[2.51] BUG: Ships getting stuck WAAAY out of the Zone

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Fri, 17. Oct 14, 23:03

Hi all,

Well, I've posted about this bug on the Beta forums for multiple public betas but this fairly severe bug is still present.

The Scenario:

A ship is ordered, either manually (trade screen) or via a Station Manager, to dock at a station in another Zone to either buy or sell wares. Viewing the ship remotely it enters the Zone but appears right at the very edge - the poor map makes it difficult to see exactly where.

The ship can then often remain at the edge of the Zone, not flying any closer and seemingly "stuck" where it is in a glitched stage. Often, while in this state the ship thinks it's near enough and launches trade drones & expects them to cover the loooong disitance to the station, which can take 20 mins+ each way easily.

A save/reload fixes ALL stuck ships instantly, and they show clearly in-Zone as you'd expect. Due to this bug, and having a large trade empire now, I absolutely categorically MUST save/reload regularly during play otherwise everything grinds to a halt with all of my ships that fly between Zones ending up stuck. Obviously a saved game is pointless as it does NOT record the game state correctly in this instance.

So, a specific scenario from my 2.51 game this evening. Several ships SELLING wares to my CV extending the station "S10 H2O Additives Fac" in Lava flow. Here is a screen shot centred on the Station.

Now, you can see I have TWO ships inbound, "Rahanas (Container) - Bio-Optic" and "Rahanas (Energy) 01 - EC/AM/IC" BOTH have just jumped in, so should be right next to the clearly visible jump beacon, however this screen shot clearly shows the first as being waaaay off - who knows how far away they are and they've been stuck here for about 15 minutes. All other ships shown are also similarly waaay off the map - the ships prefixed "Snn" are all station traders there to buy water, and they do, despite having jumped in, are all at the very edge of the Zone. This means they (and ALL ships affected by this bug) take an AGE to fetch needed wares if no save/reload is done.

To be clear, these ships are NOT "in transit" between Zones, they think they've arrived! Also in this specific example they have just JUMPED in, so should be right next to the Jump Beacon, which they are clearly not.

This bug happens far to often for me. In 15 minutes of play, about five ships have been affected in this ONE Zone. I'm about to reload & watch the issue go away, but it's getting very old not being able to play for even 15 minutes without doing this.

Once again, a saved game does NOT record this bug, the game state is INCORRECTLY recorded during the save process. This is a pain as I cannot simply submit a save showing the bug - you have to wait for it to happen - but at least there's a work around.

To be clear: If I do not save/reload frequently, my game WILL start to stall as Freighters fail to reach their destination, or at best launch drones many many km, thinking somehow that they are docked.

Please please ES, can you look into this further? Can you at least confirm you're aware of the bug from the various reports given? IS it just me who thinks it's quite severe when all my Freighters effectively stop working?

For completeness, HERE is the save game I loaded at the start of the evening. It does NOT show the bug, but if you watch, the ships jumping into Lava Flow bug out with this issue. I'd suggest trying NOT watching the Zone all the time, as I simply flicked to it to see what was taking so long (I'd not had any delivery notifications for this build site) then I realised the bug had occurred again.

Scoob.

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Fri, 17. Oct 14, 23:14

Ok, unfortunately I'm going to have to stop playing now. I did a save reload and the affected ships were all back to where they should be, i.e. In-Zone, either near the station/CV (about to dock) or not far from the Jump Beacon having just arrived.

However, after just 5 more minutes of play, another two ships entering the Zone (again JUMPING in) were equally stuck way at the edge of the Zone.

So, I'm not going to save/reload every five minutes to continue to work around this bug. The effect on my inter-station trade is devastating if I don't save/reload regularly, but I'm done with doing that constantly.

Hopefully my original report will help, just load the save and let the game play its self in effect. I have TWO current build sites and ships were delivering resources to the CV in my current Zone, as well as the remote Zone where they were getting stuck. There is also ample traffic trying to buy WATER from my H2O station and getting stuck too.

