Feedback thread

[mindlar]

I just had a game where I built the planetary council and didn't realize that I needed to change civics to become a member of the council. After realizing that I needed to change civics, I reloaded a save prior to the council being built and waited until I finished building the council.

By doing this, I was able to come into the vote just late enough to prevent either of the other two candidates from winning the election. Due to the timing of the build of the council, I wasn't able to change civics fast enough to be qualified to be voted in as head of the council.

My suggestion is to either automatically make all players a member of the council as soon as the council is built, make the builder of the council a member immediately upon building, or postpone the election for a few turns after the council is built.

 

[rocklikeafool]

2 points. 1) I hope you'll be fleshing out the factions more. Maybe some UUs or something? More leaders/factions. 2) It's only turn 8 & 2 of the factions are dead. WTH? Maybe tone down the Plant Life/Barbs?

 

[Maniac]

Maybe there should be an AI strategy for those native life forms specifically to head for a "bad" human base and leave the "good" humans alone.

Sounds good, but I can't think of a good/easy way to code this. :-s

I finally got a hold of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and played it until I got bored and my end turns takes a minute or 2 to end...

I don't think Planetfall is the mod for you. I'd suggest to stop playing it.

I just had a game where I built the planetary council and didn't realize that I needed to change civics to become a member of the council. After realizing that I needed to change civics, I reloaded a save prior to the council being built and waited until I finished building the council.

In the next patch you'll get a popup to change civics upon building the council. This was already supposed to be in, but I made a small error causing the popup to appear when some other building was built.

2 points. 1) I hope you'll be fleshing out the factions more. Maybe some UUs or something? More leaders/factions.

If somebody suggests a cool leader bonus/penalty, I'll add it, but personally I don't see an urgent need to further differentiate the factions.

2) It's only turn 8 & 2 of the factions are dead. WTH? Maybe tone down the Plant Life/Barbs?

What difficulty level are you playing on?

 

[Pfeffersack]

I posted a while ago a problem with the AI going overboard with building transports, but I wasn't able to provide useful saves then. Now I encountered a similar problem with Aquaformers - in fact I see two problems.
The situation is that me and Miriam share a border which includes a 13-tile-freshwaterlake. The believer base of "Großzion" is located at the coast of this lake and the water tiles are already improved with windmills. The strange thing is that the
Believers seem to beam occasionally stacks of Aquaformers out of nowhere (I supect the base "Kinder Gottes" as home, but no teleport buildings are there) to that lake, which disappear then again. And on the top of that Großzion happily constructs new Aquaformers, despite having a fleet of them...

I have browsed my autosaves to find hopefully useful ones, which show aspects of the problems described above. I came up with 4:

PFv12-noformers2300: Shows Großzion without any aquaformers (but building one), but note the ones sitting inside Kinder Gottes...
PFv12-whyanotherformer2301: Now the Aquaformer-fleet has magically appeared (no more in Kinder Gottes), Großzion goes on with the Aquaformer nonetheless...
PFv12-manyformers2307: shows the fleet again...if you end the turn, you see that a part of the fleet was used to convert some of the watermills to mining
plattforms. So the AI has something in mind with them.
PFv12-beforenewformer2313: if you end the turn, Großzion will start another Aquaformer...

 

[darkedone02]

I don't think Planetfall is the mod for you. I'd suggest to stop playing it.

ummm.... no, I like to play Planetfall from time to time, and it improved a lot... I'm wondering how far this mod will go...

 

[rocklikeafool]

What difficulty level are you playing on?

I was playing on prince.

 

[Maniac]

The strange thing is that the
Believers seem to beam occasionally stacks of Aquaformers out of nowhere (I supect the base "Kinder Gottes" as home, but no teleport buildings are there) to that lake, which disappear then again. And on the top of that Großzion happily constructs new Aquaformers, despite having a fleet of them...

The teleporting of the aquaformers is (I believe - haven't looked further into it) caused by Great Zion being under attack by native life. The aquaformers probably think "It's not safe here - gotta get out of here" and go to Children of God. There the next turn they think "What the hell am I doing here? This area has been completely aquaformed already! But wait, there's a lake there which could use some mining platformers. Let's go there..." Next turn: "WAAAAAA! Native life! Run!"

It causes a loop, but it's not bad behaviour. In that decade, aquaforming does happen. They're not ignoring tasks available to them.

The infinite building of aquaforming is due to original code not compatible with Planetfall: it just looked at how many aquaformers there were in the area (instead of owner by the faction as a whole, which is a better measure considering they can teleport everywhere). So when the aquaformers retreated to some safe base, Great Zion thought it was lacking in aquaformers.

I have changed this now. I can provide a patch if you'd like.

I was playing on prince.

I guess I'll reduce initial native life spawning. Remember though: you guys asked for more native life in the early game.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I guess I'll reduce initial native life spawning. Remember though: you guys asked for more native life in the early game.

- I like the frequency of native life, just not the AI's inability to deal with early incursions.

Cheers, LT.

