supplies: being in the system is enough. However, note that a single resupply depot only distributes 500 supply points *total* throughout the system, and those points are given depending on the supply priorities. Your ship might very well be far down on the ladder.

Bug: Far too often I am allied in the defenders column with a race I'm at war with and neither tactical or strategic combat will let my ships fire at the enemy.

Note that, while it's probably a bug that they're in the same column, the same happens all the time to me but never prevents me from shooting at the enemy. In other words, I suspect you're experiencing another problem. Could be a seperate bug, lack of supplies/ordanance, etc.

Perhaps you could post a savegame with this problem?

Sometimes units in fleets are not resupplied moving into a planet unless 1st detached from fleet when moving in.

Again note that you don't need to enter a planet's hex to get supplies, and that one supply facility only distributes 500 total points each turn, divided after how your resupply priorities( set in Empire Options) are set up.

[Phoenix-D]

Dizzy: you never answered the question about whether you have a non-aggression treaty or not. Your ships are probably stopping because they can't move into that hex without initiating combat!

[Dizzy]

http://home.satx.rr.com/spiderwebs/SEV-2.jpg

Entire treaty. BTW, if I am supposed to receive supplies by just being in the system... then possibly I'm not getting any from my allies because they are busy resupplying their own ships? I find this strange because they dont have any ships in the system.

But that doesnt resolve the bug where my ftrs lose their ordinance after a battle where no one fires a shot and having the planet steal it in a seperate instance.

Also, the not being able to fire at your enemy... has been confirmed by other players from one of my saved games which is posted on another thread. Has happened vs colony ships, planets and ftrs and ships... all sorts of situations vs a race at war in two seperate games same issue. I have ordinance. I have proper tactics and strategy setup. Like I said, it was already confirmed.

The last one here is the game killer. I'm still deciding what to do with this $40 box...

[Phoenix-D]

You don't have a non-aggression treaty. There's nothing under the sub-heading, so the treaty just SAYS non-agression but doesn't enforce it. THAT is probably a bug, by the way. Or a modeling of the UN. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

You should be getting supplies by being in the system, but its possible that ability isn't being extended to allies, just the supplies on the actual planet.

[Dizzy]

So I have a non aggression treaty with no details which is a bug? And that's why it wont let me enter my ally's planet hex?

Hrmmmm. I have a colony ship that will go between two different planets when I click the nearest resupply point button. Neither hex the ship will enter, tho.

[Raapys]

then possibly I'm not getting any from my allies because they are busy resupplying their own ships? I find this strange because they dont have any ships in the system.

None at all? Note that launched fighters( I think, anyway), satellites and bases also counts. I've not tried it myself, so it could be that it's actually not working, but I think it's more likely that there could be something you've overlooked in his system. Remember that you might very well not be seeing all the forces he has in that system.

So I have a non aggression treaty with no details which is a bug? And that's why it wont let me enter my ally's planet hex?

Actually, you *don't* have a non-aggression treaty. No details = no treaty. It's just an interface bug sort of. And since you don't have such a treaty, you can't enter his planet hexes without using the 'Attack' command.

[Phoenix-D]

The bug is that it lets you propose a treaty like that. Any treaty element without a sub-heading is ignored, so there's no point in having them.

The bouncing colony ship is probably part of the same thing.

[Dizzy]

Yup, I guess that's why mb im not getting supplied. Mb you have to be friends 1st and supplied later. Be nice if someone could confirm.

[Shadowstar]

Hopefully MM will fix it by forcing a default setting for every treaty heading. This should also improve AI.

I took the opportunity to listen in on the AI's diplomacy using political espionage and watched a neutral empire repeatedly send treaty proposals to another AI empire for 6 turns in a row. Political espionage does give you some interesting views of just what the AI's are doing with each other behind the scenes, although that usually amounts to something akin to spying on a room full of monkeys.

Is it too soon for another UN reference?

[Yimboli]

Shadowstar said:
Political espionage does give you some interesting views of just what the AI's are doing with each other behind the scenes, although that usually amounts to something akin to spying on a room full of monkeys.




http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

[Moriarty]

Shadowstar: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif


Phoenix-D said:
34) isn't a bug. SE5 just doesn't tell you combat speed. For ships that doesn't matter because its the same; fighters work a little bit differently..



