New Bug?

[geoschmo]

alarikf said:
I really think the key to problem lies with the treaty issue.

No, one thing I am certain of is that the treaty issue is totally separate from the problem of Roanans ships not performing correctly in combat. Roanans ships should have fought back. You can test this yourself. If you break treaty with another empire and attack them their ships will fight back, regardless of whether you openly declare war or not.

There are two separate issues here. What caused your treaty to break is a question. But the more important question is why didn't Roanans ships fight back in combat.

[Suicide Junkie]

The treaty status could be a key symptom.

Perhaps the declaration of war was hit by a comm interception intel op or something, so they were only half at war...

[AMF]

Ok, there's an interesting idea. You're postulating that my declaration of war was intercepted, so it never reached them, but I was at war as far as my guys were concerned but they were not? That seems like a plausible funky result of the interplay between comms intercepts and treaty declarations...but, still, as Geo says, once combat begins, shouldn't they at least defend themselves?

EDIT: spelling/grammar

Suicide Junkie said:
The treaty status could be a key symptom.

Perhaps the declaration of war was hit by a comm interception intel op or something, so they were only half at war...

[Roanon]

No, one thing I am certain of is that the treaty issue is totally separate from the problem of Roanans ships not performing correctly in combat.

I'm not convinced of that. I think the game has registered that the Aether Lords are at war with me, but not registered that I was at war with them. Two proofs, my ships did behave normally in all combats against a already declared enemy, the Federation, and also in the combat involving both the Federation and the Aether Lords only fought agains the Federation, not fighting against the Aether Lords. This is possible, because there is a flag per player at which player they will fire, otherwise multiple player battles involving neutral parties would not be possible.
Second, most important, the Aether Lords were NOT affected by my minefields, while their minefields damaged my ships.
I think Malfador should take a look at this if even a rerun (on a machine with larger memory?) causes the same problem.

[Roanon]

I think it happend like that:

Alarikf declared war on me. This was instantly flagged on the client side, and this flag has been taken over by the host. (OT: this should NEVER be done with Online games, client has to be allowed to send commands only and not to change ANY data directly, host data MUST BE modified the host programm validating and evaluating client-issued commands only. I hope this is done more striktly in SEV).

The host program run the turn, somehow loosing the Messages before evaluating them. There are known problems with Messages in large games, we all know that trades tend to get lost when not done as the very Last thing during the turn. The result was that Alneyans already flagged empire shot at me, while the lost message never resulted in a like change of the flag on my empire's side.

[Renegade 13]

Therefore, if you re-send your declarations of war, your ships should behave as they should have in combat.

[Roanon]

Maybe, if the same bug doesn't strike again - and only from next turn on. Would be nice if the damage done this turn could be undone. If not, I'll have to live with it, but not another turn.

[geoschmo]

Suicide Junkie said:
The treaty status could be a key symptom.

Perhaps the declaration of war was hit by a comm interception intel op or something, so they were only half at war...

Roanon said:
I think it happend like that:

Alarikf declared war on me. This was instantly flagged on the client side, and this flag has been taken over by the host. (OT: this should NEVER be done with Online games, client has to be allowed to send commands only and not to change ANY data directly, host data MUST BE modified the host programm validating and evaluating client-issued commands only. I hope this is done more striktly in SEV).

The host program run the turn, somehow loosing the Messages before evaluating them. There are known problems with Messages in large games, we all know that trades tend to get lost when not done as the very Last thing during the turn. The result was that Alneyans already flagged empire shot at me, while the lost message never resulted in a like change of the flag on my empire's side.

I obviously can't say that this is definetly not the case, but I have never seen or even heard of anything remotely like this happening. Like everyone else I have heard of problems with Messages getting lost, but I have never seen a situation where two empires were "halfway" at war like this. What are the odds that a bug this serious has never occured before now in all the games of SE4 that have been played?

I will send an email to Malfador tonight when I get home. Maybe they can figure it out.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

Ok, well I'm leaning back the other way towards thinking you guys are right and it's some sort of "halfway" treaty thing. I ran the next turn offline and the ships act very similer, dancing around and whatnot. In several places where your ships are sharing sectors there are a couple of combat rounds played in each place. They do the dance for a couple rounds worth of combat and then finally wake up and start shooting on the Last round of combat.

I thought that was interesting, so I replayed the turn again this time taking control of Roanons empire and declaring war on the other guy. This time all Roanons ships go right to shooting like they should and all the combats only happen once.

This is quite bizarre to me. I know I've seen many games where one player has broken treaty and not declared war and both ships fight on the same turn. Not sure why it's not working right here. Malfador will have to try and track that down cause I've reached the limit of what I can figure out by rerunning turns.

We could roll the turn back and let you all do the Last turn over. For whatever reason Alarik's war declaration did not get to Roanon. There is no intel project that would stop a comm like that. You can tap comms or fake a declaration, but not stop one from going through normally. It must have something to do with that known communication bug that affects trades from time to time. If both of you declare war it should avoid the problem.

Geoschmo

[AMF]

So...he gets to know that I'm attacking him, huh? sigh. Oh well.

geoschmo said:
Ok, well I'm leaning back the other way towards thinking you guys are right and it's some sort of "halfway" treaty thing. I ran the next turn offline and the ships act very similer, dancing around and whatnot. In several places where your ships are sharing sectors there are a couple of combat rounds played in each place. They do the dance for a couple rounds worth of combat and then finally wake up and start shooting on the Last round of combat.

I thought that was interesting, so I replayed the turn again this time taking control of Roanons empire and declaring war on the other guy. This time all Roanons ships go right to shooting like they should and all the combats only happen once.

This is quite bizarre to me. I know I've seen many games where one player has broken treaty and not declared war and both ships fight on the same turn. Not sure why it's not working right here. Malfador will have to try and track that down cause I've reached the limit of what I can figure out by rerunning turns.

We could roll the turn back and let you all do the Last turn over. For whatever reason Alarik's war declaration did not get to Roanon. There is no intel project that would stop a comm like that. You can tap comms or fake a declaration, but not stop one from going through normally. It must have something to do with that known communication bug that affects trades from time to time. If both of you declare war it should avoid the problem.

Geoschmo