Bug with Galactic Privateer

from GalCiv2 Forums
Can anyone explain how Galactic Privateer works, and why I'm seeing the behaviour I am?
I built this and expected my trade routes to be safe as per its description. The Dread Lords backed off for about a dozen turns and stopped attacking my routes, so I thought it worked. Then suddenly they start attacking them again.
Then 50 or so turns later, I notice a single Dread Lord escort following a freighter, one turn at a time, causing major hitching in the game. The game would focus on the freighter, like it was going to be attacked, lock the screen there (if you tried to click away it went like 1/2 an inch and bounced back to the freighter) and left the "turn" button unavailable for about 2 seconds. Destroying the Dread Lord ship completely eliminated this behaviour until a few turns later hwen another showed up to do the same thing. This continued for awhile, so I thought it was working, then suddenly they showed up with a fleet of 2 and started attacking freighters again. Lone ships however caused this weird hitching behaviour. Very annoying if you can't get to them right away to destroy them.

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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have built the Galactic Privateer in 8 to 12 games and it has NEVER seemed to work. I am under the impression (from the description in the game) that your freighters cannot be attacked after you build this acheivement. If that is not how it is supposed to work then I stand corrected, but this seems like a big flaw (bug?) in the game. If it's not, then a more thorough description needs to be provided by Stardock.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I eventually found another thread on this that reported the same behaviour. Here we've had a patch already, and they can't fix this glaring error in the game. This is a galactic wonder, it should work properly.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It means the routes themselves can't be killed. Which they aren't. I believe originally it meant no ship got hurt, but did you ever see that?

I did. A dread lord armada of 40 battleships following my freighter, trying to attack it. THAT was a glaring error. It's now fixed, they can attack ships but the route is always there.

I think that works out quite nicely.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It means the routes themselves can't be killed. Which they aren't. I believe originally it meant no ship got hurt, but did you ever see that?

I did. A dread lord armada of 40 battleships following my freighter, trying to attack it. THAT was a glaring error. It's now fixed, they can attack ships but the route is always there.

I think that works out quite nicely.

Yes, I have seen it work correctly for the AI. That is, a textbox appeared when I tried to attack one of his freighters saying that it wasn't possible.
And as always, I'm on the 'Fix the bugs and adapt the AI to the game'-side, not the 'Ignore the bugs and dumb down the game for the AI'-side you seem to favour.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
On page 56 of the GalCiv2 manual, in the Galactic Achievement/Benefit box, it states:

Galactic Privateer: Your freighters cannot be attacked.

If this has been changed so that the freighters CAN be attacked but the route stays open, please let me know. Just out of curiosity, what good is the route if you don't have any freighters? Or does this mean that if you put a new freighter back into the empty route that it just starts running the route without having to re-establish anything? We just need clarification on the issue. Thanks.

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yes, I have seen it work correctly for the AI. That is, a textbox appeared when I tried to attack one of his freighters saying that it wasn't possible.
And as always, I'm on the 'Fix the bugs and adapt the AI to the game'-side, not the 'Ignore the bugs and dumb down the game for the AI'-side you seem to favour.
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I agree completely. If that is the way they corrected the problem, it seems like a cheap fix. Why wouldn't it be possible to make a change to the AI so that they would ignore the freighters of a civ that has the Privateer acheivement? The fact that they can now attack freighters but leave the route open instead makes this acheivement almost worthless.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
THAT was a glaring error. It's now fixed, they can attack ships but the route is always there.


Not fixed apparently. I played a game last night (V 1.1) and it did the same thing. They'd try to attack, the view snaps to the freighter, no attack. This poor Dread Lord frigate kept zooming back and forth between two close trade routes trying to attack the same two freighters. And of course, they followed them right to Earth : (
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I was also wondering about the Galactic Privateer. I built (in fact I bought) one a few turns before I started a war with the drengins, to keep my traderoutes with the humans, that were right on the other side of the Drengin empire, save.

As I declared war, all trade routes with the humans were mentioned to be no longer profitable, too dangerous, ...

So if it's only useful for peaceful regions, what is its use anyway?
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I've seen this same thread several times, and not once have I seen an answer from a dev explaining how the thing works. It would seem a simple thing for them to do, no?