Guys,

There are only two possibilties:

1) That what we are witnessing in the games discussed are user errors. That is, they didn't take something into account. I have looked over many games where the user was adament that the AI had cheated (including the infamous avault "Review") and in every case there was a reasonable explaination for why something was.

or

2) There is a bug in the code that is allowing one or more of the 6 AI personalities to sometimes obtain a technology without all the pre-requisites.

Let's say it's #2 for argument's sake. It would therefore be a bug that has gone unnoticed since the betas and now 2+ months since release. Therefore, it is not a bug that is particularly problematic to the overall game play and therefore is not a critical bug. It has already been assigned into our database as something to investigate for 1.1. If it turns out to be a bug, it can be addressed in 1.1.

I have found some of the comments in this discussion offensive and devoid of perspective. As someone said above, every user has their own list of things they feel are "significant". When one user or a small group of users begins to take the view that they alone decide what order things need to be addressed, it creates problems. I don't personally consider this issue significant purely because if it were significant, it would have been a big deal a lot earlier to a much wider group of people. I personally consider the AI's star base handling a much bigger AI issue than this which I'm still not pleased with.

I definitely don't like motives being assigned to me that don't exist. I have seen terms like "Spinning" thrown in. A more accurate one would be apathy. There is a thread with bug reports on just 1.04.59. I thas 92 responses already. There isa thread on the expansion pack that has 275 posts in it. In the larger view, this is simply a non-issue. Yes, it's important to Code Monkey and a few others. But we have to make development decisions based on the community as a whole.

I'd like to thank Hawaii-Five-O who took the time to go through the tech list and I do believe that he has uncovered a bug in the AI code there. And it will be added to the list and prioritized like all other reports.

~SDC~

Well, since I've got a save game on my hard drive that says it's number 2, I hope you will, just as I said earlier in the thread, track it down and squash it. If I've gotten a bit uppity, it's only because I'm tired of, for lack of a better term, the fanboys who think that every legitimate pointing out of a bug or flaw in the game must be defending with burning oil and pitchforks.

For me, that the AI plays by the same rules that I do is very important. That's why I don't play above Intelligent. I'm sure I could beat it often enough to make it worth my time, but I'm not interested in playing an AI that's tougher primarily because of free econ boosts.

And just so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle: I do appreciate everything that Stardock does to support this game. I think that Brad sometimes loses sight that the more vocal among us are vocal because we care about making a better game, but that's cool because it shows that this game is made by devs who aren't afraid to express their personal opinion as well.

You are very welcome, glad to be of service.

I'll expose the function I used to verify the tech path in the next version of the Writer, if anyone is interested.

~SDC~

CM - I do appreciate what you are saying.

I just how you look at things from my perspective just for a second. Think of me in terms of a D&D character with "hit points". Because I'm pretty thick skinned from years of .advocacy groups and flamewars and such, I have a lot of hitpoints. But each day, I go through the forums and read what seems to me an increasing amount of quasi-abusive or unreasonable criticism from people.

We're remarkably free of trolls here which is good. But the tone of many of these posts on this particular issue, for instance, has been essentially saying that I lied about the AI. Or debates that drag into minutia.

In another thread I used a real world analogy. If I say that GalCiv is a rock solid game in terms of stability and someone can find a reproduceable crash, does that make me a "liar"? Does that put the game in the same category as crash-ridden games? Does it put us in teh same support category as those games that ship and don't get any updates? Based on some of the threads, you'd certainly get that impression.

I mean right now, there's another game in the same genre that shipped a month BEFORE us that still hasn't gotten any code updates. It's important to keep perspective on things. Something being imperfect does not make it total crap.

Anyway, the point being that at some point, if the forums just become full of nittpicking what will happen is that we just won't participate anymore. You tried to argue earlier that we need to pay attention to the "hard core" for economic reasons. But remember, GalCiv is only 10% of Stardock's gross revenue and not even 10% of its net. There is no economic justification for the development team to participate in these forums. We participate because we love the game and care about the community.

