Free alloys from upgrading fleets

[Vastet]

1. What platform are you using? PS4
2. What version of the game are you using? V2.01 according to PS4 system information, the most recent patch as of today's date is installed.
3. What DLC do you have installed? Everything currently available on console is installed and running.
4. When did this start happening? As soon as V2.00 was released I believe, but am only certain of V2.01 as I didn't notice it immediately.
5. Can you replicate it, if so, please explain how: Very easily. Just upgrade some ships. The more ships are upgraded, the more alloys you get out of it.
6. Does this happen on all saves or just specific ones? Any and all save files and any and all game modes currently available, including multiplayer.
7. What steps have you taken to try and solve this yourself (reinstall, Google error code etc)? There are no steps that can be taken to resolve this on console except not upgrading ships.

It doesn't matter if the upgrade is beneficial or detrimental to fleet strength. Any upgrade of any ship produces alloys.

 

[Askatar]

For those who shouted that "it's not a bug!" - please read it, as it's a HUGE BUG..
I would like to support reporter - this bug is still there and it breaks game economy completely.
I've reproduced this bug today with new game. and I've attached screenshots to explain it step by step in addition to provided video by author.

1. My initial space ship design, I have 3 of them:



2. I've change all 3 Mass Drives to Lasers, and I've saved design (both Mass Drive and Laser costs 10 alloys, so there is no difference in final ship design price):



3. On 2200.03.29 game time I've initiated Upgrade Fleet procedure, and paid for it 9 alloys (3 alloys per ship):


4. On 2200.04.07 game time, 1 day before 1st ship is upgraded I have 304 alloys in my empire:


5. Next game day, 2200.04.08, just when 1st ship upgrade is finished I have 331 alloys, it's +27 alloys from day before:


6. Same happened with 2nd ship - day before it's upgraded I have 331 alloys, and on day when it's upgraded - 358 alloys, again I've received +27:


So what I can assume:
1. 3 alloys for ship upgrade is equal to 10% from total cost of changed components (I've changed 3 Mass Drives to 3 Lasers, so its 30 alloys value of changed components, 10% from it is 3 alloys);
2. When each ship upgrade is completed I receive 27 alloys - it looks like 90% cost of changed components.
3. What I've found on stellaris paradoxwikis for patch 2.2.6 "Ship upgrades are cheaper due to refund amount from old components being increased to 90% (was 50%)" (it's related to PC version, but it gives some clue).
So it looks like decrease in 90% for upgrade cost due to component refund is OK, but in this case we should get actual refund after ship is upgraded - it's already included in upgrade cost.

It looks like wrong refund calculation formula in the game code/script.

Pradox DEVs - please fix this issue ASAP.
This exploit can give you on start huge advantage: 27-3=24 alloys per shipyard each 9 days. So with 5 system, 2 shipyards in each, it's 240 alloys in 9 days, or in average 800 alloys per month.

I pretty sure that many people use this exploit in multiplayer matches and crush their opponents who is not aware about it in no time.

It also breaks single player games, as now I need to avoid ship upgrade option at all to prevent myself from getting advantages.

 

[Askatar]

Further investigation.

It's so stupid!
I have a corvet with all modules installed (all core components, 3 mass drives, 3 nanocomposite armors, 1 reactor booster).
I modify the ship and removed all mass drives (total cost of 30 alloys), 3 nanocomposite armors (3 alloys), 1 reactor booster (5 alloys), Hyper Drive I (5 alloys) - so I've removed from my ship components with total cost of 70 alloys.
Upgrade of such ship costs me -62 alloys - negative value, so it's added to my empire alloy storage when I initiate an upgrade.
And when upgrade is finished - I receive 63 alloys more.

So in total when I downgrade my ship with initial cost of 115 to the ship with final cost of 45 - I received in total 62+63 = 125 alloys. And I still have a ship that costs 45 alloys.

IT'S SO BROKEN!

PLEASE STOP IGNORING THIS BUG!

 

[Darkwing Jr]

Yeah I'm close to demanding a refund they ruind a working game and gave us a broken version and refusing to fix it

 

[Askatar]

If it will not be fixed with tomorrow's patch/DLCs - I propose to everyone who is tired of this issue to record a video with using this bug.
Either single player where you can smash AIs with monstrous fleet when you even shouldn't have 20% of it, or by playing online with real people, so others will start to complain as well.
Maybe that would help to knock to Paradox DEV and QA teams.
I even cant imagine how their QA engineers skipped this issue before release. It's not an issue with certain and hardly reproducible conditions - it's regular game play, and we use upgrade to adopt to different enemies really often.

