Hi,

Has anyone ever seen this beastie?

Quote:

There isn't enough fuel available at Space (xcoord, ycoord) to allow FuelMizerPrivateer #x to get to the next waypoint. Your fleet will wait for more fuel. You need about 4mg more fuel.

This happened in a force-generated game, where my ship (loaded) had about 65mg fuel left, lacking a few drops to complete a W6 hop. Almost all other ships got their "fuel has run out, dropping to w4" messages and coasted along, but this one just stopped and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited for about 80 turns.

This is almost as bad and unfathomable as the infamous "merge with moving target" bug that simply makes the target fleet stop dead in its tracks until the pursuer arrives.

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wumpus wrote on Sat, 18 March 2006 13:20

m.a@stars wrote on Fri, 13 May 2005 11:03 Hi, Has anyone ever seen this beastie? Quote: There isn't enough fuel available at Space (xcoord, ycoord) to allow FuelMizerPrivateer #x to get to the next waypoint. Your fleet will wait for more fuel. You need about 4mg more fuel. Hmm, no idea... is it reproducable? And do you still have an M file with it? I'd like message for my "collection", if nothing else ,-)

I don't know how (or if) it can be reproduced, as I cannot even understand what triggers it, or in fact, what it means.

Trouble is, it is in the middle of a 100-yr-forced-gen m file of almost 3 megs.

Now that multi-turn splitting tool of yours would be very handy.

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[Updated on: Sat, 18 March 2006 10:02]

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multilis wrote on Sat, 18 March 2006 15:52

Perhaps something to do with orders? You may have had load orders somewheres and then after adding waypoints the load orders were carried over to the new location (space).

Yes, I had load orders, just at the intended waypoint which that ship absolutely refused to reach. I guess on lacking fuel to reach the WP load point in one hop, it stupidly transferred the load order to the point in the middle of nowhere where it arrived. That could explain why this particular ship got stuck, but not why it has never happened to anyone in the same circumstances nor why the ship stopped where it did with about 60 mg fuel still left, when that fuel should have allowed at least anoter couple dozen ly of travel.

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m.a@stars wrote on Sat, 18 March 2006 13:50

wumpus wrote on Sat, 18 March 2006 13:20 [email m.a@stars[/email] wrote on Fri, 13 May 2005 11:03]Hi, Has anyone ever seen this beastie? Quote: There isn't enough fuel available at Space (xcoord, ycoord) to allow FuelMizerPrivateer #x to get to the next waypoint. Your fleet will wait for more fuel. You need about 4mg more fuel. Hmm, no idea... is it reproducable? And do you still have an M file with it? I'd like message for my "collection", if nothing else ,-) I don't know how (or if) it can be reproduced, as I cannot even understand what triggers it, or in fact, what it means. Trouble is, it is in the middle of a 100-yr-forced-gen m file of almost 3 megs. Now that multi-turn splitting tool of yours would be very handy.

Oh, if you have the M file, just send it to me as is It'll be easy to recognise - it'll be the bit of the X file where my program goes "HEY LOOK, I FOUND SOMETHING STRANGE!"

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m.a@stars wrote on Sat, 18 March 2006 19:04

multilis wrote on Sat, 18 March 2006 15:52 Perhaps something to do with orders? You may have had load orders somewheres and then after adding waypoints the load orders were carried over to the new location (space). Yes, I had load orders, just at the intended waypoint which that ship absolutely refused to reach. I guess on lacking fuel to reach the WP load point in one hop, it stupidly transferred the load order to the point in the middle of nowhere where it arrived. That could explain why this particular ship got stuck, but not why it has never happened to anyone in the same circumstances nor why the ship stopped where it did with about 60 mg fuel still left, when that fuel should have allowed at least anoter couple dozen ly of travel.

I assume (and I think this is what Rowenstein was alluding to) that the ship got stuck at the WP0 "load optimal" fuel orders (that you automagically get with "quickdrop" and "quickload"). This would be a hangover from the Good Olde Dayes when fuel was a resource you had to mine and stuff

As to why the order became WP0 at all - I've had "do such-and-such at end of a 2 year jump" magically transfer to being attempted in the middle of nowhere too... not at all clear *why*, but it does seem to happend once in a while.

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wumpus wrote on Sat, 18 March 2006 19:35

I assume (and I think this is what Rowenstein was alluding to) that the ship got stuck at the WP0 "load optimal" fuel orders (that you automagically get with "quickdrop" and "quickload"). This would be a hangover from the Good Olde Dayes when fuel was a resource you had to mine and stuff As to why the order became WP0 at all - I've had "do such-and-such at end of a 2 year jump" magically transfer to being attempted in the middle of nowhere too... not at all clear *why*, but it does seem to happend once in a while.

I hope you can ferret out what it was. Humongous m file on its way.

[Updated on: Tue, 21 March 2006 04:27]

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m.a@stars wrote on Sun, 19 March 2006 19:11

I hope you can ferret out what it was. Humongous m file ont its way.