If anything, there's an economic justification to not have the forums at all. Consider this, 21 engineering hours were spent implementing and testing a fix for people who were surrounding stars with sensor buoys so that the AI players couldn't get out. 21 X $45 per hour is over $900 was spent on just that. How many people were surrounding the alienw worlds with ships to block them in? Hardly any. But enough noise was made about that and it was such a killer issue that we had to address it or look at making the metaverse meaningless.

This tech problem with the AI may be a bug (I'm leaning towards it being one) but it really isn't that significant. If there were no difficulty levels then that would be a different story. But it's really only a significant issue for those who are purists about the AI. And it is something we can/will look at in 1.1. But the very idea of stopping the team from working on the expansion pack stuff to work on this would be insane because it affects so few people whereas many people want rally points and the tech navigator and hyperlinking from the diplomacy screen and so forth.

In short, let's just keep some perspective here. We want to participate in the message forums but we don't want to be abused or insulted or put down or personally criticized. If you have a problem that you actually want to have addressed (as opposed to just bitch about) then state your case, put it in the bug list thread so that we can look through it and we'll look into it.

~SDC~

Or just a screen dump with the offending offered trade.

A couple of games back, I saw a weird line in my
debug.err:

Debug Message: Year: 2182. Yor Collective traded Controlled Gravity to the Drengin Empire in exchange for Corvette Technology

Wouldn't I have liked to make that trade?

Frogboy,

Perhaps you've answered your own issue with, "If it was so important, why are people only reporting it now?" Answer -- Perhaps it is a recent bug, and is as you say with the new tech trees the Arceans (for example) are using. Although I must confess I find it disturbing that such trees don't go through the same code checks, apparrently.

As for the "good research evil tech" thing, I *know* I've seen the Altairians do that in 1.03. Perhaps the in-game morality isn't being reported correctly? They showed up as "Saintly" but the Tech was supposed to be 35 or worse required. Another possibility is that the current tech being researched reported in the espionage tree is wrong.

Bruce

[Message Edited]

Henrik: I once had the Yor offer me Battleship tech for sensors. The very next turn, the Drengin topped that offer, offering me Dreadnought tech for sensors. Talk about being nice to the whipping boy Very lopsided trades can happen favoring the human.

I think everyone is in agreement that this issue is a product of a mistake on the part of either the developers or the players. I hope it has been clear from my posts that your veracity and honor are not in question.

-Drake

~SDC~

For what it is worth, I am having a HUGE amount of fun playing the game the way it is, bugs, warts, and all

SET SOAPBOX ON
If you want the AI to treat humans the same way it does other AIs, write Frogboy a check for 5 million dollars and I'm sure he can make it so (for all you Star Trek people out there). So the AI gets battleships a little early, no big deal. Tell me with a straight face would have never reloaded to a saved position after you made a mistake. Maybe Frogboy should change the code to allow the AI to do that: "Resetting to Altarian's saved game 'Might need to destroy Humans'" LOL

You want something to worry about: North Korea is developing nuclear weapons...

SET SOAPBOX OFF

PS. Aldar needs members for his empire.

Let's hope this bug is fixed. It's the most important one on the current bug list.
[Message Edited]

I think the permanent skull is a larger problem, assuming it is not intended to remain the entire game.

I'd definitely not consider that a more significant problem particularly since I'm relatively certain this is a questionable design issue. As best I can tell, there is no implemented reset condition for 'teetering on the edge' of rebellion.

There should be, and I hope to see it implemented one of these days, but it's not nearly as big of issue as the AI skipping key techs in their tech tree.

Permanent? I'd swear I saw one go away today...must have imagined it. It might have been after loading a saved game.

Late comer to this, but yea, AI's are getting techs
without prequisites. I wont call it cheating, I will
just call it a bug. I did not notice this in 1.035.