Note: this game was originally starting in 2.0, I'm not far enough in the plot yet to have opened up OL, just been (trying) to enjoy building up a production infrastructure from my ill-gotten gains...it's not going so well.

Cheers,

Scoob.

Post by **CBJ** » Fri, 17. Oct 14, 23:21

If you have a case that's reproducible from a savegame, even if it doesn't happen every single time, then we'd be more than interested in seeing it. We are well aware that the problem exists, but it's proving very difficult to trigger on demand in such a way that we can identify what's causing it.

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Fri, 17. Oct 14, 23:28

Hey CBJ,

Well hopefully using the save from my starting point this evening, and waiting for the ships to jump to said Zone will demonstrate the issue - it certainly does for me.

ALL ships going to both the local and remote CV's have their orders all queued up, as do the Station Managers buying Water of course. So, hopefully, it IS a simple case of letting the game play out for your testers too. Not sure what effect watching the Zone all the time will have, both times this evening I've not been closely watching the second a ship jumps in, rather I check every so often.

Btw: it's good to hear you're aware of this one, even if it's difficult to reproduce - I manage to "reproduce" it for myself all the time it seems, so hopefully my bad (good?) luck will transfer to you

Scoob.

Luke0086 · Post by **Luke0086** » Mon, 20. Oct 14, 01:31

Same issue here.

It happened to me first when I was doing the campaign in an un-modded game.

I thought maybe there was a limit to how many of your ships can be in a sector at once, but like you said, when I restarted my game the error corrected itself - I don't remember it coming back so quickly though!

In 2.5, I see ships out of zone now and again, but I think there is something more complex going on. Sometimes it looks like it's just travelling slowly into the zone. Sometimes it looks out of zone on the map but it's trading with a station! Regardless, the problem usually always corrects itself, even if it takes a long time.

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Mon, 20. Oct 14, 14:29

For me the problem never corrects its self without a save/reload. The ship will still send Cargolifters even though it's basically at the very edge of the Zone, which is ridiculous.

Now I have more ships flying about, it's happening constantly for me. Game is currently unplayable due to this. I'm hoping my submitted save (from before the issue) will play out the same for when ES test it. No reason it would not as my game has been kept 100% vanilla since I started beta testing.

Note that these ships are not "in transit" to another Zone, they're reported as having ARRIVED. Plus, some have just JUMPED in but at showing as many many km away from the Jump Beacon they supposedly just jumped to.

This is a big issue and only gets worse the more ships the player has it seems. I currently have the most stations and ships I've ever had. It's not just the law of averages me seeing the bug more often. When ALL ships that have entered a Zone are affected by the bug then there's a problem.

Hope ES can get to the bottom of this. I worry it will affect more and more people as their empires grow.

Note: final observation... Often this only seems to start happening after a longer play session. However, it seems to happen more quickly now, I guess due to the number of assets of mine the game is calculating.

Scoob.

TheDeliveryMan · Post by **TheDeliveryMan** » Sun, 26. Oct 14, 00:00

I also have this issue quite often and I'm begining to see a pattern: It only seems to happen in sectors the player has not yet visited during the current playing session.

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Fri, 31. Oct 14, 14:57

Just wondering if my saved game helped at all? For me, while the act of saving and reloading that particular save "fixed" any currently stuck ships, letting the game continue to play out from that point saw the problem manifest its self again very quickly. The volume of ships I have moving around now, which suffer from this issue, means I'm still not playing currently. I would however be willing to run other tests if it will help.

Cheers,

Scoob.

Nagittchi · Post by **Nagittchi** » Fri, 31. Oct 14, 21:39

I just got this as well - and I didn't visit the zone nor sector nor cluster the trader was trading too.

It's odd - I never got this bug with Safer Trading mod but since you guys autoignore any saves with a mod on it, I'm forced to play vanilla. And this is one of the issues that's, while not a huge concern, an annoying hindrance.

werewolves? · Post by **werewolves?** » Fri, 31. Oct 14, 22:30

Same thing happened to me as well, Lyraena was at edge of Pearly Shore zone trying to trade, save reload, right outside station.

