Bug Report - Rebel Units and House Units both occupying City Simultaneously

[RemoraDFC]

When successfully conquering a City Hex, if some of the Defenders Retreat, but have no tile to flee towards. They instead remain inside the City. Any of the players House units that are built in the City are locked and unable to move out (including Resource Crates). Any new attempts to attack the City (With Rebel Units inside the City) are not possible, since the City belongs to the player House. No units may move into the City.

I am uploading an image from my game as evidence of this.
https://ibb.co/JwqwCWmB

The bug occured when the city was defeated successfully. The City flipped ownership to player. But there were still some Rebel forces inside, since they had no vacant Hex Tile to flee towards. So now the City exists in both a state of Player ownership and Rebel Ownership. Where the Player cannot attack themselves, nor move units into or out of the city.

I even tried building an Engineer and Razing the City. To see if this freed the units. It did not. Since the Engineer and Rebel units coexist on same tile, the player unit is locked and unable to move. Likewise the player cannot attack the Rebel unit, since the tile is also owned by the player (Engineer present). Orbital Bombardment is also not possible, since you cannot bombard your own subjects (popup notice).

I cannot find a way to reasonably resolve this hard locked tile.

There is ONLY 1 way at moment to free the tile and attack the Rebel Unit. Using the Engineer built inside the City, Raze the City. Then Disband all units (Including the Engineer), and Disband any resources (Deleting the resources from the game). In essence you are leaving ONLY the Rebel unit alone on the tile. This is presently only way to resolve this situation. Scorched Earth all your own city, units and resources, while leaving the Rebels to remain. :(

[Dray Prescot]

Does leaving a vacant tile outside the City Tiles for them to retreat to solve the problem, i.e. will they retreat to it?

[Jukelo]

I was able to reproduce the problem at the farm on Pentateuch as shown in the screenshot, the map border seems to be particularly important for this as other tests with no tile for the defenders to retreat to have ended in the retreating defenders simply disappearing.

I have seen similar behaviours around agoras though so there must be some other edge cases where stacks get intertwined.

[RemoraDFC]

I just found another example of it. The Regent Elections occurred and I gained possession of Stigmata, which was previously held by another AI House. While I was going thru all the stuff on planet Stigmata I found a stack of units, belonging to Stigmata, with 1 single crate of materials belonging to House Al Malik (previous Stigmata owner). I now control Stigmata, and thus the forces on it. But that stack is stuck. Since there is 1 crate of materials belonging to another house. I have no idea what circumstances occurred to create this stuck stack. But the behaviour is the same. A stack of units I control unable to move. I am unable to move units into stack either. And I cannot attack the stack to take the material crate, since game thinks I am trying to attack my own military units. In this instance there is no City involved. It is a stack of units standing on grass tile, stuck with 1 crate of Wetwares belonging to Al Malik.

Image 1 - https://ibb.co/v6mXkkGf
Image 2 - https://ibb.co/h1KHdjmV (It is the 12 stack beside the Energy Tiles)

Originally posted by Dray Prescot:

Does leaving a vacant tile outside the City Tiles for them to retreat to solve the problem, i.e. will they retreat to it?

Good idea. But unfortunately no. Either the AI is choosing not to move the Rebel unit, or it is also stuck and unable to move out.

[RemoraDFC]

And a 3rd one found. This time a Stigmata Destroyer landlocked with a Decados Tank.

https://ibb.co/v6ZD3v6d

[RemoraDFC]

If any Players or Devs want to see for themselves. I am uploading this current game save online. (using free file hosting, so link expires in 6 days)

The 3 examples I mention and showed above are all in this same game. 2 on Stigmata and one on Pentateuch.

https://filebin.net/rsk7eb4lhk6wgidv

[kyuss22]

When you attack does it say. Limited Engagement and the combat screen shows up and nothing happens and all you can do is end combat? I just got this and as far as I can tell. I cant bombard or go into the fort with high spot units. Im guessing its a bug.

