All Death Bug

[Feyd]

Sometimes, players will find the colonists on the planet dying en masse unexpectedly, thus causing the game to end when everyone has died. The colonists' death rate during this occurrence is one of exponential growth, following the equation 2^n, where n is the number of turns passed since the widespread death bug began.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpost_(comp...gs_and_exploits

Anybody have fixed it?

[White Claw]

It's not a bug in the game, it's USUALLY mass starvation. It always appears like you have enough food because there's some in stock. If you always have number of agridomes times 10 food in stock, then you don't have enough. It takes 1 unit of food per 10 people. 1 agridome produced 10 units of food. So 1 agridome feeds 100 (or fewer people).

So if you have 101 people and only 1 agridome, then your people will start to starve because you are 1 unit of food short. (You need 11 units.) Usually people swear up and down they have enough food, but that is usually the problem. If you have food in storage, you can survive for the short term, but you'll need to build another agridome before your supply bottoms out.

The issue is that once people start to starve, the morale plummets and people continue to die, they don't just reach a balance with the food supply. After about 250 colonists, the population usually stabalizes a bit and it's easier to manage. (Until you get slammed by refugees from the rebel colony.)

[White Claw]

BTW: What is the rule for editing pages on the Wiki? I didn't want to edit someone elses work without permission. (I just wanted to add something to the effect of my above post.)

[Lysol]

when you start to loose people en mass.  its usually one of two things.

CHAP got blown up somehow and there is no breathable atmo.

Your facing a starvation

Plague.

Problem is when your colonist start to die....Its the Students that are the more hardy of the colonist..they are usuallly the last to die.

First to die are scientists, workers, children and students.


Q: One the population goes under the starvation level, it will stabilise.

A: Maybe or maybe not, you might not have enough workers alive to operate the Agridome so the starvation continues....Besides dammit, your the commander of the last spark of the human race...DONT KILL ANY ONE!

[Feyd]

But they non stop of die! In only a few turns.. how can I stop that? sorry for my english.

[Lysol]

what turn are you on?

See Outpost 1.5 uses cool simulation science...and not gamer nerd trekkie science that Outpost 2 does.

The game was build on various systems to support the colony.

Land your Seed factory

Build a mine
Place a digger a the end of one of the tubes
Bull doze enough space on the surface for the following buildings
!.) Chap
2.) Agridome
3.) Storage Tanks
4.) Warehouse
5.) Robot Command

By Turn 8 Your digger should have finish....put it back to work to expand level one...and on level one doze room for 2 residential.


Turn 12...land everything...and start building.  You will lose 1-3 a turn due to natural causes....but once your CHAP and AGRIDOME is online, your Moral will recover as your people are now in no danger of having to eat themselves or suffocating.


Thats a very brief way to get things going....Tell me exactly what turn your at and what buildings you have and i can help you from there.

[Feyd]

Im near turn 200  ( my seed's collapsed, yes ), I have 3 agridome, but I have no time to build another until population grow until 300.

[Feyd]

I load game in turn 145, now I build enoght AgriDome, I have 5 agridome, near turn 178, people start to die, a reason of 2^n. Like wikipedia sais. I dont know what I do...

[White Claw]

If your people die when your seed structures collapse, make sure you have a CHAP running like Lysol said. If you have #agridomes = (population/100) then you're set for food. But also CONFIRM that your agridomes are actually receiving proper resources. (They might not be connected or something.)

The other thing I noticed is that I often have to build another smelter because the seed smelter either isn't working correctly (no output) or it quits prematurely. I usually try to build a smelter early on after a couple agridomes and storage tanks. The lack of a working smelter or storage creates a deficiency in available metals, etc...

Depending on your population/food deficiency ratios, once people start dying due to starvation, it's nearly impossible to stop. People start dying and structures begin to fail due to lack of workers. It just becomes a downward spiral. You can sometimes save yourself if you demolish enough unnecessary buildings in time, but that rarely works.

I've NEVER seen a plague in any of my colonies. Not even the alien virus. I don't think the plague exists. I think it was just people's scape goat for killing their colonists due to lack of food or air.

 

[Lysol]

Well if it was CHAP related folks would die right after seed collapse.

And If he already had plenty of agridomes, food in storage should have kept colony good for a while.

Did you build another smelter after seed collapse?  Because usually resources in the storage tanks last maybe about 15 to 20 turns, and SPEW will keep your shortfalls depending on how much MPG you have.

It looks like your resource levels might be critical.

And if not that we eliminated all the possibilities and you got bugged.
 

[Feyd]

I have, at least, one building of each. CLAP, DiRTY, Smelter, Industry, Agridomes, TOMAHAK, and underground, i have at least 4 residences, comercial center, industry of clothing, lab, university, and all is well conected. The starvation start ever in the same turn. ( I think) The mine only works during 160 turns, but I have another near conected. People love me. I dont know why it occurs. I will revise and duplicate all primordial structures.

[Feyd]

OK! I found the problem. I get out of vitals minerals. My mine have a short life... And I dig it until 4 level underground. Any startegy for resources?

There are any cheat?  
Im using Outpost 1.51 , the same of the webpage.

[White Claw]

Build a SPEW and several more residences. Build more residences than you need. When you have a functioning SPEW, you get a unit of MPG for every residence you have. This will help with shortfalls in vital minerals/metals.

Remember, you don't need to connect mines to your main colony with tubes. It's just a waste of resources if you do and it give zero return.

And I reiterate: There is no "sudden death" bug. (Unless you count the stack overflow.)

[Lysol]

ctrl+f11

=D

[Falciform]

I had somewhat of a simliiar problem.  Nearing turn 200 my colonists would just start dying like crazy (not the 2^n thing, but large chunks nonetheless).  When the scientists and workers get down to 0, all of a sudden my students took over.  The weird thing was that the unemployment rate always stayed 100% while the employed rate was always 0 people.  Yet, the students took over everything, CHAP to agridome to labs.  *shrug*

[White Claw]

The students are supposed to take over. That's how it works. After you start to get scientists and workers built up, they're supposed to go back to being students. However, the game is usually lost when you get to that point because there are rarely enough students to keep everything going.

When starvation begins, the old folks (meaning your workers/scientists) and the young kids generally die first. It's not a bug though, but it's a bit over-sensitive. There's no good balance point of agridomes / population in the early game. Also, even if you have enough agridomes, they might not be getting the supplies they need. (As occured to Feyd.)

BTW: you can also overcome the mining deficiency by aggressively pursuing nanotechnology. The nanotech tree can be found in the OP1 forum.