Known Bugs (SEV)

As with many other games and programs, Space Empires V suffers from issues such as bugs. While Malfador is consistently working to improve the game and squash these bugs, more tend to show up. In the meantime, known bugs and temporary workarounds are listed here.

If you come across a bug while playing the game, please list it in the talk section of this page.

Known Bugs as of Version 1.79

 * System Generation: Certain stellar objects cannot be generated in a system with no stars. This also applies if the list of objects to generate has a star as a later entry.
 * A workaround is to use a dummy star(or destroyed star) object that has no graphic as the first object spawned. This will cause later objects to spawn normally.
 * The "survey system" order has been known to fail at certain times, possibly dependent on the positions of stars in a system being surveyed. This bug was introduced in one of the latest patches and never fixed.
 * A workaround is to use a "small systems" mod, which for whatever reason makes this bug happen a lot less often.

Known Bugs as of Version 1.74

 * Alliances: Membership. Non-members of an Alliance can be pulled in without their consent.
 * Alliances: Voting. Only one Alliance member is necessary to pass all proposals.
 * After creating a fleet with a fighter group designated as a "TF Leader", when the fleet moves into a sector that contains an enemy planet and combat begins, ship placement is disrupted. No formations are used, some attacking ships are placed in orbit around the defending planet and defending ships and fighters are interspersed throughout the attacking fleet.
 * Resizes: When one ship spawn in a new system, after it went throught a warp point, it´s bigger than the system and cover all.
 * Solar system generation: if a planet or asteroid object spawn is attempted when there are no stars already in the system, the planet will not spawn and the game will stop generating stellar objects in the system.

Known Bugs as of Version 1.66

 * Using the hotkey, the default of which is ';', you can set the colony type of anything other than empty space. After a short amount of testing, I found that you can set enemy colonies to different colony types, and they will stay that new type even after a turn change. I'm not sure if it effects what they build though.
 * There is a bug that causes the proccessing of turns to freeze up after year 2415.0 sometimes

Known Bugs as of Version 1.33

 * Ultra - Recycler does not work.  FIX: edit Facilities.txt find Ultra recycler and change its  Ability 1 Scope from "space object" to "Sector - This Player".    Also in the description the % resources returned is actually in addition to the default % resources returned (set in Settings.txt default=30%) FIX: none for now its all up to malfador on this one.


 * Construction item lists can't be modified or deleted once created. Work around: Put a version number after the list name so you can easily pick the latest one from what will probably be a huge collection of them.


 * Vehicle size descriptions mention a limit to that vehicles "movement" but the limit is actually to the number of engines you can place aboard. Racial bonus, solar sail and engines better than Ion can push the vehicle faster than the "Movement" limit. FIX: mentally replace "movement" with "engines" or edit the VehicleSizes.txt file


 * In the research screen items that are maxed in level still show up as expected results for 1 additional level of the associated technology. EX: "Central Computer Complex" shows up as expected results from increasing "Centralized Computer Systems" from level 21 to 22. even though it is maxed at level 21. FIX: none just a little annoying.


 * In ship design once the minimum crew quarters and life support are met you can continue to add crew quarters to a design and not add matching life support. The resulting ship will have far more crew than its life support can handle. But they don't suffocate so pile em on! :)

Known Bugs as of Version 1.25

 * Start/End cheat code
 * Description: Reassigning this hotkey to another key just changes the binding for the start hotkey. The end cheat hotkey remains the default.
 * Workaround: Use the default hotkey to end cheats.


 * New Game exploits
 * Description: It is possible to start with a race that has more technology and racial points than allowed with the current game settings.
 * Workaround: Double check starting races so as to avoid this exploit.

Known Bugs as of Version 1.17

 * Hard crash
 * Description: Starting a game with those settings (low computer, med map, low bonus for computer, computer difficulty = high. When the map is set and starting if I click on "building queue" it reset my computer.
 * Workaround: Set graphics to "Safe"

Known Bugs as of Version 1.13
Note: This section of Known Bugs is for reference purposes only. While workarounds can be implemented, a more secure solution is to download the latest patch.


 * Saved Empire Bug?
 * Description: When attempting to save an empire file in-game, the game crashes with an address violation.
 * Possible Cause: Unknown.
 * Workaround: Don't save empires in-game until a later patch (i.e. just save the game or use a new empire for the next one).


 * Tactical simulator doesn't work anymore... ship doesn't move, neither launch fighter.
 * Description: When doing a tactical simulation, even if ship have fighter, supply they won't move at all.
 * Possible Cause: Unknown.
 * Workaround: Avoid usage of tactical simulator for now.


 * Game Crash when launching fighter in tactical simulation.
 * Description: As ship wasn't launching, if you try to lauch them manually the game crash.
 * Possible Cause: Unknown.
 * Workaround: Avoid usage of tactical simulator for now.

