Ditto . . . Is the Meta-verse main page (ranks) stuck or something? :notsure:

Also . . . my ranking for Gigantic seems a bit skewif?

177(rank) Cotal(name) 1(games submitted) 14990(score) . . . ?

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Doh! Still Stuck! 348341.6 . . . . and counting, My precious I must have it! Ahhh h h h h h h h h h h h h

no sounds
only backround music

Cotal,

Have you tried logging off and back on? It seemed to help my problems...

There is a bug/loophole involving elimination of a major civilization. After you wipe out a rival, you can still talk to their ghost on the same turn as you eliminated them. You can "make peace" with this ghost, and thereby extract free techs or other concessions. And since their strength is zero and yours is higher, they will give you pretty much whatever they have left.

Surely these gifts cannot be intended? I just won my second Masochistic (Ix5) game, and I got Overlord tech for free from a ghost a couple turns before I won.


While we're on the subject of pointy-stick research, what is to stop the player from extracting concessions in exchange for peace, then turn right around and betray the deal and keep on attacking anyway? I did this once in an earlier game and it smelled broken to me, so I stopped using it. Civ3 at least has the mechanism of not having them talk to you for five or six turns after a war starts. I don't know that that's the best solution, but I didn't see any diplomatic or other penalties for the betrayal. Shouldn't there be something? Like a Senate vote HEAVILY weighed against allowing the war to restart until some reasonable period of time has passed?


- Sirian

Oh, just remembered one more issue: INACCURATE TECH COMPLETION ESTIMATES.

When I fiddle with the sliders, trying to get a key tech faster or to get a tech to come in without wasteful overspending, the "months to go" estimate is often erroneous, sometimes even by huge margins, though usually minor. It will sort itself out the following turn, but that won't help me if I'm trying to put just enough to finish research on that turn. I tried "adding a cushion" of minor overload, but that doesn't always help. I thought about fluctuations from trade income, but that's not the problem either. The sliders simply do not provide accurate information. The problem is magnified when both the total spending slider and the three-part ratio slider are used in combination, but there seem to be issues with each even when only one or the other is adjusted. Since I haven't read anything about deliberately deceptive/inaccurate readings, I assume there are some minor bugs in the works.


- Sirian

The "AI alignment changed" event should not happen for an AI that has already been eliminated.

Good suggestion! Infact thats a great suggestion!

I'm just curious: How can the Torian Confederation be allied with the Torian Confederation? LOL

Oh, and my Metaverse-Scores arent updated too, but this isnt a big problem for me since I havnt so much scores to worry about.

Darklor

I'm a bit lazy and I do not have the time to read through this entire thread today. Please excuse me if this has been reported earlier.

In my current game, in the "Foreign Policy" screen, "Stats" tab, the overall ranking calculations do not seem right.

Three alien races are in sixth place and two in fourth.

I am the uncontested leader but it does seem a bit odd anyway.

You know how clicking on the little arrow to the right of a ships icon in the ships screen causes it to move to the centre of the part of the map currently showing on the screen?

Well, doing this with transports seems to empty them. You load 'em up, send them on their way, but if you change their move orders from the ships screen while they're in space, they'll arrive empty.

I lost the tech race to a friendly rival in my latest Maso game. The game didn't end on the spot? I was allowed to play on, to continue. I kept going, as I was already on the last tech myself, but when I got to Final Frontier sixty turns later, the game didn't end then either. What gives? Is that is how the "Alien Tech Victory" is supposed to work? It doesn't actually cause you to lose, but instead takes the tech victory off the table?

I could have won by Alliance some 120+ turns before the AI got to Final Frontier, but I've won all my Maso games by alliance in one form or another and wanted to put a Beyond Human win up there. I ended up taking the Alliance win after all, when the tech plan didn't pan and (shockingly) the game didn't actually end when I "lost".

Either way, there's a problem here: the game didn't do what it was supposed to, OR, the documentation was inadequate to explain what to expect.


The "thin documentation" abounds in other areas, too:

* There was no explanation about how to add players to an "invite only" Metaverse Empire. Had to go with trial and error. Luckily it wasn't complicated.

* There are techs not shown on the tech tree. Why is that?

* There are no clear indicators as to which techs are alignment-based.

* The manual claims PQ12 as "habitable", but in fact, in the current patch at least, PQ14 is the lowest quality where no "life support maintenance" is paid. Took me three games to figure out not to touch those 12's with a ten foot pole.

* I still don't know what a Terror Star really does. Blows up stars, yeah yeah. But having not gone the trial and error method with them yet, the documentation about them is really thin. How many "secret" techs are involved? The only item I've seen in the tech tree is a starbase module for "Terror Star Shell". I'm assuming if there's a shell, there must be other components, too, but I can't find out about them. Why not?

