m5 scouts disappearing randomly - Shipkill notification broken, fixed by reinstall.

[Clock_Work]

So i have this problem. My light scout ships are slowly disappearing out of the game. They are not being destroyed. Let me explain:

1st instance:
When I started the plot and I got the Advanced Discoverer, after I finished the spying mission, I returned back to my M6 and I transferred my advanced satellites from my Heavy Centaur to my Advanced Discoverer. Next, I told my Advanced Discoverer to create a satellite network starting with Omicron Lyrae (keep in mind that at this point I'm not yet hostile with the Terrans. They don't shoot on sight). I started training some marines at the military outpost, undocked, and started spooling up my jump drive to continue with the plot. I was facing the gate while my jump drive was charging so I got to witness my discoverer flying through the gate out of the sector. I jumped, and mid jump I decided to start my satellite network somewhere else. When I looked in my property menu, my discoverer was GONE. I checked my logs, and it hasn't been destroyed. I jumped into the sector and there where no enemies there. I didn't reload my save because I didn't care enough about 1 discoverer and 4 Advanced Satelites.

2nd instance:
I have a fleet of 12 ships (4 M3's, 1M6, 3M5, 4m4). I want to keep them, but I don't own any stations yet so I keep them patrolling Cloud-base South East, as in my game pirates seem to love to spawn pirate stations and randomly cross the sector. Anyway, I decided I wanted to explore some more, so I jumped into the sector in my personal ship and told my kestrel to dock at the Shipyard as I was flying towards the shipyard to dock there myself. The kestrel got there first and docked (at this point I still had 12 ships in my fleet). I docked as well and my kestrel is nowhere to be found. Its not in the property menu, it hasn't been destroyed. I undock and I notice I only have 10 ships left in my fleet. One of my Fujin's is gone as well. What the crap?

I don't have any mods other than the bonus package installed and I used the Humble Merchant start. Could the ships ram into random objects and the combat log omitting it?

[Alan Phipps]

Firstly it is always useful to say which game you are playing. If this is a gameplay query then it should be in the X Universe forum, whereas if intended as a formal Tech Sp request then the information in the first Announcement on this forum is required.

Player-owned ships should not die/disappear for any reason without some sort of message in the log. Have you verified the Steam gamefiles cache for both games? Have you changed any of the settings in the Property Options screen in-game to exclude the list display of ships in certain circumstances such as docked, homebased or inactive, etc?

[Clock_Work]

I did specify that the game is not modded. I used the Humble Merchant start. Feel free to move the topic to game-play if you think it fits there better.

[Alan Phipps]

Yes, sorry, I noticed and was editing as you posted. What about the questions that followed? You still haven't confirmed which game either though I assume it is X3AP.

[Clock_Work]

I just started the game cache check on both TC and AP. This hasn't happened until 3.0 today. Reloading the game seems to have no effect as the ships still disappear as soon as I leave the sector or dock at a station (or they leave the sector). Its really weird that this is happening. I scrolled through the log all the way to the beginning. Nothing mentioning those ships.

[Alan Phipps]

Did you notice my question about Property list options above?

Omicron Lyrae is a war sector. Any of your ships going or staying unescorted by yourself (ie you being OOS) will be attacked by one side or the other in the war combat. You should get attack or at least destruction reports though if that is the case. As to your ships disappearing on docking - well that is a more difficult one.

[Clock_Work]

Yes it is x3 AP. And The only thing I changed was to omit my satellites from the property menu.

[Alan Phipps]

How did you get those (missing) ships? Just as a double-check could you tell me the headings for every 'No' in your property options tab list please.

[Clock_Work]

1 through the plot (advanced discoverer), 1 was bought from a shipyard (kestrel), and 1 was capped (Fujin). It only seems to happen to m5s and I do think they are getting destroyed and the combat log not telling me because I ordered centaur to destroy one of my other m5s while I was OOS and no notification or anything.

Also, yes my other m5s show up in the property list. I will double check when I get home a little later.

[Alan Phipps]

Ahah, that means your ship-kill reporting is somehow broken. I would somehow be surprised if that issue only applied to M5s - they just die more easily. Try destroying an M3 of yours and see if it gets reported please.

If that is the case and a Steam verify/repair doesn't fix things then I would also suggest this in case you are running a broken file from cache. The problem is that the no-reporting corruption may now be embedded in your saves. (Ouch!)

[Clock_Work]

Yeah you were right. M3's don't show up either. I can restart the game if it gets to bad. I wanted to start as a boron anyway

[Alan Phipps]

Clean the virtual store as advised above, start a new game and then, as a test, set the starter ship self-destruct and eject. Make sure the ship loss is reported in the Player log in the fresh game. If not then a complete reinstall of TC and AP may be needed. One gamecode aspect not working could be the tip of the iceberg of further problems that may appear later on.

[Clock_Work]

Well everything is fine now. I re-installed and everything. I started a new game and the reporting issue seems to have gone... at least for now! dun! dun! duuuunnn!