Bug Buggy Mess

[Bathtub-pirate]

Yikes, oh the bugs!


Hi there – I lately got around to play a bit of POTC again. So I installed it's latest edition (completely a new installment – including the stock game) and over the course of several games ran into a few oddities, that seemed to stack up the longer I played any given profile.


Often the behavior of ships at sea would be weird (like one of my ships attacking another one after loading at sea). I know that this bug happened in earlier installments, when sailing under a false flag and loading while under a false flag of a hostile nation. However, this time around I used my own pirate flag, while being on splendid terms with the pirates. This happened twice. And only when I had four ships.


Also many bugs seemed to develop around the stats of the ship. In two games I ran into a problem with my gunner. Whenever I had them as passengers on my active ship (the one I control), they would not fully attribute to the canon and accuracy skills. But when they would captain a ship themselves, the stats would be as they should be. Really weird. Also the ship, that was captained by the gunner, had always a stagnation in morale. Even though I kept rolling in the dough big and fast as a pirate (all the other ships developed high too heroic morale quickly). The gunner had enough leadership and sailing ability to lead a ship of sufficient class, as the one ship was, which kept bleeding morale.


Also I had a ship, a sworfish Xebec, having hull health of 106 % at one point. This happened shortly after I placed a skilled Carpenter (repair skill - 10) as the captain. Seems the man outdid himself. For the time being, when the ship had the 106 %, the red health bar for hull health at sea would be completely black (as if the ship being destroyed). Yet the ship did not sink or anything. The 6% “bonus” was gone, once I divided the plunder and auto-repair took effect.
Oh, at one point I also had -3 planks.


And now, when I just loaded my latest game, things went full retard. After dividing the plunder I always redistribute some of the goodies (ammunition, food, repair supplies etc.), that you receive after dividing booty, between my fleet. Because my active ship is always nearly full, due to being a heavily manned ship with 18 pound cannons. So in order to have enough space to plunder cargo holds, I switch some of the supplies to my ship with the biggest storage. It was then, that I noticed (right after loading my game) that at least two of my ships had increased cargo capacity. All of a sudden they were able to carry more. When I was done with my ship transfer, I pressed on the X to leave …. only to have my active ship be automatically chosen as both, ship A and B. Then I heard a sinking sound (while standing at the port, mind you) and my game crashed.


I am not sure, where to point my finger at, what causes this mess. It just seems that the longer I play (and I never have more than one profile at the same time), something piles up. Could be the new smuggling (as I smuggled in every game). Also the smuggling seems kind of messy. In one game, I couldn't smuggle anymore (at least in one place) because the guy in the tavern wouldn't initiate the proper dialogue anymore. Instead the conversation would go as if I had no contraband goods.


Lots of buggy stuff going on. And somewhat annoying, as I find myself forced to start anew, whenever I make some serious headway.


Attached to this post are the error and compile logs.

I from here on will probably start a new game *sigh* ... again and check if I can reproduce some of the errors.

 

[Grey Roger]

One of those is not a bug. The ship which was captained by a gunner and which rapidly lost morale: check the gunner's reputation and yours. If you have a good reputation (Bloke, Matey, Dashing, Hero) and he has an evil reputation (Rascal, Swindler, Terror, Horror of the High Seas), or vice versa, then he has different ideas from you about how to command a pirate ship and is trying to incite a mutiny. Put someone else in charge of that ship, someone whose reputation is aligned the same as yours.

The one about gunners not contributing full skills is easily fixed. Open the file "PROGRAM\officers.c", go down to the section titled "//Cannoneer", and find the line which says:

OfficerTypes.(type).skills.Accuracy = 1;     // set to 1 to balance

Change the 1 to a 2. (The gunner should be contributing his full "Cannon" skill. If not, check the next line and if it's set to 1, replace that with 2 as well.)

I've never known one of your own ships attack you, unless it has mutinied. Which, if you left that rogue gunner in charge of his ship for too long, may very well have happened.

