[Solved] ver 1.007 stopped building ships, etc.

[jimmyb]

I am playing against two AIs in a 10 planet game (no other human players).  My beginning ship is the Raider.  After about an hour playing all ship building has ceased.  None of the ship types are at their max. yet.  As a matter of fact, for the Raider I only have 35 built out of 472 available (had more which were destroyed in battle), but it will not build anymore of them or any other ships.  I have plenty of metal, crystal, and energy.  Any ideas what I should try in order to get the game working properly?  I have one space dock with the build queue set to recycle continuously.  This worked fine when I was playing the DEMO, but now in my first game after buying the game I am having this problem.

Also, I was in the process of attacking another planet.  I destroyed the enemy command center, and I was able to build my command center.  However, the game will not let me build anything else on that planet.

[x4000]

Hi there, welcome to the forums!  Sorry to hear about your trouble here.

It almost sounds like the trial time limit has been reached here, that's very strange.  It might be that there is a glitch where it still thinks you are in trial mode if you just entered the license key and started playing.  I'll check into that, but for now simply quitting the game and restarting should make that work.

Is everything else working, aside from this?  As in, are ships moving, timer counting, etc?  You might also try turning on or off the TBS-Friendly Pause in the settings menu.  I haven't heard of this issue anywhere else, so if you have any more information on it that is much appreciated!

Thanks for your support of the game!

[jimmyb]

Your suggestion to turn off the TBS-Friendly Pause in settings did the trick.  I never thought to look at any of my settings as the game seemed to work properly for the first hour or more.  I guess I assumed that if the game worked okay in the beginning then my settings weren't an issue.  All is working fine now.  Thanks for your help.

[x4000]

Glad that worked, but that's still a really strange issue -- does turning back on TBS-Friendly Pause now work?  I'd really like to make sure that mode works for you, and anyone else who might run into the problem (though this is still the only case I know of).  If you have time, is there any more info you can provide?  Thanks, and thanks for your support of AI War!

[jimmyb]

What other information would be helpful to you?  Would the saved game be of any use, or are there any game created logs, etc. that would be helpful?

I did not try turning the pause back on, but I will do that tomorrow to see what happens.

By the way, is there some way to tell if a copy of the game is operating as a demo or as a purchased copy?  Does anything show up (either way) on any of the pre-game screens, etc?  I have purchased the game, and I entered the serial number.  However, I don't remember seeing anything that acknowledged it had accepted the serial number.  When I start it up it no longer opens up with the dialog asking whether I want to continue as a demo, etc.; so I guess maybe it has accepted the serial number.

[x4000]

What other information would be helpful to you?  Would the saved game be of any use, or are there any game created logs, etc. that would be helpful?

The main thing would be trying to turn that kind of pause back on, but if that fails then the savegame is better than nothing.  Also, when you are first logged into the game you can see the version in the top left corner -- if that doesn't say anything about it being trial mode, you're okay.

By the way, is there some way to tell if a copy of the game is operating as a demo or as a purchased copy?  Does anything show up (either way) on any of the pre-game screens, etc?  I have purchased the game, and I entered the serial number.  However, I don't remember seeing anything that acknowledged it had accepted the serial number.  When I start it up it no longer opens up with the dialog asking whether I want to continue as a demo, etc.; so I guess maybe it has accepted the serial number.

See above (good question).  Also, in trial mode it shows "TRIAL" in parentheses next to your player name in the scores list.  I'm sure you're not in trial mode now, but I'm wondering if that was just a one-time glitch right after activating it...

Thanks!

[jimmyb]

I am even more puzzled now because turning the TBS Friendly Pause back on does not stop me from building.  As a matter of fact I have tried to recreate the problem I had, and am unable to do so even by beginning a new game with the pause turned on.  However, the games I saved back when it was acting up stil exhibit the 'no build' behavior.  If I load one of those saves it still will not let me build even with the pause turned off in settings.  So now I am not sure what got me out of the problem.  I am going to attach a *.zip file with those two saved games so you can take a look at them.

I am curious now to see if they exhibit the 'no build' behavior for you.

[x4000]

Okay, thanks for attaching those files.  As it turns out, this isn't a bug at all -- well, at least not much of one.  The problem here is that your crystal rate is -8 (it shows +-8, which I will fix).  I'll also fix it so that as long as your crystal income is positive, you can build more stuff regardless of your rate.  But I consider having a negative income of metal or crystal to be a very temporary sort of situation that you wouldn't actually play with over time.

Looking at the save file, I see that you have 10 metal manufactories that are all active, which is what is causing the issue.  They produce metal income at the expense of crystal income, so that's what's driving your crystal so negative.  Thanks for providing the extra info!  I'm glad it wasn't anything more serious.