Major Game Lock-up Problem

[Milos]

I am running an SE4 v1.41 [patch 6 / no mods] game with 6 human players. We have reached turn 62 and have run into a serious problem. Every time I try to process the turn, the game hangs at 48 to 50 %. There is an error dialog that states, "Access violation at address 005DC48 in module SE4.EXE. Read of address FFFFFFF". I have tried to process on two PCs with different configurations. I have also tried re-installations of the game. Nothing works so far.

The problem appears to be something to do with exceeding the maximum number of allowable object orders [movement, refit, scrap, etc.] that happens during the turn.

I am hoping that someone has seen this problem before. And has some suggestions for how to resolve it. The problem has been reported to Malfador tech support also.

[GIGM18]

Yep, it's very frustrating! Just when I was going to grind the universe under my heel, it up and crashes!

[Slaughtermeyer]

Version 1.41 is known to hang due to the following: having a carrier ordered to launch its fighters, transfering the carrier into a fleet, and then ordering the fleet to launch fighters (all in the same turn).
The game can also hang if mines without any warheads in the same sector as mines with warheads are swept. It might actually make sense to build some mines without warheads if mines are swept in the order that they are laid (I haven't tested this to see if it's the case, the warheadless mines might simply be ignored).

[Mephisto]

I would suggest to make backup copies of your turn and then process the turn while adding race after race. Eventually you will find the race that causes the problem. Let them make a new turn and hope that the problem will be gone.

[Milos]

We tried that. The only ways the turn will process is if that player does nothing new in his turn, or lets the computer play his turn. Neither option is reasonable. The computer plays former human controlled races very badly.

The problem is that pretty much puts that player out of the game if we proceed as it is. There is also no combat going on at this point. If the game locks up during a period of peace, what will happen when we get two or more players attacking each other with fighters?

[Mephisto]

Load up the faulty players turn and just hit the end button. This way the AI will not change your diplomatic relations. Maybe it works without an error then. If not, try to chancel all movement orders. Usually the error just vanishes after only one turn. This shouldn't be too bad to skip one turn.

[dmm]

Have everyone halt all ships and pause all shipyards for one turn, process that, and try to continue normally. You could even remove all research projects from the queue. Don't know about intel. (Yet another reason to make it like research.)