[Jukelo]

Originally posted by RemoraDFC:

If any Players or Devs want to see for themselves. I am uploading this current game save online. (using free file hosting, so link expires in 6 days)

The 3 examples I mention and showed above are all in this same game. 2 on Stigmata and one on Pentateuch.

https://filebin.net/rsk7eb4lhk6wgidv

Would you happen to have autosaves going... as far back as possible? :D It's hard to tell from a single snapshot what could have happened there, but with some luck it happened in between two saves and we can have a look.

[RemoraDFC]

Originally posted by Jukelo:

Originally posted by RemoraDFC:

If any Players or Devs want to see for themselves. I am uploading this current game save online. (using free file hosting, so link expires in 6 days)

The 3 examples I mention and showed above are all in this same game. 2 on Stigmata and one on Pentateuch.

https://filebin.net/rsk7eb4lhk6wgidv

Would you happen to have autosaves going... as far back as possible? :D It's hard to tell from a single snapshot what could have happened there, but with some luck it happened in between two saves and we can have a look.

It took some digging through all the autosave files. I found the save that is the exact turn I landed troops on Pentateuch.

In this autosave, I do not yet have Stigmata. So I have no idea if the 2 other instances on Stigmata have occured yet or not. However, the forces I used on Pentateuch are in a Bulk Hauler in orbit. I simply landed on the adjacent tile, accepted the damage from hard landing, rolled my 4 tanks in and won the battle with some Rebel units fleeing.

You can replicate this yourself. After the city flips, the fleeing Rebel units remain inside the city. The City is owned by me, but the units garrisoned within are the rebel unit(s) that fled. They wont leave, I cannot move units in or attack city. I can build new units. But those new units produced become stuck inside city also.

Test for yourself. The file is named Log_Save_5061.sav

https://filebin.net/rsk7eb4lhk6wgidv


ps. If you are curious about Stigmata. I won the very next election to become Regent. I asssigned myself Stigmata. That same turn that I assigned it to myself is when i noticed the 2 other instances on Stigmata.

[Jukelo]

The stack mix up issue on Pentateuch was reproduced and identified. I can't tell you when it will get fixed, but I'm not too worried about it at this point, unless you see it happening again in places that are not adjacent to the map border.
I'm afraid the fix for you in the meantime is to disband the units you can and then attack the rebels (no such option if you have ministry units there I'm afraid). Or to go back to that save, capture the city again, and pursue the (not-so) fleeing defenders to capture them and bring them over to your faction rather than leaving them in place.

What I'm most interested in is the stack mix up on Stigmata, so I'd love to see more of what led to this. So if you have saves from prior to 5061 I'll take everything you have. It doesn't matter that you don't have Stigmata yet and don't have vision there.

Otherwise it's no big deal, I've seen this issue before so I'm sure it will get dredged up in testing eventually :]

[RemoraDFC]

Okay, even though Stigmata is not player owned. I will provide all the autosaves I have for that game.

I just added them all. Autosaves from 4961 to 5061.

https://filebin.net/rsk7eb4lhk6wgidv

[Dray Prescot]

Originally posted by RemoraDFC:

I just found another example of it. The Regent Elections occurred and I gained possession of Stigmata, which was previously held by another AI House. While I was going thru all the stuff on planet Stigmata I found a stack of units, belonging to Stigmata, ...

Good idea. But unfortunately no. Either the AI is choosing not to move the Rebel unit, or it is also stuck and unable to move out.

Maybe Al-Malik will use up the Resources in the Supply Container. But that might require them to have ships or units in the system to consume them.
But that is quite unpredictable on if or when it might happen.

I used to have similar problems back in the 90s with the original game when I would have Stigmata and then lose control of it. I would have stack(s) of intermingled units or ships that I could not disentangle, forcing me to end that game.

The supply container might elude their normal rules to prevent mixed stacks.

[Jukelo]

Originally posted by RemoraDFC:

Okay, even though Stigmata is not player owned. I will provide all the autosaves I have for that game.

I just added them all. Autosaves from 4961 to 5061.

https://filebin.net/rsk7eb4lhk6wgidv

Thank you.

[Hade]

This bug has been in this game forever.
It's easy to reproduce to get mixed stacks.

[kyuss22]

LOL yes it has. Not to ♥♥♥♥ on the Dev. But yea when I bought the game in the 90s sorry it was a mess. I just hope that they don't throw up there hands and give up on ETFS.