[4.1] Crazy, invisible laser tower

[Zloth2]

Save game: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jBIjji ... sp=sharing (no mods, version 4.1)

I attacked Thark's Cascade and dropped various laser towers around the entrance gate - then a station. Sometime later, while that station was trying to build, the map got strange. It would drift around some while I was trying to focus on a ship. (Unfortunately, I don't have a save from this point.) Once the dust settled, I checked the map. The sector size was HUGE! It looks like a laser tower went on a tour of the outer unknowns. I had a Xenon-infested sector to take, though, and little clue on how I was supposed to do such things so I just ignored it.

The save was made after the dust settled and I flew a Katana out to the tower. If you load the save and check the map, you'll see the crazy path it took. You'll need to use the map to select the tower, too, as it's invisible (icons on the screen work, too). A Queen's Guard is on the way in. Even though the tower is active, it won't shoot at the enemy. If you shoot the tower, your shots will pass right through it. If you drop mines near the tower and shoot those, the tower won't be damaged. If you select the tower then do F3 twice, you CAN see the tower, but it pops in and out of existence. If you send a ship to pick up the tower (there's a frigate called Shard Osprey a few sectors away), it will head for the tower but it will not use its travel drive to get there, even though it's 4000km away. If you ram the laser tower with the Katana, the laser tower sticks at range 0 for a few seconds before dropping off.

I've seen this happen before with resource probes but they went in a straight line and stopped far sooner. When I went to retrieve one, it was visible. If I tried sending a ship to pick it up, the ship would go to where the probe was originally dropped then would slowly move toward where it was showing on the map.

[Zloth2]

I brought a frigate up next to the laser tower. Still can't pick it up. Am I doomed to have a giant Tharka's Cascade 15?

Save: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ubkzFJ ... sp=sharing

[Alan Phipps]

Since this is obviously a bugged asset in terms of its positioning in the game, have you tried going OOS and closing, restarting and reloading the game? Sometimes that helps to make bugged assets disappear, get back into their proper position or just start acting normally. No guarantees though.

It might also be worth checking that the save is not marked modded through corruption.

[Imperial Good]

I am guessing that at such extreme positions the engine is starting to break down due to a combination of rounding error or overflow. Not much one can do about it as it has plagued space sims for decades. Even freelancer suffered from your turrets and guns jittering the further you flew away from the core of the sector.

If the ship is unable to low attention collect the deployable at some extreme locations due to numerical error then some sort of work around would be a good idea. For example it teleports the deployable to itself once it is in some multiple of epsilon distance from the deployable.

[Zloth2]

Nope, no joy reloading. In or out of sector. The save isn't marked as modified.