Factorio Forums

build 36215, win64, steam
Problem started at approximately 4:30 UTC-5 (CDT) on 2018.03.27.

My first Factorio bug report, I hope I don't end up facepalming. But I suspect this one might be a doozy to reproduce or fix, so maybe I'd rather find myself embarrassed by having missed something obvious. If this is really a bug, it could be very frustrating to players if it went out on the 0.16 formal release.

Problem description:
- Science labs have power (checked at the nearest pole).
- Science labs are loaded science packs (red, green military).
- When I select something to research, it just stands there, the labs don't light up, the bar doesn't move. The exact same symptoms as if I was missing a science pack.

Relevant previous events:
- All previous research worked fine.
- I recently started researching Military Science technologies.
- Just before this problem happened I had a power outage (had run out of coal). Power is back.
- The game is single-player, no servers. So there is no ./archive folder and desync report is not applicable.
- Game is pure vanilla. No mods whatsoever. The mods folder only contains the mod-list.json with this string as content:
{
"mods": [
{
"name": "base",
"enabled": true
}
]
}

Troubleshooting done:
- I tried researching a different technology. No change, it still freezes upon starting.
- I saved, closed and restarted the game. No change.
- I closed and restarted Steam. No change.
- I loaded a previous save. The problem does not exist there.
- I looked for a "cancel Research" just in case something like that could clear the issue. Did not find such an option.

Reproducing the bug: I do not know how it was caused. For me it now happens always when I click Research or re-enter (since I have already selected some research).

Switching to a research you actually have the ingredients for works fine when I test it, I assume you only tested research you could not actually do? If no, what specific research did you try that you should actually be able to perform with the ingredients you provide?

Loewchen wrote:Switching to a research you actually have the ingredients for works fine when I test it, I assume you only tested research you could not actually do? If no, what specific research did you try that you should actually be able to perform with the ingredients you provide?

That was it. I feel stupid, but a good flavor of stupid. No bug. I am so glad to be wrong.

I was certain I was hitting a research requiring Military Science. Turns out I was not... the light blue and white colors are very similar and I got fooled.

But if I might just make a suggestion, perhaps the blue science bottle could be a bit of a darker and more "blue" blue. Some of us have aging eyes that make it difficult to distinguish between such subtle differences in a small image. Or even better... disable the Research Button and place a label indicating "Please insert the necessary research into the lab" if the necessary bottles aren't in the labs - that would make it extremely obvious to anyone that they picked something invalid.

Sorry to bother you, and thank you!