User errors generally happen with new and inexperienced
users, when you have several veterans as well as several
top 25 players in agreement with compelete abscense
of player disagreement, I would think you might take
a look at one of THESE saved games that have been
offered.

It occurs to me that the ai's are getting techs
to which the player always seems to have the prequisite
but the computer does not. Perhaps the function that
checks against prequisites is using the players
tech list, not the ai's. This of course could be an artifact of the fact that a 'user' wouldnt notice this
bug if he didnt have sole ownership of the preq.

If there is an explanation, I bet it's the minor races...but, you would have heard of their appearance. Still, when minor races appear later on, everybody immediately gets diplomatic contact with them, which means they could intimidate them into surrendering some tech, which they start out hyped up on for game balance purposes.

So, something probably needs to be done about this...the minor race should possibly be tweaked so as to treat the backward Altarians as a non-threat (maybe THEY can even extort from the Altarians!) so that technology doesn't suddenly pour out over the whole galaxy.

Can the special event 'The Alexians have managed to steal all of the XXXX's technology and are willing to sell it' happen to AI?

Good thread

~SDC~

Sorry everyone, but I gotta put myself on CMs side yet again on this one. Sure it may be a minor bug and might not even affect your game, but the attitude I've seen here is that "it's not a bug until we have nothing better to do and decide it's a bug".

The swipe at some of the people here was uncalled for, Brad. You need to be careful here - you haven't reached the masses yet. The people that visit this board ARE your customers.

BTW - from reading this post, it seems likely that the scripted techs for some of the races may have been put together before the prerequisites were fully defined. I'll agree that tracking that down is somewhat tedious.
And just for the record, I don't think anyone here is calling you a liar about the AI. You're correct that some of the posts could have been worded better - "here's a bug" instead of "the AI is cheating by doing this". But give people a break - you know how easy it is to go a little too far with a posting...
[Message Edited]

Hey, you know, Brad's said he'll look into it, so let's back off and have a little patience. I think everyone here will recognize that the tone of this thread hasn't been exactly uplifting, so let's all back off and take a deep breath.

Things we should especially avoid doing: giving Brad or anyone advice along the lines of, "You should listen to me." If you say that and he's not listening to you, he's not going to start, and if you say that and he is listening, it's just gonna make him angry at what he will probably, rightly, perceive as insensitivity. At the same time, I'm sure that looking back on it, he might feel slightly sorry for dismissing things that others feel are very signifcant. But throwing around accusations and -especially- giving any kind of personal criticism is not the function of these boards.

Please guys, let's not tell people that the things were uncalled for and all that. With emotions running high, you're not going to convince anyone, and it'll just make the situation worse! We just need to back off about it and wait. Things aren't going to change until 1.1, and if Stardock's previous track record is any evidence, Brad and the team will have nailed down and solved the problem by then. But let's wait now, and see how it goes, instead of continuing to add to the negativity flying on either side in this thread.

The most important bug to me is the unreliable research times. This techs without prerequisites issue gets second. I definitely agree that the issue exists, rather than being a figment of our imaginations. I noticed it completely independently of this thread, but never bothered to post about it since I had assumed it was being dealt with.

I think the importance of a bug is better left to Stardock to decide. No two people play the game the same way, so bugs are differently important for each of us. Stardock get bug reports, they can see based on these and their testign whether bugs are often met or not and whether many people find this problem. I don't think our own rating of the bug will help them much. If it did, they'd setup a bug submission forms with a "perceived priority" item, which would probably always end up filled with the maximal value and 'd be useless.

"The swipe at some of the people here was uncalled for, Brad. You need to be careful here - you haven't reached the masses yet. The people that visit this board ARE your customers."

That's a laugh. Every person who ever posted on this forum even a single time could make a committment to buy every single product Stardock ever puts out and you know how much impact it would have on their bottom line. Exactly BUPKISS. Zilch, nada, none.

In economic terms the people on this list are completely and entirely insignificant. Do the math, it ain't that hard.

