Glitch A very big problem with sailing loot

[commonsense123]

Today I did a mat run and got 4 skull chests. However, upon porting, I received no loot from my skull chests. This bug is really frustrating for me and other players because we put in our time for skull runs, mat runs, loot runs, etc. for loot, but to our disappointment, we are unable to collect any loot (especially lucky skull chests) at the end of our sailing sessions. Upon porting, not everyone will be able to receive loot. In some cases they will, but other times they won't.

This problem has been happening more and more recently, and I'm not sure why this is the case. This bug also seems to be more complicated than I thought, and I'm not sure what kind of solution exists to fix this problem. Sailing is my favorite aspect of the game, but this bug can be really irritating to play with. I have made many pirates and along the way this bug has affected pretty much all of them.

Strangely, this problem fixes itself when a server resets. For example, Abassa crashes with this bug in place. When I come onto Abassa again afterwards to sail and collect my loot from a loot run or mat run, it's as if nothing has happened and there is no bug. However, after a long time without Abassa crashing, this bug will appear again and will continue until Abassa crashes. Also during this bug, I have observed that there would be either no loot, an almost guaranteed famed and/or legendary item, or only ammo (gun, dagger, cannon) from any skull chest.
Note: This conclusion was drawn after multiple observations on a specific server, and it shouldn't be taken as fact. I don't have a definite value for a "long time" and I don't know how long it takes every time for this bug to be set in motion again.

A possible explanation to this (suggested by a friend) was that this bug still occurs because of the previous attempt to fix infinite sailing loot, where any cargo collected (i.e. loot containers, materials, and gold) would all be collectible when porting.

**It would be appreciated that if anyone has had this problem to please post screenshots if possible and to correct me if necessary. I really hope that there is an explanation and/or fix to this problem, because sailing is a very important part of the game, and would affect any player who sails.

Note: This was only observed on the more-populated server at the time, Abassa or Andaba.

Screenshots of one of my (many) observations of this bug shown below. Note that this is the (most common) case where I get no loot.

 

[Misha]

I can confirm from my experiences since I started playing TLOPO that this bug is prevalent in sailing loot, regardless of server or population. It's an issue, and I do hope that there might be some clarification made as to why it tends to occur.

 

[Ed plunderphoenix]

Would be awesome if it was fixed. Sadly, this is part of the reason I stopped sailing frequently.

 

[Eric Sailcutter]

I'm quite certain that this bug is happening on all servers all the time. I'm pretty sure that the reason it is more pronounced on the busy server and worse as the server goes longer without a reset is because the bug is related to lag, the more lag on the server the more errors in loot. I feel it is after you reach your hold limit, 16 items on my war frigate, that better loot is supposed to replace worse but sometimes the worse loot is not lost and sometimes the better loot is not retained. Yes, I've ported my 16 item hold war frigate with 16 showing in the hold but gotten anywhere from 11 to 21 items.

 

[Boots/Darkness]

Its it interesting how sometimes you get all then sometimes you get none or you get a various amount..

 

[commonsense123]

I'm quite certain that this bug is happening on all servers all the time. I'm pretty sure that the reason it is more pronounced on the busy server and worse as the server goes longer without a reset is because the bug is related to lag, the more lag on the server the more errors in loot.

That's quite possible. Sailing does cause A LOT of lag, causing players to crash (which has a bunch of glitched of its own) and among other things.

Its it interesting how sometimes you get all then sometimes you get none or you get a various amount..

It is! Even if I empty my cannon ammo sometimes I won't even get cannon ammo back. Or sometimes I get loot from only 1 or 2 skulls even if I get 5 total. Crazy stuff lol.

 

[Kate Daggersharp]

Wow, I didn't know that this was a bug. I've done several sailing runs or mat runs and have come in with nothing in the containers. Thought I was just really unlucky.

 

[Eric Sailcutter]

Its it interesting how sometimes you get all then sometimes you get none or you get a various amount..

It is very very rare that I get exactly the same items that show in my hold when I look through the loot unless I do a complete run on a quiet server. All the gold containers are messed up as well as the loot containers. It's only mats that I've not noticed wrong and I wonder if that is real or just because I don't do much mat runs??? I think it is real and that mats are not affected by this bug, could be a clue there...