(-9 million points from level 2 Fighters and Explosives)
 * Research Sabotage over calculation
 * Description: The amount of research removed when a tech gets sabotaged is too great.
 * Possible Cause: Equation typo or failure to explain fully what happens.
 * Workaround: Invest points into intel.


 * [Ragnarok700] - Empire options' treasury display has incorrect values for net resources.


 * Description: When you have ships with any robo resource gatherers (robo miners, farmers & rad extractors) that are currently gathering resources in a asteroid field, the game misrepresent the results of their gathering by displaying the resources gathered under both "ships" and "remote mining". The screen then displays a false set of net resources values because it calculates the remote mining twice. This false value doesn't affect revenue in any other way but display (as far as I can see).


 * Possible Cause: The game engine displays and counts the values twice for interface display, but doesn't count it twice for actual resource revenue.


 * Workaround: Make sure to properly check your empire options, treasury screen if you have remote mining ships and subtract the value once from your displayed net resources for the actual values you are left with.


 * [Ragnarok700] - When attacking a sector through tactical battle, your ships may retreat instantly once you start the battle.


 * Description: When you attack a sector from a sector other than the one directly above or the one directly under the target sector, your ships will most likely appear outside the retreat circle (yellow) and instantly retreat (disappear from battle) as soon as it starts (press space bar / click icon). If they do, then they will keep on attacking until they reach 0 movement and may finally attack properly at that point or just completely retreat to the previous sector.


 * Possible Cause: When attacking from a sector other than the one directly above or under the target sector, your ships may be placed outside of the "retreat circle".


 * Workaround: Attack sectors only directly from above or under.

Known Bugs as of Version 1.08
Note: This section of Known Bugs is for reference purposes only. While workarounds can be implemented, a more secure solution is to download the latest patch.


 * Disappearing Ordinance
 * Description: Ships in a fleet tend to lose ordinance each turn.
 * Possible Cause: Ships with more ordinance may be attempting to share ordinance with ships containing less without first checking to see if the ships with less are already at their maximum levels.
 * Workaround: Use non-ordinance weapons, or don't put ships with ordinance in a fleet.


 * Neutral races don't respond to communication attempts
 * Possible Cause: Unknown.
 * Workaround: Conquer them instead.


 * AI races build troops with no weapons.
 * Possible Cause: Unknown.
 * Workaround: Why?


 * Troop weapons do no damage sometimes
 * Weapons shoot, but do no damage
 * Possible Cause: Unknown.
 * Workaround: Ram the enemy troops instead.


 * Trade agreement tech swap reported incorrectly
 * Description: Techs traded off reported as received, and vice versa.
 * Possible Cause: Programming typo?
 * Workaround: None.


 * Tech Trade Agreements with 'Special' techs say they work, but don't
 * Description: Techs aren't actually received.
 * Possible Cause: Perhaps limitations to prevent abuse?
 * Workaround: None at this time.


 * Build ships without spaceyards
 * Description: Ships can be added to queues by using 'add to multiple' on the construction screen.
 * Possible Cause: Unknown.
 * Workaround: None.


 * Auto-Pathing for ships uses undiscovered warp points
 * Possible Cause: Lack of sight exclusions in programming?
 * Workaround: None.


 * Shard Cannon does not improve
 * Possible Cause: Formula error
 * Workaround: Edit the formula in the data files.


 * Game Hung
 * Description: Stuck at 'End of Turn Processing' or 'Player X taking turn'
 * Possible Cause: AI ships with similar speed chasing each other forever in combat
 * Workaround: Stick to small & medium map sizes for now. If game hangs, kill SE5, load game, then switch AI player into your control and do the combat yourself (Game menu/Players). Default master password is 'master'.


 * Can't remove last 1 mil of population from a planet
 * Cause: Design of the game
 * Workaround: Jettison them into space instead.


 * Upgrade Name Bug
 * Description: When upgrading a vehicle, a seemingly random sequence of numbers is added to the end of the design name.
 * Possible Cause: Unknown.
 * Workaround: Name ships with a I in the initial design (i.e. instead of naming a ship design 'Scout', name it 'Scout I' instead).


 * Multiple Space Yards
 * Description: Planets can build more than one Space Yard if they're added in a stack.
 * Possible Cause: Lack of amount check in Space Yard limitation code?
 * Workaround: Don't build multiple Space Yards.


 * Immortal Drones
 * Description: Perhaps this is a one-time issue...but when I sent out a group of anti-planet drones (3 drones), they managed, in succession, to take out 3 separate planets...without being destroyed themselves.
 * Possible Cause: Possible miscoding in kamikaze sequence? On a side note, the game crashed with an address violation after the 3rd planet.


 * Crash when picking up satellites
 * I nicked an enemy ship via intelligence that had satellite bays. When I attempted to recover satellites orbiting my planet to move them elsewhere, the game crashed with an access violation error.
 * Possible Cause: Unknown
 * Workaround: Unknown