Calculation error on population size

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Kassiopeija
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Calculation error on population size

#1 Post by Kassiopeija »

Heyho,

the Pedia entry of Ginglith II shows "Egassem 1,5" but the colony tooltip itself shows -0,5. This is not a display error, the colony got just established this very turn and got already reduced to 0,85. A few turns later the colony is destroyed.

The tooltip shows an "Unknown +2.00" which, I guess, are 2 growth specials (Ferric + Silmaline) which I have (and those give +1 respectively due to Tiny Planet size). The planet is supplyline connected (also the turns before and after)

Build number is 2015-06-15.1daea13 MSCV 2013
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Dilvish
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Re: Calculation error on population size

#2 Post by Dilvish »

Kassiopeija wrote:the Pedia entry of Ginglith II shows "Egassem 1,5" but the colony tooltip itself shows -0,5. This is not a display error, the colony got just established this very turn and got already reduced to 0,85. A few turns later the colony is destroyed.

The tooltip shows an "Unknown +2.00" which, I guess, are 2 growth specials (Ferric + Silmaline) which I have (and those give +1 respectively due to Tiny Planet size). The planet is supplyline connected (also the turns before and after)
Are you sure you didn't play around with growth specials and focus settings in between getting the suitability report and making the screenshot? That could potentially account for the 2.0 difference between the report and your current readings. The unknown +2 in the current readings tooltip is quite odd, though, I can't think of any situation that would lead to that.

Now, when you note what version you are running, is that with fully up-to-date, and unmodified, content files? If you've been simply using the updated executables you content files might be old, and it's only within the last month or 2 that Mat made some important changes to some of the growth tech & specials behavior which could cause effects like this.

Please verify that this reading still happens if you load from a saved game file, and also that your content files are up to date and unchanged. If so, then please upload an xml format savegame file someplace so that I could check this out more. (can change Options, last tab, to disable binary serialization, then restart FO, load an existing savegame file (fine if it's binary) and then immediately resave it to some other name indicating xml.
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Kassiopeija
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Re: Calculation error on population size

#3 Post by Kassiopeija »

The version I'm running is 18 days old, I downloaded a full install and uninstalled the previous version.
No, I didn't tinker with growth specials, I keep them always on, besides the destruction of the colony happened over 10 turns, so even if one or both Growth specials would have been temporarily cut off from supply the colony would recover. Also I have full supply and my borders are secure. Nevertheless, I think I've found out what might have caused it.

There's a Vacuum Dragon which did destroy my Slith colony on that planet (biological attack). Because of this I've erected an Egassem colony there (which you see in the screenie).
I've reloaded an older save and checked the suitability report each turn - on that turn when the colony is destroyed by the Vacuum Dragon all suitability reports gain a +3 out of nowhere! Not only Egassem but all my current species. However, if I colonize that planet that isn't accepted for the target pop, and as a result, that Egasem planet did starve.

I wouldn't even have noticed because this can only happen if the MaxPop is really low.

Also, if you play around with the Growth specials the game auto-corrects itself and from that point on, shows the correct number.

You can see for yourself, I'm adding a gamesave 1 turn before the destruction.

***
hmm, this forum rejects .sav files.

Anyway, here are 2 screenies to exemplify what I mean.
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Last edited by Kassiopeija on Thu Jul 02, 2015 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Kassiopeija
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Re: Calculation error on population size

#4 Post by Kassiopeija »

Dilvish wrote:(can change Options, last tab, to disable binary serialization, then restart FO, load an existing savegame file (fine if it's binary)
???

I didn't quite get that, nevertheless I 'm adding a normal savegame with changed file-ending, hope that'll do.

hmm, error: The file is too big, maximum allowed size is 1 MiB.

This forum is really restricted in many ways....

You may use this external link:
http://www.datafilehost.com/d/2222e3ff

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Dilvish
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Re: Calculation error on population size

#5 Post by Dilvish »

Kassiopeija wrote:I didn't quite get that, nevertheless I 'm adding a normal savegame with changed file-ending, hope that'll do.
No, I normally run Linux, am not currently set up for FO on Windows. The binary serialization format is not cross-platform compatible between Linux and the other OS's, whereas the (more bulky) text/xml serialization is. The instructions I gave you were for switching off binary serialization, i.e., turning on xml serialization, so that I could work with the file. No matter what mode you are in, you can still read in both formats of save file, but when you resave it, it would then be in the xml format that I can use. You could then switch back to binary mode, which might be noticeably faster when playing games.
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Kassiopeija
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Re: Calculation error on population size

#6 Post by Kassiopeija »

ok, I started FO, unchecked serialization, re-started FO, loaded save, made a new save, and ziped that
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Dilvish
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Re: Calculation error on population size

#7 Post by Dilvish »

Mat, I think that a little bit of the confusion here stems from the issue with health boosts having a min target 0 pop criteria, like you removed from various growth techs sort-of recently for this same reason. It looks like those requirements are still present with the growth-focus aspect of growth specials, but not with the direct application of growth specials to their own planet. Was that intended? If so, we should probably make a note on suitability report about how that can muck up the predictions.
Kassiopeija wrote:There's a Vacuum Dragon which did destroy my Slith colony on that planet (biological attack). Because of this I've erected an Egassem colony there (which you see in the screenie). I've reloaded an older save and checked the suitability report each turn - on that turn when the colony is destroyed by the Vacuum Dragon all suitability reports gain a +3 out of nowhere! Not only Egassem but all my current species. However, if I colonize that planet that isn't accepted for the target pop, and as a result, that Egasem planet did starve.
By 'all suitability reports' here, what you really mean is 'the suitability report for all species for this particular planet', right? That is a known glitch that happens on the turn a planet is depopulated by any effect (Bioweapons, Concentration Camps, etc.). One of these days we should track that down and fix it; in the meantime we should probably add to the suitability report some kind of specific caveat language regarding that.
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MatGB
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Re: Calculation error on population size

#8 Post by MatGB »

Dilvish wrote:Mat, I think that a little bit of the confusion here stems from the issue with health boosts having a min target 0 pop criteria, like you removed from various growth techs sort-of recently for this same reason. It looks like those requirements are still present with the growth-focus aspect of growth specials, but not with the direct application of growth specials to their own planet. Was that intended? If so, we should probably make a note on suitability report about how that can muck up the predictions.
Not intended, no, almost certainly missed instances, I'll have a look.

Edi: appears I found all instances of population low = 0 in species.txt, but forgot to also search specials.txt

At some point we really need to move as much of this sort of thing into macros, having 9 specials doing exactly the same thing with only tiny qualifiers is annoying when we need to bughunt. Hopefully fixed with d054370
Mat Bowles

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Kassiopeija
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Re: Calculation error on population size

#9 Post by Kassiopeija »

Dilvish wrote:By 'all suitability reports' here, what you really mean is 'the suitability report for all species for this particular planet', right? That is a known glitch that happens on the turn a planet is depopulated by any effect (Bioweapons, Concentration Camps, etc.). One of these days we should track that down and fix it; in the meantime we should probably add to the suitability report some kind of specific caveat language regarding that.
Yes, that's what I ment - sorry for not being more precise. BTW is this bug always in the magnitude of -3 pop or can it vary?

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Dilvish
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Re: Calculation error on population size

#10 Post by Dilvish »

Kassiopeija wrote:BTW is this bug always in the magnitude of -3 pop or can it vary?
It varies.
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