 

[Vastet]

I've recently played a game on grand admiral at 5x crisis with no scaling and high aggression with advanced ai's. One where I abused the glitch throughout the game, using it as my primary resource. I walked all over everything. No contest. Biggest issue was that I built more ships than I needed to in order to kill everyone, and my income was hurting pretty bad from it. But I was getting infinite alloys so no big deal. I recorded the game, though I'm not sure if I'll upload it to youtube.

 

[Fubar iow]

Is this being caused by a particular civic pick or some other variable as I've had nothing like this? In 3 or 4 games since the thread posting. Xbox 1 S.

 

[Askatar]

It's not related to civics. Reproducible on PS4 with any game. - 90% ship upgrade cost modifier for removed component is applied twice - first time it deducts upgrade cost, and second time when upgrade is finished it gives you free alloys.
For example if you remove component thar costs 20 alloys - upgrade cost will be decreased for 18 alloys, and after upgrade you get 18 alloys more.
It looks lice a conflict between different upgrade mechanics from different versions, or simple developer's mistake. Code copy-paste, but paste twice

 

[Fubar iow]

It's not related to civics. Reproducible on PS4 with any game. - 90% ship upgrade cost modifier for removed component is applied twice - first time it deducts upgrade cost, and second time when upgrade is finished it gives you free alloys.
For example if you remove component thar costs 20 alloys - upgrade cost will be decreased for 18 alloys, and after upgrade you get 18 alloys more.
It looks lice a conflict between different upgrade mechanics from different versions, or simple developer's mistake. Code copy-paste, but paste twice

Sorry, I meant to ask. How is this particular bug/code error being born out, since I've not had it and I guess many others don't either as it would be pretty bad. This feels like the sort of thing you get on PC, rather than on console where we are all on fairly limited potential versions of the game, it's like one of the few good things about being on a console.

 

[Vastet]

It's happening to everyone on console, just a lot of people either don't pay enough attention or have some sort of blind spot that makes them unable to see 2+2 does not equal 8.

Edit:
All I know is that it doesn't matter what civics you have or what government you have or what species you are or what traits you have. None of that is relevant, at least as far as I am aware. I have played as materialist, hive mind, ai intelligence, and militarist and it happens exactly the same every time. The game starts exactly the same way. I change my corvettes loadout, upgrade them, get a free ship. Repeat twice. Now I get 4 free ships. Repeat until bored of getting free alloys.

 

[Shadowwraith666]

Yeah I'm close to demanding a refund they ruind a working game and gave us a broken version and refusing to fix it

it's a minor glitch at best best to either ignore it or take advantage of it, oh and btw on console there are no refunds on digital games once you have downloaded the game.

 

[Askatar]

it's a minor glitch at best best to either ignore it or take advantage of it

How you can ignore it? Ships upgrade is part of game mechanic. If I want to re-spec ships to fight different enemies (e.g. change all Mass Drives to Lasers, because new enemy use only Armor, and change all Armor to Shields, because enemy uses only Lasers) I will end up with bonus alloys at the end of upgrade (and it will be around 45 alloys per upgraded corvet in early game). So i need to think ho to throw away this additional alloys to balance my game - e.g. build and destroy 3-4 science ships.
And I can't ignore upgrade functionality, as it takes much less time and resources than building a new ship, and that's the idea if this functionality. Even in single player it ruins game balance.
In multiplayer it gives you huge overpower against those players who didn't use this bug. And you never knows who is going to use it.
And again - you can't simply ignore it, as it's part of game process.

Lets assume something similar, e.g some racing game: lets imagine such glitch - if you steer left and right couple of times in a row with short delay between steering you get a glitch and you receive +5% car speed for each left-right steering cycle, and it stacks/accumulates unlimited number of times. So you can try to avoid in in single player game, while still it will happen naturally that you will get benefits from it (it's a racing game - you do left-right steering all the tile). In multiplayer - many players will use it to get advantage. So it will ruin the whole competitiveness.

So please, please and please again - stop calling it a minor glitch, as it's very critical, if not a blocker for such a game.

 

[Fubar iow]

It's happening to everyone on console, just a lot of people either don't pay enough attention or have some sort of blind spot that makes them unable to see 2+2 does not equal 8.

Edit:
All I know is that it doesn't matter what civics you have or what government you have or what species you are or what traits you have. None of that is relevant, at least as far as I am aware. I have played as materialist, hive mind, ai intelligence, and militarist and it happens exactly the same every time. The game starts exactly the same way. I change my corvettes loadout, upgrade them, get a free ship. Repeat twice. Now I get 4 free ships. Repeat until bored of getting free alloys.

