Lost Ship Replacement picking WRONG Shipyard

[Scoob]

Hey all,

I've been using the Lost Ship Replacement option at my Shipyard. Working great.... until it wasn't.

A second Shipyard of mine is under construction - S/M and L Fabrication built, along with storage - with defence modules and an L-Class Dock still building. Station is NOT well-supplied yet. This station DOES NOT have Ship replacement enabled. However, the game is attempting to queue up lost ships here, which of course FAILS as this Shipyard is not fully supplied.

Has anyone else experienced this bug? It's a first for me.

Note: if this second Shipyard had been fully supplied, the ship would have built there INCORRECTLY. This Shipyard is NOT for replacement ships, which is why I've not enabled the option, nor will I.

I have of course CANCELLED this invalid ship built. The impacted fleet is still showing as missing a Fighter (greyed out). It has not, thus far, tried to build the destroyed ship at the correct shipyard, I'll have to keep monitoring this.

TLDR: Replacement Ship queued up at a Shipyard that's NOT got Lost Ship Replacement enabled. Ignoring the Shipyard that DOES have it enabled. This has of course stalled ship replacement, as I don't know how long it was queued up at the wrong Shipyard for.

...and it queued it up at the WRONG Shipyard again. This is quite a series bug, as I often run more than one Shipyard. One for me - usually in my own sector - and remote ones to help reinforce Allies (aka sell ships).

Note 2: this WRONG Shipyard is technically the closest one to the impacted fleet. However, it's NOT enabled here deliberately. Erroneously queued replacements is a problem.

[Scoob]

Interestingly, even setting up a Trade Rule for ship sales that REMOVES the player faction from the list doesn't work. With my "No Trading" rule set for ship sales, the game is still incorrectly queuing up replacement ships at the wrong Shipyard. It's actually a bit of a game-breaker in regards this feature.

I have a fully-stocked Shipyard actually set to replace ships that's being IGNORED entirely. My entire automated Ship replacement is currently broken.

I am running some mods, so I cannot simply submit a bug report showing the issue here. It'd literally take me HOURS to reproduce this in my current vanilla game, as I'd have to build an entirely new Shipyard. I'd hope the Devs have tools available to them to magically spawn in stuff, right?

[Scoob]

I think there might be more to this bug...

The Fleet that it was trying to replace ships in, using the WRONG Shipyard, was a small Corvette + Fighters Group. This was a Fleet in its own right and had Ship Replacement enabled, but I assigned it temporarily to the second Shipyard. I wonder if the shipyard somehow inherited the wrong way the Fleet's Ship Replacement setting? As the Station was a Shipyard, perhaps that somehow enabled it on the station, even though it wasn't enabled in the UI?

I've since removed that Fleets station assignment, so they're just protecting position near the station now. Thus far, it's NOT tried to build replacement ships at the wrong Shipyard again. However, the fleet shows the two missing ships greyed out, with the hammer icon and 0s (zero seconds) next to it. So, the ships aren't even being queued at the proper Shipyard now. It's a little broken, no doubt, but that earlier assignment might be related.

[Raptor34]

That's not how it works though. But it's a good idea to be able to set whether a shipyard can be picked or not in lieu of something more in depth.

[Scoob]

When testing this feature during the beta, until I enabled it on a Wharf (my only one at the time) replacements did not occur, even if set on the Fleet / different station. Only once I enabled it at the Wharf were replacement constructed.

With TWO Wharfs / Shipyards, I'd expect ONLY the one with the feature enabled would provide replacements. However, this is not the case. I do suspect it's linked to some very specific actions though, I'll break it down as replacements were NOT built at the wrong Shipyard after this. Sequent of events:

- Separate Fleet. Corvette leader, Fighter subordinates - running a protect position order. Ship losses replaced at "Main" (Only one with feature enabled) Shipyard. Worked great.
- That fleet assigned to a Station in a defence role. This station can build S/M/L Ships BUT replacement not enabled.
- Fleet losses now queued up at this second station. Wrong.
- REMOVE that fleet from that station and replacements no longer queued at wrong Shipyard.


In essence though, if the feature is NOT enabled, then a Shipyard / Wharf should NOT be building replacement ships. Game got it wrong. That fleet, when no longer assigned to a station, BROKE automatic replacement entirely, so I need to test further.

If I had a fully vanilla save, I'd submit it. I doubt I'll have time to take part in the v7.60 Beta - even though I have my v7.50 vanilla save still - else I'd submit it there. Perhaps if I get time over the weekend (doubtful at the moment) I'll set something up in that vanilla save to demonstrate the issue.

[CBJ]

I think you've misunderstood something. There is no mechanism by which you can specify which shipyard to use for ship replacement. Ship replacement is set on the fleet, not the station, and assigning the fleet to the station has no bearing on that whatsoever. It will still pick the closest shipyard to obtain replacements from.