Nagittchi · Post by **Nagittchi** » Fri, 31. Oct 14, 22:41

Okay so this just happened AGAIN literally a hour after I sent that last post. Here's the steps prior to the bug if that helps at all:

1) Docked at my Lyranae in DeVries, executed a trade order to grab microchips at Albion - Buried Treasure
2) Had my Lyranae jump itself to Buried Treasure while I watched some TV/Reivers getting blown up by freighter's defenses
3) Arrive at Buried Treasure - I undock and head to the tech lab where the microchips are being sold to play the irritating minigame (Ren Otani must've told everyone in the galaxy already about how AI/AGI works)
4) While I'm heading to the station, I comm the captain to cancel all trade orders, so I can get those microchips at a discounted price
5) Smalltalk complete - head back to dock to the freighter and executed the trade order again
6) Freighter then decides to power-to-engines out of the friggin zone into the middle of Empty Space and stop there

I assume this could stem from cancelling orders then issuing a new set - but I don't know.

I'm uploading a save right now, if you check the third person view it looks like its boosting through space, except its floating still and the engines aren't even fired up.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7wCe6 ... sp=sharing

nalim27 · Post by **nalim27** » Sat, 1. Nov 14, 23:22

Hello,
I'm confirming this problem - I played few hours today and I during regular babysittinf of mine freigters I saw that problem few times too.

So together with known babysitting problem with Wrong follow-up even with some trades in queue (tha can be solved by removing from dquad and put them back)
we must aslo save/load frequvently to correct freigters stuck in empty space.

Game is really starting unplayable.

I did not saw this problem before - but I'm now in campaign in Omicron Lyare .... maybe it is because many of mine freigters doing system jumps (Albion, DeVrier and Omicrob) very often now?
And I put trade agent to every station, so number "watched" ststions is raising .... maybe there is some connection to the problem too.

TheDeliveryMan · Post by **TheDeliveryMan** » Mon, 3. Nov 14, 00:18

I prepared a savegame from which I was able to reproduce the bug described in the OP. I will present two step by step cases, one does trigger the bug, the other does not.

The savegame can be downloaded here: https://www.sendspace.com/file/yex6kg

Case A does not trigger the bug. To reproduce follow steps 1, 2a, 3, 4 and 5a. About 30 minutes after loading the game the last trade is completed: Logbook.

Case B does trigger the bug. To reproduce follow steps 1, 2b, 3, 4 and 5b. The last trade completes about 75 minutes after loading the game: Logbook. That's 45 minutes longer than can case A!

Steps to reproduce:

Load the savegame. The Skunk is in Torrid Veil in front of the super highway to Fervid Corona.
This step is important. The time it takes for the subsequent trades to complete depends on whether you visit Glaring Truth or not!
1. Either fly to Fervid Corona and immediately back to Torrid Veil and stay there.
2. Or simply stay in Torrid Veil. Do not enter Glaring Truth.
Enter the property menu and add the freighters prefixed by '( XXX )' to your squad. Issue the following trade orders:
- '( XXX ) Gigurum - Refined Metals': sell Refined Metals to '( S ) Arms Tech Fab' in Magma Pool
- '( XXX ) Rahanas - Energy Cells': buy Energy Cells from RoC Solar Energetics in Fervid Corona
- '( XXX ) Hermod - Refined Metals': sell Refined Metals to '( S ) Arms Tech Fab' in Magma Pool
- '( XXX ) Construction Vessel - RMP': buy Reinforced Metal Plating from '( S ) Arms Tech Fab' in Magma Pool
- '( XXX ) Fedhelm - Ore': sell Ore to '( S ) Integrative URV Forge' in Forty-Two
- '( XXX ) Rahanas - Food Rations' buy Food Rations from Crystal Castle in Gushing Spring. This freighter has an unrelated issue and will switch to 'Following Albion Skunk'. I waited until it was close to Torrid Veil, cleared the trade queue and reissued the buy order.
Open the property menu and watch the freighters (Show on map). As long as the freighters are still in their initial zone they appear nicely near the stations. Afterwards you will occasionally see them way off the map, this is especially apparent in Vapour Stream.
Glaring Truth. The result here depends on which one of the cases was taken in step 2.
1. You can watch the freighters as they jump in right next to the jump beacon. Follow them on their journey and you can see stations fly by. Eventually you can watch them docking at their destination. About 30 minutes after loading the game the last freighter will complete its trade order. There's nothing wrong in this scenario.
2. Watch the freighters. All of them are way off the map, and as Scoob pointed out this symptom seems closely related to the bug in question. It takes significantly longer until all freighters have completed their trades (in my play-through it were 75 minutes from loading the game).