Err... I wasn't trying to work out *why* it happened; I'm just filing that under "stars! weirdness", with the presumed semi-explanation being what I mentioned earlier in the thread. I just wanted an M file with the exotic message in it so I could add it to my "messages" data file

Thanks Found another bunch of messages I hadn't recorded yet in there too

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wumpus wrote on Sun, 19 March 2006 20:46

Err... I wasn't trying to work out *why* it happened; I'm just filing that under "stars! weirdness", with the presumed semi-explanation being what I mentioned earlier in the thread. I just wanted an M file with the exotic message in it so I could add it to my "messages" data file

I see. But perhaps you can glean enough info to at least hint what to do to avoid it in the future?

Quote:

Thanks Found another bunch of messages I hadn't recorded yet in there too

Cool!

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[email

m.a@stars[/email] wrote on Mon, 20 March 2006 17:10] wumpus wrote on Sun, 19 March 2006 20:46 Err... I wasn't trying to work out *why* it happened; I'm just filing that under "stars! weirdness", with the presumed semi-explanation being what I mentioned earlier in the thread. I just wanted an M file with the exotic message in it so I could add it to my "messages" data file I see. But perhaps you can glean enough info to at least hint what to do to avoid it in the future?

Well... not from this ;P It's only clear that what I said previously is true; the "load optimal fuel" somehow wound up as a WP0 order in deep space, and from there on in you were screwed, since the circumstances dictated that you were stuck with an unfulfillable WP0 order which just sat there. The last part is not a bug - the fact that it became a WP0 order in the first place *might* be a bug, hmm.

With the *starting* M and X files I might be able to discover something interesting, but I have my doubts it would be all that illuminating; still, if you feel like sending them to me, I might get a chance to look at it some time.



[Mod edit: fixed quote]

[Updated on: Mon, 27 March 2006 07:33] by Moderator

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wumpus wrote on Mon, 20 March 2006 18:34

Well... not from this ;P It's only clear that what I said previously is true; the "load optimal fuel" somehow wound up as a WP0 order in deep space, and from there on in you were screwed, since the circumstances dictated that you were stuck with an unfulfillable WP0 order which just sat there. The last part is not a bug - the fact that it became a WP0 order in the first place *might* be a bug, hmm.

So, it can only become a problem during a force-gen. Phew.

Quote:

With the *starting* M and X files I might be able to discover something interesting, but I have my doubts it would be all that illuminating; still, if you feel like sending them to me, I might get a chance to look at it some time.

I'll see if I can dig them out.

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Ptolemy wrote on Tue, 21 March 2006 04:24

Actually, since the ship had waypoint 1 load fuel orders, when it ran out of fuel in the middle of the transit the waypoint 1 fuel load order 'may' have been transferred to a waypoint 0 fuel load order. This should be easy enough to test and/or reprodcue if this is the case. I'll see what I come up with.

Except that the ship didn't run out of fuel ... it still has a fair bit of fuel on board, it's just *not enough* to get to the next waypoint.

At least that's how it looks in the M file And there are no FX, SFX or anti-matter pods in the fleet, so unless some random passing fleet donated fuel ( ;-P ), then the fleet was never completely empty

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Ptolemy wrote on Tue, 21 March 2006 15:52

Yes, I'm aware of that. However, when a fleet doesn't have enough fuel to get to the next location it won't move. That's a known condition.

But most of the time the afflicted ship just reduces its speed to one of 0 fuel usage, even all the way to warp 1, and coasts along. Happens all the time!

Quote:

Take a fuel mizer minelayer with about 15mg of fuel and try sending it warp 9 to a location in space. The fleet waypoint tile will show red for the amount of fuel needed since there isn't enough fuel. Next turn, the fleet hasn't moved and the 15mg of fuel is still on board. Incidently, any ships targeting that minelayer will end up where the minelayer would have ended up if it had the fuel.

If memory serves, that ship won't stop w/out having moved. It will travel as much as it can with the fuel is has at the set speed, and for the remainder of the trip it'll get its speed changed to the highest fuel-free available one.

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Ptolemy wrote on Tue, 21 March 2006 17:11

Which exact version of Stars! was this seen in?

AH's own, downloaded from its download page.

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So far, using only 2.6jrc4 I haven't been able to make it happen.

Me neither.

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Could you guys send me the entire file set .m .x .h and .xy - I'ld like to look into it from that angle.

I don't have them at hand, but I guess yes. Beware that one of the m files is almost 3 MB long.

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You can go ahead and mail them to me - 3 megs won't phase my mailbox.

Ptolemy

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Ptolemy wrote on Wed, 22 March 2006 10:35

You can go ahead and mail them to me - 3 megs won't phase my mailbox.

I'll use Wumpus' new mSplit tool to extract the relevant year(s) from the multi-turn m file as soon as I get a moment.

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