By playing with the files from this game I was able to duplicate the problem and have it occur every time I ran the particular turn. The design being retrofit to is a legal design. If you wait a turn later you can retrofit to it fine. It's only on the exact turn you make the design you can't retrofit to it. But this doesn't happen to every design obviously or we'd hear more about it, so there is some other bit of information that is causing the problem.
After much testing and a little help from SJ in the understanding what was happening, I have resolved the cause of the bug, and have some work arounds to avoid it in the future.
Every ship design in Se4 has a class name, but it get's tracked internally by an index number of some kind. These index numbers are apparently given to each design sequentially during the game as the design is first commited "to paper". However, in a simultaneous game since each player is doing their turn at the same time the game is giving each design the same index as the players do their thing. Then apparently later during the host turn the game reconciles this and removes duplication by changing some of the indexs. Not 100% sure that is exactly what is happening, since I can't see the code, but the symptoms fit the hypothesis.
The result of this reconcilliation on the host is that all the designs created during that turn get shifted around like a game of musical chairs. A long time ago we had this bug and the result would be that sometimes players would end up retrofitting to a design that belonged to another player. Even if they didn't have the tech for all the components. This was bad and resulted in a ship that could not be repaired, and free intelligence about what the other player had tech wise.
Apparetnly the bug was not completely fixed. Now instead of getting the wrong design, the one player will get his retrofit order cancelled with no error message or any indication that anything is amiss.
This problem always flows in the direction from the Last player to the first. The Last player will never have it happen to them, the first will have it happen more frequently. Thos in the middle may have it happen occasionally depending on the circumstances from turn to turn.
There are two workarounds. The first can be done at anytime, but is not 100% foolproof. If a player is designing a ship and has to retrofit to that design immedietly that turn, they can add several designs and pick the Last of the new designs to retrofit to.
This will work most but not all of the time. For example, if player one adds 5 new designs, and gives an order to retrofit to #5, it will work unless the other players make a total of five designs as well.
The second workaround is foolproof, but requires a little advance planning. At some point prior to the turn the new design is needed, the player can add some new designs and not use them for new constroction or retrofits. Then on any later turn those prototype designs can be edited to anything they wish and they will already have index numbers from the previous turn and so will not be affected by anything the other players do during that turn.
Geoschmo
Quote:
Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:
I hesitate to mention it, but something similar happened to me... and even much more foolproof. All I did was unmothball a ship. Next turn it was still mothballed and no orders in queue. I just passed it off thinking I had intended to unmothball but never got around to doing it, but sure have a memory of giving the order. This has happened in the past and again I just passed it off. This may be one of those sporadic glitches that occurs now and then for seemingly no reason.
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If you have a spefici instance of this occuring I'd liek to see it. It doesn't appear to be the same problem Stone Mill was having.
Geoschmo
[ May 08, 2003, 18:27: Message edited by: geoschmo ]