[4.0 HF3] L(?) ship docking error, ship flickers back and forth on map, delaying its orders - Fix in a future build.

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Nulric
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[4.0 HF3] L(?) ship docking error, ship flickers back and forth on map, delaying its orders - Fix in a future build.

Post by Nulric » Mon, 12. Apr 21, 18:06

(EDIT: Steps to reproduce, and a save, are provided in a post below this one.)

So, providing a working save for this may be pointless, because saving the game while this issue is occurring, and then reloading the game, fixes the problem. A save, therefore, would not be overly helpful it would seem. Because of this, I will try to verbally describe the set up as best I can. Should a save be desired anyway, let me know and I'll try to provide one.The issue occurs for me under the following circumstances.

I've seen it occur multiple times, though obviously not every time. I might venture to guess that of every ten times a ship tries to dock, the problem occurs maybe once or twice? What happens is observable from the map, while I am always OOS. I don't spend much time in Grand Exchange 1 personally, where the complex is, so as to not mess with the mining operations. Ironically, it's the mining ships where this occurs, since they're the only large ships I have docking with the complex. It seems the issue is limited to the large ships docking at the pier. I assume it would be large traders too, but I don't recall off the top of my head seeing it happen with them. Besides, the station doesn't get much traffic right now anyways from NPC traders.

Rather than dock, transfer its wares, and leave (the whole process taking, I don't know, 30 seconds?), the large mining ship appears (from the map, while OOS) to be flickering between two points extremely rapidly. So fast that it appears to be in two places simultaneously on the map. When zoomed in you can see that one position is where it should be docking on the E-pier, and the other position is always close by, probably within two kilometers, of the station. The station registers the ship as being docked, by the way. This results in the ship sitting at an "execute trade" command with the station for a very extended amount of time. Rather than say 30 seconds (however long the process normally takes), it sits there for a good 2 or 3 minutes (much longer than normal), before it does eventually finish the process, and transfer its mining cargo. It seems to happen with all solid cargo types. It may happen with the gas as well, but I don't think I've seen the gas collector I have running get stuck (possibly thats just by chance).

As to the station setup, I have added a terran 3 dock E-pier to my player HQ in Grand Exchange 1, a terran M/S dock, plus resource refinement facilities; one of each commonwealth type (metal, silicon wafers, water, graphene, antimatter cells, superfluids), plus a teladianium processor. I also have several terran large storage of each type (3 solid, 3 liquid, 6 container), and two commonwealth energy plants. Plus some terran cross section connectors.

I have three Chthonios mineral miners mining for the station, as well as one Chthonios gas collector. As mentioned, it's the solid miners I see this happen with, but I'm also running those 3 to 1 compared to the gas collector, so it could just be circumstances that dictate not seeing the gas ship do this. That's about the best description I can give at this point, without understanding better what's happening here.
Last edited by Nulric on Tue, 13. Apr 21, 18:25, edited 2 times in total.

Alan Phipps
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Re: [4.0 HF3] Large(?) ship docking error, ship flickers back and forth on the map, hanging its orders up.

Post by Alan Phipps » Mon, 12. Apr 21, 22:48

@ devs: There are a few other reports too. It can affect capital traders and miners, solid and gas, alike.

viewtopic.php?f=146&t=436815
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=436307
viewtopic.php?f=180&t=435934
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=434510
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=433354
A dog has a master; a cat has domestic staff.

Nulric
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Re: [4.0 HF3] Large(?) ship docking error, ship flickers back and forth on the map, hanging its orders up.

Post by Nulric » Tue, 13. Apr 21, 04:31

Alan Phipps wrote:
Mon, 12. Apr 21, 22:48
@ devs: There are a few other reports too. It can affect capital traders and miners, solid and gas, alike.

viewtopic.php?f=146&t=436815
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=436307
viewtopic.php?f=180&t=435934
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=434510
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=433354
Thank you Alan. My apologies, I should have serached a bit closer, clearly. Sorry again. Glad Ego knows though, I'm sure they'll squish it when they have the chance!

Nulric
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Re: [4.0 HF3] Large(?) ship docking error, ship flickers back and forth on the map, hanging its orders up.