So what does the "21, 21" on the ship design represet then? I thought it was space and ground combat speeds.

Not to mention - fighters can't fly anywhere OTHER than in combat (be it ground or space), so there's no point showing star-system speed.
Thus I'm going to stick to my guns and call it a bug. At the very least if it's intended then it's poor design. :-/

[Phoenix-D]

It is. Space (strategic) and ground movement (tactical). Fighters CAN fly in-system, by the way. Don't ask me why combat space movement isn't in there I don't know either. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[StarJack]

Shadowstar said:
Political espionage does give you some interesting views of just what the AI's are doing with each other behind the scenes, although that usually amounts to something akin to spying on a room full of monkeys. Is it too soon for another UN reference?



That's funny, and no it's not, though rabid monkeys might be more appropriate.

[Baal]

I didn't find this in the history.txt for 1.08 so here it is. If I an AI uses intelligence to destroy a research project I am doing it makes the research project take an insurmountable amount of time. On further inspection when I clicked the "Research Spent" option to see how much I had spent on various other fields it showed that I had spent "-9,995,234" research in that field.

The destroyed research project was going to take 10 million research points just to dig it out of the hole to get to the next level.

[Caduceus]

I hope that -10M research points is a bug that will be fixed - i.e. set to 0 from whatever you had researched so far. -10M essentially means abandoning the project forever.

[Raapys]

I've had the enemy destroy my research projects several times, without it actually having *any* effect. They'd still finish right on time. Funny game.

[Captain Kwok]

Raapys said:
I've had the enemy destroy my research projects several times, without it actually having *any* effect. They'd still finish right on time. Funny game.

Is that in the Balance Mod though? I have it only subtract 5000 points so you might not even notice depending on how many points you're making. Perhaps I should make it ~25% of the project cost instead?

[Raapys]

Hmm, that might be an idea...or even 50%?

Intelligence seem a bit messed up though. Enemies which have had at max 5'ish intelligence facilities have suddenly come up with 50k intelligence points and hit me with 31(!) attacks in one turn.

[Slick]

It is sabotage! It's not like they stole a wrench or something, they destroyed the research lab, scientists and all that goes with it. You need to start from scratch, maybe worse. It should be -150% or even -200%.

[Shadowstar]

What about having the amount of damage be based on the number of intel points spent?

[Captain Kwok]

Raapys said:Intelligence seem a bit messed up though. Enemies which have had at max 5'ish intelligence facilities have suddenly come up with 50k intelligence points and hit me with 31(!) attacks in one turn.

That's cause *gasp* stock intel projects only cost 1000-5000 points per project.

[Shadowstar]

So how about combining certain intel attacks that would otherwise be repeated excessively into single attacks of larger proportions. For instance, an empire with a small intel capacity may just steal a wrench, whereas one with a developed intel department would bomb the facility, killing the research staff and destroying the subject material. A super-developed intel empire with lots of intel points going into sabotage would not only bomb the facility, they'd delete all government records of its existence, destroy the funding, and make sure organized crime "professionals" made sure no other scientists in the society would be willing to continue researching that technology (in other words, potentially driving the research score in that field into the negative).

[Captain Kwok]

It could be done in the following way without much effort:

Essentially with increasing intel tech, you get additional entries for the same types of sabotage projects - ship bomb, cargo damage, etc. The AI actually picks randomally which project it will use, but this can be adjusted so that low tech projects (aka low effect projects) are preferred when you have less than X points to spend and vice versa for big effect projects.

[Raapys]

That's cause *gasp* stock intel projects only cost 1000-5000 points per project.

That wasn't my main concern, though. I was thinking, how did an empire with *at max* 7-8 intelligence facitilites get 50,000 intelligence points? In the intelligence screen it said 'Enemy empires 1' 'Estimated Intel expenditure against us: 50k'ish'.

I then looked at the scores and noticed that the empire had 4000 intelligence points. So logic dictates that the 'Medium computer player bonus' actually gave him 46K intel points extra?

[Captain Kwok]

The bonuses are 2x-3x-5x for L-M-H. The estimated expenditures is the accumulated total and not a per turn average like I told MM it should be.

