Edited: Slick's question thread.

[Baron Munchausen]

Slick said:
Ok, new question: Is there a limit to the number of fleets you can have?

The reason I ask is that I'm in a game now where I have between 30 & 35 fleets and a very wierd thing just happened. I assembled a fleet of about 35 ships at a training world and sent it on its way, but on the next turn all the ships had stopped after moving the expected distance but their "fleet" had disappeared. All the 35 ships were in the same sector awaiting orders. Then I had to send them back to my training world to become part of another trained fleet.

Anyone else ever see a fleet disappear from under its ships?

There is a long-standing problem with fleets in SE IV. Since SE V is by the same programmer it may well have inherited the bug or some variation. All of the AIs use the same routine to create their fleets, and somewhere or other the AI sometimes gets confused about fleet names, or perhaps ID codes. It causes two different fleets to get identified together and locks them both up. It is entirely possible for one of the 'other' fleets to be a player's instead of an AI's fleet! The only way to 'fix' this is to disband one of the fleets. I described this problem to MM several times but he never seemed to be able to find the source of the screwup. So, he might have built in some 'automatic' failsafe to at least keep fleets from getting jammed. And that might have resulted in the accidental disappearance of one of your fleets.

[Slick]

If it adds any data to shine some light on the problem:

- I did use the simulator that turn, which I only very rarely do; didn't use fleets in the simulator. I haven't seen this problem before either. Maybe the simulator does have some quirky side effects.

- I always rename my fleets using a pretty unique naming convention. I don't think that there was a duplicate name. As far as fleet ID, who knows how the game works in that respect.

- The fleet existed for some time before it disappeared. It was trained to 20% at a training facility.

- I'm pretty sure that the fleet in question didn't really do anything other than: get created at the training planet, get trained, get filled with ~35 ships, then move for a single turn (simultaneous turns). No combat, 1 warp.

[Slick]

Is there a way to use a treaty to trade research points? It seems that research points never get traded like other resources; rather technology gets traded instead.

[Captain Kwok]

That's correct. There's no trading of research points.

[Slick]

Thanks. Where in the data files is the setting for how many units a planet can launch in a single turn?

[BlueTemplar]

Nowhere AFAIK. You can launch as many as you want.

[Slick]

It must be somewhere because sometimes not all units are launched in 1 turn (simultaneous).