Strange problem

from Stardock Forums
Yeah, I know this belongs in the general forum as opposed to the strategy forum but for some reason I can't seem to post or have the general forum update for me correctly.

Anyway my problem is that some ship types seem to have disappeared from the screen. These ships are still there in that you can select them in the build screen but there is no picture of the ship, just the description. Also once the ship is built there is nothing showing on my screen. It's completely invisible and not selectable. But I can access it thru the Tab key sequence and move it and it attacks/defends just fine. It's not just my ships either, but some of the AI's as well. Basically for me it's anything beyond dreadnaught (so Ranger, Avatar, Overlord etc all exhibit this problem) and for some races it's their battleships, others it's their dreadnaughts and still others it's things like combat transports. All these ships still show up on the mini map but you have to use that to find and attack them. It's extremely annoying to say the least. I'm not sure if this was present at the end of 1.02 or just after I upgraded to 1.03.

Any ideas? Do I have to completely re-install or just install certain parts again?



~SDC~
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I've seen other people report this and I'm still trying to figure out what's causing it.

Saving and reloading should fix it.
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Saving and reloading DOES NOT fix this problem for me.

Exiting the game does, but still a pain.

It doesn't happen every time, but the first victim is always the first of a class of ship. Sensor drone, ranger, whatever.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I've seen this on my own system - after playing a long time (over 4 hours), the UI seems to have problems loading new ship images - so they come up blank (for all new ship classes built). Sometimes I'll see other strange UI problems also (starbases disappear, UI text gets doubled up in the helpful hints windows).

Exiting out and going back in seems to fix it for a while.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Like Daniel I also see it after playing a long time. Because the saved games don't save all the current status's between empires I try not to shut down my game once it starts because otherwise when a game is re-loaded the AI's often make unpredictable moves for the first couple of turns. The result is the game may stay active for a couple of days (I just minimize using CTRL-ESC to get to other apps/check Email etc).

My system for reference is a 1 Gig Athlon with a GeForce 2 card and 512 Megs of Ram so I don't think I should be running out of any system resources.

I will now try exiting and re-starting in the future to see if that fixes the problem.



~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
i experience the identical problems under identical circumstances
also class 25 planets now have no planet image

~SDC~
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I've seen the same problem. again usually a few hours into a game where certain classes of ships for certain empires just don't appear. I find it affects a complete class of ship for a single empire at a time. I also then see the planet icons begin to disappear. I've had it happen to my ships and enemy ships, usually dreadnaughts.

The only way to locate such enemy ships is to use the mini map or the tactical map. Or if they're damaged the damage shows and you can locate the ship from that.

Paul.

~SDC~