Bug with destroyed research?

From what it sounds like, it seems as though a successful intel in a research area drops your total accumulated research points to 0. meaning that if you were at level 8, you start as though you were level 0, and while you have all those levels. you have 0 rp, so you start from scratch and have to earn all those RP back. sounds like its working as it was written, not as we would like it to... which would be to drop the research for that level to 0 but still have all the research from lv 1 to 8...

Dragagon

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

-- Robert Heinlein

As a matter of fact, looking through the intel files, that is exactly what it is supposed to be doing. It removes ALL accumulated research from a field. you still have use of the technology, but you have to "re research" the entire field to get back where you were. HEHE sounds like an evil way to do things in a multiplayer game.

Dragagon

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

-- Robert Heinlein

There is a research/tech bug such that if you dump too much research into a single tech, sometimes (but rarely), after you earn a few levels in that tech area. It takes tons of turns to earn the next level. I had 40K research and I dumped it all into Point-Defense, and got 4 or 5 levels in it, but the next level too 42 years to research. This same bug might be affecting you.

No.

The problem is that the destroy research intel project subtracts -10,000,000 points from your project rather than just setting it to 0.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

After I fixed troop movement on my files I thought I took care of the worse .13 problems(go into VehicleSizes.txt and search Troop and change all troop engines per move to 1 instead of 0, if you don't already know).

Painfully mistaken, the first game the AI actually gives me a run for my money I fall behind on Intel and now my game is completely broken with bad techs. I looked at the Intel script but there's just a bunch of calls I don't know and nothing really looks fishy, been a while since I did a programming class. What exactly do I need to change to get it not to drop below 0 after a research sabotage? Should this script be dated 7/13/2006 or is the script source not updating with the patches? If this is the problem how do I get around that? Don't see any way to decompile it.

Gotta say I loved the hell out of SE3 and SE4, maybe I lucked out by missing the release of it, and I know this'll get patched up to par within a month or two, but somebody really dropped the bomb here.

Unfortunatly, looking through the code, there is no system call to find out how much you have and only subtract that ammount. This will have to be submitted to Malfador as a bug in order to fix it. My script is also dated 13 July 2006 so it seems it has not changed in a few months. Probably because the AI wasn't too proficient in Intel when they first started.

Dragagon

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

-- Robert Heinlein

The intel feature for trashing research should only affect the current level being researched. It should not trash all finished accumulated research on a project. Once a research level is finished it's acquired knowledge, not research. I sure hope that MM fixes this serious bug so that this intel feature can't be abused or become overwhelming.
Omnius

I think that if you are going to want it only to remove that level's built up RP, then you are probably looking at a mod. I can't see any reason to remove 10M RP from a tech unless you are going to make them start over from scratch. scratch meaning level 1. It still doesn't do that, which is a bug, but its close to what they wanted.

Dragagon

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

-- Robert Heinlein

Fixing this bug would mean implementing clearing the RP to zero, not substracting absurdal numbers - going into milions - of RP, regardless how many did you really have gathered till now.

The thing is, if you look at the event script there IS a call there to see how much resources the player has, and not send those below 0.

set max_rad_amt := Sys_Get_Empire_Current_Points(plr_id, POINT_TYPE_RADIOACTIVES)

Then it proceeds to check that the amount subtracted isn't over max_rad_amt. I haven't tried but I imagine something similar could work for research. Or just change the value subtracted to a more reasonable value, like the Balance Mod does.

Or, if you don't want to mod and don't care of the balance mod, copy the .csf files from the Balance Mod into your standard SE5 Data directory.

Sadly there is no such call for accumulated RP in an empire. the only thing that deals with the accumulated RP is the one that changes it. and its not a set value, its a subtraction from the current value. Which means either we need to have Aaron add a Sys_Set_Empire_Research_Tech_Area_Accomplished_Amount so we can set it to 0, or, the better fix, Have him make it so you can't go below 0. And then also give a Sys_Get_Empire_Research_Tech_Area_Accomplished_Amount so we can find out how much they have and subtract that.

Dragagon

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

-- Robert Heinlein

Yep, anyone can make the modifications, just go to the Utilities/ScriptParser/SE5MainScripts/Script_Main_Intelligence.txt and look for -10000000 and it should take you right to it. just remove a 0 to make it 1M and then open it using the ScriptParser, compile it. then move the .csf file into the Data directory (be sure to back up the original so you don't overwrite it) and then its fixed.

Dragagon

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

-- Robert Heinlein

Capt Kwok,

Please tell me this is fixed in the balance mod...

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The goggles... they do nothing!

Of course it is - probably in 6x series a couple of months ago before the game was released. Anyway, it subtracts a mere 5000 points - but I will likely change that to a random number between 10-25% of the project cost.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

I think something more significant than 5000 RP loss. I have systems that generate about 20000 RP in the begging of the game. If you truly want to make the sabotage more than a mere pinprick, I would recommend a loss of around 10-20K of research points.