* While we're on that subject, perhaps my perspective is spoiled, having come along lately and never experienced earlier patches, but the hyperlinks in the tech tree are GREAT! So... why aren't there any links for the ships, planetary improvements, and starbase modules? I'd love to be able to click on those and read about them. (Then I'd know more about a Terror Star, for example). There's the trial and error method, of course, but how much of that are we supposed to be doing in one game? And how much info are we supposed to remember off the top of our heads? Where's the Civilopedia, for god's sake.


- Sirian

Cultural Flip Issues:

I had a colony on a PQ13 that was in a sector next to a sector with a PQ20+ rival planet. (Rare habitables, so that 13 was important to me!). Despite my best efforts at resistance and influence, the PQ13 eventually failed a saving throw and got the rebel mark on it. That meant one more failed roll and the planet would flip. Since I had another planet in the sector behind that one, I decided to abandon the PQ13 to be sure to protect the other one. There was ALSO a minor civ in the same sector as the PQ13. Later I invaded and captured the minor, and that gave me enough influence in the sector to take the lead, so I decided to refound the PQ13.

THE REBEL MARK APPEARED ON THE NEW COLONY! Why? Surely that's a bug. If I destroy a whole colony to root out rebels, it most definitely sucks to come back and find their ghosts still influencing events on that world.

I also found that giving away a rebellious colony to another civ doesn't take away the rebel mark, even if you give the colony to the civ the rebels supposedly admire? LOL

I'd say this whole mechanism needs a thorough inspection.


- Sirian

Thats how it's supposed to work right now. They haven't programmed it to end the game yet if an alien races gets Final Frontier.

~SDC~

Well, it is annoying that the skull and crossbones hangs around if the world is conquered several times . . . Had a recent game in which I was vainfully waiting for a planet to flip only to realize on closer inspection there was no hope of that happening . . .

If theres no cultural pressure on the planet (i.e. all things considered) the skull should really go away completly . . . why do I need to be reminded of what happened there several years ago when the culture that stressed the planet out is dead and gone?

Magnum: The save game won't really tell me anything.  Are you using DSL, and is it the kind where you have to log on? Some people with DSL have problems with submitting.  We're still trying to figure that one out. It's also possible that it didn't pull your name correctly from the registry.  A lot of the time when people tell me that their game isn't showing up, and I go to the metaverse database guru, he finds the game under the player name New Player Alias.

KEmperor: did you try downloading the clean data files from my last reply?

fsk: I believe that I have fixed this on our end.

John: Sounds like something went wrong with your install.  Are there any errors reporting missing images in your debug.err file? You may just want to do a clean re-install, which you can save yourself some time by archiving the multimedia and just re-downloading the main module and the bonus pack.

kasualkid: the next time that happens, can you please e-mail the game to me? [email protected]  I'll need both the .sav file and the folder with the same name as the .sav file.

We've been moving servers, so not everything was back to normal.  If T-man hasn't already fixed it today, it should be fixed by the end of today.

Corsus: are you getting any kind of errors relating to sound reported in your debug.err file? Do you have any files in your sfx directory?

I haven't been able to determine what the bug is that allows the AI players to ally with themselves. It's some kind of logic error that I couldn't see from reading the code. It's on my list, though.

Sirian: Yes. The AI can't win the game by a tech victory, just keep you from winning with it, if it's enabled.

 

 

 

 

Noticed that occasionally after a UP vote that everyone's influence is set to zero. If I save and reload it sorts itself out.

Working as designed. Your votes in the UP are the net sum of your per turn influence. After a vote, you have to reaccumulate more votes.

Incidentally, saving and loading should cause similar spikes. The cultural influence data isn't saved because the formula's recursive nature makes it difficult to recalculate without data going back a significant length of game time, and saving and loading that data would slow down an already long load time.

~SDC~

My latest win says 'Lost', and the score isn't updating with a resubmit.
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[email protected]

Cari's email

CariElf,

Yes, as a matter of fact, I am using DSL (always on thru my handy-dandy router). If I can be of any assistance in figuring this out, please let me know. It is aggravating.

I have always used the same alias, and have successfully submitted games before (as my record shows). Resubmitting does not seem to help.

If you had problems with the Excalibur being missing download the expansion pack again and it will reappear. I did it last night and it worked.

Be thankful that they let you live to win in some other fashion. In the old OS/2 version, when an alien race transcended reality, they judged the human race unfit to be in the galaxy and revert you back to a blob of protoplasm so you can evolve again, hopefully into beings worthy of the transcended aliens!

Bill

~SDC~

Just noticed that when autopilot is set to on and ships are moving about that you don't always see their info in the ship detail miniscreen at bottom.I had several survey ships moving and without actually clicking on them couldn't tell which was which.Only noticed this on gigantic so far.

Not sure if these are bugs or not:

The I-League was willing to trade their last system to me to stop our war. That doesn't seem right as they are now gone from the game.

I tried to move a combat ship into that newly owned system, but I get a message every turn that there is a Drengin freighter there and if I want to move into orbit I have to declare war on them.

Playing with the latest patch.