1.8.0 (3943) My army defeated a prethoryn army after the world was infested

[Serious Burns Unit]

Description:
The Prethoryn invaded a world belonging to a member of the federation I was in and I landed an army to take it back. I did not bomb the fortification before invading. This resulted in an extended battle.

I landed a large army and watched them fight till I could see they were winning. I left them alone until the Planet Secured notification came in. The population appears to have been exterminated during the battle as the world was infested by the Prethoryn while the armies were fighting.

The excess armies embarked into space. A full garrison remains trapped on the surface.

As I now control that world it cannot be bombarded from orbit.

This planet interface will not let me embark the armies because that tab is disabled. Only the Infested World tab is displayed.


This game was started at the current patch level 1.8.0

DLC :
Content -
Anniversary portraits
Creatures of the void portrait pack
Horizon Signal
Leviathans Story Pack
Utopia
Species pack -
Plantoid

No Mods have been installed.

I have not attempted to reproduce this problem. I am playing in Ironman mode and cannot go back to an earlier save.

 

[hart30]

Had that issue too in earlier versions. After experiencing the bug one time i never did it again (because i knew what would happen), but didnt think on a bug Report. I totally forgot that.

 

[uBartu]

I'm having this exact issue. Also started in 1.8.0, now in Capek v.18.2 (135b).
Came here to post this bug.

Would be great if extermination and/or forced resettlement of species was delayed during invasion. Would make sense as well.

 

[WandererRTF]

Yeah. Same happened to me also in 1.8.2 (153b). This also resulted in the scourge 'quest' being impossible to complete or to end.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Have a Prethoryn Swarm crisis.
2. Land troops just a bit prior to the purge deadline. Enough troops to capture the world even without reducing fortifications - 30+ 'space marines' ought to do the trick.
3. See world turn into infested world
4. See your troops going missing. In a sense that they are still in the world but you can not access them nor can you get them out of the infested world either.
5. Wait. A while. A long while (especially if ground combat odds were fairly even).
6. See information how you occupied an enemy world. Now you have an infested world that you can not access or manipulate in any manner and seemingly all other parties interested in killing the scourge also leave it alone. Causing scourge quest to be impossible to complete.

I tried to 'fork' around with the console by first turning the world in continental one. Then swapping the ownership to me - which removed the swarm and allowed me to get troops off the ground but didn't fix the quest line bug. Then i killed (kill_pop) all the populations on the new world and allowed the colony to 'die'. But that didn't help either. Scourge still continued. Though i can not find any scourge bases or ships (and i have full sentry thing so they can't hide). In fact scourge retook the now empty planet as new fleets spawned into that very system. Clearing the newly infested world and all visible prethoryns (stations, ships, etc.) didn't allow questline to be completed either.

 

[GauHelldragon]

This bug is still around, just had it happen to me as well, in Boulle v1.9.1 (83d2). Can't do anything about it because it's an ironman save.

 

[uBartu]

Exactly my problem. Did manage to solve that though. It's been a while, but basically did the steps below:

Changed the save file location from cloud to local, if I remember correctly I did that in in-game settings. Waited a month => quit the game => edited the save file so that I did not occupy the planet anymore => restarted the game => loaded the local safe file (cloud version was also an option, but logically still contained the problem), then changed the save file location back to ironman and presto I was back up and running and got my army back as well.

 

[Serious Burns Unit]

I would like to add an update to my original post that might help others who have this issue. I continued playing the broken game and kept a small fleet orbiting the planet. After a while I observed that infesters would spawn in the system and I amused myself killing them off. Eventually a couple of Prethoryn fleets spawned in the system as well. I pulled my battleships back to another system and left the Prethoryn fleets alone in the infested system. Those fleets bombed the infested world until it died. Then I killed the last two Prethoryn fleets and infesters to complete the quest. This successfully concluded the crisis, but all my armies on the planet died. I was a bit disappointed the armies died but glad I could finish out the game. Hope that helps.

 

[uBartu]

Had that same thing almost happen twice. Both times the Prethoryn fleet almost succeeded in bombarding the planet, with just had a few hundred planetary fortification points to go, when an awakened empire fleet showed up and the Prethoryn fleet quit bombarding to get slaughtered byt he AE .
Terribly frustrating. That's why I decided to work around the bug.

 

[Shachza]

Edit: RESOLVED - the Prethoryn will bomb occupied infested worlds. You just have to let them.

