[19.4 - Ground Combat] - All units getting "stuck" (difficult to replicate)

[Rogueywon]

I've come across an odd bug in 19.4, which I also hit once in 19.2. It's a difficult one to replicate and posting a save might not help, because quitting the game and reloading usually seems to make the problem vanish.

It seems to occur when you have one or more Sentinel Battlesuits deployed on a mission. Occasionally, after a Sentinel-wearing soldier has fired a shot, all of my remaining units will refuse any move orders. As in, I can see the TU count and they have enough TUs to make the move, but no matter how much I click, they just stand there. They can still shoot ok, though. If I reload my last save (from within this ground combat mission), the problem will go away temporarily, but will generally recur the next time a Sentinel-wearing soldier fires his weapon. If I quit to desktop and reload the game, then it seems to go away for the remainder of that mission.

Thing is, it doesn't happen all that often - maybe on 1 in 6 missions or so where I deploy one or more Sentinel users. It can happen on any tileset that I've seen (including alien base missions). It might be linked to circumstances where I've already loaded a save already once in the course of a mission (but I couldn't swear to that).

Sorry this is so vague - I tried a few times to replicate it last night and failed... only to have it happen to me a couple of missions later when I wasn't particularly trying.

[GizmoGomez]

Perhaps you can simply save the game after every move? Then, when it happens, you'll have a save game of before and after it started to share with the bug squashers.

[Rogueywon]

The problem with that is that even if I had a save game from immediately before it happened, quitting to desktop and reloading that save would make the issue go away - so loading the save on another PC entirely is likely to remove the issue. It's something in the game-state that goes awry, rather than in the save itself.

[GizmoGomez]

Oh, right. Hmm... Actually, that wouldn't matter. Just save the game before every action. If that action triggers the bug, then save the game again and include both the before and after saves. Then they can use the before save and replicate the steps you took to trigger the bug, and see if it appears again. Also, the after save might help them find it, you never know.

[Rogueywon]

I can't replicate the bug in that way. Let me give an example of how this flows:

I had an instance last night where at the start of turn 2 of a mission (I was saving at the start of each turn), my first action was to have a Sentinel soldier take an aimed plasma rifle shot at an alien. After he fired the shot, I tried to move him into a better position, but the bug had taken effect and neither he, nor any of my other soldiers, could move. Even if I ended the turn and went to the next one, my squad was frozen in place.

I reloaded my save. This time, I moved the soldier before shooting. He moved just fine. However, after I fired his shot, I couldn't move any of my other troopers.

I reloaded my save. I had a trooper in Predator fire then move. Everything's fine. Next I have the Sentinel guy fire; now I'm bugged again.

Reload and try again. Firing on a different Sentinel guy in the squad doesn't cause the bug. But trying a third one does.

Rather than load my save again, I quit to desktop and reload the game.

I load my save (same save that I'd been using all along) and repeat the very first action I took - the first Sentinel guy fires then moves. No bug. The rest of the mission plays out just fine.

There's only one save in play here and there isn't really a "before" and "after" state. Indeed, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the save at all. Rather, it seems that some part of the game code that's loaded into memory during gameplay has glitched out and until it's cleared by restarting the game, the glitch will keep recurring.

I've had this happen 5 or 6 times now, generally when I have a lot of Sentinels deployed on a mission. I'm not running any external mods, though on this playthrough I've bumped the sale price of alien alloys up to 5 mill through .xml editing so that I can boost through quickly to test the end-game before the next unstable release breaks save compatibility.

It's not a game-breaking bug once you know how to get around it, just an irritation.

EDIT: May try testing this further by keeping saves from multiple missions-with-Sentinels. When I get the bug next, I'll load a save from an earlier mission and see if it re-occurs when my Sentinel guys there start shooting.