Bug Report 7/3/12 - Carrier becomes immobile in time warp

[DirtyDog]

severity: medium
reproducibility: 5 of 5
workaround: yes

If the player gets the carrier very far up an inlet and then tries to enter timewarp, the carrier will get stuck and you can apparently be in time warp for a very, very long time. I haven't tested how long, but after a number of minutes my carrier was still in the exact spot I left it in at the starting island with time warp engaged. I was able to reproduce this several other times, and it isn't necessary to "beach" the ship on shore; simply putting the ship into a position where it would have to "back and fill" or "k turn" to get out would cause this bug. (the carrier would have to back up turning, move forward turning, back up turning, move forward turning etc. to avoid hitting the land)

workaround: move carrier to more open waters before engaging time warp

suggested resolution: fake pathfinding to simply move time warping ships clear of land. barring that, actually get it to pathfind correctly in the small constraints of the inlets. if that's too expensive or time intensive, refuse to go into time warp when "too close to land"

- dirtydog

[ScareYa]

I am quoting from the email which contained the key for the CCGM Beta:

If you have any suggestions for improvements, please let us know via the special Feedback Tracker.

Your suggestions and bug reports might be more useful there, dirtydog. And it might also be worth to mention that basically all of your points were being reported at the feedback tracker before.

But don't be irritated by this since no one from BI seems to listen to your suggestions, bug reports and first impression anyway...
Marek "Maruk" Spanel (CEO of BI) excused the obvious lack of interest with the team being busy finishing the XBox version (see this post). Nevertheless it feels a lot like BI pulled our leg with this "Beta Test". They wanted our money, but it surely seems they don't want our opinions. Even with a team busy as hell I think any developer would be well advised to give his best attention to a bunch of dedicated volunteers investing time and money in testing their products.

But maybe I am just another babbling fool...

[DirtyDog]

Hey, thanks for the reply ScareYa . I hadn't noticed that link, I do appreciate you pointing it out.

I'm not frustrated by the lack of replies...far from expecting responses or changes in the game, Im just happy if one of my posts is read by even a junior designer who thinks about what I've written. I think this this game has amazing potential that is unrealized and would like it to be better, as it seems like the kind of game I could happily lose hours to. I have a lot of respect for the products that BIS puts out and am contributing my time for free...if they don't want to take advantage of that, well it's everyone's loss I guess!

Having been on both sides of a beta, I know that it's often not possible to respond to even those comments you agree with, so I'd hardly expect designers in here going "oh good idea we'll DO that!", hehe.

Thanks again for your time and the info ScareYa!

[Harbinger]

Yeah - last resolved bug on the tracking system was back in May.

No updates since. That gives the impression the Devs not interested, and updating the Tracker a non-priority.

I am not saying that no work has been done, I am simply saying there is the impression that nothing has been done.
Glad you are willing to admit that, and I hope your next beta has more involvement.

[Dram]

Hello guys. So sorry for the lack of updates, we've been extremely busy with fixing bugs and finalizing the game.

To address the issue, I remember it being addressed and fixed. In addition, you may set a waypoint anywhere in the map (without timewarp), and timewarp from island to island should also not cause any stuck problems of the carrier. Just to clarify, there was a bug where sailing manually to another island (ie without timewarp) did not load the island. This issue has been resolved.

There is a new beta release coming very soon, so please be patient and accept my apology. We have had no intention of ignoring players, quite the contrary. We implemented as many suggestions as possible, however we did not provide feedback, which is our fault and we apologize for that.

Take care,
Martin Melicharek