The Curious Case of the Disapearing Resource Bases

without a trace

I'm a little new to bug reporting so bear with me here. In my latest game I’m playing on maso in a gigantic galaxy, and they year is currently 2048. I've been noticing something really weird going on. It seems that, for reasons I can’t comprehend, the AI seems to be abandoning their resource starbases. Nobody is at war with anybody else, and there are no minors on the map to attack them. They just seem to disappear. As far as I know the player cannot decommission them so I don’t believe the AI can either. It also never happens to my resource bases. It is just really weird when a whole bunch of good starbases just open up allowing me to sweep in and take them, or seeing resources that I know had to have been taken early in the game sit idol when I know there haven’t been any wars for years in game. I don’t know if this is a bug or a quirk in the AI or what it is. I have seen the starbases disappear, but running my saved games back I cannot get the same starbases to disappear consistently. Sometimes it will be an economic base other times a research base. They don’t go at the same time consistently either, it takes any where from 11 or more turns for it to happen. It just seems to happen at random.

I’m also having a "phantom starport" issue, but I’ll post about it once I test it a little bit more to see if it is a one time thing or if I can repeat it.

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Ok I just finished testing the "phantom starpot" issue I was talking about. Basically it allows you to build a ship at a planet even though there isn't a starport built. You can only build one of the ship, but I find it really weird. Basically you take any planet with a starport and set it to build a ship. Preferably one that takes several weeks so you can see it happening. Then decomission the starport. Now that the starport is gone you would think that the ship would stop being built, but it doesn't. It will actually continue until the ship is completed. Once it is done though it will not build any more. I don't know if this is a bug or just a quirk. Either way it seems to be really weird.

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Seen both of these. I love the first. Can never have to many resources. You can tell if you have done the second one inadvertantly if there is a ship on the Starport Gov screen that will not change over to a new build.

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MMM. Have seen the "phantom starport" in my last game. Weird if you ask me, but not that bad as i only decomision a starport if its a planet i just conquered and is of a too low PQ for anything but research hub or money farm.
As for the missing starbase. Now that you mention it. I have seen unclaimed resources in middle to late game laying there unclaimed for several turnes until i constructed a starbase on them (or those arceans who stole a couple of resourses from me, they had the name of my civ o them!). I allways asumed the starbase has been destroyed in a war and the other civs either didnt care about the resource (which would be weird but i dont play in such a high difficulty) or i just wondered if all the AIs thought that oter should have allready built an starbase on that resourse.

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As far as I know the player cannot decommission them so I don’t believe the AI can either.

Yeah, you can - just select the starbase and hit "Delete", same as for ships.

As to why the AI would do such a thing, who knows. Can't say I've ever seen it, but then I don't let them keep their resources for very long anyway.

Phantom starport issue is an annoyance, especially on a gigantic abundant when I decommission a lot of starports after the colony rush, and then start getting new colony ships appearing a year later! Really useful, they are.

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I have seen unclaimed resources in middle to late game laying there unclaimed for several turnes

Are you sure that the resources aren't generating randomly throughout the game timeline? I don't know if they do this or not, anyone out there know?

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Are you sure that the resources aren't generating randomly throughout the game timeline? I don't know if they do this or not, anyone out there know?

I allways thought they were generated at the start of the game and have never seen one appearing in the area I can see of the map. Has anyone seen this? Even if the are generated randomly in mid game, why doesn't the AI claim them?

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While not an expert I have never seen anything that says resources can pop up mid to late game.

Nor anomolies

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I have never seen a resource generate mid game. I did however see a resource base be there one turn and gone on the next. One time a mining base dissapeared as the Thalians were sending constructors to upgrade it. There was a constructor right next to it the turn it was gone. I have seen this happen on lower difficulty settings as well, including tough and challenging.

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I've seen both of these, but never felt compelled to post about either. But, since you brought it up, yes, if you decomission a starport when it's building a ship, the ship will complete the build and launch as if the starport was there all along. I've seen this since 1.1.

I've often seen alien mining starbases dissappear. In fact, I now keep a few constructors on-hand just for that happenstance. I don't know for sure what's going on, but in a game with a really long enhanced economic activity event, the AI greatly built-up their military. When it ended, they all went broke and just about every mining starbase they owned dissapeared. Naturally, I scooped up those resources just as fast as I could. That was cool. I think they may be losing them when their economy goes too far into the red.

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I too have had this disappearing starbase issue. CraigHB makes a good suggestion, and I know of one case where a race was in real trouble, including economic trouble, and some of their starbases disappeared while they were at peace and before they finally surrendered. However, I have also seen the starbases of races with perfectly fine economies just vanish.

The only other explanation I can come up with is space pirates, but I cannot think of a game where they appeared and a starbase vanished in the same area.

As far as I know, there is no maintenance fee for starbases. Why then would the AI disband starbases due to economic reasons? It would generate a few credits, sure, but a very few, and disbanding an econmic resource mine for a few credits is ridiculous.

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