No Carbonite

[TheMac]

There was no source of carbonite in my home system, so I ventured to exit the system as soon as possible. Shortly after my explorer ships had upgraded to the new drive system I found a source of carbonite and I was happy to send my construction ship to build it, then I noticed the option was grayed out because I didn't have enough carbonite to build the station that would give me the carbonite I was missing. This is almost comical.

Are we still reporting bugs to the Tech Support -> Report your issues here (forum link)? It's been about 6 months since I played and reported a bug.

Edit: Reminds me of what the game was like around 2-3 months after launch. A few years later a small supply of carbonite just shows up, then the mining station gets built and the carbonite builds up to around 300 units, then it starts going down for no reason. No freighters came to visit. I watched the numbers go up and down a bit without a ship ever visiting.

Then I started wondering why none of my cargo ships were heading out there to pick it up, and it turns out several of them flew off to a newly discovered colony who has a supply of carbonite and they started buying and trucking it home. It's been quite a few years now, and I still have no carbonite I can use to build more mining stations or ships, though several hundred units show up on the resources tab where you get mining info (new mining locations, etc.). That indicates to me that my empire thinks it has some on one tab, though my home world and home station do not have more than 1 unit.

Where in the world did all the carbonite go that was being mined by the station? I think several thousand units have just disappeared without being picked up by any ships?

Why did my freighters buy carbonite when my mining station had plenty for free?

Why does the Resources Tab F6 show I have a couple hundred units of carbonite, while my home world and home station only show 1?

[Ax4711]

Well obviously you didn't start with the v.good home system because there you have guaranteed carbonite. If you can't handle the higher difficulties don't complain about the game...

[I Throw Spears.]

Originally posted by Ax4711:

Well obviously you didn't start with the v.good home system because there you have guaranteed carbonite. If you can't handle the higher difficulties don't complain about the game...

Dude. This bug has been around forever. It can happen even if you set your home system to "normal" levels of resources. Missing carbonite is especially crippling early, as its needed to make all ships.

[Nightskies]

Oof, bad luck for that empire. Did you check reserved amounts? I'll bet the mining station reserved a large amount for a freighter bringing to the independent and that freighter happens to be a distance away. It can go far at this stage of the game.

[TheMac]

Originally posted by Ax4711:

Well obviously you didn't start with the v.good home system because there you have guaranteed carbonite. If you can't handle the higher difficulties don't complain about the game...

LOL! It's on easy and all settings are default. Hahaha!

[jorgen_cab]

This is usually what you have mining ships for... you need to make sure you can upgrade your mining ship with a warp drive to get there and mine it. They will know what minerals you lack and mine them for you.

If you know you lack a mineral you have to plan for it. It is possible to constrict the usage of certain minerals to a bare minimum.

[TheMac]

Originally posted by Nightskies:

Oof, bad luck for that empire. Did you check reserved amounts? I'll bet the mining station reserved a large amount for a freighter bringing to the independent and that freighter happens to be a distance away. It can go far at this stage of the game.

Maybe this is something, though what I observed was the count quickly rise to 300 units at the mining station, then it just suddenly fell to 150 or so and then went up a little, and then down for some reason. No freighter came for years. In fact I never saw a freighter come at all, though some 7-10 or so years later I saw in the freighter list that a freighter had magically visited and was hauling 200 or 300 units back to the HW. I was switching between the larger galaxy view looking for any ships heading that way, and the immediate view of the station where I was looking for any ships in the area while monitoring the actual units of carbonite the mining station was reporting. I didn't check to see how much they were wanting to keep there, though because I wasn't thinking that there was a secret stash of the carbonite the station kept elsewhere as a buffer or something.

It seems to me like I heard something in the stream about resources magically appearing somewhere as a temporary work-around to a coming future fix. Maybe this is part of it, but it doesn't explain where the carbonite went since my HW and HW station didn't have but one unit. Really looks to me like it just disappeared into thin air. Thanks for looking at this, though.

[TheMac]

Originally posted by jorgen_cab:

This is usually what you have mining ships for... you need to make sure you can upgrade your mining ship with a warp drive to get there and mine it. They will know what minerals you lack and mine them for you.

If you know you lack a mineral you have to plan for it. It is possible to constrict the usage of certain minerals to a bare minimum.

This is a good point, and once I figured out I was low, I looked for a way to cancel some ships in production and get the resources back (coming from other 4x games in the past six months), but once you hit this wall there's nothing to do but wait.