[Raapys]

Oh, confusing *_* Then I guess it makes sense, thanks.

[Moriarty]

Phoenix-D said:
It is. Space (strategic) and ground movement (tactical). Fighters CAN fly in-system, by the way.


I think we're communicating at odds here.
I've seen fighters can do the following:
- Fly around in space combat (speed double stated).
- Ground combat.

I've never managed to get them fly to around on the strategic map, that's what the carriers are for. Thus my comment about not needing the strategic movement number because they can't actually do it.

[Phoenix-D]

Except you're wrong. Fighters can move around on the system map just fine. They can't warp, and the turn they're launched they only get one movement point, but other than that- they work like a ship.

[Raapys]

I just had an AI demand I remove my ships from a system I've not yet heard of O_O

Also, somehow the AI managed to move half a dozen ships which had all their engines destroyed or rendered inoperational by damage *11* hexes in one turn, ending up with the rest of his undamaged ships from the same attack. I.e., as if they weren't damaged at all.

[Barronosod]

This is probably known, but I get several CTD when doing various things inside the Alliance chambers. That sounded dirty.

Alliance Relations button - CTD
A few others as well.

[Astax]

Raapys said:
I just had an AI demand I remove my ships from a system I've not yet heard of O_O




Are you allied with another empire? I have recieved threats based on my allies colonies/ships.

[Raapys]

Ah, that's it then, because I had two requests, none of which systems I had actually found, but I have one ally who's spread all over the place.

[Shadowstar]

It looks like Satellite layers (and maybe other unit deployers too), aren't removing the units from thier cargo holds when they deploy them in combat. I had a sat layer which was attacked and dropped sats, then after the battle it still had a full load of the sats, and the ones it deployed were also still deployed. In effect, I got "free sats".

[Raapys]

I had one of my satellite layers under attack, and it dropped its two satellites; but they emptied from the cargo like they should. However, from what I remember those satellite layers were using the 'Carrier' design type since Satellite Layer wasn't implemented yet. That was using Balance 0.92.

[Moriarty]

Phoenix-D said:
Except you're wrong. Fighters can move around on the system map just fine. They can't warp, and the turn they're launched they only get one movement point, but other than that- they work like a ship.


Really? Because they didn't do it when I tried and had no number (i.e. 1/1) showing their movemement points.

And if they only get one movement point that it's STILL mis-reported the movement points, because instead of 21 it gets 1. :-/




I just had an AI demand I remove my ships from a system I've not yet heard of O_O


That happened to me as well, a couple of times but I forgot to report it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif
The system certainly wasn't exploreed and yet the AI was demanding I clear out (I think it was asking me to lose my colonies there actually). I did have colonies in one of their systems - just not the named one.
I certainly wasn't allied though I may have had a treaty.

[Blade W]

Sry if this is noted already, I dont have much time to read all posts here, but found a bug: with "warp points located anywhere in a system" option I saw a warppoint generated in a sector that already occupied by a star. Its nasty cuz cannot move there so u cant warp http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif . I didn't try it from the other side.

[Shadowstar]

Hmm, another issue that seems to only be affecting me. Seems something's up.

[Phoenix-D]

Moriarty: they only get one movement point *on the turn they are launched*. All turns thereafter they get normal movement.

[AAshbery76]

I have a mutual defence pact but the empire in question can still attack your ships.

The empire options are also saying I have 2 fleets when there is only one.

[Phoenix-D]

AAshbery76 said:
I have a mutual defence pact but the empire in question can still attack your ships.



Not a bug. You need to specify "Non aggression" in your pact.

[Shadowstar]

lol, mutual defense without non-agression... sounds like a race of lawyers proposed that one.

[Thy_Reaper]

Some bugs I'm trying to recall from memory, I hope they aren't repeats.

1) Researching too many levels (10+?) of a tech in a turn causes a hang at Processing All Players Turns

2) It seems like a lot of things concerning empire interactions have reversed naming. Spying on politics, system maps, etc.

3) System maps are useless. You just know how many stars it has, and nothing else. You don't get warp points, planets, or anything else. We should be getting ghosted sensor data instead.

