Need3Lives

Join Date 02/2006

Next Patch to fix Save Game issues?

I didn't see this mentioned in the patch preview notes, but I hope it is there. Since I generally game in 1-2 hour sessions, I save and restart from saved games frequently. I have noticed the following problems with the saved games when you restart one:

1) It shows the pop-up screen welcoming my new civilzation to the galaxy, as if I was starting a new game.
2) It takes me to my research tree and home planet as if I was starting a new game.
3) All production (military, social and research) ceases to exist for one turn - nothing is produced in the turn after you hit the 'Turn' button after restoring from a saved game. This is very noticeable by looking at the timeline graph of manufacturing - it drops to 0 for myself and the AI. Over a long game, I can count how many times I restored from a save game by seeing the downward spikes in production.
4) Ships that moved before the save can move after restoring the save (haven't confirmed if this is 100% or just sometimes).
5) In the turn AFTER the 'no production turn', any ships or improvements built do not create a GNN news event allowing you to go to the planet to change production, OR the green/blue icons that appear down the right side of the screen that allow you to click to go to the planet, or right-click to launch the ship.

Most of these are annoyances and don't kill game play, but a fix for them would be greatly appreciated, and allow me to lose my 'fear' of needing to save a game and restore later (sometimes I just alt-tab out and let it run for hours in the background while I work on other things).

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I've been running into the exact same problems. Problems 1 and 2 might intentional, but the other 3 are definantly bugs, and I've had these problem for the entire time I've had this game.

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What I've noticed that's odd is that when you hit the next turn button after loading a save, the date does not advance. Ships will move but it's still the same week.

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I think I've seen all of those, except I don't recall the GNN news screen stuff...could be that I just didn't notice, though.

I never realized those dropoffs on the graphs were caused by save games. I definitely have seen them.

I'm guessin gthe game is putting an extra turn in with no production and no movement and no combat as it saves. This extra "null turn" also would account for why ships have their movement back...not sure if the AI gets that also, but they don't seem to be using it if they are.

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Going to the research and home planet are in there on purpose so you can remember what you were doing from the time you saved.It does a lot of things on restarting a game that aren't necessarily bugs.

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I understand that loading a game forces you to skip a turn (due to the save-and-reload exploit). I wholeheartedly disagree with this feature in SP, regardless of whether it is enforced in the Metaverse. So check the dates when you save and load... they may be different.

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Yes, this is my pet bugbear!

I had the impression this is one big BUG that Stardock refuses to acknowledge but if this is a feature to discourage saving and re-loading for Metaverse scoring, can there be an option for players to choose (during game creation) "I do NOT wish to submit scores to metaverse" so that they can save and load without penalties?

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

Ideas:

1) A Save game automatically undoes any moves from that turn, so the turns starts all over when you load. That might be the best solution.

2) One feature I'd like to see is when you load a game- the status screen you had from GC1, that explains where you are sitting- "The Arceans are the most powerful race in the galaxy, and they really don't like you."

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Ah, thanks for the info about some of this possibly being intentional to avoid Metaverse exploits. Too bad it is so frustrating for those of us that just want to play. I agree, #1 and #2 are very minor. #3 and #4 are particularly annoying, but for me #5 is the largest pain since it requires you to manually go through all of your planets looking for ships that need to launch that you didn't get any notice of completion for. I have had a few games where many turns later I find a troop transport or constructor that probably finished 20 turns ago that I could have really used but missed.

Perhaps a toggle as skunkpuppy mentioned, assuming these aren't fixable bugs but intentional design decisions.

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Also : some space anomalies disappear after re-load.

All this is probably intentional and was carried over from galciv 1.

I think Stardock did aknowledge that in the galciv 1 forum. Can somebody confirm ?

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Possibly related issue that I have come across: Unless I exit to the main menu and load from there, the current account blance from my old game becomes the account balance when loaded. I was starting out, cranked my production to max so that I could land grab, and saved before buying a colony ship so I could go back and restart the map at some point. After ending the turn I realized that, since I was buying colony ships, production was rather dumb and I should have maxed research instead. Load my save game form the load/save dialog, and now my colony ship isn't bought, but I've paid for it. This is repeatable across multiple save games (Made the same bonehead mistake twice

)

If this is WAD (working as designed) to cripple exploits on metaverse games, that's fine, but it should ONLY apply to metaverse games. Strategy games can't afford to discriminate against fans that have jobs/lives and need to save games on occasion.

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If this is WAD (working as designed) to cripple exploits on metaverse games, that's fine, but it should ONLY apply to metaverse games.

I agree with that.
Any news from Stardock on this matter ?

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I agree with that.
Any news from Stardock on this matter ?

Why should I not be able to reload without issue in a Metaverse game? I didn't realize it was ironman mode, with no breaks allowed.

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Load my save game form the load/save dialog, and now my colony ship isn't bought, but I've paid for it.

I would guess, you have fallen for a bug, which was fixed in 1.1-beta2:

+ Fixed bug where data on main screen (treasury, tech, etc) would not update immediately after loading a saved game

Press ESC twice after a loading a game, if you are not yet willing to update.

In the beginning I was just wondering, what was happening... But today I tested this behavior some more:

- I started a new campaign.
- Moved the colony ship and the scout.
- Quicksaved.
- Loaded the game.
- Clicked turn -> Still 1st of January and my ships had full movement points again.
- Moved the colony ship and the scout.
- Quicksaved.
- Loaded the game.
- Clicked turn -> Still 1st of January and my ships had full movement points again... and so on...

This way I was able to colonize a planet, which was at least 15 parsecs away, on the 1th of January

Btw, the computer did move his scout ships, too. I haven't yet checked, if production is working for the AI...

In my opinion this is a bad bug: Let's say I was being attacked... and the battles have all been very unlucky. But if I reload, that one big ship i was building will not be ready in time to participate

Or the other way around: You have built a large fleet and start attacking an inferior enemy. Since production is not working he cannot even build defense ships on more remote planets. Exploiting this bug you can capture all his planets in a single turn (if production is indeed also not working for the AI).

Anyways, since this is my first post: I love this game

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It is true that all these file save/load problems are a carry over from GC1, but I don't think it's fair to call them "intentional". Perhaps the devs might call them "limitations" rather than "bugs", but bottom line the save/load code is very sloppy, and has been for a very long time.

Don't get me wrong - I'm lovin this game - and its a huge step forward from GC1, but GC2 is getting much more attention, and lots of great reviews, so I would guess that means their sales are up. Which means, IMHO, its time to get the quality up to what you would expect of a mainstream game. The 1.1 patch is looking quite awesome, with lots of bug fixes, and lots of neat, new features, but afaict, the save/load code is as sloppy as ever.

So there devs, I know its not so much fun but please, please clean up the save/load code!!! For those of us that can only play an hour at a time, and don't have the option of leaving the game running indefinitely, this is a must!!

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