My Gold aliens were running for the first few days, now, they aren't. You no longer get the "Ferrengi are on the move" statement when you log in. I checked them, they are still showing as activated in the editor, but they aren't "on the move."

In the other game, it's showing they are on the move when you log in but they are just sitting stationary. I've got them to move 1 in 2 chances and over 50 percent chance of exploration.

could there be something wrong in the alien manager?

Please can someone help me out here.

Did someone destroy all the active aliens?

Do you have another person with TEDIT access, maybe they made the aliens inactive?

Also check to see if the nonpserver or npserver is running in your task list. If not, reboot, and clear out memory and see if it runs again.

quote:Originally posted by Orion_Blastar

Did someone destroy all the active aliens?

Nope!

quote:

Do you have another person with TEDIT access, maybe they made the aliens inactive?

Nope, password protected tedit. And, just in case I checked, they are listed as active.

quote:

Also check to see if the nonpserver or npserver is running in your task list. If not, reboot, and clear out memory and see if it runs again.


This would have been my next step, but I'm only a remote game op there and have no server access. I asked the sysop to check it.
I think he was busy because 12 hours later I still didn't have a response, so I went ahead and went into the Tedit and used the global "recycle server."

Of course, the server went down and had to be put back up by the sysop, and that seemed to fix the problem. The aliens are freely running around again and I get my "on the move" messages again.

Shrug. Evidently the nonpserve program wasn't operating for whatever reason.

Thanks dude for the help on this. Believe me I appreciate it immensely.

Well I do what I can, even if I am still a bit of a newbie. [:)]

You are welcome.

quote:Originally posted by Orion_Blastar

Well I do what I can, even if I am still a bit of a newbie. [:)]

You are welcome.


ok maybe you can help with this. I created a Q in the game. I created him first on my test server in the same game and he runs fine. I created him on the real game identical to the one I'm running, but he won't run. We've recycled the server, ever re created him once. He just won't go active no matter what we do.

Is Q an alien race or some external program? Or is Q an alien?

I recall a Q external program that worked with the BBS TW door, Q did something random in the game.

Make sure that the alien race is set to active and you didn't set a setting that says days until alien race is active in the game. Also did you create a homeworld setting correctly?

quote:Originally posted by Orion_Blastar

Is Q an alien race or some external program? Or is Q an alien?

It's an alien. The Q module doesn't work with Gold, so I'm creating a mimmick.

quote:
Make sure that the alien race is set to active


All the settings are correct and identical to the settings on my test server, and he is running on the test server.

quote:
and you didn't set a setting that says days until alien race is active in the game.


I tried zero days til active, he didn't run, I then tried setting it to the number of days the game has been running minus one. He didn't run. I then tried setting it at other various numbers. He didn't run.

quote:
Also did you create a homeworld setting correctly?


First, I had to create him based on another alien race in the game, and they all have homeworlds, but I didn't want him to have one. So after I created him, the first thing I did was set him to "maintain homeworld- NO."

Yet, when you look at his stats in the Librarium it still shows him with a homeworld! (The homeworld of the alien upon which he was based)
I went and checked the editor, it says "N/A" for homeworld and is set to no for maintain homeworld!

So I said, ok for some reason it's still thinking he should hava a homeworld, and I gave him a world, and I recycled the server. He still didn't work.

So... I checked my test server where he's running and sure enough in his stats at the librarium it shows him having the homeworld that belongs to the race that I based him on. (but he's running on that server). So I went to the editor and it says "NA" for homeworld. So evidently, that's just the breaks.

I don't dare try basing the Q alien on the "alien traders" ID Zero aliens (who don't have a home world by default) because every time I've based an alien race on ID Zero aliens, I get non resettable Gold Alien errors upon loading the game!

So, I went back to the actual server where the game is running. I created a new Q alien. I then had the sysop bring the server down, delete the first Q alien, then activate the second Q alien. We gave him a homeworld this time to satisfy the quirk in the game edits that requires him to have a homeworld if he was based on an alien with a home world.

He STILL wouldn't run!

We gave up and said, ok no Q in THIS game.

I am not sure what is going on there. Except when I did have tedit access and used gold aliens, I was not able to edit individual gold aliens. Is this an Internal Alien?

quote:Originally posted by Orion_Blastar

I am not sure what is going on there. Except when I did have tedit access and used gold aliens, I was not able to edit individual gold aliens. Is this an Internal Alien?