What the people here DO DO is provide a lot of ongoing beta-esque testing which SHOULD make the devs jobs a little easier in terms of making a better product. But as soon as it stops doing that, and starts making their life MORE difficult, it crosses the line.

CM, Ra Chua, others. I heartily appreciate your contribution to this game. You guys do all of the anal lets look at every single little thing stuff that I find so incredibly tedious and boring that I'd rather be subjected to a 24 hour Britney Spears Marathon than do it. You do it so I don't have to, making the game more enjoyable for those of us who just want to play.

Thank you.

But now its time to let it go. You've stated your case, very well I think. You've been heard and Brad's stated his case, also very sensible. Its now in the queue. Your job is done here. It is not any of our places to tell Stardock what should and shouldn't be a priority.

Case closed. Lets go back to gleefully committing genocide and killing billions of innocent civilians.

(Re: #89) Staffa, it's not the case that it's checking the player's tech list. In my game last night (reported in the bug thread), Warp Drive and Virus Elimination both appeared before anyone (including minors, as the galaxy was fully explored at the time) had the pre-reqs. I will admit that I didn't notice it until I got Anti-Matter and Organic Piecing, respectively. Warp Drive led to the Altairians getting Battleships well before me, which in turn made the game substantially harder, since I "had to" take a +50% PQ bonus early in the game. Fortunately, I survived...

With that sort of attitude, you won't do very well in business. Each customer counts for more than just themselves. I'm sure since Brad has a successful business and you don't, he knows this.

It's a balancing act, but it's never good to just blow off customers if there is a cheap and easy alternative way to please them.

Bruce

I'm new here - bought the game over a month ago, visited the forum once, but haven't had the time to actually play it or thoroughly read the goings-on. Excuse my ignorance.

I noticed earlier in this thread that Brad posted a snippet of code from the game. So a question: is the source available? If so then those of us who happen to be programmers can take a look at the source to see if we can track down the bug in question, spare the developers the headache.

Just wondering. Like I said I'm new and found it rather startling that Brad posted *any* source - other game companies would shoot themselves before revealing a single line of code. So if the source is sitting about for review, then perhaps we could hunt down the bug ourselves rather than pushing what appears to be the already-overworked dev team. I don't have much time myself, but this appears to be exactly the sort of bug that several pairs of eyes, working in tandem, could hunt down in fairly short order, and I'd be happy to be one of those pairs.

Kudos to Brad for even showing up on this forum. It's the reason I bought the game in the first place, a month ago when I came here out of idle curiosity (and intense disappointment with MOO3). And although I haven't played yet (no time!) I certainly look forward to it.

Max

Hey there Maxpublic.

It isn't open, so the source isn't available.
Basically from what I have seen, he only posts information about the mechanics behind the AI, or in this case the source code, when he is getting fed up/irritated with something. [Apologies if this is an oversimplification or an incorrect assessment Frogboy]

In any case, I'd have to say that it sounds like their is a problem.

I'd also like to say that I too find any accusations of the AI cheating to be annoying and unwarranted given the track record of Frogboy et al.

But I also agree that the unexplained tech leaping would be a priority in terms of discovering the how and why it is happening. Because it seems that people have done a bit of scrounging to get the information they have, and that it doesn't add up. And it also makes the game precisely what it aims not to be, and that is a game with an AI that doesn't play by the same rules. NOT by intention, but seemingly by behavior. I know this is not the intention and so it just makes sense to get to the bottom of it.

On the other other hand, I'm sure as Frogboy pointed out, that there are many better and brighter things to be worked on, to have time, money and effort spent upon.

But as he also said, it's on their list.
So, chalk one more name up on the list of those who would like to know this gets looked into.

Thanks

Ah, well. Just thought I'd offer a hand if I could. Seems to me from the problem reported that it's probably just a simple error somewhere in the code - an incorrectly passed value, or something along those lines. Easy to fix, but hard for a single person to track down.

Still can't wait to play, when I have enough free time to get into the game.

Max