Can Intel Really do this?

[spacefan]

This is starting to make me furious, and I can't figure it out.

In the history of the galaxy PBW game, it seems like every turn something happens to my ships or something that is completely different than what I ordered. Im turning in the turns on time, so I can't figure it out, unless this is all someones' intel projects, and for some reason I can't tell who do the utter chaos to my empire.

Here's what I've seen happen, if you've seen all these things happen through Intel somehow I'd like to know, cause otherwise something is wrong with the PBW game, and it really makes it hard. I'm going to keep roleplaying it, as it fits my race (fazrah, but I'd like to know for future games)

First I've noticed many times my ships were supposed to go to one place but instead went to another. I've seen intel projects do this. But I thought you'd get some sort of message.

I discovered an empire I had been at peace with was all of a sudden at war with me, with no notice. I also have heard of intel like this. But I still got no notice of it and didn't realize it until I tried to give orders to my tragically misdirected fleet.

The thing I've never seen an intel project do is change your projects. Somehow my intel was changed from counterintel to covert recon, and another time to a specific counterintel of a race. I guess I've just never experienced this many intel projects, cause I never know what the hell my ships are going to be doing the next turn and I can't do anything cause it seems my EVERY order gets changed.

Its just frustrating and I'd like to figure out what it is and how many intel points it took to do all that.

[Gil Hamilton]

spacefan- Two games ago (not PBW) all of a sudden my ships started being destroyed because of "a lack of resources". As I had just been declared war on by a newly discovered race I assumed their Intel was awesome! In 8 or 9 turns I had lost almost half my fleet of nifty new cruisers with all the latest bells and ... well you get the point. After another 10 or 12 turns of shifting my entire economy to building and REALLY promoting Intel I notice something funny.................. my Organics income was Very negative. Duhh... I had just begun to excersise my race's organic tech developments into useful gadgets for my nifty new fleet.
I'm sure its not that simple for your case, but look closely for something you might be overlooking. (BTW, I ended up not losing too many colonies before I got things back under control, once I realised my error. Good thing I wasn't playing other humans!)

[Phoenix-D]

Sounds like the AI may be having fun with you, plus a few intel projects in to spice things up.

You have ministers off? Not missing any turns? And most importantly- you 100% sure you're sending the right file all the time?

Phoenix-D

[Spoo]

It sounds like the AI is running your turns for you.

[Gryphin]

Spacefan,
A misdirected ship:
I thrice had a ship go the long way around to get to a known location.
Turns out it knew moor than me. The short path was through an un expored start system.
I now always check the "ship path line"
I guess this post should be double posted to the "how dumb ru" thread.

[geoschmo]

Spacefan,

I see exactly what happend to you. I will explain it here, not as a way to ridicule you, but in the hopes that other new players can learn from your mistake. You should not feel bad, it is a very common mistake on PBW. Probably the #1 cause of messed up turns. Unfortunately there really isn't much we can do to prevent it except inform people to watch out for it.

On the 28th, you were the Last player to upload your turn. You uploaded your .plr file at 6:45:38, the turn completed processing at 6:45:54. You then uploaded again at 6:46:28, and the .plr file was exactly the same file size as the one uploaded at 6:45:38. Obviously this wasn't you playing the next turn very fast, this was the same .plr file. The only thing PBW does is check the file name to make sure you are uploading the correct player for the correct game. It cannot tell if you are uploading an incorrect turn for that player in that game.

But when Se4 goes to process the next turn, it does recognize that the .plr file is the incorrect turn, and so ignores it and the AI controls your empire for you. If a human game owner were running this as a PBEM game, they would get an error message at this point saying "The turn for player 6 is for the date 2415.3, and the current game date is 2415.4. Do you wish to continue and let the AI run this players turn?" PBW however runs turns at the command line and does not stop when it receives these errors. It makes the AI run these turns by default.

This same thing happened to you again on the next day. You controlled your empire for turns 153 and 155, and the AI controlled it for turns 154 and 156.

What could have caused this? Well most likely your web browser did not refresh right away, and you thought maybe PBW did not register your file upload and you hit the send file button again. The server process turns very quickly in most cases. A matter of seconds unless there are a LOT of combat rounds going on within the game. Quite often the server processes the next turn way faster than the page refreshes on your screen, due to communication lags over the internet.

The best way to prevent it is check the game info and the game log whenever you upload a turn. If you are the Last player uploading be careful. If you see in the log that it registered you as uploading twice with a new turn inbetween when you only uploaded once, then you can undo the second upload from the game info screen and play the correct turn and upload it.

You can also download and use the Play By Web Real Time Client. This automates all this stuff, and will delete the exsisting .plr file from your pc before letting you play the turn, and will not upload until after you play your turn, so you avoid all this mess to begin with.

We can't have PBW abort the game everytime se4 receives an incorrect turn or we would have to have someone sitting at the PBW server 24 hours a day clicking on the error Messages that pop up and sending emails to the game owners. It wouldn't be an automatic game server then.

Geoschmo
PBW Admin Team

[spacefan]

Thanks, thats really clears things up, as I was starting to go mad. I have a tendency to click things twice when they don't go fast enough for me, so I just need to remind myself not to do that. Especially since the next few turns are crucial.