Facilities disapearing in AIC

Wolfman77 · #1 March 30th, 2006, 10:54 AM

I was playing AIC last night and I ran into a situation where my homeworld cultural centers started disapearing. It happened several times, usually 1 or 2 each time untill they were all gone. One turn I noticed I had 4 left, when I attacked a damaged enemy ship in my homeworld sector, combat started with 2 of them damaged, before I clicked to begin combat. Then with 2 left, I went 2 more rounds without any combat and they were gone. My population mood was anywhere from happy to angry, I had my resource storage at or near max and was using only about 200 each turn to build. Is there something in the building abilities that would make them dissapear?

Alneyan · #2 March 30th, 2006, 12:21 PM

The Planetary Bombs (Resupply Depot/Spaceport) can take down a homeworld, since it has these two abilities. One hit is enough, if the planet is not shielded. All facilities can be destroyed because of weapon fire; the amount of damage needed in AIC should be higher than in stock, but it can still happen.

So, if there were battles and your planetary shields went down, facilities are relatively easy to destroy. If there were no battles, intelligence projects can destroy facilities, but you should have got a message in this case.

Wolfman77 · #3 March 30th, 2006, 04:42 PM

Intell is shut off, so unless there are intel projects that don't require Applied Intel(sp) then thats not it. Besides there were no messages. also the facilities showed up destroyed in combat before any shots were even possibly fired, before I clicked the "begin" button. Also my AIC versions of the Space Port and Ressuply Depot were not destroyed. Only my 17 cultural centers.

Alneyan · #4 March 30th, 2006, 06:05 PM

'Tis odd. I suppose no ground battle is currently going on at your homeworld? All Intel projects should fall under Applied Intelligence, and *all* Intel may be disabled with the relevant setting.

I guess it could have been a random event, but seventeen times in a row is just a little bit too much. So, perhaps you have switched on the AI Minister, and it has decided to scrap your facilities? Sounds unlikely though, but I cannot think of anything else, besides a glaring bug in the game itself...

Wolfman77 · #5 March 30th, 2006, 06:14 PM

Events are off as well. No ministers on, thats the first thing I checked. They were all gone by about turn 40 or so, I'm now at turn 120 and have about 10 "towns" and a few other facilities but none have gone missing. Thats why I think it may be in the facility itself. I'll have to try to get it to happen again tonight.

PvK · #6 March 31st, 2006, 02:43 AM

That is really strange. Never heard of facilities just vanishing - did you study the combat replay during which the homeworld went from 4 to 2 cultural centers? Did the planet get hit? If so, with what? My only thoughts were already mentioned:

* that maybe there was damage to the planet during the combat

I thought about the AI minister scrap idea too, if you have that on, but I don't think so - unless you have the minister on AND changed the colony type of your homeworld to something other than Homeworld.

PvK

Wolfman77 · #7 March 31st, 2006, 01:03 PM

I did some testing last night. It would seem that if a single facility is destroyed in combat and there are more of that same type on the planet, then the next time combat is initiated one of the remaining facilities will be destroyed without any shots being fired. It happens in stock as well. I played a game with 2 races and sent 1 ship to the enemy planet and destroyed 1 mineral miner facility I then stopped firing. The next time combat was initiated by either race and either using the attack button or moving off then onto the square, 1 more of the minerl miners was destroyed I had the ship set to run and hide in the corner it had a DUC I on it and never got near the planet in strategic and in tactical I never gave anything any orders. I have not tried this with a simultaneous movement game yet, nor have I tried to see if destroying 2 or more of one facility type will result in losing more facilities each time. But this does seem to be a bug with the game, though in stock worlds are destroyed so fast it doesn't make alot of differance. In slower games however where destroying a world is a multi-turn or even multi-year siege, it is more noticable.

Yimboli · #8 April 1st, 2006, 01:20 AM

That's strange that no one would have caught onto this after so many years of SE4... maybe this is a new problem??

PvK · #9 April 5th, 2006, 03:56 PM

Whoa... that is weird... what version were you testing in?

Wolfman77 · #10 April 5th, 2006, 05:24 PM

1.94 haven't had a reason yet to install 1.95, though I can't see that it would make a difference.

I don't know a whole lot about coding, but I understand the concepts, so I may be way off here, but my guess would be that when the game stores the facilities in combat it keeps either each type in a sepparate variable with a second variable for the number of them, and that it isn't clearing the destroyed ones from the list after combat. Probably since outside of combat there is no need to look at the destroyed facilities as they don't show. then the next time combat begins it reads the destroyed facilitiesleft over from the last combat, then the rest of the facilities, but when there aren't enough total slots for that type it just cuts off the list, Like it does with every other apect of the game when confronted with something that isn't supposed to be there.