Guild Ship missing

[UlaVii]

I strongly recommend that every guild leader places at least one character they don't play in both their guild ship and stronghold. Give those placeholder characters the gold key. Never move those characters from the ship/stronghold. Do the same for at least one officer you trust.

 

Then when your ship/stronghold vanishes again you can temporarily pop them back by picking up and placing a decoration. It only lasts from seconds to minutes but it's enough time to access summons, launch invasions and allow members to travel to the ship/stronghold.

 

Keep in mind that one way the ship can vanish is when a character leaves the guild (or is removed) while they still have a gold key and they are on the ship, even if they haven't logged into that character for months. It's not 100% reproducible but this has been a factor in lots of the disappearances.

 

Another key related one is if you are giving out Silver keys too quickly. When I have time in the hour or two before a patch I will go through and give everybody in guild a silver key. If I do that too quickly then the ship/stronghold will vanish instantly. The first indication of that is when the key for the next row does not change from bronze to silver. When I open the strongholds panel I'll see the ship has gone. I leave this until just before a patch because this one has happened so many times. If/when it does happen then we only have to wait an hour or two until the next server restart. This has actually stung us a few times when patches are unexpectedly delayed and the ship went missing just before the scheduled time but it's still the best option in my opinion, if you want to bump your guild members up to silver. Silver keys allow guild members to use resource nodes and invite their friends for a visit.

 

There are definitely other vectors that cause these guild assets to vanish but these two issues with key system are the ones my guild has run into most frequently.

[thededman]

Made a post on General Chat Forums and was directed here.

 

Tuesday we were able to select a planet to invade for conquest,

 

Wednesday night guild members along with myself were attempting to use the summoning feature and were all met with a message stating the summons was unsuccessful.

 

Nobody is allowed to travel to the guild ship as apparently it no longer exists.

 

We still have all 5 guild perks as well as bonus perk active.

Edited July 23, 2020 by thededman

[TUXs]

Missing ours as well...please fix this Bioware.

[GreenQueenZero]

Seriously.. has any one gotten their ship back. WE CAN'T SUMMON!!! The ship is just gone >

 

We have picked up deco's, moved the ship, logged out / in, we have tried everything to try to get our guild ship back!!!

 

We have billions invested and we can't use it because it's phased somewhere... SWTOR needs to either fork over all the plans that it took to unlock the entire ship and approximately 3, 000,000,000 credits in decorations or fix their software.

[Nee-Elder]

Missing ours as well...please fix this Bioware.

 

Yet another victim of this truly awful GAMEBREAKING bug---> http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=982533

 

Mr. Musco, i know u guys are super busy with other gamebreaking bugs (NS Nightlife, Swoop Event cheevos, etc. ) and also hampered by work-at-home situation but is there any possible chance we can get another more current update from Dev Team about this issue?

 

Does it require a complete overhaul of the entire 'phase' system or something drastic like that?

 

Any additional transparency or info would be extremely helpful to us "concerned" GM's.

 

Thanks.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Nee-Elder

[DarkAnnmarie]

Mr. Musco, i know u guys are super busy with other gamebreaking bugs (NS Nightlife, Swoop Event cheevos, etc. ) and also hampered by work-at-home situation but is there any possible chance we can get another more current update from Dev Team about this issue?

 

Do you mean fixing them, or creating them?

[IAudacityI]

Our guild ship just went missing as well! Please please fix this issue! Our guild is <Empire of the Shadow Hand> I see a lot of people also have this problem every now and then since 2014 so I hope this gets resolved and we can get our ship back asap.

[AliGarciaF]

Our Guild has had this issue in the last 2 days. We lost our Flagship out of nowhere.

 

Does anyone know what can we do to get it back or is this a "support only" fix?? We are in the middle of Conquest and boom, out of nowhere, we lose our Flagship and cannot get it back. I hope rewards are given even though the Planet Invasion window says "Need a Flagship to participate and get rewards by Conquest".

 

I tried to go and see if the "reactivate" option is given but it does not show as inactive because yea, it just disappeared. Tried to buy a Stronghold to see if by buying it, the Flagship turns out to appear in the SH window but it doesn't let me do it because it says we have exceeded the maximum SH availability (capacity) as a Guild. Fun thing is, we only have (now had) a Flagship, never bought a Stronghold.