4) Intelligence doesn't update technology report. Whenever doing Espionage - Empire Wide, and getting reports on tech levels, this data isn't stored in the technology report on the empires screen. It should be.

5) Intelligence - Empire Wide production reports are painful to look at. They should be in fancy looking columns, and occasionally I should get research and intelligence production reports also.

[Shadowstar]

More bugs:

I attacked an AI homeworld, killed all his ships and bases and then sent in a transport to land troops. It did this, but there were no defending troops or anything on the planet, and so there was no ground combat (this in itself seems odd because the population is supposed to make militia units but did not). At first, I thought the transport didn't drop the troops, but then I looked at the planet and it showed my fighters and troops occupying the planet. However, the planet was still under enemy control.

Next turn, suddenly my fighters are launching from the planet and attacking my ships, but they are now controlled by the enemy AI. It seems the AI magically "converted" all of my units. This is indeed a bug. And yes, they are MY fighters as they use my design and design names, so I know the AI didn't just build some of its own fighters.

So there's that bug. Now I just have to figure out if there's a way I can pull this campaign out of the crapper or if I'll just have to give in and glass the planet.

[Raapys]

You sent a transport ship with 'drop cargo' orders?

[Shadowstar]

I sent a transport ship with capture planet orders, the movement order was an attack-move order. I thought about giving attack-seek with the planet targeted, but I figured it wouldn't matter either way. It's not like the planet's going anywhere.

Although if stuff like this keeps happening, I don't think I'd be surprised if it did...

[Raapys]

You did it in a seperate attack from the main battle?

I've only tried a few capture-planet attacks myself, and all the times I let the AI do the actual battle, just having a 'capture planet' strategy on my cargo ship. All those worked fine: the troops were deployed, combat started the next turn.

Perhaps the bug is that you, I assume, had fighters in the cargo ship with which you 'captured'?

[Shadowstar]

Yes, I didn't really need a carrier in the battle so I assumed I'd just use the fighters for air support on the planet. I put a few extras in with the troops and sent the ship off to do its work. The troop transport arrived after the main fleet had already gone in the turn before and took out all the defenses. One reason I did this was to keep the troop transport out of harm's way. It's probably best I did that too, because otherwise the transport would have bee-lined for the planet while my guys were fighting off the defensive ships. When it did arrive, that's exactly what it did, bee-lined for the planet, but by then it had a clear path and reached the planet with no trouble. It turned and flew away after reaching the planet (that's where it dropped the troops I presume) and the planet report then showed my forces occupying the planet.

I would have expected the planet to go to my control at that phase, but there was no ground combat and the planet remained in enemy hands. I've gone ahead and glassed it now and will just land a colony on it next turn. My main reason for attacking this AI was that his homeworld was about 3 sectors away from the warp point into my home system and his ships keep blockading my other warp points. The sooner I get rid of him, the more territory I will have to myself.

[Raapys]

No, if you do it in tactical combat you'll get a message as soon as the ship reaches the planet that your troops have been deployed and that ground combat will start *next* turn.

At any rate, the presence of the fighters is the only explanation I can see as to why it might get 'bugged'. But then again, I'm not really sure how one is supposed to use fighters in ground combat; if they're just supposed to be in the same hex, or if they're supposed to be part of the cargo drop like yours.

[Shadowstar]

I'm using simultaneous movement, everything is handled by the AI. I prefer that because I will be adapting my Starscape mod from SE4 to SE5 and running PBEM games with it, once the game has been patched a bit more. Anyway, playing simultaneous mode helps me get used to the quirks of the AI system and I can learn how to handle strategies and such.

However, as with any AI, it is potentially buggy. I don't get any messages in combat replays, but I'm used to combat from SE4, and there were no messages there either. If fighters are buggering up the ground combat, then I won't use them from now on, but I've read several posts here from people who have used fighters in ground combat and figured I could use them in a "multi-role" sort of way. Just cuz I don't have any carriers, doesn't mean I can't use em in ground combat, or so I thought... Mostly I just wanted to see how fighters play in ground combat, so in some ways it was also an experiment.

[Phoenix-D]

They work in ground combat, so that's not the bug.

