Apologies for the picture quality.
Situation:
I had just taken Pherkad and refreshed in order to take the measure of the opposition. As you’ll note in the pictures below, there are 85 ships in AlGiedi and 80 on the Yildun I with 2h 58m 8s to Production. I took a picture and sent it to my ally.
When I refreshed the browser an hour later (1h 27m 37s to Production) to check back in, I noticed something dramatically different.
The Yildun I arrived at AlGiedi, but all of its ships, along with 20 that were on Algiedi, had been teleported to Minkar, up from the 26 that it had an hour previous.
Minkar now has 132 ships.
There’s no lapse in time that would account for this. All of the production rates are within expected increase. Jabbah (19 ships), Alnilam (22 ships), Yildun (23 ships), Markab (2 ships). These ships just magically leaped a 12-14hr journey.
Now, the player quit earlier today and the AI had taken over perhaps 5 hours previous. Is the AI known to be able to shuffle ships like this?
There are many ways to take a screen shot. I suggest two methods here from MS Windows.
Keyboards can be different, but if you can find a key that says “Prnt Scrn”, then try to hit it once, sometimes it needs a combination like simultaneously hitting “Fn”+“Prnt Scrn”, which captures the whole screen, or “Alt”+“Prnt Scrn” could capture only the active window. This copies a screenshot into the clipboard, which then can be pasted into MS Paint for editing and saving to hard drive.
Sometimes the “Print Screen” button can not be found, then a software keyboard can be found from accessibility services. On MS Windows 10, that is from the “Ease of Access Center”.
From MS Paint, my favorite personal preferences are
set color 1 = red
set color 2 = light turquoise
then edit away, cropping, circling items, or adding text, etc. . .
My guess is your observation is most possibly likely some kind of network glitch.
There is a very small and doubtful possibility that there is a bug in the code. Maybe @JayKyburz could know whether anything changed in the code ?
Make sure your browser is the latest most up-to-date version.
Most browsers can be refreshed by clicking in the address bar with the desired path, then hit ENTER key.
Most browser tabs can be individually refreshed by hitting key F5.
You most likely already know those two, but try this one.
NP2 game data can be refreshed updated from the server by left clicking on the Production timer, which is between the menu button icon & the Diplomacy mail icon. Just be sure you have already clicked whatever buttons to save any data entry or commands OK acceptance buttons & wait two to four seconds for the network to update, before you refresh from the server.
Not for nothing, I understand your points well. Since my ally is a real life friend, it’s easier to simply take pictures with a cell phone and send it via Whatsapp, our usual method of communication. Given that it’s all the evidence I have, please bear with me.
As I said in the initial post, there was less than an hour in between me checking, as you’ll note by the production clock. Though the carrier those ships were riding on did not change positions, the ship count very much did.
In my second post, you’ll see that it was the Yildun I that was the ship
Above is a snapshot of the current movement.of the ship. In the first post, you’ll see that it was carrying 85 ships to AlGiedi, and AlGiedi had 80 ships present at the star already. An hour later, that ship was carrying 1 ship and Minkar (the destination) had the full value of what it was carrying. It’s almost as if the execution of the “Pick up” and “Drop Off” happened instantaneously, but the ship is still in transit.
Thanks for the additional screenshots. They were helpful.
I agree with your analysis, calculations, estimations, distances, travel timings, even including difficult readings thru past the overlapping numbers from the screenshots. It would seem like you have found a genuine bug, probably somewhere in the AI code.
It would seem that 3 ticks before production, star Minkar had 26 ships, star AlGiedi has 85 ships, and carrier “Yildun I” with 80 ships would arrive AlGiedi on next tick, but mysteriously 105 ships were teleported 3.86 LY from AlGiedi to Minkar when carrier arrived AlGiedi.
I think this is the first time that this sort of bug has been seen and reported.
I hope @JayKyburz can track it down and fix it.
Several EDITs
Intel charts show that sometime after tick 210, Pink Skyros acquired Scanning 4, which allow him to scan 6 LY.
In the first screenshot was tick 213, Pink Skyros was able to scan Yellow AI star Chertan, which is 5.67 LY. So Skyros acquired Scan 4 sometime on or before tick 213.
In the third screenshot from Skyros, it was tick 214, Pink Skyros had Scanning 4 which allows him to Scan 6 LY from star Pherkad. This allows him to scan 3.03 LY beyond star AlGiedi. His screenshots shows nothing in that region of space.
Skyros was also able to scan 2.72 LY beyond Yellow star Minkar.
The AI most likely did not have WG, and no WG are seen in his screenshots.
Is it possible there is no bug in the code, but that the servers might have had a networking glitch ?
What are the star ID # of AlGiedi & Minkar ?
How does 26 ships magically jump from AlGIedi to Minkar ? (there should be code for this?)
It is curious why does Yellow AI have so few carriers in this region of space ?
I think I can answer my own question here.
Most likely because the AI had not had a chance to buy carriers.
Could an AI have ghost carriers from a bug ?
Could Red ships movement near stars Alhajoth or Errai have influenced this ?
On the PC, Google Chrome Version 77.0.3865.120 (Official Build), no extensions active.
I tend to use Chrome on my cell phone as well. I switch back and forth when playing the game between mobile and PC.
I can only assume the troop count was correct. I refreshed after taking Pherkad, just as you said, given that I had just acquired Scanning 4. I wanted to see and position my attack accordingly.
Regardless, I’m not sure it could be a browser issue. Having just taken Pherkad, the game would have to be up to date for it to show correctly as a star possessed by me, right? And its possession was the only reason I was able to see AlGiedi / the Yildun I.
As to the carriers, Yellow had crashed three (sizable) attacks earlier that day.
While it might have been possible that there was a ship in that part of space coming from Koi, given the AI’s ability to ignore range, I would have seen it on scanning given its trajectory to Minkar. Still, the question remains as to how those 105 ships disappeared off of AlGiedi.