[Targ Collective]

Hm. That makes a lot of sense, but needs to be configurable. A player might not want all shipyards to be eligible, and might want shipyards to balance stock levels by fleet demand. Easiest way is to keep it as now - the closest shipyard will build the replacement; if there are no resources then bounce to the next nearest until all shipyards have been flagged as checked, then check again if no ships can build next time the script catches up with itself. An additional layer of refinement; a shipyard with four quarters build resources eligible over a shipyard with just a quarter. To balance the draw on resources.

If the player for some reason wants to exclude shipyards from Replacement duty - either for their own use, or for an NPC faction - then the means to do so would be highly useful.

[Scoob]

My earlier speculation as to the cause appears to be wrong. Once again the game is trying to build replacement ships at a station that DOES NOT have Lost Ship Replacement enabled. The station it's picking cannot build ships, it's not been supplied.

What's the point of having an option to enable lost ship replacement at a station level for it to be ignored? As I mentioned previously, it was only after I enabled the lost ship replacement option at my original Shipyard, that ANY ships in my various small fleets or working for other stations were replaced. Perhaps that was just a coincidence, some sort of long delay. I mean, initially I thought I JUST had to enable it for the Fleet / Station that I wanted automatic replacements at. However, when ships weren't being built, at all, I then enabled it on my Shipyard (which was just a Wharf at the time) and only then did replacements start being sent to other fleets.

This is a real problem. Automatic ship replacement is currently BROKEN in my game as it's choosing the WRONG Shipyard. Rather than the long-established and fully supplied main Shipyard, it's picking one that's still being built and is missing critical supplies.

There appears to be nothing I can do to work-around this issue. Blocking ship sales to EVERYONE (including me of course) at the WIP Shipyard doesn't work. Game is STILL incorrectly queuing up replacement ships there, yet the station cannot build them.

It does seem to be a pure proximity thing. This WIP Shipyard is closer to this particular Fleet, other ships are being replaced just fine that died closer to the main Shipyard.

This is a significant issue! One the WIP Shipyard is fully supplied - which will take a while - it'll be able to build replacements, buts that's not what it's for. It's NOT for me, it's to repair, resupply and sell ships to allies in the frontier sector its built in.

This is either a bug or a major oversight with this feature. I only had one Shipyard during the Beta, so I didn't experience it.

[Scoob]

I've done a formal report on this. I suspect it's not a bug, but more of an oversight. I hope to provide a fully vanilla save (I have a game in progress I started for the v7.50 beta) BUT I have to construct a second Wharf first to replicate the issue as my current main game uses some Mods.

[CBJ]

My earlier speculation as to the cause appears to be wrong. Once again the game is trying to build replacement ships at a station that DOES NOT have Lost Ship Replacement enabled.

Again, there is no such thing as a station that has lost ship replacement enabled on the supply side. Lost ship replacement enables the commander of a fleet to order replacements from the closest available station. There is no mechanism by which to direct the commander where to order the ships.

[Scoob]

I think you've misunderstood something. There is no mechanism by which you can specify which shipyard to use for ship replacement. Ship replacement is set on the fleet, not the station, and assigning the fleet to the station has no bearing on that whatsoever. It will still pick the closest shipyard to obtain replacements from.

Apologies. I somehow missed you're initial comment but I did explain why I thought this might be the case. Basically, when testing this feature in the v7.50 Beta, lost ship replacement didn't work for me UNTIL I enabled it at my Wharf. I thus assumed that the Station that builds the replacements needed the feature enabled too. This turned out to be a coincidence. I'd just experienced an excessively long delay BEFORE the replacements started building, which only then started moments after I'd enabled it on the Station. Hence my confusion.

I think my other points remain valid though:

- Don't queue up ships at a Station that cannot build them, when a Station than CAN exists. (Resources)
- Have Trade rules work for this feature. So a rule that says the Player CANNOT buy ships (even though we still can manually) prevents automatic ship replacement working on that station.
- Have a more distinct option to DISABLE a Station providing Ship replacements. (Perhaps clearer?)

Sometimes the best station isn't always the closest station, and Stations set to NOT trade with the Player (for ship sales) are set like that for a reason. Is it uncommon for people to run multiple Wharfs / Shipyards? I also make extensive use of Maintenance Bays, dotted around the map. Both are excellent for supporting allies in border sectors.

[vvvvvvvv]

My earlier speculation as to the cause appears to be wrong. Once again the game is trying to build replacement ships at a station that DOES NOT have Lost Ship Replacement enabled.

