Retrofiting Remote Mining Base

Slynky · #1 November 20th, 2005, 01:09 AM

Have a base in the air with two extractors on it mining an asteroid. I have a shipyard ship in the same location. I issued an order to retrofit to add 2 more panels but nothing happened and I received no message at all (so I don't know what's wrong). So, I tried retrofitting to add just one panel and again, no message of any kind and no upgrade took place.

Any idea why?

Captain Kwok · #2 November 20th, 2005, 02:32 AM

I wonder if the remote mining activity prevents the ship from being upgraded as with construction?

Atrocities · #3 November 20th, 2005, 03:09 AM

I will bet its the 50% rule.

Xaren Hypr · #4 November 20th, 2005, 07:14 AM

Quote:

Captain Kwok said:
I wonder if the remote mining activity prevents the ship from being upgraded as with construction?

I don't believe it matters. I've successfully refitted my remote mining bases (usually a few times over as tech improves), and didn't have any issues. What was the overall cost difference between the two designs?

Ragnarok-X · #5 November 20th, 2005, 08:25 AM

Its the same as retrofitting ships. I remember in one of my games using starbases (2,5kt) with mining components. Using a retrofit series i was able to get the base full with mining components MUCH faster (i remember it took my 3 retrofits, though i packed the base full with plague bombs for maximum effience) than constructing them with a yard-ship could have resulted it. Its really awesome to mine a 200% mineral asteroid with 20 lvl 3 miners

Additionnally, the retrofitting doesnt stop the ressource gathering. Im sure of that as well.

Slynky · #6 November 20th, 2005, 09:42 AM

First of all, I'm upset because there is no message (successful or error) indicating what happened with the retrofit order

. I've wasted 2 turns in a KotH game for the throne because I have to guess what the problem is because the game is not doing what it is supposed to do! Games like these have little tolerance for wasting time.

As to the problem being the 50% rule, the total size of the ship is 8000m, 400o, and 500r. Adding 2 panels had a cost of 2000m and 500r. Thinking rads might be causing the retrofiting problem, I wasted another turn telling it to retrofit to add 1 panel (cost 1000m and 250r...exactly half the existing rad size of the ship) but that failed with no message whatsoever.

I'm sure I've retrofitted bases before--the most recent game being Geo's 10-homeworld Dimension game so they CAN be retrofitted while mining.

Also, in the past, when I've exceeded the 50% rule (or didn't have enough resources in storage), I've gotten an error message.

[edit] - Actually, the time I tried to add a single panel, it was an org extractor and its cost was 1000m, 100o, and 100r. That's LESS THAN HALF the size of any category of materials and it failed.

Alneyan · #7 November 20th, 2005, 10:01 AM

I suppose you have more than enough in all three resources at the moment you order the retrofit, right? (Even if you didn't, you should have got a message)

The 50% rule add all three resources, so you are fine, and again would have got a message. So, I'm not sure what the problem is. I gather there is no fishy order on the SY ship?

Slynky · #8 November 20th, 2005, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Alneyan said:
I suppose you have more than enough in all three resources at the moment you order the retrofit, right? (Even if you didn't, you should have got a message)

The 50% rule add all three resources, so you are fine, and again would have got a message. So, I'm not sure what the problem is. I gather there is no fishy order on the SY ship?

Well, IF I don't have enough to retrofit 1000m, 100o, and 100r, I have a bigger problem than wasting turns

. To answer, I have plenty.

As to "fishy" order to the SY ship, I guess I'm giving a bit of my game away by saying this but on the first turn I retrofitted, it was given orders to build mines (which it did). Second time, when trying to retrofit to add one org panel, all I had it do was launch mines. I didn't worry about any of that because regular shipyards can be building and planets can be launching during retrofits.

I guess I can try it without the damn ship doing anything at all but that sucks if that's the problem. Additionally, giving no error message at all sucks. I mean, basic programmers know enough to code a logical check for success...something along the lines of, "IF Retrofit Successful, then Next Order ELSE Display Error_Msg". Pretty simple stuff.

geoschmo · #9 November 20th, 2005, 10:58 AM

Slynky, my guess is the issue here has nothing to do with the 50% rule, or the mineral mining. You are probably being bitten with the old "retrofitting to a new design in a simultaneous game" bug. Here's what happens:

On your turn, you design a new ship or base.
You give it a name, but the game also assigns an index number to it which it uses to track it internally.
You issue the order to retrofit your ship or base to that new design.
Another player in the game on his turn designs a new ship or base.
Since you are playing simultaneous on different machines, the .exe assigns the same index number to both designs since it uses a simple numerical progression when assigning index numbers.
When the host turn gets processed, the conflict is resolved by giving the players designs different index numbers. But unfortunatly, your orders internally still point to the old index number.

What used to happen at this point is your design would be retrofitted to the other players design. Even if it was technology you didn't have access to. You wouldn'tr be able to repair the components after retrofit in that case. There was a patch that fixed that part of it, but the other part of the bug still exsists. Now you just get no retrofit and nothing in the log.

There are ways to avoid the problem. If you are the last player in the game it won't happen to you so you won't have to worry about it. If you aren't the last player, you can avoid the problem by never trying to retrofit to a design on the same turn as you created that design. In the case where you know you are going to use a retrofit series, you can create a couple extra designs a few turns ahead and then edit them when you are ready to use them. You can retrofit on the same turn you edit a design. By then the index number is established internally.

I have also heard that if you put a new design in a build queue somewhere on the turn before you issue orders to retrofit to it you will be ok. But I think that's not 100%. Because what would happen if the other player did the same? It seems like that would still be a problem.

What would be ideal is if the game used a prefix or something on the internal index numbers to identify the player, but that never got done in the patches.

Slynky · #10 November 20th, 2005, 11:19 AM

Thanks, Geo.

Well, first of all, I didn't give any orders to the SY ship and the retrofit worked to put 1 panel on the base.

But, after reading what you said, it's difficult to know what caused the retrofit to work because, in both instances, I created a new design from the old design on the same turn as I issued the retrofit order. So, the "simultaneous bug" could have bitten me twice and then worked as I tried to add the one-panel version a turn later. Or it could be that the SY ship wasn't doing anything.

But, we'll see this turn as I didn't give the SY ship any orders AND I created a new design on the same turn I used it. So, if it fails again, I guess it's the "bug" you are talking about.