Last time I had a ship go over 100% health, it was because I'd just applied the "Corsair refit" upgrade. Have you done that recently? Among the effects of that upgrade are an increase in cargo capacity and decrease in maximum health, but it doesn't reduce the ship's current health, so the current health is now higher than maximum. As you saw, that causes the health bar to appear empty, but when the ship has taken enough damage to bring its health below its new maximum, the health bar displays correctly again. Also, have you done anything else in the shipyard, such as change the ship's appearance?

One useful hint: occasional weirdness does happen, and when it does, try deleting the file "options". If you altered things like key settings, you'll need to redo them. That file sometimes gets corrupted and when it does, all sorts of odd things can result. It's not guaranteed to fix everything but it's worth trying as a first resort, and may save you having to start a whole new game.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The skill thing should probably be fixed using the ZIP you find through the link in my signature.

Black health bar when HP is greater than 100% is also known, though I'm not sure how that managed to happen.

The other stuff sounds really quite weird. Perhaps @Levis has some thoughts, since some of it relates to his work?

But that ship transfer thing sounds bizare to say the least. Is there any specific sequence of buttons you pressed for that?
Are you able to replicate the problem by doing the same thing again?

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

@Grey Roger

Ah, so the difference in reputation is the problem. That is interesting. Does the reputation of the officers change over time?


So the gunners per default do NOT contribute their skills? Didn't know that. And it's awkward, because everyone else does. And I certainly didn't toy around with the settings.ini.


No idea what causes the ships to attack one of their own. So far I have yet to pin down how to reproduce it.


Yes, I indeed did the corsair modification/flushed deck. I never knew that it would increase capacity.

One question: Is there some dynamic component to the effect of the upgrades on various ship types or even specific ships? Sometimes I find some upgrades to be profoundly more effective on some ships, other times they have nearly no effect whatsoever. I recently did the speed improvement for the hull (don't remember what it is called right now) on an Armed Merchantman … and it had no effect whatsoever. There was no speed gain. However, when I did the flushed deck on an Essex Frigate, the effect was quite hefty with a gain of well over 1 knot.


Thanks for the hint with the options file. However, I just changed options within the game. Never by manipulating the settings thing; only via the in-game options function. Does this hint apply then?



@Pieter

Luckily the ship transfer thing did not reproduce. And with the major chunk of the other stuff sorted out, my game may be not in such a bad shape after all.


As far as the smuggling goes: I learned in the mean-time, that contraband goods can very well change over time. So maybe the goods got legalized and I just missed the boat on that one.^^

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ah, so the difference in reputation is the problem. That is interesting. Does the reputation of the officers change over time?

Yep, great difference in captain reputation can cause morale dropping and eventual mutiny of companion ships.
Reputation doesn't change for non-player characters at the moment.

So the gunners per default do NOT contribute their skills? Didn't know that. And it's awkward, because everyone else does. And I certainly didn't toy around with the settings.ini.

Indeed that was a mistake that is fixed in the ZIP I mentioned.

No idea what causes the ships to attack one of their own. So far I have yet to pin down how to reproduce it.

Save At Sea might not always work perfectly. I wonder if it uses incorrect companion nation attributes or something.

One question: Is there some dynamic component to the effect of the upgrades on various ship types or even specific ships? Sometimes I find some upgrades to be profoundly more effective on some ships, other times they have nearly no effect whatsoever. I recently did the speed improvement for the hull (don't remember what it is called right now) on an Armed Merchantman … and it had no effect whatsoever. There was no speed gain. However, when I did the flushed deck on an Essex Frigate, the effect was quite hefty with a gain of well over 1 knot.

There is indeed a random element to it.

Thanks for the hint with the options file. However, I just changed options within the game. Never by manipulating the settings thing; only via the in-game options function. Does this hint apply then?

That file is prone to corruption for unknown reasons, causing all sorts of random crap.
Removing it will reset everything and clean things up. Worth doing once in a while when you think things are getting too bad.

