Weird Bug

[Petek]

This is one of the strangest SMAX bugs I've ever seen: Playing as the Drones, single-player, on a custom 180x180 map. The map has "poles" (single lines of land tiles at the top and bottom of the map). Just for the heck of it, I have an infantry unit exploring along the top of the map.

Sometime around MY 2290 I notice that Yang is shelling one of his own bases! I look at the base in question and find that it's occupied by one of my units. It takes me a couple of turns to figure out that the unit in Yang's base is a copy of the infantry unit that's exploring the top of the map. If I right-click on the unit in Yang's base and select "Activate", the focus shifts to the unit at the top of the map. When the unit in Yang's base takes battle damage, so does the unit at the top of the map. Yang built a unit in the base and a copy of the Hive unit appeared at the top of the map, in the same square as my unit (it disappeared the next turn). When I upgraded the unit at the top of the map, the unit in the base also was upgraded. I can't move the unit in Yang's base, which continues to be under his control.

Game is still in progress. Will be interesting to see what happens.

Strange!

[BlackCat]

SMAX has a problem with the pole areas (the single line you mention). If a base has tiles in those areas and you set a former to autoimprove, it does not do anything in those areas - you have to do it manually.

It's a typical programming problem - you use 20 % on the main body and 80 % on the limits and still have problems - I know, i have been programming for 20 years and still get in trouble

[Xian]

Thast same type of bug shows up in doom and sonic the hedgehog, interesting

[Lord Nword]

IIRC, my experiences also show that there are never pods in that row either... could be wrong though.

[Petek]

Yes, I've also seen other problems associated with the poles. (If I recall, solar reflectors don't increase the energy crawled at the poles.)

In the above-mentioned game, I ran into problems on the next turn. SMAX froze solid. Had to kill it in Task Manager. After verifying that the game froze at the same point after several reloads, I disbanded the unit up at the pole. The duplicate unit in Yang's base disappeared. However, it was replaced by a Morganite Scout Patrol!

No more freezes and the game ended several turns later in a diplomatic victory. Never checked back on Morgan's Scout Patrol, though. I'm keeping a save of the game in my "Keepers" folder.

[Illuminatus]

I've encountered similar bugs before, but only playing with SMAC. Once, there was area on map where every unit that would pass through it would instantly be transported to Hive (yes, a coincidence). Moving them out of Hive base they would end up normally on that continent. Unity foils and rovers transported there, and later when I was in war with them I tried to capture it. Units still teleported there.
One other time I noticed that Morgan units kept appearing in Miriam's bases through F4 button - which is very unusual since they were in state of vendetta and Morgan did not have any coast bases (stupid AI).
We must admit that SMAX at least has interesting bugs.

[Blake]

I think this is a kinda common rare bug, as in most players see it once or thrice in their SMAC career.

When it hit me one time I was mopping up some AI, and suddenly my gravships were defending the AI's bases, I didn't really have a lot of choice than to attack and destroy them and each time one of my gravships (the linked one) would get destroyed, kinda like voodoo doll units , but I had heaps of gravships and only half a dozen got voodoo linked into AI base defense.

[Commy]

Civ 3 has the right idea with ice shelfs at the poles, have fun settling that...