 

[Boots/Darkness]

It is very very rare that I get exactly the same items that show in my hold when I look through the loot unless I do a complete run on a quiet server. All the gold containers are messed up as well as the loot containers. It's only mats that I've not noticed wrong and I wonder if that is real or just because I don't do much mat runs??? I think it is real and that mats are not affected by this bug, could be a clue there...

Usually when I get all I only have 1 - 2 skulls anyways..

 

[Boots/Darkness]

Something else I noticed about this is whenever its brought up several people say its due to the fact of them being split throughout the crew.. Couple days ago I was on a run with 11 people had 6 skulls when we ported the captain of said ship got 3 and I got 4 skulls we were the only 2 in what remained of the crew (4 people) to get any.. Point being if he got 3 and I got 4 that's 7 we ported with 6 skulls how is that possible???

 

[C4BA]

=_=

 

[Shamus The Brute]

Would be awesome if it was fixed. Sadly, this is part of the reason I stopped sailing frequently.

Never stop or quit on sailing. This BETA phase needs your involvement to report sailing issues which are occurring.

 

[Eric Sailcutter]

Something else I noticed about this is whenever its brought up several people say its due to the fact of them being split throughout the crew.. Couple days ago I was on a run with 11 people had 6 skulls when we ported the captain of said ship got 3 and I got 4 skulls we were the only 2 in what remained of the crew (4 people) to get any.. Point being if he got 3 and I got 4 that's 7 we ported with 6 skulls how is that possible???

It is clearly not splitting skulls between players. It happens to me when I sail solo just as it does with crew. It also happens with all loot containers and all gold containers but since few even look at anything other than mats and skulls it is not well known.

 

[squintz]

I'm quite certain that this bug is happening on all servers all the time. I'm pretty sure that the reason it is more pronounced on the busy server and worse as the server goes longer without a reset is because the bug is related to lag, the more lag on the server the more errors in loot. I feel it is after you reach your hold limit, 16 items on my war frigate, that better loot is supposed to replace worse but sometimes the worse loot is not lost and sometimes the better loot is not retained. Yes, I've ported my 16 item hold war frigate with 16 showing in the hold but gotten anywhere from 11 to 21 items.

I guess whatever people want to call lag, it comes with the bug. However, I feel there is an underlying memory issue going on. Not your personal machine memory, but how tlopo handles all aspects of memory management within the game at all levels.
Sometimes they're called memory leaks. Memory hooks. Whatever. I think there is a core of the game code of handling processes and memory and I think the tlopo staff has always fought that battle. If memory is an issue one hopes the staff will win one day.

 

[Eric Sailcutter]

I guess whatever people want to call lag, it comes with the bug. However, I feel there is an underlying memory issue going on. Not your personal machine memory, but how tlopo handles all aspects of memory management within the game at all levels.
Sometimes they're called memory leaks. Memory hooks. Whatever. I think there is a core of the game code of handling processes and memory and I think the tlopo staff has always fought that battle. If memory is an issue one hopes the staff will win one day.

I think it's likely that this is a bug where loot is supposed too be exchanged, keep better and toss worse, but the programming is reliant on certain processes being completed before it can do that correctly. When you have lag sometimes these processes are not completed before the loot swap is initiated and so an error occurs.

 

[Eric Sailcutter]

Here's another interesting thing about this: the loot showing in the drop down when you click on the loot icon while sailing is never wrong. Obviously, your loot when you port is not based on that running total.

 

[deanaug]

I think it's likely that this is a bug where loot is supposed too be exchanged, keep better and toss worse, but the programming is reliant on certain processes being completed before it can do that correctly. When you have lag sometimes these processes are not completed before the loot swap is initiated and so an error occurs.

During the sailing run the loot generator only keeps track of a list of which container *types* will be "kept" (i.e. the ones left after container roll-off due to the prioritization scheme). Then at the end, when you port, it calculates the items each person receives for ALL containers that remain at port time. It's POSSIBLE (just a theory) that the process of computing all the loot at once is causing enough lag or timeouts or whatever, that the loot item distribution cannot finish in time, resulting in all/some loot being dropped by the time the loot panel is displayed.