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Mon, 3. Nov 14, 12:03

Is my save not reproducing the issue for people then? For me, I just have to load it and let any trades queued up play out, plus there are those controlled by various Station Managers that are effected too. So, no actions are needed other than to load the saved game and observe events as they unfold.

Within 15 minutes (5 in one case) things start to break down and ships show as stuck at the edge of the Zone. Most importantly, even ships which JUMPED in locally to the Jump Beacon show at the edge of the Zone. So, potentially, this bug isn't about ships stopping at the edge of the Zone, but some glitch placing them at the edge of the Zone the moment they do enter it.

Quite often, but not always linked to this bug, Zooming in on a ship in transit between Zones will show a squewed view of the map and the ship not in motion. I suspect this is a precursor to the bug occurring.

Again, load my save, everything is already set in motion for the bug to play out by its self.

Scoob.

Post by **DocAce** » Mon, 3. Nov 14, 16:01

Hi,

I've had a quick look at the savegame you (Scoob) provided. I still need to investigate the actual trading, but what the map shows you is actually wrong/outdated information, so the positions being wrong is probably a red herring.
I'll update you when I know more, but for now thank you all for the effort of giving us good savegames to reproduce the issues with!

Matthias

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Mon, 3. Nov 14, 16:14

DocAce wrote:Hi,

I've had a quick look at the savegame you (Scoob) provided. I still need to investigate the actual trading, but what the map shows you is actually wrong/outdated information, so the positions being wrong is probably a red herring.
I'll update you when I know more, but for now thank you all for the effort of giving us good savegames to reproduce the issues with!

Matthias

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Yes, the map showing incorrect information would explain why a save/reload seems to fix things. However, without said save/reload any ship that doesn't show in-Zone correctly will then take an absolute age to make a trade. A save/reload will often see several ships insta-complete their trades, well, the ones that appear in a "docked" position post-reload at least. Others appear "queued" as you expect, while they await their turn to offload - assumption is queues form when the same docking port is allocated to several ships, or any time Wares are being offloaded at a CV.

So, there's certainly more to this than simply the map not showing the correct locations, as the actual trades take an age to complete without a save/reload.

Glad the save is giving you something to work with though

Scoob.

TheDeliveryMan · Post by **TheDeliveryMan** » Mon, 3. Nov 14, 20:01

Scoob wrote: Yes, the map showing incorrect information would explain why a save/reload seems to fix things. However, without said save/reload any ship that doesn't show in-Zone correctly will then take an absolute age to make a trade. A save/reload will often see several ships insta-complete their trades, well, the ones that appear in a "docked" position post-reload at least. Others appear "queued" as you expect, while they await their turn to offload - assumption is queues form when the same docking port is allocated to several ships, or any time Wares are being offloaded at a CV.

So, there's certainly more to this than simply the map not showing the correct locations, as the actual trades take an age to complete without a save/reload.

I had a look at your save. If I immediately fly to Fiendish Moloch map issues in Lava Flow are gone. If I save/reload in Molten Archon and stay there I will soon notice map issues in Glaring Truth.

You seem to operate in DeVries only. To avoid most map issues you can fly one quick loop through all four sectors of DeVries (Glaring Truth -> Molten Archon -> Bleak Pebble -> Barren Heart -> Glaring Truth). But you'd have to do this everytime you load a save. See if this has an effect on your freighters.

