Bugs

[Pumpernickel]

In my latest game I came across a few issues I hadn't encountered before:

1. In one save I have a dreadnaught armada CNC ship that I can not repair. When I bring up the repair screen, the bar indicating the ship's hit points is completely red while the little plus symbol to the right of that is green O.o. Repairing capacity reads: None (even though I have a handful of repair ships listed on the left). Repairs needed reads: full red bar. The repair ship's numbers representing their repair capacities are full. When I click on the dreadnaught in attempt to repair it, all the repair ship's numbers go to zero (as if they're attempting to repair it) but nothing happens. The damaged ship's red bar remains completely empty/red.

2. In another save, when I pull up the repair screen at a given system, the areas that read how much repairing is needed and available are shifted to the left. Everything else is where it should be so it just has a broken appearance to it all. Other planet's repair screens display just fine.

3. In one battle I encountered an enemy ship that became sationary and undestructable after an enemy support/tanker dreadnaught exploded next to it. It is burning and torn up as if it is close to destruction but it never explodes. I can fire upon it indefinitely.

4. This last one is probably just poor AI rather than a bug, but a solution would still be nice. When I start battles with dreadnaughts and select the 'close to attack' option, one will often run into the planet. Happens repeatedly in different battles if I don't consciously take the measures to avoid it. My flagship tends to be the one that smacks butt first into the planet as it, all too late, tries desperately to slow down (idiot pilots!). Flagships (at least the Zuul ones) are slower to accelerate and decelerate.

I'm hoping there may be patches or something to solve these issues. As I suggested for the first two bugs: I have saves available for them if you'd like to see them with your own eyes. All help is appreciated.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

What version of the game and are you modded?

[Pumpernickel]

Complete Collection. No mods.

[LordUther]

Late to the party, but I have had SOTS install improperly on a few occasions. Resulting in odd bugs popping up. Back up your saved games and config settings. Then uninstall it and reinstall again. That has always fixed the anomalous random bugs like these for me.

[Pumpernickel]

Hmmm. I actually did an uninstall and reinstall for other reasons recently. Guess if I run into more bugs I'll have to try it again...

[Pumpernickel]

@LordUther I thought a little more about what you said. Assuming you utilize the default recommended directories to install your game, shouldn't one install be exactly identical to the next? I can't imagaine there'd be differences there.

[cedric.yvon]

I have a lot of graphical bugs with my NVIDIA GT 330M
The texture most of the time appear outside the ship .

I'm playing the normal steam verssion on a windows 10.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Show us some screenshots.

[Pumpernickel]

@Colonel Sanders Lite
Here are your screen shots.

This one is for #2 in my original post: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/93851170779294069/27481C146E091100AA31981B3CC683CDDA277AFF/
Take note of the red bar indicating the needed repairs being located to the left of where it should be.

This one is for #1:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/93851170779331422/924E4663CB8EB0B18F1BA7ACFA4C3EA39383BC6C/
The Armada CNC at the top of the list can not be repaired. All the repair vessels read 0 on their repair capacity now because I just used it all trying to repair the CNC and it did nothing.

I didn't think to take a screenshot for #3 when it happened.

I can get one for #4 if it helps, but all you'll see is the Flagship close to the planet as it hits it butt first as described above.

[Fulano]

I see bugs all the time in this game, and I play it on 3 different machines, it's far from fixed, but it's playable at least.

#1 I've seen before, but it always fixed with a reload of the game, it seemed the HP bar was wrong because the ship was fine in battle.

#4 is a pain... but I think mostly due to the poor ship path finding.

Though considering how old this game is I really don't think they're going to mess with fixing it, but it would be so amazing if they did!

[Pumpernickel]

@Fulano5321

#1 Yes, it seems the HP bar isn't indicative of what shape the ship is actually in. You can still waste your entire fleet's repair points by trying to repair it though. And reloading doesn't rectify the issue in my case. :/

[Smiler_FDL]

I have no graphicl bugs like you, but I cannot design cruiser ships with torpedoes. I have researched photonic and fusion torpedo, but the ship hull "Torpedo" is only available for destroyer class. Also the Barrage command section etc. are not available. I just bought the SOTS complete edition and playing as human.

[Pumpernickel]

There are prerequisites for being able to build the various ship sections. More than likely that is not a bug, but a lack of required technology thus far acquired on your part. The wiki will give lots of information on the tech tree.

[WuTaNiSt]

There is no cruiser torpedo section. At cruiser and dreadnaught level the barrage mission section is built around a mix of torpedos and other weapons, as is the assault command section. Since for most races (humans & morrigi especially) these sections have heavy beams (HCL, Lancers, Cutting beam) you need to have researched one of them as well before the sections unlock

[Smiler_FDL]

You are right. When I got Heavy Lasers all the sections became available. Thanks for your help!

[BlueTemplar]

The first 3 just sound like bugs when a number happened to increase/decrease to the point of rolling over to the other side of it's value.

Take a signed integral on 8 bits, which can represent values from -128 to 127 : if a variable is at 128 (coded 1111 1111) and you add 1 to it, you'll end up with 1 0000 0000, except now you have 9 digits, and the first one is dropped, leaving you with 0000 0000, which represents -127.
Which can have unintended consequences like the first 3 bugs : what happens if a ship has negative health points?
(Or you have 32-bit integrals rolling over when substracted 1 from 0, ending with 4 294 967 295. Good luck having to repair all that!)

That said, with over 4000 hours with SotS1 I rarely, if ever saw these kinds of bugs, so that might be corruption on your side, either from software or hardware.
(The most common bug I run into that sounds like that is the one where upon dropping slaves to a world they instead just disappear. Not sure if it's really related though.)