Ancient Ruins and non-starting species

[UnifiedStars]

I've recently started playing version 0.4.4 of FO and noticed that placing an outpost or colonizing a planet with the ancient ruins special with a ship not belonging to my starting species makes it so that nothing is discovered. The ruins still displayed the excavated text, but there was no message of any sort in the sitrep box. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it makes it rather inconvenient. I can guarantee that the ruins were not previously excavated as there were sentinels guarding the system. This may be an isolated incident as I don't remember much from my previous games, but I'm sure it's probably a bug.

Another thing I've noticed with the Manical A.I. is that it seems to like sending its ships into systems it has discovered that is blockaded by sentinels, leading to certain death and a waste of resources. Perhaps they could be tweaked to judge attacks based on whether they can achieve victory or not before initiating. I remember my first game (Just last week actually) where I got stomped by beginner A.I., it seems that now even the Manical A.I. is too easy. I understand that it would be difficult to program smarter A.I., but perhaps introducing another setting where they cheat (Additional 10 pp and rp per planet they own?)might make the game more interesting. As of now, they hardly build any ships in the early game (first 30 turns or so), so rushing them is quite easy and basically secures the game.

Other than that, I'm really enjoying this game, and I wish best of luck to the developers and everything they've done to create this masterpiece. I realize that many things still need to be done, and perhaps in the future I may also be able to also contribute. Keep up the good work!

[Dilvish]

...noticed that placing an outpost or colonizing a planet with the ancient ruins special with a ship not belonging to my starting species makes it so that nothing is discovered. The ruins still displayed the excavated text, but there was no message of any sort in the sitrep box....This may be an isolated incident as I don't remember much from my previous games, but I'm sure it's probably a bug.

None of the relevant code has any info about what your starting species was; that was not the issue. It's conceivable it was just some weird fluke bug, but without a savegame file or relevant screenshots we don't really have any chance to figure out the situation.

As of now, they hardly build any ships in the early game (first 30 turns or so), so rushing them is quite easy and basically secures the game.

Hmm, yes, I suppose they don't really have any strategy yet for dealing with such a small galaxy that they can be rushed so quickly-- how many systems and AIs are you playing with? Eventually we'll try to rectify that, but in the meantime I suggest trying more systems per AI.

[UnifiedStars]

I've taken a couple screenshots of the incident, and if you want to have the save file then I can also upload it.

[Dilvish]

It would be most helpful if you could post the savegame from immediately before you colonized the planet (hopefully Mat or someone on Windows could then test it out some). You will probably need to put it on some hosting site and just share the link. And just to confirm, the sitrep did not appear on turn 174? (the pic is from turn 174, but you are showing sitreps for turn 173).

It would also be helpful to me if you could show a similar screenshot (showing the sitreps, planet and special's toolip, but keeping the sitreps in sync with the turn) for turn 172 (since it is rather inconvenient for me personally to test out anything with the windows version).

[Dilvish]

Ah, here is another thought-- had you already excavated a couple other Ruins? If you already have MultiSpectral Shields and Krill Spawner, then you are not guaranteed to get anything more; there is just a random chance of getting a Dragon Tooth, Death Ray 1 or a Neutronium Synthesizer.

[MatGB]

It is definitely the case the Ruins trigger for any species, including outposts, most of the time. I've had it happen more than enough times, including when I was bughunting the release of 0.4.4.

However, it does sometimes happen that you get nothing, having looked at the code in the past I know that's always theoretically possible but I've never checked it thoroughly to ensure it doesn't happen erroneously. It is possible you've found a (very) edge case bug that sometimes applies, but I doubt it.

Basically it gives you a chance of getting, in this order:
A Dragon Tooth (20% chance)
A Neutronium Synthesizer (25% chance)
Unlocking Death Ray 1 (50% chance only if not already unlocked)

If none of the above happen, then it will automatically give you Multi Spectral Shielding if you haven't got it, if you have it will automatically give you Krill Spawner. If you've got both, it does nothing and says nothing. We possibly ought to to a sitrep for that at some point as it is nice to know, possibly somethign like "The ancient ruins on planet X turned out to be valueless" or even something gimmicky, our scientists have discovered an ancient source of food, etc etc...

[UnifiedStars]

Actually Mat, you may be right. I discovered the Death Ray and Multi-Spectral Shielding on the two systems right beside my starting homeworld (Made for a very interesting[easy] game), and later found the Krill Spawner. That screenshot was only the second ruin that I colonized in the last 10 turns or so that gave nothing. But anyways, I think that a message might be very helpful in the future so as to make it clear that there is a chance to receive nothing. Here's the save file just in case you need it, and thanks.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gdy40ziwnuwmd ... 0.sav?dl=0



Oh, and another thing, is this supposed to happen? I've never seen planets in deep space before, but my most scientific explanation would be that a nebula didn't have enough material to create a gas giant of critical mass to ignite into a new star.

rsz_weird.png (878.09 KiB) Viewed 1125 times

[Dilvish]

We possibly ought to to a sitrep for that at some point as it is nice to know, possibly somethign like "The ancient ruins on planet X turned out to be valueless" or even something gimmicky, our scientists have discovered an ancient source of food, etc etc...

I agree; done: "On %planet% Ancient Ruins were excavated, but only tantalizing hints of ancient technology were found."

Oh, and another thing, is this supposed to happen?

Yes.

[MatGB]

It's supposed to be rare, but not non-existent, I've seen drifting planets in at least two SF series and there's the old trope of "captured" planets, etc.

But you don't need a scientific explanation in this game, everything weird can be explained by "The Precursors did it (and probably as a joke)". I blame the Experimentors, they're just evil (have you met them yet?).

[UnifiedStars]

Not yet, as I've only been playing on smaller crowded galaxies. As of now, I'm currently trying out a 200 system map with 4 AI to test the waters and get a feeling. I think that early stealth tech rushes might be a little too overwhelming as it would take forever for them to find you and by then one would have much of the late game tech researched.

Is there anything I should be aware of for the experimenters? I've been browsing the forums and came across images of the experimenter system being cut off from the rest of the galaxy, and I think I read that the more powerful monsters only come out past wave 300 rather than all at once when the turn counter reaches 200. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!