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Mon, 3. Nov 14, 20:17

TheDeliveryMan wrote: I had a look at your save. If I immediately fly to Fiendish Moloch map issues in Lava Flow are gone. If I save/reload in Molten Archon and stay there I will soon notice map issues in Glaring Truth.

You seem to operate in DeVries only. To avoid most map issues you can fly one quick loop through all four sectors of DeVries (Glaring Truth -> Molten Archon -> Bleak Pebble -> Barren Heart -> Glaring Truth). But you'd have to do this everytime you load a save. See if this has an effect on your freighters.

Yes, flying around does seem to alleviate the issue, I can only assume that player Zone/Sector transitions refresh/reset something. However, I'm not going to do this as it's not fun and I feel I've done enough working around things for the moment

My play style recently, while building my empire, has largely been to sit in one place ordering my Squad to pick up wares I've produced and deliver them to my build sites. As it's really clunky to go removing ships from my squad every 5 minutes to stop them following me while I travel, I stay in one spot. Additionally, this "I'll follow you as soon as I run out of trades" mechanic makes managing various builds while travelling about doing other things totally unworkable. Yes, I could do it with micro-management, but I don't want to, so I'm not going to.

So, as I cannot do builds while doing other things without a whole load of headaches (pending the ability to have ships wait after finishing a trade) I do mass builds where I camp out in one place doing lots of building in one go. Only once all wares are delivered and the builds in progress do I remove ships from my squad and do other things. Sadly it's this play-style that triggers this bug most effectively.

Ultimately, I would just like to assign a Container and Energy class Freighter to my Architect and let them buy what's needed, however, this is unreliable currently and I've had wares go missing via this method. Add to that the Architect is unable to recognise when all needed wares are already on the assigned ship, so it tries to buy more. Dumb ass! lol. Consider that all building materials are produced by me (bar the surface elements) loosing a load of RMP or Fusion Reactors is a pain.

Oh, thanks for checking out my save btw

Scoob.

Post by **DocAce** » Tue, 4. Nov 14, 13:21

I've had a look at the trades going on in the savegame, both staying in the initial location and going to the sector where the mentioned trades take place in. With my working version (which is going to become one of the next updates) there is nothing indicating trades taking longer when the player is not in the same sector.

The longest time to completion was 10 minutes, and that was an extreme outlier. Almost all trades finished in 1 to 3 minutes after the ship arrived at the trade location.

This can mean one of two things:

1) The incorrect display of positions on the map has made it look as if the trade took an extremely long time, while in actuality the ship was still moving towards the station.

2) There was a bug that has been fixed between 2.51 and now.

In either case I'd like to ask you to try the beta version of the next patch when it's made public. I don't know if the fixed map positions will be in the first version - look for something like "Fixed object positions on map when viewing a different sector" in the changelog - but maybe you'll be able to tell a difference anyway.

Thank you for your patience!

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Tue, 4. Nov 14, 22:53

Hi DocAce,

Thanks for checking.

It always seemed to me that trades taking a long time to complete would go hand-in hand with ships visually stuck at the very edge of the Zone. Equally, doing a quick save/reload would see potentially several "Trade complete" type messages on reload. However, saving, then waiting in-game it still might be many minutes before the trades complete.

Additionally, while I see what you're saying about ships actually still being in-transit, despite not showing on the map correctly. This does not explain why ship that have jumped in via a local Beacon still take an age to make their trade.

I will test in the next beta as my current save (the one you have) shows off the delays quite well.

Btw: there is a potentially difference if you watch the sector remotely. Usually I'm doing other things when I wonder why I've not gotten a trade message, I then check the remote sector and see the reported issue. Obviously trades under the command of a station manager do not give a message upon completion, though the ships can be seen quickly completing their trades after a save/reload. Whereas saving and watching (not reloading yet) sees the trade take an age.

I will report back once the new beta is out and I've had a little time to test.

Cheers,

Scoob.

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[2.51] BUG: Ships getting stuck WAAAY out of the Zone

[2.51] BUG: Ships getting stuck WAAAY out of the Zone