 

Server: Satele Shan

Guild name: The Old Republic Legends

Guildmaster: Alirio

[UlaVii]

"Solutions"

 

1) Wait until the next server restart. I don't think there are any scheduled maintenance dates at the moment but there's usually one every few weeks. This is the only thing that will bring it back long term, until the next time whatever triggered it happens again.

 

2) If you have any characters still on the ship from before it vanished that have a gold key then you can get them to pickup and place a decoration. That will make it pop back for seconds/minutes so other people can travel back to it. Just make sure the gold key character does not leave the ship including no PvP/GF pops.

 

3) Customer Services once suggested that if you can persuade everyone in your guild (present and past) to log out for an hour then the ship should return. The suggestion was that it was mistakenly thinking somebody else owns the stronghold and having everybody log out would reset that. Nobody has posted here to say that worked for them.

 

Here are the problems people have faced due to their ships and strongholds going missing. Not everybody suffers from all of these:

 

 

• Can't access the ship/stronghold or the assets inside it like GTN, storage, resource nodes, slot machines, etc.
  
• Can't summon.
  
• Cant begin invasion.
  
• Can't login with characters that logged out in the ship/stronghold.
  
• Ship does not show up in public listings.
  
• Have to keep explaining over and over again to guild members that it's vanished.
  
• Look like noobs to new recruits.
  
• If you have it once then you will likely have it again.
  

[dipstik]

we got it to

[Khiller]

Same issue for my guild this morning, no more guild ship, and impossible to re-launch the conquest...

[TUXs]

"Solutions"

 

1) Wait until the next server restart. I don't think there are any scheduled maintenance dates at the moment but there's usually one every few weeks. This is the only thing that will bring it back long term, until the next time whatever triggered it happens again.

 

2) If you have any characters still on the ship from before it vanished that have a gold key then you can get them to pickup and place a decoration. That will make it pop back for seconds/minutes so other people can travel back to it. Just make sure the gold key character does not leave the ship including no PvP/GF pops.

 

3) Customer Services once suggested that if you can persuade everyone in your guild (present and past) to log out for an hour then the ship should return. The suggestion was that it was mistakenly thinking somebody else owns the stronghold and having everybody log out would reset that. Nobody has posted here to say that worked for them.

 

Here are the problems people have faced due to their ships and strongholds going missing. Not everybody suffers from all of these:

 

 

• Can't access the ship/stronghold or the assets inside it like GTN, storage, resource nodes, slot machines, etc.
  
• Can't summon.
  
• Cant begin invasion.
  
• Can't login with characters that logged out in the ship/stronghold.
  
• Ship does not show up in public listings.
  
• Have to keep explaining over and over again to guild members that it's vanished.
  
• Look like noobs to new recruits.
  
• If you have it once then you will likely have it again.
  

 

Thank you for this!

 

This is a bug that has far too much impact on a guild to be ignored by Bioware. It's getting beyond tiresome.

[UlaVii]

Is your guild ship currently missing? If it is then please post the server, guild name and rough time/day it vanished.

[Jelina]

Satele Shan

Conclave of Aritaur

G-Ship Disappeared 24 Sept. o/a 7pm(EDT)

[Laser-fodder]

The guild ship for Fallen Chaos (Satele Shan server) disappeared on October 9, 2020. I have reported this to Customer Service and they have not provided an reasonable fix, Seeing in this blog that this issue has been happening for 6 years, only shows that the developers do not care for the players of the game, else the bug would have been fixed over 5 years ago. I can only hope after the next server re-boot the ship returns. It hurts seeing a fully opened and decorated guild ship get kidnapped by an uncaring Bioware.

[Nee-Elder]

From tomorrow's big UPDATE and Patch Notes: http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes

 

"Fixed an error which could cause guild strongholds and flagships to be unavailable."

 

Rejoice!

[Kaveat]

We are happy to announce that we have discovered that the "missing" guild ships are not actually missing, but were hijacked by ewoks in a galactic effort to return home before the next ewok holiday special starts production.