I'm certain I've not had it, as has been said above its a big problem. With all the upgrading I've done (mostly because I misfitted ships), I'd of seen escalating alloys for sure. I hate to be that 'turn off turn on I.T guy' but have you, hard reset/uninstall-reinstall? You might get lucky.

 

[Lotussteve]

Hello!

Will try to reproduce, playing my second game on PS4 with the new 2.0.2 Upgrade, first was a militaristic spiritualist build, this now is rogue servitutor, so far didn´t notice this bug (always in dire need of alloys) but also not upgrading that much (and monitoring it, but fairly sure that I would´ve noticed a 2+2 == 8 bug....).

Hope I´ve time to play next week !


Ciao,

Steve

 

[Shadowwraith666]

it's not a bug

here's a snippet from the wiki

Ship upgrade cost reduced by increasing the refund amount from older components, and upgrade time reduced

Patch 2.2.X - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

 

[Gurunicknak]

it's not a bug

here's a snippet from the wiki

Patch 2.2.X - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

I wouldn’t bother mate just leave it

 

[728090]

I'm afraid Shadowwraith666 that you are wrong, if you try changing ship loadout and upragrading fleet several times, you will have more alloys than you would have without upgrading and the more you upgrade, the more alloys you will have.

So conclusion is, that it is a bug.

 

[Askatar]

it's not a bug
here's a snippet from the wiki

Patch 2.2.X - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

Maybe it's better to read posts and check video and screenshots before giving Captain style response?
Wiki statement is correct, but refund amount is counted twice per ship. So if your old component refund should be 60 alloys, at the end of upgrade it becomes 120 - one time it's counted for upgrade cost, second time - when ship upgrade is finished.
Why you people are so lazy to read bug explanation?
It looks like not only players but also Paradox is OK with this bug. Like "we don't care it ruins game economy, and we don't care about multiplayer game... we created this Bug forum just for fun. Just to make those console gamers nervous".

As QA engineer myself I just become crazy about this situation.

Paradox - fix this damn BUG!

 

[Shadowwraith666]

I'm afraid Shadowwraith666 that you are wrong, if you try changing ship loadout and upragrading fleet several times, you will have more alloys than you would have without upgrading and the more you upgrade, the more alloys you will have.

So conclusion is, that it is a bug.

no it's working as intended, you are refunded 90% of the cost of old components which also includes strategic resources used by higher tier components , plus while your upgrading/changing loudouts etc it does not pause your resource gen from your planetary and spacial sources it carries on regardless hence your resource reserves being higher after upgrades are finished.

from the official patch notes:

patch 2.2.2 - Ship upgrade cost reduced by increasing the refund amount from older components, and upgrade time reduced
patch 2.2.6 - Ship upgrades are cheaper due to refund amount from old components being increased to 90% (was 50%)

therefore not a bug but working as intended by the developers. /thread

 

[Askatar]

therefore not a bug but working as intended by the developers. /thread

Why are you so blind? 90% refund is performed on initial upgrade - its deducted from upgrade cost, and it's absolutely correct. But just at the same day when ship upgrade is finished - you get another 90% of removed components. So this "Ship upgrades are cheaper due to refund amount " is counted twice, and it's a bug!

Example - you remove 3 lasers from the ship, each costs 10 alloys, so you will pay for upgrade -27 alloys, actually you get 27 alloys for such upgrade, and this part is correct. But at the day you ship upgrade is finished you get another 27 alloys, so you get doubled refund. So you remove components that costs 30 alloys, and you get 54 alloys after upgrade, you put them back, pay 30 alloys, you remove them - you get 54 again! So in total it will be +54-30+54-30+54-30... Do you think it's ok? Spamming alloys by doing such upgrades? Its like "I want to buy you cell phone for 100 bucks. Ok. Now you buy it out from me for 180 bucks - because it's 90% refund, but twice, now I buy it again for 100, and you will buy it out for 180..." and so on.

Stop posting nonsense by pointing to patch notes - patch notes are ok, but current code is not!

 

[Shadowwraith666]

Stop posting nonsense by pointing to patch notes - patch notes are ok, but current code is not!

with the exception of pc-only features and differences in ui, the 2.2.7 and console 2.2.7 are identical in-terms of mechanics, there are mentions of the refund mechanic on steam and reddit from the pc version 2.2.6

If it was a bug it was never fixed or even declared as a bug in future updates and by future updates i mean all the way up to 2.7.2 (the current pc version), in fact that particular upgrade mechanic that was introduced in 2.2.2 and tweaked in 2.2.6 never gets touched or changed after that point.