I have no idea why they "turned" on you, but there IS a problem where if the enemy has mines on a planet, you can't take it over (need to kill all enemy units, and mines are invisible..)

[Raapys]

So fighters are supposed to be 'deployed' on the planet?

[Phoenix-D]

They work like troops, except during the actual combat they fly instead of..whatever the hell SE5 troops do.

[Shadowstar]

I've gone back to a saved game I made the turn that I drop the troops and am going to try doing different things with them.

I have a hunch that the bug is related to the fact that there is absolutely no resisting force on the planet. The troops can land without causing a ground combat because there's nothing to fight them. There isn't even a weapon platform on the planet. I suspect that SE5 isn't giving me control because no combat is occuring, in other words it's only coded to give control if a combat occurs and I win it. It wasn't programmed for this occurance.

That said, there SHOULD be resistance. Even if the computer player won't build any troops to protect the people, there should be militias.

Something is odd here.

[Phoenix-D]

Does the planet have population left after your bombardment?

[Shadowstar]

That's just it, I didn't bombard the planet. I had to create a new strategy for my ships to make them ignore the planet, and they do. It works well since the planet doesn't threaten them, and they can leave the population intact. So its basically a full-pop homeworld with no defenses whatsoever, and the only thing keeping me from conquering it is this damn bug.

I wonder: has anyone actually ever seen militia units in a ground battle? I know the manual says that they are a factor in ground combat, but I've never actually seen them...

[Shadowstar]

Another bug: While it's understandable that ships shouldn't fire on a planet once you have deployed troops on the surface, I've also noticed that transports won't land additional troops on the planet either. This makes sending reinforcements in to help out a stalemated battle kinda pointless.

[Raapys]

The normal cargo transfer doesn't work either?

I've been wondering if it's actually possible to land troops in the first place if the planet's cargo hold is full.

[Raapys]

Beam-out-of-nowhere from the planet, screen attached. This was in the combat simulator, not sure if it's the same for real combat.

And what's up with game crashing everytime when pressing the 'Alliance Relations' button?

[tmcc]

Shadowstar said:
I wonder: has anyone actually ever seen militia units in a ground battle? I know the manual says that they are a factor in ground combat, but I've never actually seen them...



Militia units are definitely present in the battles I've fought.

[Shadowstar]

Hmm... Well I haven't actually had many ground battles because the AI I've been fighting doesn't seem to know how to build troops. I figured the militia calculation was the fact that my troops don't conquer the planet right away, and instead whittle down the population a little bit every turn based on how many troops I have there.

I should mention that I'm using balance mod... But I doubt this is a balance mod issue.

[Raapys]

I just realized: I can't remember having ever gotten 'ruins' rechnology in SEV so far? Can't remember if I even saw any ruins at all.

When I propose a rule change in my Alliance, the other alliance members wont vote? In fact, they wont vote on any propositions I make.

[Shadowstar]

a known bug with SE5 is that ruins and system/planet abilities are getting deleted after the first turn.

New bug: Autotarget doesn't seem to make use of point defense. I'll have ships with point defense cannons fly into a cloud of fighters and just get blown to bits. The PD's never fire. AI ships don't seem to have this problem. In order to get my PD's to fire I have to manually target each fighter with the point defense. I can only do this in turn-based games, obviously. I don't know if this issue effects simultaneous games, but I suspect it does since simultaneous combat most likely uses the same automove/autotarget logic.

[Q]

I can confirm the point defense bug against fighters.
Another bug with fighters: even with zero supplies they retain their full combat speed.
Both bugs have been reported to MM.

[Q]

I switched one of the AI empires to manual control. It was a almost dead empire, who had only some fighters left, which I wanted to eliminate. After I did that, I waited for the message "You loose" and continued with my real empire then saved the game.
When I tried to reload this savegame, it turned out to be impossible.
Went back to the last intact savegame, did everything the same but switched back the dying empire to AI control immediatetly after the fighters were eliminated. Everything was fine.
Conclusion: If one of human controled empires dies (displaying the "you loose" picture), the savegame gets corrupted and you can't load it again.

[dmm]

Baal said: The destroyed research project was going to take 10 million research points just to dig it out of the hole to get to the next level.