As far as the smuggling goes: I learned in the mean-time, that contraband goods can very well change over time. So maybe the goods got legalized and I just missed the boat on that one.^^

Indeed they do change when an island smuggling state changes and there should be a Tavern News entry when that happens.

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

So I just delete the options file in the POTC folder? Do I have to re-adjust my options in-game thereafter?

There is one thing still on my heart about salary payment. I am somewhat skeptical if it works as intended. I NEVER get asked for a monthly salary, when I don't happen to be on the sea on payday. And one method to skip the payday realiably is to simply have the ship being repaired in the shipyard. Since bigger repairs take a few days, that is a foolproof way to simply sit the payday out. Just start whatever bigger repairs are necessary shortly before it and you should be fine. From my observations one could use this mechanic to simply bypass payment every month and have a crew of any size completely for free (save for hiring fees). Considering that standard salary is meager anyway - not that much of a deal. However, I always want to play with a big modificator (sometimes as high as 14) for payment, but the crew being apparantly not all that keen on being paid kills that challenge somewhat.


Oh, and one other thing. It seems that when one upgrades a ship, then sells it, the stats of the ship (as shown in the display of the shipyard) remain the same. Does this mean that if one buys the ship immediately back, he can stack the effects of upgrades? Because this is what it looks like. Should this be possible, this would be a somewhat costly but still massive exploit. Just imagine: a 60 knot Royal Manilla Galleon! Every trader's wet dream!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

When saving at sea after a battle and then restarting from that save your ships know they are supposed to be mad at someone but there is no one around. So they start blasting at each other.

If I remember correctly going to the world map fixes that.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So I just delete the options file in the POTC folder? Do I have to re-adjust my options in-game thereafter?

Yes, you do.

There is one thing still on my heart about salary payment. I am somewhat skeptical if it works as intended. I NEVER get asked for a monthly salary, when I don't happen to be on the sea on payday. And one method to skip the payday realiably is to simply have the ship being repaired in the shipyard. Since bigger repairs take a few days, that is a foolproof way to simply sit the payday out. Just start whatever bigger repairs are necessary shortly before it and you should be fine. From my observations one could use this mechanic to simply bypass payment every month and have a crew of any size completely for free (save for hiring fees). Considering that standard salary is meager anyway - not that much of a deal. However, I always want to play with a big modificator (sometimes as high as 14) for payment, but the crew being apparantly not all that keen on being paid kills that challenge somewhat.

Uh, wha? I thought @Levis put some code in place to trigger salary payment ashore as well. But that was ages ago and should still be in place.

Oh, and one other thing. It seems that when one upgrades a ship, then sells it, the stats of the ship (as shown in the display of the shipyard) remain the same. Does this mean that if one buys the ship immediately back, he can stack the effects of upgrades? Because this is what it looks like. Should this be possible, this would be a somewhat costly but still massive exploit. Just imagine: a 60 knot Royal Manilla Galleon! Every trader's wet dream!

I don't think anyone ever noticed that.
Perhaps the upgrades remain in place when you re-purchase her. But I am not sure of that.
Try it and we'll know!

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

@ Hylie Pistof

This could be the case, as it seems to happen after battles when saving just after the dust settled. But it still seems very sporadic, as it never happened to more than one ship (going aggro). At least in my games. Maybe if there was an explicit "attack" command given, which was active while saving, but the target ship submitted. This would be a typical situation to save (at least for me), to be prepared in case of a crash on deck of the enemy ship (since that still tends to happen here and there).

I will look out for that.

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

Another weird thing I noticed. When I get a new officer in a tavern, he simply replaces one of my existing officers. I play the Jack Aubrey game, which is one of the games, where you start with a number of offficers right away. Could this be the source of trouble? And no, I don't have a passenger list, exceeding eight officers (for that used to be trouble, at least in the stock game).

And yes, I deleted the options file.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The passenger list allows much more than 8 officers.

When you hire that officer, do your existing ones DISAPPEAR altogether from the passengers list or do they just stop following you around?

