HELP!! The Chiron Bermuda Triangle

[karu-san]

Hello!

It's me, with another strange question that people will probably misunderstand as my own incompetence despite all my sincerity and evidence to the contrary. Oh, well, it's worth a shot since it's been giving me nothing but a pain in the a$$. And besides, what are all you experts and veterans out there good for if you can't help poor pitiful me sort through the quandaries that are plaguing my need for closure

Anyway, here's the deal:

I mind-control a peacekeeper base with 7 (seven) needlejets, three missile and four resonance laser. Forthwith I use the captured needlejets to attack a nearby peacekeeper base. The turn ends with six of the seven needljets in the air, but it is the first movement turn for all of them (I AM SURE OF THIS! HE**, I CAPTURED THE BASE ON THAT TURN!), so they should all return to base anyway. Incidentally, on the F6 screen (the units list) i now have all of ONE needlejet of each new type listed, even though, right there in front of my quizzical little nose, are three of one type and four of the other. I did not have any missile or resonance jets before the capture.

Well, I pass this off as just another one of those small F-screen glitches but I cannot do the same when, after the turn ends and the next begins, I find that three of my needlejets are just plain GONE! Vanished! I have all animations enabled but I saw no out-of-fuel crashing or battles, and I even ran the editor with omniscient to verify that none of the planes were attacked (even though there are no enemy planes visible). They weren't. None of the planes were out of fuel, since I also verified by going back a turn that as soon as I had captured the base, all the planes had 24/24 fuel.
Furthermore, the supporting base had exactly enough minerals to support all seven of the planes. Yes, a rushed probe team was produced the next turn, but I don't believe that is relevant.
What is really non-kosher is that only three of the planes in the stack vanished, leaving the other three intact. Two missile and one resonance, if I recall.

Anyway, for all you doubters of genuine Karu-san-variety phenomenon, I made a save of the game at the end of the turn before the jets vanish, so if anyone really thinks I'm just pulling this out of me arse, there it is, right there on the save (inform a computer illiterate if there's a better way send it besides email or putting it on a home page). I've already used two separate computers to verify the disappearance. The gauntlet lies thrown to anyone who can explain this occurence.

And yes, despite the bombast, I would love it someone deflated me by pointing out the ever-present, altogether ridiculously obvious solution. However, as my save will verify, all of the above observations are true to the best of my empirical abilities.

Edit: It has occurred to me that perhaps people just wrinkle their noses at such oddities and move on, rather than try to explain them (even if it involves the loss of three lovely little needlejets at time when my army is, well, spartan). While this might be the case, I still ask you to suffer this post on the chance that someone can clear this up. Thanks!
[This message has been edited by karu-san (edited February 27, 2001).]

[NorthSwordsman]

quote: Originally posted by karu-san on 02-27-2001 08:09 AM Well, I pass this off as just another one of those small F-screen glitches but I cannot do the same when, after the turn ends and the next begins, I find that three of my needlejets are just plain GONE! Vanished!

Karu-san, I've experienced the same type of problem, and never found a solution. If anyone else has, I sure would like to know. My best *guess* here is that it has to be a bug in the game itself. Other than that, I have no idea.

NorthSwordsman

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

This may be too obvious but... Did the captured base have the requisite minerals to provide support for the units in question? You claim it did when your turn ended but did an opposing faction occupy a min laden square such as a mine. Otherwise I am also stimied.

Og
[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited February 27, 2001).]

[lbores]

Sounds like just bad karma to me!

[theohall]

Karu-san - please send the save - email link is above. I'd like to take a look as I haven't seen this happen yet.

[karu-san]

Thanks everybody!

And Northswordsman, it's heartening to know that somone else has experienced this too.

Just to clarify Og's question, the supporting base had no minerals before the disappearance (exactly enought to support the jets) and three extra minerals after (accounting for the lost jets). So no, mineral production didn't decrease across the turn-change. Temporary movements across my base radius of enemy units shouldn't disrupt production,even if there had been any (there weren't). It is theoretically possible that enemy units moved into mineral squares, disrupted production and were then destroyed by other enemy units. However, I used the editor to verify that this didn't happen either.

still befuddled but grateful for the commiseration,
K-san

[Sprayber]

I've had captured units disappear as well. But mine was a foil not a needlejet. I just went on and played even though it put a snag in some short range plans. H*ll once I captured one foil inside an enemy seabase and ended up fighting myself on the next turn. SMAC can be weird sometimes.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

This actually reminds me of a game where I was beating up on Hminee. IIRC I was beating the snot out of Booger (hee hee) with an X-chopper campaign and then I checked my infiltration. Booger just got Orbital space flight. Next turn Booger has over 100 crusie missiles in a base. I rapidly gassed the base into oblivion fully expececting themiisles to evaporate b/c at least they had to be supported somehow right. Wrong they fly back to the next base and get homed there are apparently with no support implciations. WTF? The X campaign continued never giving Booger a chance to fire them but still.

Og

[theohall]

Karu-san - just loaded up and took a look.

The stack of six - every plane is showing 9/20 movement left in the red. Only way this is possible is if those planes had moved twice since they only have a 10 movement value. Amazing 3 planes stayed alive. If they'd only moved once it would be 10/20 in the yellow which is what three of the planes changed to on the next turn.

Weird.

[Locus]

I feel for you. Weird sh*t happens sometimes in SMAC. I have an annoying problem with needle jets myself. Sometimes when my jets automatically return to a base, I click in the base and select hold. A few turns later, I select activate, just to find that the fuel supply still says something like 9/20 in yellow or red. How annoying! The jets will even be fully repaired from waiting in the base! I then have to fly the jet out and return to the base without making an attack for the fuel to reset. Very annoying, sometimes I have lost great attack opportunities because of the delay. I just deal with it and keep playing. Good luck!

[Rastapopoulos]

Actually, reading your post reminds me of one sad occasion in an MP game, whence a freshly mind-controlled foil that had formerly been owned by Marr decided to disappear the next turn. Marr at the time was played by the AI and I discussed the matter with my fellow human player and he conceded that we reload the turn (we were playing in Hotseat mode) only to find that the behaviour was reproducable.
IMO, this and the evidence above strongly suggests we are looking at yet another outrageous bug in SMAC that causes mind-controlled units to disappear, even though it doesn't seem to happen very often and the circumstances that lead to the event (if any) are still unknown.
The only good thing I can find about this is it somewhat balances the enormous power of probe teams by adding some sort of random risc factor. But of course this thing has never been intended to happen by anyone at Firaxis. If you ask me, they have very, very good game designers but lousy programmers.
What happens, I imagine, is something like this: all units ever produced in a given game are probably stored in some sort of internal list, which also states, among other things, who they belong to and probably some sort of tag is assigned to a unit when it's destroyed, so it can disappear from the game, but it still is registered for the purpose of showing it on some F-screen. Now when you probe a unit, the program has to change all kinds of properties in this list, namely who the unit belongs to and at this point it messes up and assigns the tag for being destroyed to these units. Something like this. Also explains all other kinds of messy behaviour in conjunction with unit-lists. I have seen so many lies in those F-screens, units assigned to the wrong factions, units in my Command Nexus I've never owned nor even designed and the like. As I said: lousy code



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May the fungus be with you...