Wow, you could REALLY exploit the AI with that bug!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

[dmm]

I was fooling around with the demo and found a bug that might explain Shadowstar's problem capturing that homeworld.

Here it is: I "attacked" a sector containing a 2B pop homeworld planet (and no defenses) with only a transport, landed troops, and got the usual message. Then I "attacked" that sector again the same turn with a well-armed LC (to defend the transport from any ships the planet might make), but I forced the LC to NOT attack the planet. I ended the turn, and got NO ground combat for that sector. (I did have ground combat in another sector, though, which was expected.) So I looked at the planet in question, and it had my troops in its cargo! A few turns later, I dropped more troops from another transport, which I had quickly brought up using some cheatcodes. (Hey, if the computer's going to cheat....) After ending that turn, I got normal ground combat, and all of my troops participated (fighting for me). They killed a few militia, and the planet was mine (finally).

So, the bug is either
1) you can only have one ground combat per turn (unlikely); or,
2) if you attack a sector after dropping troops, the ground combat at the end of that turn gets called off. Your troops remain loyal to you but you have to drop troops again to re-initiate the ground combat.

edit: this was all turn-based and tactical combat.

[Shadowstar]

I think the bug was because ground combat isn't happening in simultaneous games. If anyone has seen ground combat in simultaneous games, please let us know.

[Dejavuproned]

dmm said:
I was fooling around with the demo and found a bug that might explain Shadowstar's problem capturing that homeworld.

Here it is: I "attacked" a sector containing a 2B pop homeworld planet (and no defenses) with only a transport, landed troops, and got the usual message. Then I "attacked" that sector again the same turn with a well-armed LC (to defend the transport from any ships the planet might make), but I forced the LC to NOT attack the planet. I ended the turn, and got NO ground combat for that sector. (I did have ground combat in another sector, though, which was expected.) So I looked at the planet in question, and it had my troops in its cargo! A few turns later, I dropped more troops from another transport, which I had quickly brought up using some cheatcodes. (Hey, if the computer's going to cheat....) After ending that turn, I got normal ground combat, and all of my troops participated (fighting for me). They killed a few militia, and the planet was mine (finally).

So, the bug is either
1) you can only have one ground combat per turn (unlikely); or,
2) if you attack a sector after dropping troops, the ground combat at the end of that turn gets called off. Your troops remain loyal to you but you have to drop troops again to re-initiate the ground combat.

edit: this was all turn-based and tactical combat.



Actually im pretty sure its number 1. Ive noticed whenever I drop troops onto more then one planet in a turn I only get one ground combat at the end of my turn, and after the next turn I get the other ground combat. I hope this is a bug becuase it doesnt make sense to me for this to be on purpose.

[AstralWanderer]

Bugs not yet mentioned:

Organic armour doesn't regenerate
Religious Studies level 2 (the maximum) doesn't provide anything Solar Sail limited to one level only? C'mon! Updates should be available - albeit requiring multiple levels (e.g. 5 levels of Stellar Harnessing).

[AngleWyrm]

Cannot launch sattelites or mines from planet if there are fighters on planet. Fighters launch instead. Worse yet, fighters cannot land on planets anymore, so they are not recoverable.

[Captain Kwok]

Organic Armor does regenerate.

[AngleWyrm]

Organic armor doesn't regenerate once it is fully damaged.

It only regenerates during the very short time window between 1% organic armor damage and 99% organic armor damage. During that time, it will recharge several hitpoints. It will also reach 100% damage and stop recharging altogether in just a couple hits -- often just the first strike.

And because it's so big, you get way more hitpoints out of regular armor.

[Suicide Junkie]

Of course it dosen't.
It would really silly if completely destroyed armor were to regenerate.

As for specifics, the regen ability from any particular armor will fail at 50% damage (as seen in settings.txt)
Kwok also determined that if the armor is given time to regenerate back to 0% damage (thanks to other armors on the ship, or the hull's regen ability for example), then the ability will reactivate and contribute to the global regen rate again.

[AngleWyrm]

It would also be silly if one Depleted Uranium Cannon shell passed through the armor and somehow made it completely useless.

What kind of weapons does the AI have by the time you get organic armor? How much damage will a frigate inflict in one hit?