 

[Grey Roger]

Yep, great difference in captain reputation can cause morale dropping and eventual mutiny of companion ships.
Reputation doesn't change for non-player characters at the moment.

It does change for those officers who are actively with you. Having already got myself to Hero status by side quests and governor ship-hunting quests, I still do good things because it bumps up the reputation of my companions, albeit more gradually. I had one who was Swindler and is now Matey. Some others who started out already on the good side are now Hero.

Which means, @Bathtub-pirate, put that mutinous gunner into your party. If his Melee skill is poor (which it probably is to start with), talk to him, say "About you", then "Why don't you sit out the next boarding", so he doesn't get killed when you next board an enemy ship or raid a dungeon. But give him decent equipment because he'll still be with you if you are attacked while in town or in the jungle. Do whatever it is you do, whether good or bad, and his reputation should gradually change to align with yours. Then you can start using him as a prize captain again.

@Pieter Boelen : Ship upgrades: are you saying that the effect of a certain upgrade to a certain ship, e.g. "Stays" to an Aurora class frigate, are random, to the extent that it may not have any effect at all? Or does the effect depend more on which ship is getting it? (I wouldn't expect "Stays" to do much to a xebec, all its sails are effectively stays anyway.)

@Bathtub-pirate : Salaries: you previously mentioned dividing the plunder. The crew won't ask for salaries if you're paying by dividing by plunder. If you haven't switched to dividing the plunder then you're going to run into trouble with the crew anyway, regardless of what modifier you've applied to the salary, because once you have over a certain amount of gold they demand a share of it. If you don't then switch to dividing the plunder, they may take matters into their own hands... The other exception is if you're a commissioned officer because then the Navy takes care of salary payments, but you said you're friendly with pirates, so that exception probably doesn't concern you!

Officers disappearing when you hire new ones: I've seen that happen as well. Sometimes it stops happening for no apparent reason as well. Save game, hire an officer, see if one of your other officers has disappeared, if so then reload the savegame and don't hire the new officer. On the other hand, if you now have one more officer than you used to have, keep him. The maximum number of passengers / officers is now 35. (36 if you count through the entire "Characters" list including yourself. Prisoners also count.)

Do you have any ships berthed in shipyards?

When you hire that officer, do your existing ones DISAPPEAR altogether from the passengers list or do they just stop following you around?

You hire a new officer and one of your previous officers disappears. For example, you have 15 officers, you hire a new one, you still have 15 officers. Someone has disappeared. It's not consistent. I've been able to get up to the maximum of 36 people total, or I've had officers disappear when I had a lot less and tried to hire another one.

I only played Jack Aubrey, not for very long because an update requiring a new game came out shortly after I'd started. But I'm now playing the Nelson storyline in which you also get a set of officers at the start, and before that I tried "Brave Black Flag". In both cases I was able to hire some officers. Nelson has now run into the disappearing officers bug, but not before I already had several new ones.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It does change for those officers who are actively with you. Having already got myself to Hero status by side quests and governor ship-hunting quests, I still do good things because it bumps up the reputation of my companions, albeit more gradually. I had one who was Swindler and is now Matey. Some others who started out already on the good side are now Hero.

They do? Didn't know that!

@Pieter Boelen : Ship upgrades: are you saying that the effect of a certain upgrade to a certain ship, e.g. "Stays" to an Aurora class frigate, are random, to the extent that it may not have any effect at all? Or does the effect depend more on which ship is getting it? (I wouldn't expect "Stays" to do much to a xebec, all its sails are effectively stays anyway.)

Literally "random". So if you make a save prior to applying it, you may get different results when you do it several times.
Search for "rand" in PROGRAM\KB_routines.c .