Interestingly, I was looking for any ships at all heading for the one, lone discovered source of carbonite and there were none at all heading for it. Only a couple of exploration ships moving in that direction. It was very early game which made it super easy to track ships. Weird stuff all around.

[TheMac]

BTW, when I woke up this AM there was another update to the game. So far no announcement thread of a new beta, but I wonder if this bug was addressed? I'll look for some new Beta patch notes to show up soon.

[apadilla124us]

the update this morning was the dlc.


I had a similar issue with silicon. I didn't find any source of silicon with in range of the first 2 warps. and the nearest source was already claimed by an empire. Guess who declared war right after?

I liked that feeling and game play. wish some resources were more limited to the galaxy forcing to either trade or war.

[Ozone]

This is not a bug. This is intended.

If you can't find a resource, you have to trade it with independent or other empires.
Then concentrate your exploration efforts toward planets which can actually have the lacking resource (The Galactopedia lists them).

You can also buy a contact from a pirate, to get trading opportunity

It's part of the game to manage your resources.

[Nightskies]

Originally posted by Ozone:

This is not a bug. This is intended.

If you can't find a resource, you have to trade it with independent or other empires.
Then concentrate your exploration efforts toward planets which can actually have the lacking resource (The Galactopedia lists them).

You can also buy a contact from a pirate, to get trading opportunity

It's part of the game to manage your resources.

While this is sound advice, his issue is that he can't locate the resources the information suggests he has is at. I'm almost certain its in reserves, if I had a save I could be sure.

[Ozone]

the carbonite builds up to around 300 units, then it starts going down for no reason. No freighters came to visit. I watched the numbers go up and down a bit without a ship ever visiting.

There is a reason: the resource gets reserved (it moves from the stocks to the reserve), it means a freighter is on its way; it can take a very long time for the freighter to show up. If they don't, it means they get stopped somewhere on the way. Check your Freighters list, filter by Carbonite, and look where they are in the Galaxy.

[Nightskies]

It can also be a foreign freighter too, so, might not find it on that list~

[TheMac]

Ozone, you may be right about the stocks seeming to disappear. I didn't know about the reserves and thus I didn't check there. You can see from these screen shots that some carbonite has gone into the reserves.

Freighter who actually visited and left empty.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ltav67rglphul3/Screenshot%20%28600%29.png?dl=0

Reserves:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6l450v9s5e7j8i3/Screenshot%20%28601%29.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jp8i37utonkzkkn/Screenshot%20%28602%29.png?dl=0

Nighskies, here are your saves.

First ran out of Carbonite and reported the bug on the beta forum.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lpasz47am4gqcxv/War%20Moe%20-%20Ackdarian%20-%202761-12-19%20No%20carbonite%20to%20build%20carbonite%20station.DWGame?dl=0

Screenshot accompanying the bug report
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kaa2owd0dsq6m14/Screenshot%20%28599%29.png?dl=0

Here is what you may really want. It's the autosave from just before the construction ship starts building the station. There's only one source of carbonite and it's at that planet. Load this autosave and you should be able to see everything I described -

- Freighters avoiding the mining station despite the fact my empire is out of Carbonite
- Carbonite disappearing from the station (maybe going into reserve?)
- Freighters buying Carbonite from a newly found independent instead of getting it for free from this station

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g0jlfhegib93vzf/Autosave4.DWGame?dl=0

Here's the save game from the first screenshot of this response showing the one freighter who actually did visit the mining station, on its way back with zero cargo.

-Why did the freighter go out there on a mission to "Transport cargo to Ackdarian spaceport if it didn't pick anything up?"

-Why didn't the game reserve any carbonite for this freighter as it clearly has reserved carbonite for something else?

Almost none of this makes any sense to me.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ee5hq0y3x6l7vmh/War%20Moe%20-%20Ackdarian%20-%202766-04-17%20Wed%20PM.DWGame?dl=0

[TheMac]

Originally posted by apadilla124us:

the update this morning was the dlc.


I had a similar issue with silicon. I didn't find any source of silicon with in range of the first 2 warps. and the nearest source was already claimed by an empire. Guess who declared war right after?

I liked that feeling and game play. wish some resources were more limited to the galaxy forcing to either trade or war.

Thanks. Wondered what the update was. Glad you found a source of silicone and also glad it wasn't a key material in the construction of your ships and bases.