Post by Nulric » Tue, 13. Apr 21, 07:33

Alright, I was able to reliably reproduce this behavior by taking a series of specific steps, using the save below. It is VERY important to understand that the bugged flickering behavior will NOT occur (at least in this case) if you watch the ship docking with the station directly on the map. This behavior only occurs when you view the ship and station on the map AFTER the ship reaches a certain state (execute trade).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6gd6zfphmt1wn ... ml.gz?dl=0

Step 1: Load the save.
Step 2: Open the property menu (Shift-p). The player ship should be automatically focused and centered on the map. (Take NO OTHER actions except as detailed below, to ensure reproducability.)
Step 3: Expand "Enigma Station Complex" (press the + icon on the menu beside its name)
Step 4: Expand "Alpha Group"
Step 5: Expand "Beta Group"

NOTES: Take note of a ship named "Enigma Complex - Gas Collector 001" This is the ship that you are interested in, and will bug out on you. You need only proceed from here to step 6, but I wanted to note the following in addition. There are two ships in the process of docking with Enigma Station Complex, the aforementioned Gas Collector 001, and "Enigma Complex - Mineral Miner 002". I mention this because you can watch the status icons of Mineral Miner 002 to be sure of when Gas Collector 001 will execute his station trade. Shortly after loading the save, Miner 002 will gain a white "docked" status icon, then proceed to "Execute Trade" with the station (blue briefcase icon), and then begin undocking. Shortly thereafter or sometimes right before Miner 002 completes his ware transfer, Gas Collector 001 gains his docked icon. Collector 001 will then, within a few seconds, begin his "Execute Trade" action.

Step 6: Wait for these conditions! Notice a ship named "Enigma Complex - Gas Collector 001". Within two minutes or so, this ship will dock, and gain the blue briefcase status icon, indicating he is in "Execute Trade" mode.
Step 7: As soon as the above described condition is met and you see Gas Collector 001 executing trade, double click on "Enigma Station Complex" in the property list. This will zoom you from the player ship on the map to the station in Grand Exchange 1, where you can now see a docked ship (Gas Collector 001) flickering in two positions on screen.

Hopefully, this works as reliably to reproduce this for others as it did for me. I reloaded this save 7 times, 5 times doing the above (which triggered the problem behavior), and 2 times just watching the station the whole time instead (which never triggered the problem behavior).

EDIT: Some other strange behavior I've noticed associated with this behavior, is that while a ship is in this flickering state, try changing the number of drones maintained by the station, by clicking on the small white arrow keys in the drone slider section of the station overview. When clicking on those arrows (not using the mouse slider behavior) I noticed that it keeps resetting the drone number on me to like 0, or anything other than the next logical number you would expect to get, by clicking once on the arrow. I donno if that's known behavior or not, but I've never seen it before. I think it's a side effect of the odd flickering behavior if anything, but maybe its nothing, or some separate issue. I figured it was worth mentioning here, regardless.

Nulric
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Re: [4.0 HF3] Large(?) ship docking error, ship flickers back and forth on the map, hanging its orders up.

Post by Nulric » Thu, 15. Apr 21, 01:30

To my surprise, I just saw this happen with an NPC medium miner as well, attempting to land at my station to sell me some silicon, in a terran 4M10S dock.

I was watching the station on the map, and not a single large miner had an issue during that time, as detailed in my above post. To reiterate, it seems that if you watch on the map it seems to prevent the issue with the large ships.

Imagine my surprise, assuming the above, when right before my eyes a medium miner moved to a position near the station (within a kilometer or so I'd guess) from the nearby accelerator, changed facing, and started to move to dock. As soon as it changed facing and began to move directly towards the medium dock, it began to flicker, just like the large ships. So it's less frequent from what I can tell, but it does indeed happen with medium ships as well. At least, medium miners anyways.

I saved the game and watched it until it departed, then reloaded to see if it would persist. This saving and reloading had the same result as mentioned in my initial post, in that it actually fixes the behavior when it's in the process of occurring, so the newer save would demonstrate nothing in this case.

Nulric
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Re: [4.0 HF3] Large(?) ship docking error, ship flickers back and forth on the map, hanging its orders up.

Post by Nulric » Tue, 27. Apr 21, 09:07

So, as an update to this, I discovered that changing my Terran 3-dock E pier out for a Terran hexa dock, has greatly reduced the instances of the flickering occuring.

To be clear, I reengineered the design of my HQ, removed the E pier, added some vertical connectors, and put a hexa dock at the end of those vertical connectors.

Now, while anecdotal, I can say that there are WAY less instances of ships flickering during their docking process. It does still occur, but it's much reduced. I know that's not the best in terms of details, but I felt like it was definitely worth noting.

DocAce
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Re: [4.0 HF3] Large(?) ship docking error, ship flickers back and forth on the map, hanging its orders up.

Post by DocAce » Mon, 10. May 21, 12:43

This (meaning the icon flickering on the map) should be fixed in an upcoming update.

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