@Bathtub-pirate : Salaries: you previously mentioned dividing the plunder. The crew won't ask for salaries if you're paying by dividing by plunder. If you haven't switched to dividing the plunder then you're going to run into trouble with the crew anyway, regardless of what modifier you've applied to the salary, because once you have over a certain amount of gold they demand a share of it. If you don't then switch to dividing the plunder, they may take matters into their own hands... The other exception is if you're a commissioned officer because then the Navy takes care of salary payments, but you said you're friendly with pirates, so that exception probably doesn't concern you!

On Divide the Plunder indeed you wouldn't pay, but the crew gets grumpy if you don't divide the plunder after about 90 days.
On Salary Mode, the crew gets grumpy if you skip payment AND when you have a huge amount of money (they want some too!).
If you are a Commissioned player type (Royal Navy), then you skip salary altogether. Nice and easy and the crew doesn't care!

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

Thanks for the heads-up with the officer reputation.


Nah, I am aware of the differences between dividing shares and paying by salary. Thing is that the salary never seems to work right for me. The crew asking for it on a set date - no matter what. Just doesn't seem to happen. It might be worth mentioning that I play Iron Man style. For whatever difference this may or may not make.

I just prefer Iron Man style ... save for one thing. It is nearly impossible to run into a storm in Iron Man mode. Storms are so easy to avoid there. When the weather is fine when you start your trip, it will never grow sour on you during the entire trip, it seems. Either that or it is ridiculously unlikely for the weather to tremendously change in any way in open sail/iron man. For I have probably spend days of my lifetime in Iron Man Mode and whenever I started a journey with the weather being fine – no matter how long it took – a storm never happened.


BTW - the crew growing vary of a rich captain ... I think you can bypass that by simply hiding the money. Either by means of putting it in the sea chest on board of the ship or by investing in a loan shark. Both keeps the amount of crew money nice and humble.^^


On the disappearing officers: I managed to stop the effect by having one officer actively with me, when doing the "job interview". The one that used to disappear before. So that could be a workaround. Before I was always walking around alone (for I don't want my officers to die because of some random overpowered thug in the bushes).


No, I have no ships berthed. Neither had I ships berthed at any point in the game. Why?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Weather changes gradually in 3D sailing mode.

There are indeed ways to get around the envious crew. It's quite impossible to keep track of EVERY spot where you might hide money.

 

[Grey Roger]

I just prefer Iron Man style ... save for one thing. It is nearly impossible to run into a storm in Iron Man mode. Storms are so easy to avoid there. When the weather is fine when you start your trip, it will never grow sour on you during the entire trip, it seems. Either that or it is ridiculously unlikely for the weather to tremendously change in any way in open sail/iron man. For I have probably spend days of my lifetime in Iron Man Mode and whenever I started a journey with the weather being fine – no matter how long it took – a storm never happened.

You've been lucky, then. I play Realistic mode so I can use the worldmap to travel between islands. Partly because I have limited real world time in which to play PoTC and I'd rather not spend most of it staring at empty sea. And partly because silly things sometimes happen when the "Land Ho!" message indicates that you're approaching an island. Since you didn't list that as one of the bugs of the game, this is presumably something that has yet to happen to you...

On the disappearing officers: I managed to stop the effect by having one officer actively with me, when doing the "job interview". The one that used to disappear before. So that could be a workaround. Before I was always walking around alone (for I don't want my officers to die because of some random overpowered thug in the bushes).

This just means that officer hasn't disappeared. You may find that some other officer you don't care about as much has disappeared instead. Count how many officers you have in total, hire a new one, count again - if you still have the same total number then someone has absconded.

No, I have no ships berthed. Neither had I ships berthed at any point in the game. Why?

Because one theory which I was going to test was that having a ship berthed might have an effect on this. It still might be a contributing factor and I'm going to test it next time I'm at Jamaica, where I do have a ship berthed. But if you're getting the problem without a ship berthed then something else is causing the problem.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You've been lucky, then. I play Realistic mode so I can use the worldmap to travel between islands. Partly because I have limited real world time in which to play PoTC and I'd rather not spend most of it staring at empty sea. And partly because silly things sometimes happen when the "Land Ho!" message indicates that you're approaching an island. Since you didn't list that as one of the bugs of the game, this is presumably something that has yet to happen to you...