 

[darkedone02]

when I was playing Alpha Centauri, I noticed that my formers build more condensors, farms, sentries, and mines... but over here in Planetfall, my formers spam build bunkers, mines, and greenhouses, I hardly see any of my formers make any condensers, and other things... Also how come that every time I tell the aquaformers to automate, on the next turn all the aquaformers ask for a new command? They not suppose to do that at all, formers just go to auto-skip mode without my confirmation.

Also for some reason, the recommended circle that appears when you find a good spot to build a city, for both sea colony pod and colony pod. Why is it that sometimes when my colony pod just reach there, the recommended circle disappeared? Also there is hardly any recommanded circles that I see for sea Colony Pod, which makes it appears useless to colonize the seas, and not only that when I successfully build a sea city, when I build buildings, I get lots of lag every building I select and build... why is that?

 

[Pfeffersack]

I have changed this now. I can provide a patch if you'd like.

Assuming that it does not break saves and does not cause too much work, it would be appreciated (I played Immortal this time to get a more challenging AI, so I'm glad about anything suboptimal they do not do )

- I like the frequency of native life, just not the AI's inability to deal with early incursions.

I'm with Lord Tirian here. I cannot comment on lower levels gaming experience specifically, but I generally don't think is a good idea to lower native life frequency, if people just complain about that the AI does not cope well with it (things would be different if complaints were still about human players getting crushed). So improving/strengthening the AI - even if it just happens by giving them additional defenders for the moment - would be better, IMO.

when I was playing Alpha Centauri, I noticed that my formers build more condensors, farms, sentries, and mines... but over here in Planetfall, my formers spam build bunkers, mines, and greenhouses, I hardly see any of my formers make any condensers, and other things... Also how come that every time I tell the aquaformers to automate, on the next turn all the aquaformers ask for a new command? They not suppose to do that at all, formers just go to auto-skip mode without my confirmation.

Also for some reason, the recommended circle that appears when you find a good spot to build a city, for both sea colony pod and colony pod. Why is it that sometimes when my colony pod just reach there, the recommended circle disappeared? Also there is hardly any recommanded circles that I see for sea Colony Pod, which makes it appears useless to colonize the seas, and not only that when I successfully build a sea city, when I build buildings, I get lots of lag every building I select and build... why is that?

My guess is that both Aquaformers and Sea Colony Pods as spin-off units from the standard terraforming/colonization units don't get recognized as such by the responsible code. Don't know how difficult it would be to fix this, if that is the reason at all.

The decisions automated units will make follow the same logic the AI does AFAIK, so any change here alters the AI as well. Likely there is room for improvement, but it is likely not easy to improve things here (unless you come up with very specific stupidities automated units or AIs do) Condensers might be among the rather neglected improvements, but at least the AI uses them:

 

[darkedone02]

It will be nice if it was enough where we have a code on a certain improvement and an value to change to make the Automatic system (the workers have) to increase the "need" of that improvement, for example, from a value of 75 on Farms, the workers will build more Farms, but if the value is 25, they build less farms. If there was such a system, I would like the forts to be less spamming and put the value of 25, Farms at 50 (if you have the terraform civic) or 35 (for the hybrids), greenhouses along with Farms value, and condenser increase to at lest 55 (for terraformers, 35 for hybrids), etc. Things that help make the same automatic system that the original concept from Sid Meier Alpha Centauri, so that I can see Sensors, Condensors, Farms, Mines, and Solar Collectors everywhere.

My guess is that both Aquaformers and Sea Colony Pods as spin-off units from the standard terraforming/colonization units don't get recognized as such by the responsible code. Don't know how difficult it would be to fix this, if that is the reason at all.

The decisions automated units will make follow the same logic the AI does AFAIK, so any change here alters the AI as well. Likely there is room for improvement, but it is likely not easy to improve things here (unless you come up with very specific stupidities automated units or AIs do) Condensers might be among the rather neglected improvements, but at least the AI uses them

Can you improve the coding of the sea colony pods recommended circles so they appear more at any seas and also make it less laggy when you try to build something on a sea area?

It also be nice if you make a system to make soldiers automated just like what sid meier's Alpha Centauri had, which is garrison, attack, and explore in a press of a button.

 

[TheLazyHase]

It also be nice if you make a system to make soldiers automated just like what sid meier's Alpha Centauri had, which is garrison, attack, and explore in a press of a button.

I would just recall to everyone that most people find this kind of button useless, and explore exist anyway. Since there is much to do, maybe putting this kind of suggestion on the bottom would be better. Worker automation is a different case because AI use it, but frankly in any kind of civIV (and AFAIK in Sid centaury too) it's just suboptimal to use it, because it's so easy to do much better.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Runned into a crash...happens when turn is ended...if needed, I can provide the autosaves of the turns before.

 

[Maniac]

- I like the frequency of native life, just not the AI's inability to deal with early incursions.

Okay, I gave the AI some extra free barb kills instead.

Also how come that every time I tell the aquaformers to automate, on the next turn all the aquaformers ask for a new command?

I cannot replicate this behaviour.

(I played Immortal this time to get a more challenging AI, so I'm glad about anything suboptimal they do not do )

It sucks to be good at playing Civ, doesn't it?