 

Unfortunately, as Endor is not yet in the production schedule for general access, we are unable to access said guild ships to facilitate their return, but will be addressing this issue in a future game update.

 

fixt, Happy Patch Day!

[JenHarkness]

Hi everyone! I know the guild ships have been disappearing for a lot of guilds lately, and it seems like it's been around forever. The good news is that things should be much better after the release of 6.1.4. Since this has been around a while, I wanted to take a bit of time to give you all a peek behind the curtain to help explain why it was so hard to track down. I also really want you to understand just how much we appreciate your forum posts and bug reports. Even when we don't reply, as a developer my first stop in investigating a backend issue is always looking at logs, and the more detailed the reports are, the easier it is for me to find something.

 

A bit of background on the Backend

Like many games, we store our persistent character data in a database. To make updates faster, we have a cache layer between the game and the database that batches up updates. Then we write the batch to the database. The benefit is we get better performance, but the drawback is that if there is one bad update in the batch, we abort the entire batch. Most of the time, the effect of aborting is that characters get kicked to character select, which isn't great, but is better than the data being corrupted. The good thing is, these errors are pretty rare, and are always the highest priority for us to fix.

 

So why might an update fail? Well, one of the nifty things you can do with a database is define a constraint on your data. That's a rule that can never be broken. Now the database is your last line of defense against something going wrong and your data getting corrupted. For this story, the important constraint is on unique character names. If we try to write a batch of updates, and one of the characters in that update has the same name as someone else in the database, the batch gets aborted.

 

A Victim of our own Success

Now, you all might remember some complaints on the forums lately about character renames not working. Behind the scenes, we have a big list of all the names on each server, so that if someone tries to use a name that's taken, the rename gets rejected before it gets anywhere near the database. Well... how does that list of names get built, you might ask. Basically, before we let you guys into the servers after a restart, the servers ask the database for that list of names so that they can make quick decisions later.

 

Here's the part where we have become a victim of our own success. It turns out that the programmer who wrote that database query back in 2009 or so added a parameter for how far back in the past to search for taken names. He happened to put 3000 for the default number of days. Yup, that's a bit over 8 years, and we launched a bit less than 9 years ago. It's a bit off because of some database maintenance we did the first year, but you get the point. So anyone who tried to rename a character with one of the names that was last played 8+ years ago would have the rename look like it succeeds, but then the database says no.

 

Luckily, that was a pretty easy fix, just increase the number. (Although if we start having rename issues in 2093, feel free to yell at me!)

 

OK.. but why would this have anything to do with guild ships??

Well, it turns out that sometimes the data that stores info on your guild ships was part of the batch that was being kicked out because of a bad rename. Yes, I know the guild ship problems have been happening for years, but that's because anytime we were having database errors, sometimes the guild ships were being caught in the crossfire. However, like I mentioned above, we always fixed the database errors super quick, so people would complain about guild ships, but then we couldn't reproduce it and they died down, because we'd already fixed the database error.

 

Here's the good news, this time it's really fixed. We've both fixed the rename error, and thanks to the guilds who have given super timely info, we were able to spot the guild ships getting caught in the crossfire. Now that we know what's going on, we were able to make it so that if the guild ship does get batched up with a bad batch, it will be automatically reloaded. So, no more disappearing flagships even if we have database*errors in the future. For realz this time.* (We hope!)

[Nee-Elder]

Hi everyone! I know the guild ships have been disappearing for a lot of guilds lately, and it seems like it's been around forever. The good news is that things should be much better after the release of 6.1.4. Since this has been around a while, I wanted to take a bit of time to give you all a peek behind the curtain to help explain why it was so hard to track down. I also really want you to understand just how much we appreciate your forum posts and bug reports. Even when we don't reply, as a developer my first stop in investigating a backend issue is always looking at logs, and the more detailed the reports are, the easier it is for me to find something.