No it doesn't! Doesn't have to happen at all. I'd be very OK with it if no weird stuff happens at all.

 

[Elgin]

I'm new to this forum and right from the start I must say that i'm impressed with the amount of work and effort put into this game. Been playing for a couple of weeks now, and I have to say my gaming experience was great, but for a few recurrent bugs that drive me nuts. Don't get me wrong, a love the options this build has to offer, beta 14 being vastly superior in every aspect, over the vanilla. (over 10 years since first played) As i mentioned, my gameplay was pretty smooth, i'm using the latest build 14 beta 3.4 by the way, up until i ran into some serious issues with the 2 most annoying bugs. So, now let me get into the thick of it:

1st one: the infamous boarding crash
pfffff... the most game breaking bug. went through every single post that mentioned this one, applied every fix suggested and it still persists. had a fresh install, fiddled with the looting options, (at one point using the autolooting on, in combo with option 3 seemed to do the trick) but it reappeared and honestly I don't know what else could I do to fix it. That is why I hope to get an answer that will get rid of this issue, with your help of(f) course.(pun intended) Oddly, i might add, this bug usually occurs, during the cargo area and/or the gun deck phase of the boarding (at a lower rate though) if ship is a lower tier. If somehow i don't get the crash during the cargo area it might do so right before the ship transfer screen, although usually it doesn't get that far.

2nd: the port crash
Actually i managed to workaround this one. i have tested various options and if I select travel directly to port from the action menu, it won't crash. If I select moor, and go to loot my chests on the ship and then travel to port it is most likely to crash.

3rd: I don't know if this is a bug or not but the salary I pay doesn't match the sum that is subtracted from the total money. Simple as that, it might be a problem, but it doesn't bother me all that much.

4th: First time I said to myself, well that's a freebie, but it happened again. Some officers I have, started to upgrade" themselves to quite extraordinary stats. After I had them as quartermaster and carpenter, I think, after a battle I assigned them a ship i just captured to sail to the nearest port to sell it. Gradually it looked as they upgraded to a huge level: one from 4 to twentysomething to 42 to 44 as well as their stats and the other one from 11 to 42 and the salary i'm paying remained unchanged. Quite the help i should say.

Well, these are the problems and the only one that is preventing the to play the game as it should be would to is the first bug, since none of the fixes recommended so far, have the desired effect, to fix the issue. I should add that I'm playing swashbuckler, realistic mode, the Nat Hawk storyline on a machine using a GTX 675mx, 3630QM @2.4HGz, 8GB RAM running Win7 64bit. Attached are the error and compile logs.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

1. That is mostly hardware related. Are you able to use the GTX 675mx or are you using intel graphics on your laptop?

2. That is a weak spot and sometimes does cause a crash.

3. This computer program is notoriously bad at math.

4. Yes sometimes one gets super officers. If one suddenly advances from a low level he then becomes pretty useless as he will no longer advance and get any perks. If a high level officer suddenly advances then you have someone usefull as he has some perks.

 

[Elgin]

First days of gameplay I used the onboard intel GPU alongside the fix provided. Didn't do the trick. Boarding crash almost all the time. Got angry. Fresh install, used only the Nvidia GPU, same crash in same place, the cargo area. I can only speculate... anything could be faulty, including my saves, the various ship types, the looting mechanics, but one thing i'm sure of, at the moment the game is pretty much unplayable, because naval battle and boarding subsequently play such an important part in the overall appeal of the game. Boarding is kind of hard as it is, with them angry pirates rushing towards you, with demigod hitpoints while your own idiotic party members have hit boxes the size of a house, and do a very good job at preventing you from reaching the enemy. Even that is manageable, wasting hours on capturing a ship isn't. Still, I think I pretty much want to continue playing this game and I do wan't to know if there is someone with the heavy ship boarding/capturing combat oriented play style and what setup or configuration works for you.