X3AP Billion Barracuda Bug (& other ships) - UPDATE: Solution in 2.5.3.

Grammarye · Post by **Grammarye** » Sat, 11. Aug 12, 23:44

I've not been able to spot a similar report to this problem, so apologies if I'm duplicating anything.

I've been running Albion Prelude 2.5 with the Bonus Package (the game otherwise unmodified) perfectly fine for a few weeks on Humble Merchant, and all of a sudden after a long SETA run to test a sequence out my game was lagging perceptibly. Beyond being offered the first mission, I'd not started the plot in M184.

I had already noticed an in-system lag when I got an unkillable pirate ship turn up in Elena's Fortune, with the Argons adding more and more ships trying & failing to kill it, but that was nicely local to that system. This by comparison was universe wide. No matter where I went, the game was sluggish.

After a bit of investigation, I discovered that the Mars system had become somehow partially stuck in OOS processing. Ships were appearing, but not moving, staying on top of each other. Traffic from other sectors was passing through fine, so it appeared to be linked only to certain ships & spawns.

As far as I can tell, the Terrans are spawning Cutlass & Scimitar vessels in or around Mars which then go off to fight in the nearby war sector Asteroid Belt. Trouble is, they never arrive, and bunch up around the Mars-Asteroid Belt accelerator. Left to its own devices, this yields thousands of Cutlass & Scimitar ships stuck in the sector. The game performance understandably suffers.

After dropping in Cycrow's cheat script and deleting all ships in the sector, the game performance was back to normal, but this is a temporary fix. The same spawning slowly starts to reoccur. If I jump IS before too many have got stuck, then the Scimitars & Cutlasses happily head to the accelerator (and interestingly are in entirely different positions to where they were listed OOS), leave, and the problem is again temporarily solved. Short of permanently camping out Mars, anyone got any suggestions on how to fix this?

Post by **X2-Illuminatus** » Sun, 12. Aug 12, 00:43

Would you please provide a savegame with the described problem, preferably one where you haven't used Cycrow's Cheatpackage yet?

Ringold · Post by **Ringold** » Sun, 12. Aug 12, 09:14

I've discovered an identical problem,except its Ocean of Fantasy, and Boron ships. I wondered why my game was getting slow, and just happened to to jump in to a system to dock and save for the night, and saw a few hundred ships poking around, looking like gnats.

Makes me think, since I've not bothered to put down any satellites or even explore the whole map, that there must be another system or two out there stuffed full of these fighters too.

I don't see an option (might be missing it) to attach a file directly to this post, so... a public download link courtesy sugarsync. I'm docked in the system in question, with only the Bonus Pack installed, X3:AP via Steam.

https://www.sugarsync.com/pf/D8071903_67919368_845860

Thanks for any help that can be provided! Also didnt mean to threadjack but sounds like the same problem.

Grammarye · Post by **Grammarye** » Sun, 12. Aug 12, 10:33

Thanks for the swift reply. Some auto-saves of the problem can be found here, here, and here. They cover the problem as it is starting, a few Scimitars etc in Mars, and the problem when there's over 1000 of them.

Unfortunately, it requires signing up to 4Shared to download the files (total rubbish in my view) so I have created a convenient temporary account on their servers. DinkleKitten@sogetthis.com is the email, DinkleKitten the password.

Edit: I can also confirm that having passed by Ocean of Fantasy, I also have the same accumulation of Boron ships.

One thing I did notice was that after hitting Mars IS and letting the small number of accumulated Scimitars & Cutlasses from the second time around leave, one damaged Scimitar remained near the Mars Shipyard just oscillating back & forth. I deleted that ship as well, and since then have had no recurrence of the problem in Mars. I don't know if that helps.

bfifteenv · Post by **bfifteenv** » Tue, 14. Aug 12, 02:55

http://i.imgur.com/13BrF.jpg

This has been going on for a while and it has survived a couple of exit/restart cycles. Not sure if it's a bug of a feature. There are hundreds of them (more than a screen-long list of each variant, and all variants) and they aren't going anywhere - just flying around in big clusters - and they look like they're heading for the gates sometimes, but they aren't showing up in neighboring sectors. IS/OoS makes no difference.

Bonus Pack is all I have installed.

If it's a potential bug or something and you need a log or whatever, just tell me what to do.

Ringold · Post by **Ringold** » Tue, 14. Aug 12, 04:47

This is exactly the same thing I reported in another thread, the same system in fact. Definitely must be some sort of bug.

NinjaDriver · Post by **NinjaDriver** » Tue, 14. Aug 12, 05:46

HOLY CRAP!

I've got another thread going about slow down issues. I just checked my Ocean of Fantasy sector and it's LOADED with Barracudas. Radar has them packed in the trade lines.

