Finicky Auto AI Progress setting.

[ayrnieu]

For my first post-tutorial game, the only setting I put on 'easy mode' was Auto AI Progress.  The default was +1 every 5 minutes, which I knew would have seriously unnerved me.  I set it to +1 every hour or so, went on to look through settings, and then -- err, set it again to +1 every hour or so, as it'd bumped up by itself.  Then I started playing.

The first hour ended with the annihilation of my economy, double-digit resources, half a screen of blinking slow construction, a double-digit fleet, and a healthy new fear for advanced co-processors - the ones that reduce AI Progress while opening Pandora's box. (Finally I self-destructed my command, had my few remaining ships retreat, and then built up home system defenses in a panic while watching the scary unfamiliar ships wear down the mass driver, waiting to see if they would come for my home system next.  They did.)

Most of the second hour was spent just recovering.  But near the end of it I was back on my feet with only 11 AI Progress despite my attacks, thanks to the AI Progress reductions.

At the end of the second hour I had 87 AI Progress.  +75 AI Progress from Auto AI Progress?!  I found that the galactic map told me the nature of the world: indeed, every two hours it's +75 Auto AI Progress.  That's faster than +1 every two minutes, and WAY more than I wanted or think I can handle.  I have 87 AI Progress and I've barely done anything!

I know where to look now to make sure that future games are as I wanted them - I'm just annoyed, because I went two hours into this one before noticing that my setting didn't stick.  I was just having a blast with my first game, and now...

I have version 3.1.7.5, and both expansions.

[triggerman602]

Can you post a save?

[ayrnieu]

Sure.  "Game 2.sav" and "Game 2 - recovered.sav".  They both show 75/120 in the galactic map.

[keith.lamothe]

ayrnieu, welcome to the forums

Thanks for reporting this issue, I'll try to reproduce it and track it down.

In the meantime, I've opened up your save (the "recovered" one) and "fixed" the ai progress (total was 125, now is 50, so the effective is 12 with all that's gone on) and the AI progress to +1/60.  Normally I don't repair savegames but it sounded like you were enjoying this one except for that one issue, and at this particular point in time my working build is identical to the public 3.176 prerelease.  So you'll need to update to 3.176 to use it.

Anyway, I'll look into the root problem, thanks for letting us know.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, I've hit the lobby interface with various blunt objects and can't get it to do anything unexpected with the auto-ai-progress amount or time-interval dropdowns.  Can you try to reproduce the problem, and if you can then tell me the steps necessary to do so?  Thanks

[Sizzle]

Ayrnieu,  another thought:   Do you habitually use the mouse scroll to navigate pages?  If you touch the scroll wheel after having adjusted the AI progress settings, you'll actually adjust the setting again with the wheel.  I once had a game at 250 AIP every 30 mins by accident with that one. 

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, yea, the mousewheel would definitely do it.  I don't have a wheel, so I didn't think to try it.

[ayrnieu]

Thanks for the modified save

With 3.176 now, it's pretty noticeable when that field changes with the mousewheel, and it doesn't change with the mousewheel if I click to another tab and try.  And it doesn't change when I try to repeat what I did before.  So maybe that's fixed.

[keith.lamothe]

It's probably some intermittent weirdness in GDI+ (the windows forms api we use for the lobby and a number of non-main-game-window stuff).  It's a good library in general but there are a few really weird bugs (like this and the dropdown items getting switched descriptions) that we really have no control over since it's so embedded in the OS.  So these issues should go away (perhaps to be replaced by others) when we switch from our custom .NET/SlimDX/GDI+ engine to Unity.

Anyway, have fun