[Phoenix-D]

That's a balance problem, not a bug.

[AngleWyrm]

Or it could be an implementation problem; the window of opportunity for repair of partially damaged armor is very small during combat--maybe even too small. The benefit of several hitpoints of armor for every incoming shot would be more substantial.

How about a Damage Control Team component? It could use supplies from cargo as replacement parts.

[Suicide Junkie]

No, it is most certainly a balance problem if armor has too few hitpoints to be useful.
The point where the ability fails is also a balance issue, since it is completely moddable.

The fact that the armor must regen to 0% damage before the regen ability recovers is an implementation issue, but it really isn't a problem here.

It really sounds like you're arguing that you want combat to be more like GGmod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Yimboli]

Suicide Junkie said:

It would really silly if completely destroyed armor were to regenerate.




That depends on if you view the ship's complement of organic armor as distinct components or as a regenerative skin (akin to playing as zerg in starcraft). I view it as the latter.

[AngleWyrm]

Is it possible to create a component that can regenerate itself even after it has been 100% destroyed?

[Captain Kwok]

It might be possible if you set the operable damage amounts in settings.txt to 100% damage (101%?) or something like that.

[Phoenix-D]

Just give the hulls a small amount of regnerative capability. That should make the armors regenerate even when dead.

[Blade W]

I made with some AIs a Share Combat Report teatry. When I tried to replay the battle I got a "Cannot replay this combat" message.
I'm not sure if it's a bug.

[Baal]

I can make a planet move in simultaneous play. If the planet is owned by me and has one of my ships above it I can select the planet and the ship at the same time and tell them to move somewhere and the planet follows the same orders as the ship.

Simultaneous play troop invasions never invade.

In turn-based play if I select a battleship with 13 movement points/turn and 2 dreadnaughts with 11 movement points/turn then tell them to move somewhere the dreadnaughts keep up with the battleship regardless of running out of movement points.

[dmm]

Baal said: I can make a planet move in simultaneous play. If the planet is owned by me and has one of my ships above it I can select the planet and the ship at the same time and tell them to move somewhere and the planet follows the same orders as the ship.


Does the planet go through warp points? (Imagine preparing 8 billion people for THAT!) Seriously, this would be a super-cool game ability if it were available as the final stage of a LONG research project. As a bug, though, it is hilarious and horrifying.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I have noticed that if I have a ship set to survey a system and it moves over another ship set to survey it will pick up the other ship and move it along till the first one (the pick-er-up-er) runs out of movement points. I have had this happen to create a daisy-chain of three ships once.

[Baal]

I didn't wait to see. It was moving one hex at a time.

[Baron Munchausen]

AngleWyrm said:
Is it possible to create a component that can regenerate itself even after it has been 100% destroyed?



The thing to do is give all 'organic' hulls an innate regeneration ability. That way, there will be some regeneration ability even if all of the armor is damaged. Thus, organic armor will be more effective when installed in organic hulls -- as it should be!

[Captain Kwok]

Note that the Balance Mod does give organic hulls some regeneration ability for just this purpose. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Yimboli]

Baal said:
I can make a planet move in simultaneous play.



I can make a planet move in real life.

/threads/images/Graemlins/Lightning.gif :8ball: /threads/images/Graemlins/icon48.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Yimboli said:
That depends on if you view the ship's complement of organic armor as distinct components or as a regenerative skin (akin to playing as zerg in starcraft). I view it as the latter.
I was taking about the destroyed stuff *causing* regeneration. Like nuking a vampire. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Certainly other, undamaged components could (re)generate replacement armor to fill the hole.

[Yimboli]

Oh, ok. What if all organic armor is destroyed?

[Suicide Junkie]

That's irrelevant.
You can add regen ability to things other than armor components if you want them to be regenerated.

To go with your example, if you were to say, skin your zergling alive, then the hide in your backpack isn't going to contribute anything to the zerg's regeneration capability any more.
The best way to model the starcraft physics is to give all the regen ability to the hull, and give the armors themselves the regen ability so they can be regenerated, but with an amount of zero. (or an insignificantly small amount if nessesary)

[Shadowstar]

So if you skin a zerg, does the skin grow a new zerg?

The market for zerg pelts may take a dive...