[Bug - 1.21] Hundreds of NPC Freighters Deadlocked

[Simoom]

So I was in Wrecksville, when I noticed the game became super laggy (about half a frame per second?) - and it was only laggy when I faced one side of the zone, as if there were a lot of objects being rendered onscreen (Last Stand gave me similar issues with its icy asteroids, which I fixed by turning down the view distance)

In Wrecksville, however, there weren't a lot of objects as far as I could tell - and I remember visiting it earlier during the campaign and it wasn't laggy at all. Then I noticed something weird... what looked like 3 Rahanas freighters stacked in similar position on top of each other. So I opened up the sector map and...

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There were literally hundreds of freighters stacked on top of each other right here (look at how long the scroll bar on the side is). I am not sure what to do about it, either - I can't seem to find any references to these freighters in the save game file, and manually killing them one by one would take a painfully long time.

What should I do? :/

[quintupularity]

It does take a long time. A very long time. This happened to me not long ago. In my game they were attacked up like that at a cell recharge fac port.

Because they overlap, it's impossible to single out one target. So as you shoot, you're spreading your shots around between several ships. This means that the engineers have time to make repairs before the game cycles back to a given ship.

I ended up placing something heavy on the ctrl key and went afk-ish for a few hours.

Eventually it worked. I cleared the cell recharge port and when the wrecks despawned things in that sector were back to normal.

Unfortunately, it didn't save the economy. Trading everywhere had come to a halt and I had to start a new game anyway.

[StarFreeze]

Had the same issue in 1.18 at one of the Energy Arrays. The ships just stacked as high as the eye could see. I couldn't find a way to get rid of them and the economy seemed hosed at that point so I just did what quintupularity did. Start a new game :-/

Scary part for me is this has started happening in my current game, not 10+ but 4 of them sitting around one of my stations in a stack. It has me greatly concerned that a few hours from now there will be 10 of them stacked and they just sit there while the economy dies.

[quintupularity]

That happens too, Starfreeze, when your economy is tanked. But we're talking about something different.

Imagine dozens of those stacked freighters all overlapping by the game engine so that looks like one ship.

I don't know whether or not Simoom's economy is actually tanked at this point. I happened to experience this as my economy was breathing its last gasp, but it may be a rare bug unrelated to the economy. It might be mod-related. I also wondered if maybe they start to overlap because they spawn at that location, and for some reason or another they don't move off.

There's just not enough information to tell what causes it.

[Santi]

The solution to shoot the ships stacking, has the drawback of taking out of the game what could be half of the trading fleet, so no surprise that the economy grinding to a halt afterwards due to lack of trading ships.

[quintupularity]

Nah. It was already all but halted by that point in my game. Zones had dozens of stacked up freighters with empty trade ports everywhere. Every now and then I'd see a freighter flying around but it was rare becoming rarer.

I removed two suspect mods and started fresh and wow. I marveled at how much activity there actually is!

[StarFreeze]

Ohh I see wow no I haven't seen that yet or I haven't noticed. Dang ummm now I'm curious. I rarely look at the map anymore I maybe missing a group of them that needs a killing haha.

[Simoom]

I don't know whether or not Simoom's economy is actually tanked at this point. I happened to experience this as my economy was breathing its last gasp, but it may be a rare bug unrelated to the economy. It might be mod-related. I also wondered if maybe they start to overlap because they spawn at that location, and for some reason or another they don't move off.

There's just not enough information to tell what causes it.

I honestly haven't been keeping an eye on the economy since I haven't been doing much trading, but I do know when I order a ship at a shipyard, construction would simply be stuck at 0% for hours on end (for what was supposed to be a 4 minute construction job).

I think that means the NPC economy is toast?

[quintupularity]

0% construction doesn't necessarily mean the economy is broken. It definitely means that goods aren't getting to the station. This is common in DeVries since they don't have production. Supply it with necessary goods personally to finish the ship.

If the Albion shipyards are stalled out, something is probably wrong. I started a new game a couple days before I first replied to this post and since then NPC traders have been keeping everything in Albion very well supplied. Albion is so well supplied that every station is full of everything. I guess the NPC corps aren't building anything. There's no real sink for the goods to flow to. At least goods are cheap!

You'll have to scout around in Albion in your game to see for yourself if the AI is keeping the economy alive. If its not, probably time to restart.

BTW, I think MCE and/or UFO are what ruined my other games. They are the only mods i removed and the economy is working, more or less. Tons of frustrating glitches, of course, but at least the NPC traders aren't stalling out.

[Simoom]

It was the shipyard in Omicron Lyrae.

I don't have UFO installed btw... but I do have MCE (not sure how I could play without it)