Email game errors on trancendence level

dacole · September 20, 2003, 21:48

Ok playing an email game and my partner reported this error, haven't seen it myself. He says that at certain times when I send him the turn, the year changes his units act like they have already moved and even his research doesn't advance. The units can be explained by haveing them move into fungus or rocky squares correct? The other is more disturbing to me. Has anyone else encountered this error if so what did you do about it? Also in another post, the name of which escapes me now it was said that the xp compatability patch corrected some problems with upkeep ect on transcend level..any one have any more information on this? Haven't seen these errors yet, anyone know anything about them? Thanks in advance!

Curiosity · September 21, 2003, 05:19

Quote:

Originally posted by dacole
Also in another post, the name of which escapes me now it was said that the xp compatability patch corrected some problems with upkeep ect on transcend level..any one have any more information on this?

In SMAC v4, upkeep is added to your energy reserves rather than subtracted from them at Transcend level. Also, golden ages do not give +2 growth as described. The xp patch fixes these two problems.

As for the other bug, I don't know. PBEM is prone to wierd bugs - in one game I've had a network node spontaneously appear in a base. Have you tried going back to a previous save?

gwillybj · September 22, 2003, 19:08

Also re the XP patch: All players in a MP game must use it, or none must use it; if one player in a 2-player PBEM has the patch and the other doesn't, the saves from either player will not be read correctly by the other's version (v4 by v5 and v5 by v4).

Hydro · September 22, 2003, 20:20

I've seen the year 'slip' frequently, but none of the other nasty problems you describe.

I'll have to make sure to load the XP patch and hope that fixes potential problems. Thanks for the heads up, and the possible solution!!

Hydro

Mongoose · September 22, 2003, 22:53

Quote:

Originally posted by Curiosity

In SMAC v4, upkeep is added to your energy reserves rather than subtracted from them at Transcend level.

This is not correct. The maintence expense bug doesn't add credits at Transcend or at Thinker. The effect of the bug is that the game fails properly to deduct them. At Transcend, only 1/3 of the maintence expenses displayed on F3 are actually deducted from your treasury. At Thinker, 2/3 are deducted. At Librarian, the deductions are made as should be.

I have always thought that this was supposed to be an AI advantage at those two higher levels that got mis-coded and applied to the human player...perhaps instead of, perhaps in addition to the AI.

Minute Mirage · October 23, 2003, 12:11

Quote:

Originally posted by gwillybj
Also re the XP patch: All players in a MP game must use it, or none must use it; if one player in a 2-player PBEM has the patch and the other doesn't, the saves from either player will not be read correctly by the other's version (v4 by v5 and v5 by v4).

Is this confirmed? What does "will not be read correctly" mean? Will they not be opened at all?

dacole · October 23, 2003, 15:09

Another question, same game but now when ever we open a file it takes us to the map editor where every thing is visible ect. Is there a way to stop it from doing this? Happened because of the way email was handeled on my end for a while which has been corrected. Any help is appreciated!

johndmuller · October 24, 2003, 03:02

Some wierd situations can occur when the turn is not exited properly with "turn complete", followed by a save, but instead is exited by "quit", followed paradoxically by a save. This can do a variety of odd things to the turn, and also seems to have effects simiilar to "resigning", which itself is flawed in PBEM.