You an edit individual Gold aliens when there's only one alien in the entire race active at any given time. Just set the number of aliens to 1.

I guess I should go into greater detail here.

I began experimenting with single alien races about 2 months ago. I noticed that in games I'd visited they have to set the alien races to full strength in 120 days, otherwise the aliens get so powerful no one can even play, the aliens are all over the place maiming and destroying.

Yet, when you do set for 120 days, (especially in high turn games) the aliens are so weak they get wiped out, no matter what spawn settings you use. Most sysops who run high turn games with big edits don't run aliens for that reason.

I have created NUMEROUS alien races that are unique, with ONE alien in the race who regenerates if destroyed. I then can set my spawn rates in such a way to dictate their behavior. It works great! The single alien in the race gets powerful fast, and he is able to defend his planet and his sectors quite effectively, yet, he can only be in one sector at a time, so the mayhem on the players is minimal!

I have been able to mimmick the old Q and Chrystalline Entity modules to a degree of effectiveness. (of course Q doesn't play tricks on you or give you stuff like the add on does, and Chrystalline entity doesn't zap colonists on planets however, a sysop who is active in his game and is inclined can do those things for the Q and send messages using Game Command setting that completely mimmick those add ons)

Right now I'm about to release an "Overlord" game, that has a single Ferrengi Overlord who appears after a certain amount of days in a Scorpion. He can't twarp like the old Overlord, he can't deflect Photons, etc. but in every other way he's just like the original Overlord, right down to his name!

A sysop who is so inclined, and who is running the Overlord, can claim fighters in a sector, sending a message as the Ferrengi informing the user that their fighters have been siezed by the Overlord. (Shrug, if they wanted to go that far to mimmick the overlord).

The point is, single aliens in a race has proved itself to be a great idea. I've tested this over and over again and it is awesome.

This is the first alien I have been unsuccessful in activating in a game and it's only one game. On the test site Q runs like clockwork!

Shrug

If the settings are all the same, it should work. I am not sure what the problem could be. Can anyone else help out here?

The only way I have been able to successfully add a gold alien to a game is during big bang. After that there is no good way to add them or make them appear because that part of the game doesnt work the way its supposed to, or at least the way it appears it is supposed to.

If you tell a gold alien that it is supposed to appear after 15 days and then bang it, it will appear after 15 days but will have no home planet or home sectors even if it is assigned one because those can only be created at the bang. You have to set them to be active on day 1 and set the days to appear to whatever, the problem with that is it creates the home sectors and planet and the aliens dont appear until you told them to so it leaves everything undefended and easily taken over when found. You cannot assign planets to gold aliens like you can with fighters or mines, the only way they will take over a planet is if it is in their home sector with their own planet or in place of their own planet. That makes it impossible to just create a planet for them when they show up because it doesnt work. My suggestion is to set all your races and then bang the game, they should all show up that way. It does sound like you might have a few other issues with your game server tho, like maybe corruption or a possible conflict with something else on that computer.

Got it! Thanks Boss. We'll have Q at rebang then

quote:Originally posted by Boss

If you tell a gold alien that it is supposed to appear after 15 days and then bang it, it will appear after 15 days but will have no home planet or home sectors even if it is assigned one because those can only be created at the bang.

I created a Gold species based loosely on the Yuuzhan Vong from Star Wars. They were not set to come in until day 30, and took 90 days to mature (day 120). After bang the alien manager said "Will reset on server error" or whatever. I scanned through the active planets and there was nothing there that shouldn't be (1&2). I avanced the game to day 35, and ran manual extern. The Alien Manager showed 3 of the guys roaming around. They did have a planet, and within the first 30 min were fortifying the sector.

Something interesting I realized (that was probably obvious to others) was that if you set an alien species to begins spawning on day 30, their spawn stats are going to have T = 30 even though it is their first day. This can be especially important if you don't have anomalous aliens and are using the static spawn stats.

I figure if you are having trouble getting an alient species to spawn you could change their stats manually on a given day. There really aren't that many stats that require the server be brought down to change. It would be possible to set their exploration to 0% drastically reducing the liklyhood of them straying very far, which can then be changed to higher once the game has progressed.