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Bases all go away

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:43 pm
by maze
It's been a while since I noticed that my explored universe looks like a vast desert. Star bases go away when you quit the game and restart it (and only a handful are respawned, but that's not the heart of the issue).

Frankly I consider that to be a HUGE problem. I'm surprised issue 2951933 is closed as a wontfix. I'm going to attempt to fix it, if I can.

Re: Bases all go away

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:58 pm
by klauss
Honestly, I haven't seen this. I don't even remember the ticket, but I don't see that disappearance problem (at least not at the scale you mention). It looks like it's been closed because it was deemed outdated.

If you can reproduce it, do tell. If you can fix it, even better :)

Re: Bases all go away

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2012 10:54 pm
by maze
So you play, you save, you quit, and you find back the bases in the same location? Not at all how it works for me. Basically, how it works for me, is that the bases are gone after I quit and come back to the game. Except for a handful which are encoded in milky_way.xml like Serenity for example. Then, it happens from time to time that new bases will be spawned into my explored space, but this is a rare occurrence. All in all explored space is void of bases.

Do you have bases saved in milky_way.xml/ or in save/?

1) Them being generated, alongside with planets, and then saved in milky_way.xml is disactivated in the default config. That's the most easy to fix, and probably the less buggy currently, although it really looks like it was disabled by default on purpose.
2) Then, there's at least another way by which bases get spawned, and those don't stick around. I haven't found yet where that happens exactly...

milky_way.xml is a robust storage place, so that'd be fine as far as I'm concerned. Good news is that it looks like factiontookovers are respected for those bases, as opposed to the other type. In order to get the milky_way.xml bases, you only have to give the SmallUnitsMultiplier option a non-zero value. A few issues though if we take that route:
1) Having toyed a little bit with it, I expect the randomness of the number of bases per system will not be enough, unless we create a situation where all systems really have a lot of star bases.
2) Probably all bases will be attached to a planet, and not to a moon nor a sun (very minor issue).
3) My save game mentions a lot of bases, with their type, in systems that I have not yet explored. I guess this is related to News. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think the functions which populate milky_way.xml would take any of that into accout. I may be wrong though.
4) I also expect the bases in milky_way.xml will keep coming up after having been destroyed in-game.

Re: Bases all go away

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2012 2:24 am
by klauss
Bases not in milky way should be saved on the savegame and respawned appropriately by dynamic_universe (I think it's that). They should vary from time to time, but veeeery slowly.

Maybe there's a bug there. I never checked whether the bases I see are in milky way.

Re: Bases all go away

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 10:33 pm
by maze
So now I installed myself some limited debugging capabilitiesin python and I've been diving into this issue a little bit.

First, let me say it's not as bad as I made it sound in the OP. In fact, rather than a plain buggy base disappearance issue it looks like the dynamic universe is being a little bit to harsh on bases, and they have a hard time surviving, especially in the areas where I hang out a lot. Probably more battles are generated around the system where the player is located.

So, let me just show you an example here by uploading two consecutive of my save games, the first in 0.0342.179 and the second 0.0343.045.

First, you can notice that a lot more bases are destroyed than spawned.
I also have noticed that the longer I play without quitting the game, the more violent the dynamic universe becomes. This might be a factor acting on whether the global base population increases or decreases over a campaign. And, maybe the bounty hunting style that I deployed until recently also has something to do with it.

I've been focusing a little on the disappearance from FG of 2 bases in Solace/Guhthutee (line 21187 in the earlier save game from 0.0342.179), because I remember at the time I was disappointed to see that commerce center go away, it had a huge supply of cheap AI Cores... This system is indeed mentioned a lot of times in the dynamic news as a place of constant Area/Andolian war. Heck, the dynamic_news line even mentions 2 bases, a Gas Mine and a Refinery, which probably were there and were destroyes I guess in battles before the Factory and Commerce Center. That's a lot of turnover just for one system (not at all varying "veeeery slowly," as you put it).

Lastly I noticed that while the Commerce Center is is indeed mentioned in the last battle of the dynamic_news line of the second file from 0.0343.045, the Factory doesn't seem to be mentioned in any battle, yet it's been removed from FG right between 0.0342.179 and 0.0343.045 (and this specifically might have to do with a bug after all, though I can't be sure at this stage).

Edit: arg... I can't post the savegames, they're probably too big. Let me just try to post a diff:

Code: Select all

diff maze-0.0342.179 maze-0.0343.045
And the diff was huge to tell you the truth, so I tried to keep only the most intersting things from FG

Re: Bases all go away

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 10:50 pm
by klauss
I don't see anything attached...

Re: Bases all go away

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 11:12 pm
by maze
I'm still trying, sorry. I'm down to 2 megs, still won't do.

EDIT:
Please go to http://vs.pkbd.org/savegames/
There you should be able to download both savegames.

If it doesn't work, could be because your DNS server has still to hear from mine. Retry in one hour. If you still can't get access in one hour, please tell me. But normally should be ok.

Re: Bases all go away

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 2:48 am
by klauss
Oh, if you gzip them, they're a LOT smaller.

Re: Bases all go away

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 8:45 pm
by maze
I don't know why I forgot. Anyway, did you get the files?

As for myself, I still think there's a slight problem here, however I'm going to leave it aside until I have a better understanding of the whole dynamic of the universe. Too many vanishing and unreplaced bases, an also probably too much turnover. A vast majority of systems have at least one base on first visit, not so much on second and subsequent visits.

But as I said I'd rather continue to tackle things which are clearly bugs until I gain a global understanding of how things work before maybe going back to this.

Re: Bases all go away

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 8:56 pm
by klauss
maze wrote:I don't know why I forgot. Anyway, did you get the files?
Yep... but without internet at home, it will be difficult to debug. I may have to wait until things go back to normal before looking into it.