Passenger/cargo contracts cease to exist

[uua90]

I fired up Oolite the other day and noticed that all passenger and cargo contracts are now gone. There's just nothing there.

I started a new game and checked the screen. All contracts present and accounted for.

[Commander McLane]

Can you be a little more specific? Do you mean that you had taken contracts, and suddenly your cargo bay and passenger berths were empty? Or do you mean that the were no contracts available on the F8-F8 screen?

The former would of course be a heavy bug. The latter may just be caused by random. Contracts and passengers are not available in every system, and of course they will be different each time you visit a system.

[uua90]

The latter. I just dropped off a passenger and everything was normal. I went to F8-F8 and saw that the contract lists were present but entirely empty.

I've jumped to several different planets, and the list is empty every time. There was a planet where there was a single cargo contract available, but that's all I've found.

Worst luck in the world maybe?

[Zireael]

Do you have show reputation oxp? If not, install it and see your reputation. If it's high and there are no contracts, it would be weird. If it's low, no surprise.

[uua90]

I think I've found the problem-- removing the "Captain Bert, Engineer" OXP results in the F8-F8 screen being populated once again. I have no idea why or how that particular OXP would cause such a problem.

[blipvert]

Hi folks,

Actually, I have the exact same problem. I'm running 1.75 (for Linux) and noticed that my list of passenger/cargo contracts started disappearing. Not only that, but the list of ships available for purchase now reports "No ships available" -- regardless of what tech level the planet is.

I uninstalled all OXP's (execpt for Griff normal mapped non-shader OXP as I'm currently flying the Python) and verified that the same issue occurs.
I do have a older saved-game (using the Cobra Mk3 default ship) that does not exhibit this problem with all my OXP's loaded, or unloaded.

I did not notice the ships available for purchase disappearing until after I upgraded to 1.75 and completed my cross-galaxy 1 cargo delivery mission. (I had upgraded to 1.75 while in the midst of this delivery mission)

Short of enabling debug mode (I don't have a 2nd PC I can hook up to this PC) are there any suggestions on how I might help isolate the problem?

[Cody]

Hi blipvert and welcome... sorry that you had to wait an hour for your first post to be approved.

I'm just a pilot (grounded atm), so have no input to this thread. If you have any questions, just ask.

[Smivs]

Hi blipvert, and I'll second the welcome. I'm going to useless as well as I don't normally do contracts, but I wanted to mention the 'happy memories' your name brought back. The pilot for Max Headroom, wasn't it?

[blipvert]

Hi Guys, and thanks for the welcome.

Blipvert is from Max Headroom, but it was what commercials devolved into.

I thought some more about how this problem could be identified, and it occurs to me that if I emailed my save-file to another linux user, we could isolate if the problem is repeatable at least.

Any takers?

[Micha]

Hi Blipvert, and welcome to the friendliest board this side of Riedquat!

If you have 2 saves, one of which has the problem and the other doesn't, send them over and I can take a look at what's going on.

Cheers,
- Micha.

<edit>
PS: If you upload your save-files somewhere and post a link, then whoever has time and gets to it first can take a look. Many board members use box.net or similar.
</edit>

[Switeck]

For uploading midsized files, http://www.mediafire.com seems the most friendly to me...doesn't require FLASH (despite what it says) and doesn't delay downloads to force people to look at ads.

If you just want to do pure text, even pastebin.com can work. ...But it has a NASTY habit of screwing up tabs by converting them to spaces.
(Savegames count as "pure text", if you open them in a good text editor.)

[blipvert]

Thanks guys! Great ideas! I thought at first the files were binary, but since they are simple XML files, I uploaded them to google docs and enabled them to be publicly shared without anyone having to log in to google.

Anyone should be able to see the files. Please let me know if it doesn't work and I'll use one of the suggested systems above.

This first file is the one that requires the griff non-normal mapped Oxp to be installed in order to run, since I'm using the Python.
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B_6rmB ... y=COa6vNYF

This file is is the one that I saved prior to upgrading my ship, and doesn't need any special OXP's.
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B_6rmB ... y=CP3T2sUF

I reviewed the save file that causes the missing ships for sale and missing passenger/cargo contracts issue, and I noticed that that there are references to Random Hits OXP. I remember now that I had installed Random Hits 1.4.8 and when oolite started got a error indicating my machine was too slow for this OXP. It was shortly after installing this OXP that this error started becoming noticeable.

I've since downloaded Random Hits 1.4.9 as the author indicates there was a fix around this error, but it may very well be that my machine is too slow (as it's just a netbook). The problem persists with Random Hits 1.4.9 loaded or not -- so this MAY be a problem with the OXP not cleaning itself up nicely when the machine it's running on doesn't have the oompf.

Also, it occurs to me that it shouldn't matter if you are running the Linux version or not -- should manifest itself on all versions. Thanks for all your help in advance!

[Eric Walch]

I reviewed the save file that causes the missing ships for sale and missing passenger/cargo contracts issue, and I noticed that that there are references to Random Hits OXP. I remember now that I had installed Random Hits 1.4.8 and when oolite started got a error indicating my machine was too slow for this OXP. It was shortly after installing this OXP that this error started becoming noticeable.

I just downloaded the saved games. Indeed strange that there are no ships available. Not in the techlevel 11 confederacy you saved the game, nor the adjacent techlevel 12 confederacy. But on the next tech level 14 democracy was one ship for sale. And in two of the three of the systems I got cargo contracts. It is no 1.75 issue as 1.74 offers exactly the same.

At this moment I am not sure if it is coincidence. But I would have expected more ships for sale.

I just bought the one ship that was available, went back to the original system (with no ships for sale) and had now an offer of about 20 ships. Coincidence, or does the used ship change the odds?

(Thank for the console command system.mainStation.dockPlayer() that makes quick test possible )

EDIT: I think it is just coincidence. I made a few jumps:
Celabile: no ships (starting point)
Tianve: two ships
Celabile: no ships
Tianve: many ships (two screens)
Celabile: many ships (two screens)

I repeated it twice, with the same result. No need to change ships.

Random hits has nothing to do with it. That message showing up was a bug and should only be possible with players compiling Oolite themselves in debug mode. Or it would be really very slow computers. (I can't rule that out though)

[Micha]

I've finally also had a quick look now and I also think it's just down to random chance.

Having the Griff shipset installed modifies the chances of ships being offered for sale. It sets all built-in ships to 0 chance, so there's twice as many ships to choose from than default, but half of them won't ever be picked.

(Perhaps this needs to be changed, and all 'player' ships with 'chance 0' should be removed from the ship's registry?)


Loading the savegame which "doesn't work" but without the Griff OXP installed I get several ships offered for sale straightaway.

----

As for the contracts, if you're just jumping around a local area, it takes some time before the contracts get renewed. So if you're unlucky enough not to be offered any you either need to wait up to 2 months (game-time), or go to another part of the galaxy.
Again, i'd say it's just bad luck - I stepped through and there were no contracts offered at the current time (no other effects such as reputation came into it).

[blipvert]

Okay, I confirmed that after jumping to a few other systems further away, I started seeing ships and contracts available.

It was certainly odd to me to encounter a 'drought' of contracts after being used to seeing them ALL the time. I've stopped worrying about it, and now I'll go see if my computer has enough power to take on an assassination.

Thanks for all your help guys!