I tried reproducing this issue at one point, it happened frequently in the busy shard, and either never or very infrequently in the quiet ones (been a while, not sure now). So I'm a little surprised to hear it's a significant problem in the quiet shards as well.

If this is the case, a possible fix would be to calculate all the loot items on-the-fly as each container is rolled into the keeper list. This would distribute the processing load throughout the run, and avoid the big spike at port time. It does have the disadvantage that the effort to compute items for the rolled-off containers is a waste, since those items will be tossed. Although if this really a persistent issue in the quiet shards, not sure if this will fix things or not.

 

[squintz]

During the sailing run the loot generator only keeps track of a list of which container *types* will be "kept" (i.e. the ones left after container roll-off due to the prioritization scheme). Then at the end, when you port, it calculates the items each person receives for ALL containers that remain at port time. It's POSSIBLE (just a theory) that the process of computing all the loot at once is causing enough lag or timeouts or whatever, that the loot item distribution cannot finish in time, resulting in all/some loot being dropped by the time the loot panel is displayed.

I tried reproducing this issue at one point, it happened frequently in the busy shard, and either never or very infrequently in the quiet ones (been a while, not sure now). So I'm a little surprised to hear it's a significant problem in the quiet shards as well.

If this is the case, a possible fix would be to calculate all the loot items on-the-fly as each container is rolled into the keeper list. This would distribute the processing load throughout the run, and avoid the big spike at port time. It does have the disadvantage that the effort to compute items for the rolled-off containers is a waste, since those items will be tossed. Although if this really a persistent issue in the quiet shards, not sure if this will fix things or not.

Perhaps there's a flaw in the actual logic where the item info isn't releasing or exchanging for the next process. Fundamental memory not off loading or truncating off the stack at the very basic.
What the heck did I just write.

 

[Eric Sailcutter]

During the sailing run the loot generator only keeps track of a list of which container *types* will be "kept" (i.e. the ones left after container roll-off due to the prioritization scheme). Then at the end, when you port, it calculates the items each person receives for ALL containers that remain at port time. It's POSSIBLE (just a theory) that the process of computing all the loot at once is causing enough lag or timeouts or whatever, that the loot item distribution cannot finish in time, resulting in all/some loot being dropped by the time the loot panel is displayed.

I tried reproducing this issue at one point, it happened frequently in the busy shard, and either never or very infrequently in the quiet ones (been a while, not sure now). So I'm a little surprised to hear it's a significant problem in the quiet shards as well.

If this is the case, a possible fix would be to calculate all the loot items on-the-fly as each container is rolled into the keeper list. This would distribute the processing load throughout the run, and avoid the big spike at port time. It does have the disadvantage that the effort to compute items for the rolled-off containers is a waste, since those items will be tossed. Although if this really a persistent issue in the quiet shards, not sure if this will fix things or not.

You can see the bug in action on quiet servers/shards if you do a short run. As I've been telling people, I did a Treasure Sense study and for it I went on 40 runs where I sank exactly 20 Ogres on each run. I did this on random servers and very few runs were on the busy server. When I ported after the runs I tabulated all the loot to get a good sense of Treasure Sense, 20 runs with TS at 0 and 20 with TS 8. The most surprising thing to come of the study was just how messed up loot is, I rarely got 16 items and got anywhere from 11 to 21 items from my 16 item hold.

 

[deanaug]

You can see the bug in action on quiet servers/shards if you do a short run. As I've been telling people, I did a Treasure Sense study and for it I went on 40 runs where I sank exactly 20 Ogres on each run. I did this on random servers and very few runs were on the busy server. When I ported after the runs I tabulated all the loot to get a good sense of Treasure Sense, 20 runs with TS at 0 and 20 with TS 8. The most surprising thing to come of the study was just how messed up loot is, I rarely got 16 items and got anywhere from 11 to 21 items from my 16 item hold.

Hmm regarding how "messed up" loot is.

If a loot container contains only gold, the gold is auto-awarded without displaying the container itself. This is done to de-clutter the loot panel, and display only containers which contain selectable items.