SE IV Crash : Range something or other

[drcharm]

Hi all,

New, proud owner of SE IV Gold and I'm having a bit of a problem. Most of the time the game runs fine, but I've started getting a crash during the computer players' turns that says something like: "Range calculation fails" and all I can do is close the application and start it again.

Any ideas on what this is and how to fix it?

Cheers,

Dr. Charm

[dogscoff]

Was it a range Check error? You'd better get used to those...

[sachmo]

I've seen this too, but in my experience it was only after I had added some of the custom races. Does it happen with standard races also?? To be honest, and I do appreciate the effort, that Last answer was less than helpful...

[drcharm]

Well, what's interesting is that this is a new problem. I've had the game for about a week and a half and it's only in the Last 2 days that I've had this problem. Also, yes, I am using a custom race, but I have been since the beginning, and this is the first time I've had the problem.

Cheers,

Dr. Charm

[Jmenschenfresser]

Just make sure you turn on the automatic saves for every turn or every other turn.

Has saved several of my games against the AI. To me I think Gold gives out more RCEs that the original.

[mac5732]

One thing you may want to try, sometimes it works sometimes not, Is in your part of the turn or during the turn prior to the AI taking its turn, whatever you were doing, do something different or don't move or do anything and just hit end of turn. Sometimes by doing something different no matter how minute, it changes something in the turn that the ai is using. But like I said sometimes this works sometimes not, but its worth a try. Usually if you get past that turn, your home free.... at least for awhile, also try turning your cd music off if its on, If its a combat situation and your using tactical, use strategic instead, or visa versa, or don't have any combat that turn or for several turns, then try again, but change your formation... good luck,

Or what I have found, there are certain areas in a game that certain actions will always trigger and RCE or index error, this could be a planet, use of captured wp's on a specific planet, etc for that particular game only. It won't happen in a different game, I think (not sure at this point) that these types of RCE's are somehow generated when the map is made prior to starting a game. There is no way of knowing until that type hits, because they only usually happen only during that particular game, but you may have different triggers in each game that does the same thing. I've seen this type in several games I've played. 2 involved specific planets during the game, another involved a specific wormhole when fleets met. But did not happpen in the next new generated game. Not 100% sure on these types, only stating what I've seen that may have a common denominator...

good luck, I hope I made sense in what I said

just some ideas Mac

[Q]

Most important: are you playing a turn based or a simultaneous game??
In a turn based game you can determine and eliminate the error by switching the AI player that causes the error to human control, activate all ministers and watch the turn till the error occurs.
In a simultaneous game that's much more difficult. As said the only thing you can do is to make some random changes of the AI turn by switching some ministers on or off. If the error occurs when you do nothing at all and all ministers are turned off then the game is probably lost.
If you can dertermine the cause of the range check error don't forget to mail it to MM.
Hope this helps and good luck!