Bump and key addition to this point. Prethoryn worlds that you finish invading post-infestation are effectively invulnerable. You cannot bomb them, you cannot voluntarily give them up, the armies occupying them are accessed through a planet tab that's locked out, so you cannot retrieve or dismiss them, the planet cannot be otherwise invaded so the Prethoryn do no care to retake it (or cannot). The only potential relief would be if another empire declares war on you and decides to bomb the planet into oblivion, which is a highly unlikely scenario.

Because of this bug, you cannot destroy every last Prethoryn world. Therefore the Prethoryn cannot be defeated in any playthrough in which this bug occurs.

Here's the kicker. The AI empires can trigger the exact same bug.

Version: Boulle v1.9.1 [83d2]

Description: Planet invaded mid-Prethoryn infestation; ground battle won post-infestation.

Savegame: Single player game, current version.

DLC's: Anniversary Portraits, Arachnoid Portraits, Horizon Signal, Leviathans, Synthetic Dawn, Utopia, Humanoids Pack, Plantoids Pack

Mods: None.

Reproduction Steps:
1. Let the Prethoryn occupy a world and begin purging the population.
2. Invade the world with armies, but make sure you cannot take the world before the Prethoryn purge completes.

Observe: In the savegame there are two such bugged worlds: Naff'Oblal in the Daarasta system occupied by myself (Union of Korrsalia), and Tchaa'Pol in the Tchaa'Pol-Kolse system occupied by the Quenti Sacred Conglomerate (computer-controlled regular empire).

 

[GauHelldragon]

Bump and key addition to this point. Prethoryn worlds that you finish invading post-infestation are effectively invulnerable. You cannot bomb them, you cannot voluntarily give them up, the armies occupying them are accessed through a planet tab that's locked out, so you cannot retrieve or dismiss them, the planet cannot be otherwise invaded so the Prethoryn do no care to retake it (or cannot). The only potential relief would be if another empire declares war on you and decides to bomb the planet into oblivion, which is a highly unlikely scenario.

I had the exact same thing happen to me on two planets. After a year or so of warring, one of the planets became uninfested. I wasn't paying attention at the time and i was at war with an awakened empire, so it's possible they bombed that planet when I wasn't looking. The second planet also eventually eventually uninfested itself as well. This time I was not at war with anyone and it seemingly just did it on it's own. At this point the Prethoryn had basically been wiped out, and were eventually eliminated.

Maybe I was just lucky, but it's possible this problem will fix itself with enough time? Either way though, it's still a bug that the armies remain there at all.

 

[Shachza]

I had the exact same thing happen to me on two planets. After a year or so of warring, one of the planets became uninfested. I wasn't paying attention at the time and i was at war with an awakened empire, so it's possible they bombed that planet when I wasn't looking. The second planet also eventually eventually uninfested itself as well. This time I was not at war with anyone and it seemingly just did it on it's own. At this point the Prethoryn had basically been wiped out, and were eventually eliminated.

Maybe I was just lucky, but it's possible this problem will fix itself with enough time? Either way though, it's still a bug that the armies remain there at all.

The second planet; did it go back to its uninfested form, or did it revert to a barren world that could be terraformed? Was it the last Prethoryn-owned one in existence? Did it ever somehow end up within someone else's controlled space?

Man... I'm grasping at straws here.

 

[GauHelldragon]

The second planet; did it go back to its uninfested form, or did it revert to a barren world that could be terraformed? Was it the last Prethoryn-owned one in existence? Did it ever somehow end up within someone else's controlled space?

Man... I'm grasping at straws here.

It reverted to barren world. And it was the last prethoryn-owned planet in existence. It was never in someone else's controlled space. Like any other controlled planet, it created a border aura which went away when it was gone.

It's possible another empire came in and bombed it when I wasn't looking, maybe?

 

[Shachza]

It reverted to barren world. And it was the last prethoryn-owned planet in existence. It was never in someone else's controlled space. Like any other controlled planet, it created a border aura which went away when it was gone.

It's possible another empire came in and bombed it when I wasn't looking, maybe?

Possible. The occupation mechanic was clearly never intended for infested worlds, so who knows how an empire occupying it may affect others' ability to interact with it. This deserves testing.

 

[Shachza]

It reverted to barren world. And it was the last prethoryn-owned planet in existence. It was never in someone else's controlled space. Like any other controlled planet, it created a border aura which went away when it was gone.

It's possible another empire came in and bombed it when I wasn't looking, maybe?

To follow up. Apparently the Prethoryn themselves will bomb the planet into oblivion. I'm not sure the specifics of the mechanics, but I suspect that if they don't have any other targets within their territory, then the occupied planets will get bombed. Essentially, the planets are targets, just weighted below every other possible one (like an enemy fleet). So, if you leave them alone once you reach the stage of having only occupied Prethoryn planets left, they will take care of things for you.