Firstly, I use the
Mac version of Starfarer v0.51a.
Secondly, I installed version 1.2a of DeathSG's
Minimash multiple-mod compilation in order to spice up the game.
It's been flawless...with one exception, that is. And it's not strictly anything to do with the modded content directly, either; that's just a means to an end, as you'll see.
After playing the game with that set of mods for a while, the added awesome features in said mods often lead to the ability to win enough battles such that one can generate mountains of cash to buy an epic-sized warfleet. To make full use of such plunder, I tweaked my setup further to set the default battle size at 400 fleet points instead of 100. Also by my hand, system defense fleets ranging in strength up to 800FP - and more! - are now roaming the void, too; the resulting fights have been truly heroic. Many songs have been sung and much ale has been quaffed as the victors recounted their tales of pluck and derring-do. Hegemony forces celebrate by watching extra-special gladiator combat between terrified untrained file clerks from Human Resources pitted against sharks with lasers on their heads. Even those otherwise uptight Tri-Tachyon stiffs have been known to order their post-battle cup of tea with lemon (such expense!) AND an
extra lump of sugar in it.
The game begins to get unstable once the overall amount of fighter wings in service, ship hulls in service, and items & money in inventory also become epic-sized. Darn. Eventually that instability crashes my gameplay session -- every time. I was surprised and confused that such apparently mundane accumulation of stuff would be a problem in an otherwise
very pleasantly "finite but unbounded" game universe as this one.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to say what the
precise trigger is which sets off the instability which eventually crashes Starfarer. I wish I could be more specific. The only reliable clue is that the game begins to lag; slowly at first, then more and more over the course of about 15-45 minutes. This surprises me because I'm running Starfarer on a Mac Pro tower with OS X 10.6.7, and the increasing amount of game lag gets so bad that it eventually smashes one entire CPU core at +90% utilization and holds it there. RAM usage doesn't escalate, but the game goes insane with CPU hogging.
The inevitable end always comes when, after already having amassed a vast pile of loot, I'm randomly trying to purchase new fighters, ships or inventory items at any space station. I'll click the "Confirm Transaction" button...it lights up...but the game never acknowledges the mouse click. After anywhere from 10 seconds to 2 minutes of a frozen game screen, I'm greeted with an error message. Boom!
Abend. It's
always the same message every time:
"
Fatal: GC overhead limit exceeded
Check starfarer.log for more info."
As soon as I click to dismiss the alertbox, the game crashes to desktop.
Fortunately I screencapped one recent instance of this game error--
The use of the "Confirm Transaction" button after already having a very large fleet inventory (starships as well as weapons, crew, money, etc.) is the straw which breaks the proverbial camel's back. But what is the trigger value of the too-small boundary that is being crossed, and where can it be found? And is there more than one error condition which is being met? That's what I can't figure out.
A save-game file which exhibited this same trouble previously can start freaking out even just a few minutes after rebooting the game and reloading that same save into a new gameplay session. I don't think that the save itself is being corrupted, because no matter how many times I delete it and begin a new campaign game from square one, Starfarer eventually runs into the same trouble. I've easily encountered this same bug during more than 10 consecutive gameplay sessions, within at least as many brand-new campaign games begun from square one.
These chronic freezes and crashes become
even more mysterious as well as frustrating to me, precisely because there is
no such file as starfarer.log in the Mac version of the game!
[-sigh-] Well, so much for checking the (nonexistent) debugging logs. Without that, I can't take any further useful action to help you pin down this aggravating error.
I didn't think that things such as fleet size, etc. had hardcoded limits bounding them. That IS true, isn't it??? But
something within the game sure is mighty unhappy once you rack up a few more orders of magnitude. My highly informal guess is that some data register (or more than one?) within Starfarer's codebase doesn't hold enough digits to get the job done. As I have a serious penchant for very large battles plus accumulating the equally large in-game infrastructure to support them (and repair my wounds afterward, lol), I'd love it if this bug was squashed in the next version of the game.
Same thing for the grievous lack of any error-logging at all in the Mac version of this generally great game.
Any insight you can share about the exact cause and projected future bugfix for the GC overhead limit error would be deeply appreciated. Thanks!
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