I can't COLONIZE !!!!

[smellymummy]

Hi,

I've ran into this problem a few times now, but in this most recent game it's really at its worst!

I can't colonize a planet in my home system with a system colony ship, nor can I colonize a planet in another system with a regular ship.

Previously all I had to do was make sure a scout ship was present with the colony ship, and it worked, this time around, nothing works!

What happens is the following turn I see in my siterep that 'a colony ship has landed on planet xyz', for both places trying to colonize. However no colony is formed, not even any population dropped to the surface.

The planets are Green and Sweet spot, so it should colonize right away.

Here is a link to the save file, please try it for yourself and see

1 colony ship can be found in the Ramad system the other is in the homeworld system

Interestingly enough, and I've seen the same thing happen in my other attempts, sometimes an enemy fleet (usually just one colony ship or a scout) appears out of nowhere and is followed by a battle at the end of the turn.

Is this some bug with opponent ships being unseen for some reason?

Is it maybe a limitation on the difficulty? I'm playing at impossible level, maybe I can only colonize after turn 15 ?

thanks in advance for any help provided

[justjake73]

hmm... I assume you formed the task force, then did you click "Forces", select your Colony TF, then select the planet you want to colonize, then click "Send A Colony?"

I have never played any game ever on Impossible. It would just get me aggravated.

[smellymummy]

yes justjake, I manually moved the colony ship to the system, selected the planet, clicked on forces, then clicked on create colony, or whatever it's labelled as - and the same for the system ship. In short, the manual way.

Of course afterwards I tried the automatic way: going to the system then selecting the planet, forces, then clicking on 'send colony'.

And I also tried it the third way, going into the planet list, finidng the planets I wanted to colonize, click on orders, then click on send colony.

Sure, in the automatic way it takes an extra turn before the AI drops the colony ships, but either way, it does the same thing: A message in siterep that a colony ship landed on planet xyz... but no colony formed.

you can check it out in the save file

btw, impossible isnt all that much harder. apparently the only difference is that the AI gets bonuses to its productivity, research, food, mining, etc.

[vmxa1]

Well I downloaded the game and colonized the II planet with no problem. I send the scout out to some other place and selected force and send colony.
I noted that a Green circle was displayed over the task force with a line through it. I guessed that was saving it did not like something and presumed it was the fact the the colony ship had a scout in the task force. I never send colony ships within any ohter task force. I do not know if that is allowed or not.
BTW I did not see any sweet spot.

[smellymummy]

ahh but there is a sweet spot! in the homeworld, it has an orange atmosphere, perhaps why you missed it. It's marope IV to be exact. Some races consider sweet spots different than others..

And that green circle you saw, thats whats shown when you colonize manually. You never tried to do it on your own yet? Simply move the colo task force somewhere, and select your planet, select the colo task force and place the colony... I never really tried seeing how good the AI is at colonizing, I prefer direct control over that matter.

and the task force was a single colony ship btw. It just happened to have a scout with it. And even if you got a task forced mixed with other ships, it works for colonizing. The other ships that don't colonize simply go back to the reserve according to the manual.

Anyway the problem is solved! it was a mod I had inserted into spreadsheets.mob. A modified militaryai.txt to be exact. I got it from:

http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=3575626

sorry for posting this here, I really thought it was a problem... but the thing is though, I was able to colonize previously, even with this mod installed. And apparently i'm not the only one experiencing this kind of weird behavior.

Too bad though, the modified militaryai.txt are really promising in making the AI much more aggressive.

[vmxa1]

Yes I do it manually for the first 100 turns and then let it fly (so far).
No sweet spot as the systyem was named Ra***** not Marope. I did not say you could not have other ships in the task force or in orbit, only that I send mine off on their own.
Glad you are back in business.