All my cities disappear (bug?)

[blackbrc]

Ok, I've run searches on the forums and have come up empty.

I'm playing an accellerated start game. Small planet. I've got 5 bases. No matter what I do, on a certain mission year, all my bases disappear, and I'm left with several colony pods and some units.

This strange phenomenom seems to coincide with Domai's destruction at the hands of the University. It almost looks like I was the faction that was wiped out, and I'm restarting on the map.

Is this a known bug? Anyone else encountered it? I've tried to change the things I do before it happens, but that doesn't seem to make a difference.

Robert

[Lefty Scaevola]

Yep it occurs sometimes when an AI tries an rescue factions leader probe and some bug cause your faction to be designated the 'rescued' one and your vanish and reapear with the conlny pods and units. There may be another mechanism to this as well. I recall 2 to 4 other threads on the same thing.

[Lefty Scaevola]

One of the thread in the archives suggests that the error usually happens to the faction which was holding the captured leader which is attempted to be freed. Did you wipe out a faction and thus capture a leader? If so, try this go back a couple of turns from the vanishing and prepare a defense against probes in your HQ base: put a couple of probe teams in garrison there.

[RedFred]

ALL YOUR BASES ARE BELONG TO US!

There is also a much less severe problem when you accidently hit the wrong hot key that makes all the bases disappear, but it is not terminal. Hit almost any other key and 'POOF' your bases magically return.

[Chaos Theory]

That would be the "T" key, for terrain survey. Repeatedly hitting it will strip away portions of the map, leaving just the base terrain (raininess, rockiness, contour, etc) after three presses. The fourth brings everything back, and scrolling while this is in effect will cause odd effects, as the newly drawn portions of the screen will be normal but the old parts will have things removed.

[blackbrc]

Thanks for the quick responses. It's definately not the "T" key. I'm familiar with that.

It sounds like Lefty's suggestion, but I'm not the faction that captured the enemy leader, and I wasn't probed the turn before.

I turned off the "restart eliminated factions" setting. Could be that the computer is trying to restart the Drones (who were wiped out) and can't so it restarts me.

Anyway, thanks again for the replies. I'll chalk it up to a bug and restart the game.

Robert

[Lefty Scaevola]

Try clearing you temporary files and then load a save. Some of the faction errors (and other smac-x bugs) can come from info stuck in the temp files from an earlier game with a different mix or order of factions.

[blackbrc]

Do you know where the temporary files are located? I see quite a few files with the .tmp extension in the root Alpha Centauri directory, but surely those can't be temporary files? Programmers wouldn't be so sloppy as to mix temp files and game files together, would they? ;-)

Robert

[Lefty Scaevola]

I don't know about thoses, I thinking of thoses in windows/temp.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by RedFred
ALL YOUR BASES ARE BELONG TO US!

*ARGH!*

I wanted to be the first to say that!

*shakes finger angrily at RedFred*