Can we please have a warning and an estimate of what types of building elements are going to be destroyed/despawned/eliminated in the new version?
I think this is important because the last patch changed the height of triangular foundations, resulting in the destruction of all placeables that rested on them. The patch before that changed the support struts from functional into decorative, resulting in the collapse of all floors that received their stability from them. In both cases, the damages were substantial to a lot of people.
With some advance warning, we could at least remove any chests and workbenches and their contents from endangered building elements.
It would have been a good idea NOT to wipe the testlive servers before patching them, so that testers could observe the effects the patch has on existing structures, rather than players having to find out after the fact, like in the past.
I (and a few others) were prepared and did test this when the pet patch initially hit testlive. I lost no placeables, but I did lose a few random benched thralls. There have been a few patches since then, so things could have changed, but it’s better safe than sorry, so:
My recommendation would be to place your bench thralls into chests before this patch hits, and only pull them out when you need them, promptly returning them there.
Don’t place any recently broken thralls into the world until after the patch (unless absolutely needed) in case the feeding system gets bugged and they go into death count before food is ready.
Have food ready to give to thralls already placed (even gruel does the job well) so that you can sate their hunger as soon as you log in.
Every patch has it’s unforeseen issues when changing major systems (or adding them in), so it is likely that there will be many reports of people losing items after the update. The things I’ve listed might help curb some loss, but it’s not a guarantee. I hope this helps.
And please for the love of </whatever you prefer> do some automated tests on copies of the actual Live servers, making sure that placeables don’t disappear post-patch-deployment. Actually, do this every time, whether it’s a hotfix or a big content patch.
I hear and agree with your message, but, even if they were to take a copy of a live server, then patch it, how on earth would they know if anything is missing inside all those bases?
Oh well it wouldn’t catch everything, but a simplistic “compare pre-patch DB to one that has been running on a post-patch server for 30mins” would catch at least some problems. Preferably add an “automated player” that flies through the map, making sure each zone is loaded (since a lot of problems only happen when an actual player is present).
I mean, they completely broke physics, and also lobotomized all NPCs, before going on a 3 week break. I’m guessing the line on the graph representing “Effs” is approaching zero.
Curiously, if the server administrator makes a backup “game.db” before the patch and after the patch retrieves the data from it - maybe there will be no loss of buildings? Has anyone tried this? I, unfortunately, did not expect such a bug and did not make backup copies before the patches.
They ought to be able to perform a placables count, and also perform a side by side comparison. A pretty decent spot check / “smoke test” of this should only take a couple of hours, tops, I would expect.
If they do not have the tools / skills to perform this, then we are much further up defecation creek than I originally thought we were.
I’m 100% sure they have the skills, if they don’t do it there’s another reason for that. But since I don’t know what it is, I’m going to suggest it anyway.