Again, there is no such thing as a station that has lost ship replacement enabled on the supply side. Lost ship replacement enables the commander of a fleet to order replacements from the closest available station. There is no mechanism by which to direct the commander where to order the ships.

It implies that this should be a thing. A player should be able to exclude stations from lost ship replacement mechanic and decide which ones are available for making ships. Perhaps those could be lists of stations, saved as presets and selected per fleet with one of them being a default. It is not uncommon for a shipyard to be unable to build a specific ship. Because a player, for example is running separate commonwealth and terran shipyards.

[jlehtone]

It is not uncommon for a shipyard to be unable to build a specific ship. Because a player, for example is running separate commonwealth and terran shipyards.

Why not even extend that thought to ability to select which ships a particular yard of ours is allowed to build? This would both give control over what we sell to NPC and what materials the Fabs require.

Which falls back to design decision between allow player to micromanage many details, and allow player merely select an "AI" manager (that does her decisions about details).

[vvvvvvvv]

Why not even extend that thought to ability to select which ships a particular yard of ours is allowed to build? This would both give control over what we sell to NPC and what materials the Fabs require.

I would prefer to have a list of shipyards, not which ships they're allowed to build.

That's because X4 has 250+ different ships right now. It'll very quickly become unwieldy. Plus murphy's law says that when script will be deciding which shipyard to use, it'll pick the wrong one. Hence it is easier to tell "use this one". So the machine does as told without trying to be creative.

[Scoob]

Game became confused for me today. A fleet lost a ship, but it NEVER queued up a replacement. The ship just showed greyed out in the fleet for hours. I ended up removing it and will manually replace it at another time. Ship was right next to the new Shipyard I built, which had been quite well stocked but had suddenly run out of Weapon Components around that time. Even once restocked, the ship never rebuilt and was never even queued.

I still think more control is needed, my Primary Shipyard remains VERY well stocked indeed, this new satellite one - which is building ships for Allies from time to time, as well as repairing and rearming them - sometimes get low on resources.

[oddgit]

I started a new game, so no shipyard yet.
But in the beta for 7.5 i had shipyards, did a feature request/bug report to allow set what shipyard is responsible for replacement of lost ships. Super frustrating to have a bunch of fighters queued up at your HQ when all it does is build terraforming drones. Hopefully its something that can be added.

[Scoob]

I just had a really weird case...

One of my Stations - a Defence Platform with repair (Maintenance Bay) facilities lost some Fighters that were assigned to Defend it. Automatic Replacement is enabled, so I can see that the Station's Alpha Group is having replacements built. HOWEVER...

Of TWO replacement ships needed, ONE is being built at my main Shipyard, the other at my secondary Shipyard which, once again, is out of one of the needed ship-building resources. Ally is using it a LOT, so it runs down quickly.

This stations is closer to the secondary Shipyard, so I would have expected it to queue up BOTH replacement ships there, even if that's not appropriate. However, it's queued one at each... only one of which is being actually built of course. So, of the two fighters the Defence Platform has lost, it's queued one up at the Primary Shipyard (building just fine) and one at the Secondary Shipyard (stalled, lack of resources).

So, the "closest Shipyard" logic does NOT always apply. Once again, one Shipyard can readily supply any and all replacements this Defence Platform could ever need. The other is out of key ship building resources, yet it was still tasked with replacing a ship it cannot build.

As mentioned, I DON'T want to use this Secondary Shipyard to produce my ship replacements, that's not what it was built for. I have no control of this however.

I'd hope being able to turn the Ship Replacement provider flag on or off wouldn't be a huge leap? You might get a situation where there's a station that can produce ship, but it's set not to. So, if it loses subordinates, they will be built elsewhere.

Ship replacements not not happening because the "wrong" Shipyard is chosen is far from ideal of course. As mentioned previously, if trade restrictions for Ship Sales worked, I'd not have this issue as I could Blacklist myself, but not my allies, while manual ship build, repair and outfitting orders would still be fine...

[oddgit]

I think a simple check box that would enable/disable the shipyard to be open to auto replacement would be fantastic. Though as Scoob mentioned, blacklisting yourself, if it worked is pretty awesome solution.

[Scoob]

Some good news on this. It's been confirmed that the Trade Rule (to restrict the Player Faction) not working was indeed a bug. Should be fixed in a future update. This is of course very welcome as it's the most obvious option for the player to use when attempting to restrict ship replacement.

Moving forward though, I still think a little more control would be great. However, I'm pleased the fix will be available I assume with v7.6's release.

When discussing this issue on discord, I was pointed towards a MOD that allows for some more configuration options regarding ship replacement. One of the "features" of this mod was that it DID obey ship sales restrictions set in a blacklist. I've not tested it myself yet, but thought it worth mentioning that it's available. Here's a link to the Nexus page, in case anyone is interested.