Condensers might be among the rather neglected improvements, but at least the AI uses them:

Do you have the original screenshot of that without the editing? I could use marketing screenshots...

Runned into a crash...happens when turn is ended...if needed, I can provide the autosaves of the turns before.

The crash is caused by your base at coordinates 37,39 (west coast, your most productive base) checking what religions it has. The game just crashes when checking the boolean value which contains this information in the save file. I didn't change any of that code, and I don't have a clue what could possibly go wrong there.

I see a Believer Missionary in the neighbourhood. Did Miriam perhaps spread Edenism there the turn before? If you have a save of the previous turn, I could have a look at that, but to be honest I am not hopeful I could find what causes this crash.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Do you have the original screenshot of that without the editing? I could use marketing screenshots...

I can at least easily reproduce it and then it would be without the blue numbers near the condensers - the bigger problem is getting rid of those strange red circles, which appeared when opening the worldbuilder to took the save. Never encountered them before. I don't have the intelligence level in that game to see Morgans bases, so I was forced into the editor - but of course that is nothing which cannot be corrected by going back a couple of turns and cheating myself a army of hackers I will see what I can do...

The crash is caused by your base at coordinates 37,39 (west coast, your most productive base) checking what religions it has. The game just crashes when checking the boolean value which contains this information in the save file. I didn't change any of that code, and I don't have a clue what could possibly go wrong there.

I see a Believer Missionary in the neighbourhood. Did Miriam perhaps spread Edenism there the turn before? If you have a save of the previous turn, I could have a look at that, but to be honest I am not hopeful I could find what causes this crash.

Edenism is there present since sometime before 2360, I checked that. But now that you singled out the base which is the culprit, I might have found another possible crash reason - Menschenwimmeln suffered a food revolt in 2365, one turn before the crash happened. The revolt was 1 turn, so in the beginning 2366 the base was content again. Maybe this status change causes a problem?

 

[Maniac]

the bigger problem is getting rid of those strange red circles, which appeared when opening the worldbuilder to took the save. Never encountered them before. I don't have the intelligence level in that game to see Morgans bases, so I was forced into the editor - but of course that is nothing which cannot be corrected by going back a couple of turns and cheating myself a army of hackers I will see what I can do...

Thanks!
Those red circles were added in the latest Better AI. They indicate the plots which the AI is planning to reterraform with another improvement.

With Ctrl-Z you can get vision of everything without opening the Worldbuilder.

Edenism is there present since sometime before 2360, I checked that. But now that you singled out the base which is the culprit, I might have found another possible crash reason - Menschenwimmeln suffered a food revolt in 2365, one turn before the crash happened. The revolt was 1 turn, so in the beginning 2366 the base was content again. Maybe this status change causes a problem?

Unfortunately I don't see how this could cause any problem. Furthermore if I use the 2365 autosave, and press End Turn twice, I get to 2367 succesfully without a crash. So I'd advise just replaying from that point onwards.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Thanks!
Those red circles were added in the latest Better AI. They indicate the plots which the AI is planning to reterraform with another improvement.

With Ctrl-Z you can get vision of everything without opening the Worldbuilder.

Thanks, that's good to know!

Unfortunately I don't see how this could cause any problem. Furthermore if I use the 2365 autosave, and press End Turn twice, I get to 2367 succesfully without a crash. So I'd advise just replaying from that point onwards.

Sadly this isn't the case for me Neither pressing 'end turn' twice with as few actions as possible nor playing the two turns normally from the 2365 autosave helps me to get over the crash.

I suspect an OS issue. Perhaps if someone with Vista and someone else with XP could try to go on two turns with the 2365 autosave, we could sort out if the OS is the deciding factor.

 

[darkedone02]

In Sid Meier's Alpha Centuari, when I build cities on the water, you can still see the water as under the city buildings, there are floating pieces of blocks, not a biodome around it that you added to the cities...

Everytime I build a certain building on a city under water, I get a lag pause everytime I select and cheat build, the problem what I think it is, is that the city building cannot be display and have been built under the ocean floor. What I think you should do is that you should redo all the town graphics that you did for the cities and when you build a city on the water, I should still see the city like I do however every building is on a floating platform. I think this can help reduce the lag, and also make it look more shiny. You can take those biodomes that you use to add for the cites under water, do a little more art to it, and add it to the future buccaneer race when you do Planetfall: Alien Crossfire.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Another crashing save from a new game I started (end turn to make it happen; I can provide autosaves of the previous turns, if needed):

 

[Maniac]

That save does not crash for me. I have no lead at all what could be the problem.
There are some things you could do:

1) Find someone else with XP and Vista to try the save. I believe Panopticon has Vista.

2) Open the Worldbuilder. Remove everything except one base of yours and one base of another faction. Does the game still crash? Second: experiment: remove half the factions. Third experiment: remove the other half of the factions. Etcetera. See if you can pinpoint the cause of the crash to a specific game object.

3) Set up a debugging environment with Visual C++ Studio for Planetfall, so you can see at what point in the code the game crashes.