Definitely a problem. My framerate and game response time had dropped to nothing in that sector.

[ external image ]

If anyone knows of any other sectors this is happening in, please post. ES needs to clean this up.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Tue, 14. Aug 12, 10:30

OK that seems to be a new and confirmed in-game bug. I will contact the X3AP bug-tracker to get him to contact the devs.

Could you all please make sure you have saves of the issue available as we may need them to investigate and develop a fix.

bfifteenv · Post by **bfifteenv** » Tue, 14. Aug 12, 16:42

I just made a copy of a save with the problem in progress...

If you need it just let me know.

Thanks!

Grammarye · Post by **Grammarye** » Tue, 14. Aug 12, 18:17

The thread I started about this can be found <now merged> including savegames. Hope it helps.

<Threads merged. Thanks. Alan Phipps>

Grammarye · Post by **Grammarye** » Tue, 14. Aug 12, 20:30

Scratch my earlier statement re deleting a ship stopping the problem. My Mars is once again filled with Scimitars & Cutlasses. Just a matter of time.

bfifteenv · Post by **bfifteenv** » Tue, 14. Aug 12, 20:51

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7rYbfz ... Z1NTQ/edit

Link to my save with only Bonus Pack installed. I too haven't explored the whole universe, so I'm not sure where it is happening other than Ocean of Fantasy.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Tue, 14. Aug 12, 21:01

Thanks.

Edit: The X3AP bug-tracker is on the case and trying to get dev attention (they are rather occupied at the moment) for this issue.

Ringold · Post by **Ringold** » Wed, 15. Aug 12, 04:31

My save should still be available too. In the mean time, is there a way to somehow nuke or reset a sector to mitigate the problem in way that doesn't give a game a modified tag? I'd like to keep working towards Steam achievements, but if thats not possible it's okay. Game just isn't playable as-is. LOVE the game though! Thanks

Matt Armada · Post by **Matt Armada** » Wed, 15. Aug 12, 07:33

As a reference for everyone who is attempting to use a service to download the files.

If you sign up for a drop box account, and then put the files in your 'public' folder anyone can download them assuming you provide the public link.

You're welcome.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Wed, 15. Aug 12, 10:58

@ Ringold, not in vanilla from outside the sector. You have to be IS to use the orphan no-rep-loss missiles trick. See what the devs come up with.

We are already hoping for a solution to the many Escort fighters and TS/TPs left scattered doing nothing around the galaxy from station missions that do not clear up properly after thenselves in vanilla X3AP. Maybe a clean-up fix for such existing in-game problems may be considered for future release. Who knows?

One question to you all - have you all been using extended periods of SETA before this issue cropped up?

NinjaDriver · Post by **NinjaDriver** » Wed, 15. Aug 12, 13:55

Yes, I've used many extended SETA sessions.

bfifteenv · Post by **bfifteenv** » Wed, 15. Aug 12, 22:58

Not much SETA time for me. I have used it a lot in the game, but I don't need to do SETA tricks to make money faster at this point, so there certainly haven't been any overnight SETA marathons or anything like that.

Just before I *noticed* the 'Cudas, I built a complex (actually used Heph to lay the factories) in Spires of Elusion. I used maybe 20 minutes of SETA time there as I moved a couple of mines around... and since it was towing a mine, it's was far from constant SETA time.

My game has run to 10+ hours since then with ZERO SETA time, and they haven't cleared up. I thought they might just be getting bunched up at the gates, so I left it on overnight to clear that out if it was the case.

And I've only been back in Oceans of Fantasy once since I noticed it, just to see what it did to my frame rate. It didn't make then go away.

I'm not too concerned about it personally. I know the Devs have got better things to do... I'm working on getting the Xenon to venture into OoF more often to see if they can clear it out for me.

Ringold · Post by **Ringold** » Thu, 16. Aug 12, 00:30

Oh yes, I've SETA'd the heck out of it. It's probably still a young game compared to many peoples, but 4 or 5 days of SETA at 1000% total. SETA is how I initially noticed a problem brewing; first 10x would lag, then 8, 6, 4, until now when normal game speed seems to lag.

I'll look in to the no rep loss missile trick, since that was really my concern; I tend to like my fishy boron friends.

Edit: Looked up what that is exactly; I think I have too many targets to do that any time this millenia. Guess I'll figure something else out, or maybe settle for a *modified tag.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Thu, 16. Aug 12, 11:12

Another victim of this bug here.

Also further info on potential sources here.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

X3AP Billion Barracuda Bug (& other ships) - UPDATE: Solution in 2.5.3.

X3AP Billion Barracuda Bug (& other ships) - UPDATE: Solution in 2.5.3.

Billion Barracuda Bug? (and Terran equiv)