X3FL (1.2): Carrier command is horribly broken.

[steve_v]

As in the title. Not only does it result in constant message spam (as with drone carriers), it also (permanently AFAICT?) breaks subordinates, even after they are later removed from carrier control.

I added a bunch of fighters to a wing for ease of control, moved them to a carrier, then assigned them to carrier control. As one may well do.
Later I wanted to manually control said wing, so I removed them from carrier control again... All quite ordinary.

I now have a large number of fighters which show as being part of green wing in the "my wings" section of the property menu, and yet have no wing command console.
The "ships" section of the property menu shows them not in any wing nor under carrier control, but all their (navigation, combat etc.) commands are still disabled. The submenus are there, but everything is greyed out.

They cannot be removed from the now zombie wing, but they can be assigned to another, appearing in both lists...

So, in an attempt to fix this mess, I discover that these ships can be controlled as the latter wing. So I sell them all.
At which point the original "green" wing shows as having the previous number of (now non-existent) ships assigned, yet no actual ship names listed. Apparently that wing is now permanently broken.

What am I supposed to do here exactly? Revert to a save from 12+ hours ago? How the hell did carrier command software make it to release anyway? Should it not come with some kind of health warning on the box?


Seriously people, I get that this is a free expansion and all (though I did buy the "donation pack" on GOG), but there are so many bugs in it (as even a cursory peruse of the forum will demonstrate) one might as well just play modded AP. Hell, a bunch of stuff in FL isn't even new, it's just less functional and more broken versions of the AP bonus pack, or repacks of 10 year old mods... Maybe it was an April fools joke after all?

Broken carriers, broken fleets, braindead "station manager" behaviour, a complex planner that thinks quantum tube fabs produce microchips (and other bees), idling zombie ships all over the place...
Is any of this going to get fixed or what?

[Hwitvlf]

This same thing happened with me. The issue appears to be when a ship in a wing comes under any automated control script- Manager, Drone Carrier, Carrier command etc . It breaks their role in the wing without actually removing them from the wing.

If I remember correctly, I fixed it by landing the affected ships to a station and re-adding them to the wing through "Command Console Landed Ships".

I also used a similar method when I accidentally put several capital ships under the Station Manager's control by 'bumping' "Assign Homebase to all Landed Ships". As capitals aren't supposed to have a homebase, there's no traditional way to remove it, but you can add them to a wing with the 'landed ships' console, and then clear the wing's homebase.

[Novvak]

I had a problem with pretty much the same thing, I had Tern and Shrike with some fighters assigned to my PHQ (because I wanted them to resupply there), but since the PHQ was (mis)managed, the ships AI went completely off the rails.
Both ships were in a Green Wing, which I couldn't take off of them, but was able to remove them from the PHQ after a while and assign to the Red Wing, so they are now in both, and it's an endless tug of war between the command Green Wing gives to the ship and commands chosen by myself for the Red Wing.
That was pretty much the bug that made me abandon this game. I can live with the bug itself, but all of the bugs combined give a sense of pointlessness.

Amass wealth -> Assemble the fleet -> Do nothing with it because every feature is utterly broken.

Even when you command your ships manually, what really is the point then? I have taken few capitals and attacked Duke's HQ in the Lasting Vegenance, wiped them out, left the fleet on patrol. In few minues Duke's fleet just appears from nowhere and retakes the system.

All in all, features introduced in FL are great, except every single improvement comes with a BIG disclaimer that will invalidate using the feature to begin with (e.g. station builder that can't handle stations bigger than 40 stations).

[steve_v]

Okay, this is ridiculous. The wing involved now borks any ship assigned to it, forever. Even ships that have never been under any of this horrifically broken "manager" bull become broken if added to this "zombie" wing now.
What. A. Joke. What exactly qualified this mess for the "DLC" sticker and official packaging again? Pretty much every new "feature" in FL is a buggy, game-breaking disaster.

How do I fix my ships? How do I fix the bugged wing? Some script console command? A mod for a mod? Anyone? Is my save now permanently screwed or what?
Anything at all but tumblweed and "me too" in here? What exactly am I supposed to do, just give up now before I punch my monitor in sheer frustration?
What a waste of time.