Unfortunately people find faults in everything and fail to recognize all the pluses which far outweigh the negatives.

And why someone would want the devs to waste an entire patch cycle to "fix" something completely irrelevant is beyond me, so I guess we're going to have to agree to mutual lack of comprehension. All I know is that this nonsense is going to cost us new features and tweaks and give us nothing tangible in return but a slightly (and I mean INCREDIBLY slightly) easier to beat AI opponent.

Emphasis on ANNOYING, especially if you save and reload each turn ...

Vinraith -
I agree with you completely, and much earlier in this thread voted against wasting resources on "fixing" it. It is a minor bonus at best that has rarely if ever effected me, let alone being an actual impediment to victory. However:

It is my understanding from others that play Gigantic, all abundant maps with somewhere between 600 and 900 worlds that at some point the micormanagement leads to only getting in one turn in an evening. In fact, I think Mumble even mentioned somewhere in this thread that sometimes he wouldn't even get ONE turn done in an evening, resulting in multiple saves and loads for a single turn. Imagine the time it would take to check the building and military queues on 100 worlds and adjust everything just so. Imagine that for 400 worlds. I can see where they are coming from.

Still, I have never heard Mumblefratz or purge or one of the other abundant/gig players claim that they lost a game due to this "bug", and as already stated, it has always been there. It is, as you mention, a problem that only very slightly helps the AI. For one, it only matters for rush buys - and so is really most likely to have an effect during the colony rush. During the colony rush is when you are least likely to be saving and loading as a result of needing to micromanage hundreds of worlds. Even then, it would have to be at a point where rush buying an extra building got you to produce a ship a turn faster... which if two rush buys would accomplish, means that the AI will get one ship one turn faster, because by the second turn it could have accomplished a second rush buy anyway. Maybe, with 9 opponents, you are looking at a one time boost of 9 enemy ships if you were facing a perfect storm. That's it. And thats worst case. More likely an AI build time on a colonizer drops from 4 turns to 3 turns one turn too early, so the AI is getting a fraction of a colony ship quicker, though not cheaper.

As I said many posts ago, if this "bug" is causing you to lose games, lower the difficulty level. If it is causing you to lose games on cakewalk, you might want to find a different game to invest your time in.

- Wyndstar

*Gleams* Yes! If we could have this over fixing this "bug" I would be all for it.

In fact it is little feature changes like that I most look forward too. I would love a step or two slower than very slow research to be able to choose as well, for truly caveman like clashes.

A higher level of difficulty.

I would also like to be able to up the number of asteroids that are popped down. Even at abundant the random generator never comes close to kicking out as many as were in several of the campaign missions. Seeing as asteroids also effect movement, and so add a level of tactical depth and terrain defense as well, I wish there was some way I could get more of them. As it is, they seem to be (sadly) generated near planets. So for instance, if you choose rare planets, rare stars, but abundant asteroids you get... almost no asteroids. Its so sad really.

Oh, but I know this thread isn't for wish lists. Just seeing the possibility for another difficulty level got me excited. Sigh.

- Wyndstar

Has anyone tried the beta builds to see if this problem is reduced by the change I made in 1.6 beta 5?

Hurray!

Thanks Cari and Kryo!

Thank the gods! May we let this topic RIP (at least until someone claims the fix doesn't work!).