[Bug] Vasari Loyalist Capital Victory

I believe any capital ship or Starbase also counts as well...the bug is not the research modifier, but rather the text description...

If that's true, how could we go about verifying it?  It's not just a matter of convincing the AI to surrender (which I think it would probably do if it lost everything but a few frigates)--it's a matter of the game's victory criteria not being met when playing with real people.

I suppose I can try testing it by playing a rigged game.  If it turns out that's how the technology actually works, it would probably be a good thing if the description were updated.

UPDATE: I can confirm that that's how the game works currently.  However, one of two things must still happen--either the game is updated to accurately reflect the research text, or the research text is updated to accurately reflect the game.

Someone could try searching the change logs posted on this forum to see if this was changed on purpose at some point. I've noticed that balance fixes/tweaks often enough don't have the corresponding in-game description updated. Even today the Percheron's description says "a squadron" of strike craft, even though it can field two. And that balance change was made in 2006 or so...

I can't find all of the old changelogs, mostly because the forum search utility continues to be unhelpful, but I can recall reading them all fairly promptly upon release.  I daresay that if this problem was at one time an announced change, I'd remember.

Nevertheless, I'm happy to be proven wrong if that's what it takes to clear this whole thing up.

My bet is that given what's in the entity file, namely

modifierType "CapitalShipsTitansAndStarBasesCountAsPlanetForNoGameLoss"

this was designed like this, as Sel says. There's no "TitansCountAsPlanetForNoGameLoss" modifierType (or in fact any other kind of *NoGameLoss modifier.) Each modifierType needs C/C++ code to implement, so given what it's called, it's obvious this was designed as it behaves. So, it sounds like the in-game description was [always] bugged (by not mentioning capital ships and starbases.) Which is far from the 1st occurrence of this type of bug/discrepancy. The bug/OPness of Corsev's self-repair (huge difference in behavior from the in-game description) would be another Rebellion-specific example.

This type of issue very frustrating when learning the game. You can't really expect the average Joe gamer to read the entity files, but that's how you have to learn a lot of the way Sins works... Alas the producers seem to give low priority for fixing this type of issue, even though it's fairly easy to fix. It doesn't even require coder's time; only some product manager and doc/manual writers' time.

Fair enough.  As you can see I did quite a bit of in- and out-of-game digging, but it never even occurred to me to search the game files.

You need to convert them from binary to text first (with a command-line utility that itself doesn't do batch conversions), so that's another dissuasive factor for the non-modder gamer...

And as comment on software engineering: making the in-game text descriptions reside separately from the entity files (they're supposed to describe) is quite bug-prone. It's easier for people to forget to update related files than it is to forget to fully update one file. I suppose i18n might have something to do with that (assuming there are non-English editions of Sins) although some text descriptions, e.g. those in galaxy files are not separate... (And even then, if one uses UTF8 files, i18n strings can go all together.) I did some modding on DoW2 and at least there such a separation was fully justified by the i18n ambitions (sold editions in several languages) and it's not unusual to find that in similarly i18n'd non-gaming software.

Frankly the research in question here does seem a bit OP [as implemented] for capital victory mode as well as of no use otherwise (unless I'm missing something.) Lua callbacks/code (as used in DoW2 for instance) would have made fixing/changing code of that kind a one-liner any modder can do [assuming you wanted to change the behavior instead of its description]. I used to joke that DoW2 is the emacs of games: it has a Lua hook/callback for [almost] everything. (Well, LuaTeX would be a more direct comparison, but most people haven't even heard of that.)

True, although I'd imagine they're separated so as to more easily differentiate between functional and aesthetic portions of the game.  That way both can be worked on simultaneously.  But as with any such separation, if the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, side effects may occur.

[Edit]: As to the contention that the research is OP for Capital Victory and otherwise useless: it's a big advantage in Capital Victory, but certainly not a decisive one.  It both allows and requires you to put more Fleet power into an offensive force.  Allows, because you aren't as concerned about losing your Capital; requires, because you can't afford to lose your Titan.  I will say, though, that for Capital Victory games it would make a lot more sense if the research worked as described.  Hunting stragglers is not fun.

On the other hand, in non-Capital Victory games, it allows you to build a big Fleet and go planetless.  A roving-Fleet strategy is generally impracticable because losing all of your planets is an automatic game loss--meaning you need to maintain at least some defensive and cultural infrastructure to keep from being eliminated.  I can't speak to how often people go that route, since I don't play a lot of ICO multiplayer, but I like at least having the option.

One could argue advent have a sick advantage for research victory, or TL an unfair advantage for occupation victory...

Last thing we need is a vasari nerf.