Possible glitch: "you have liberated the drone faction!"

[sendos]

Ok, so I was playing as Yang on Thinker with mixed up factions and a REALLY weird thing occurred: a popup appeared and said that I "liberated" the drone faction and they pledged allegiance to me (I already had a pact with them), yet I did nothing. I looked where their bases used to be and they were all gone! The drones were then relocated to a smaller island next a recently captured sea-base of mine from the Spartans with some units and colony pods. The popup also showed the same image as the "world conquest achieved!" image. They used to be under attack by the Spartans but I managed to keep the Spartans in check by crushing their navy.
Why did this happen? Is this a glitch or not?

This might be a possible clue, but 2 of their bases were empty when I last checked. They are heavy polluters because their island consists of the borehole cluster. Perhaps a huge horde of mind worms killed them off?

NB: I have the rule: "don't restart eliminated players" on.

 

[Petek]

This is a known bug. It is related to the "free eliminated faction" feature that was introduced with SMAX. I don't think that anyone knows for certain what triggers it. Was one of the other factions eliminated? This can happen to the human player too. One turn everything is normal. The next turn all of your bases and units are gone. You respawn somewhere on the map with some Colony Pods and a few basic units. This happened to me once. No known fix.

 

[sendos]

This is a known bug. It is related to the "free eliminated faction" feature that was introduced with SMAX. I don't think that anyone knows for certain what triggers it. Was one of the other factions eliminated? This can happen to the human player too. One turn everything is normal. The next turn all of your bases and units are gone. You respawn somewhere on the map with some Colony Pods and a few basic units. This happened to me once. No known fix.

I defeated the pirates before this happened, if that does matter.

When the Drones founded a new base, it started at 5 and I noticed that when a boil status mind worms was attacking a drone unit, its strength was about 2.12, yet it should have been about 3.37.

 

[Petek]

I defeated the pirates before this happened, if that does matter.

When the Drones founded a new base, it started at 5 and I noticed that when a boil status mind worms was attacking a drone unit, its strength was about 2.12, yet it should have been about 3.37.

The bug might have been caused by some other faction sending a probe team to your HQ and trying to liberate the Pirates. As for your other observation, it's hard to say what happened without a save file to look at.

 

[sendos]

The bug might have been caused by some other faction sending a probe team to your HQ and trying to liberate the Pirates. As for your other observation, it's hard to say what happened without a save file to look at.

That's it! I forgot to say that the Morganites sent 2 probes at my HQ. I was wondering why they "failed", because nothing happened, and then this happened which I thought was irrelevant to those probe teams. I actually feared the worst: mind control probe, because I had knowledge active and that means increased success rate for enemy probe teams and -50% probe team cost; and the Morgans had about 2000 credits, enough to capture my HQ, I think. Thank goodness that did not happen. They also pledged alliance with the drones, too, since they're pact brothers.

The Pirates did surrender to me, but they "revolted" by launching an attack on the Peacekeepers, who has also surrendered to me and I had units in there. They didn't surrender this time so I crushed them instead.

The current situation: Drones are re-populating around the new island. They sent a small strike force against the Spartans with air and sea cover from me and they withdrew from the empty Spartan HQ.


By the way, there's another bug I'd like to mention:

I was at war with the Believers (now they've surrendered) and yet there is a believing terraformer in one of my sea bases and I don't know how it got there. It was once a Spartan sea base.

 

[vyeh]

You might want to post your bug reports (the ones that haven't been resolved) in the scient's subforum of CGN (see my signature). If scient comes back (he has grace us with his presence for a few months in each of the last two years), I'm sure he will look at it. (I use to copy bug reports, but I am too busy these days.)

Saves are essential for scient's work and it is better to only have one bug per thread (the motto is "post count no, thread count yes" in that forum).

 

[sendos]

Well...it doesn't seem to matter because it isn't affecting my gameplay at the moment.

 

[IdaGno]

Well...it doesn't seem to matter because it isn't affecting my gameplay at the moment.

careful re the seemingly innocuous things that can suddenly change one's gameplay...

many moons ago, playing smax, was regularly sharing/giving all my techs to a pact mate, when suddenly, the AI gave all my bases but maybe one & a colony pod to said pact mate - I mean, they instantly changed ownership

related? or another unrelated but known bug?

 

[vyeh]

Was the base that you retained the HQ? It looks like the computer thought you had gifted all your bases to your pactmate. Since you can only give bases one by one, I am sure this wasn't a keyboard error on your part when you thought you were giving away tech.

 

[IdaGno]

Was the base that you retained the HQ? It looks like the computer thought you had gifted all your bases to your pactmate. Since you can only give bases one by one, I am sure this wasn't a keyboard error on your part when you thought you were giving away tech.

vyeh: was so long ago that I do not recall if the base left in my possession was HQ, or even if I was left in possession of a base! may have been left w/only a colony pod and best wishes

FWIW, I was playing as Morgan with mixed SMAC/SMAX factions and the recipient of my largesse was the Data Angels

absolutely NOT a keyboard error on my part and a phenomenon seen just that once, tho I continue to regularly share ALL of my research data w/at least one pact mate

 

[vyeh]

It does sound like the release faction leader bug, except in those cases I believe the bases simply disappear- they aren't reassigned to another faction.