Odd commodities behavior

[pilotnewbextraordinaire]

I'm not sure if this is the place to post server questions so forgive me if I'm in the wrong spot.

A friend setup a multiplayer server that was installed locally onto his desktop. We played around on that server for a couple of days and then he moved the server off to a VM and we've been running it there since. To move the server, he copied/pasted the whole Legacy server directory but did not initially run the installer on the new server. Just copied the directory and ran the server that way.

After doing so we noticed some very odd commodities behavior, with them showing up at 0%, 25% and 100% pay which seemed rather odd. No matter the region. I suggested that he backup his universe and text8 file, trash the server directory, run the installer and then restore the two files just in case the installer needed to be ran for a properly running server. Doing so did not fix the issue.

I can have him send me his files so submit for review if needed but I was mainly curious if anyone has seen this and/or knows of a way to get the economy reset and running properly.

Here are a couple of screenshots. Top two are of Sapphire and the bottom two are Lambda.

[Bodega]

Hi I noticed something similar the other day on a server. All the prices were REALLY low. It seemed like, and this is purely a guess because I don't the mechanism for how it works, that the prices were based on the colors of the technology more rigidly. Meaning this, because I realize that doesn't make any sense:

Before the latest patch, the quadrant tech overlay would go between Red - Yellow - Green, and it was a smooth gradient between all the colors. Then it was changed so that this map shows just red, yellow, green for territory control / tech. I wonder if these 25% - 50% - 75% etc are because the new algorithm for displaying the colors is more definitive and less based on the gradient as before. It's like this area is red so that must mean it's <25%, this area is yellow so >25% && <50%, Green > 50% (those numbers are kinda made up but just trying to illustrate what I'm talking about). Whereas before it would be like RGB 99-00-20, so that is a purplish, so the area might've been 40% or whatver. I could be completely wrong, and probably am, but I saw the same thing.

[pilotnewbextraordinaire]

That's a possibility I suppose. I didn't even notice that the tech overlay changed. Hadn't played much multiplayer before this last patch so that may be why I never noticed.

What also comes across as a bit odd is that in the Regional News/Commodity Price News, some of the regions are displaying what I would think would be normal looking fluctuations. Those are normally far flung regions so I haven't been able to actually go check the region out to verify if the prices match the news or if they still show up with the odd valuations.

I do know that I haven't see anything that was over 100% recently. Putting a hurting on our mining efforts.

[Janus]

There is a section in the text8.dat file that deals with this. There are 3 lines. They deal with the Commodity price change, Economy/technology changes and Territory control. If they are set to 0, then only players will influence these things. If set to 1, NPC's will influence them as well. They are lines 890, 891 and 892. If they are set at 1, then players and NPCs will affect prices, economy/technology levels and territory control. If they are set at 0 then only players will affect these things.

[Vice]

Polarized values can indicate a problem with improper updating or damaged/corrupt data. There is a file in the server folder named factionmap.txt, if you send that to me (starwraith.com > contact), I can review it to try and determine if the problem is with the data internally or if maybe something happened on the client side.

You can also back up that file, then delete or rename it to something like 'factionmap-bak.txt', then relaunch the server program to test to see if the values return to default levels properly.

[pilotnewbextraordinaire]

Thanks for the info Vice. We'll backup the file and get a copy to you to check out as well as give it a go on deleting and seeing if levels return to normal.

[pilotnewbextraordinaire]

The factionmap file was deleted and everything went back to working as it did prior to the move. He's going to send the file over to me after work and I'll shoot it your way Vice just in case.

[Vice]

Sounds good, thanks.