 

A bit of background on the Backend

Like many games, we store our persistent character data in a database. To make updates faster, we have a cache layer between the game and the database that batches up updates. Then we write the batch to the database. The benefit is we get better performance, but the drawback is that if there is one bad update in the batch, we abort the entire batch. Most of the time, the effect of aborting is that characters get kicked to character select, which isn't great, but is better than the data being corrupted. The good thing is, these errors are pretty rare, and are always the highest priority for us to fix.

 

So why might an update fail? Well, one of the nifty things you can do with a database is define a constraint on your data. That's a rule that can never be broken. Now the database is your last line of defense against something going wrong and your data getting corrupted. For this story, the important constraint is on unique character names. If we try to write a batch of updates, and one of the characters in that update has the same name as someone else in the database, the batch gets aborted.

 

A Victim of our own Success

Now, you all might remember some complaints on the forums lately about character renames not working. Behind the scenes, we have a big list of all the names on each server, so that if someone tries to use a name that's taken, the rename gets rejected before it gets anywhere near the database. Well... how does that list of names get built, you might ask. Basically, before we let you guys into the servers after a restart, the servers ask the database for that list of names so that they can make quick decisions later.

 

Here's the part where we have become a victim of our own success. It turns out that the programmer who wrote that database query back in 2009 or so added a parameter for how far back in the past to search for taken names. He happened to put 3000 for the default number of days. Yup, that's a bit over 8 years, and we launched a bit less than 9 years ago. It's a bit off because of some database maintenance we did the first year, but you get the point. So anyone who tried to rename a character with one of the names that was last played 8+ years ago would have the rename look like it succeeds, but then the database says no.

 

Luckily, that was a pretty easy fix, just increase the number. (Although if we start having rename issues in 2093, feel free to yell at me!)

 

OK.. but why would this have anything to do with guild ships??

Well, it turns out that sometimes the data that stores info on your guild ships was part of the batch that was being kicked out because of a bad rename. Yes, I know the guild ship problems have been happening for years, but that's because anytime we were having database errors, sometimes the guild ships were being caught in the crossfire. However, like I mentioned above, we always fixed the database errors super quick, so people would complain about guild ships, but then we couldn't reproduce it and they died down, because we'd already fixed the database error.

 

Here's the good news, this time it's really fixed. We've both fixed the rename error, and thanks to the guilds who have given super timely info, we were able to spot the guild ships getting caught in the crossfire. Now that we know what's going on, we were able to make it so that if the guild ship does get batched up with a bad batch, it will be automatically reloaded. So, no more disappearing flagships even if we have database*errors in the future. For realz this time.* (We hope!)

 

Post of the Year imo ^

 

As a 2011 SWTOR 'founder' (and former QA-Staff for a certain notable emulator of a game that rhymes with Bar Boars Falacies ) who not only "critizes" BioWare from time to time but also recently reported/posted on this very particular issue, words cannot express how much i appreciate that ^^ level of communication and detail.

 

Obviously, devs & coders are typically super busy and rarely have time to partake in these forums, but still...i really wish EA would allow more BioWare devs to post from behind-the-code-curtain like this more often. imho, it would go a long way with building (or re-building) community trust as we head into what's probably gonna be the twilight of SWTOR's 10+ year run here soon.

 

So, THANK YOU Ms. Jen Harkness, hectic hardworking dev who hasn't posted since 2013 (and thank you Mr. Musco for endorsing the transparency) .

 

./tip-hat

Edited October 22, 2020 by Nee-Elder
THANKS SO MUCH, JEN ... really awesome post ! ...cheers

[TUXs]

As this has recently happened to our guild on 2 occasions in less than a month, I have to give a HUGE THANK YOU for figuring out the issue. I know your work can be thankless at times, but your description and explanation as to why it was happening is very very much appreciated!

 

Again...THANK YOU!!!

[Hudlar]

Thanks so much for the update! I really enjoyed the peek behind the scenes.

[UlaVii]

Thank you for helping all our guilds and for the great post explaining the issue and solution

[HKtheindomitable]

Post of the Year imo ^

 

As a 2011 SWTOR 'founder' (and former QA-Staff for a certain notable emulator of a game that rhymes with Bar Boars Falacies ) who not only "critizes" BioWare from time to time but also recently reported/posted on this very particular issue, words cannot express how much i appreciate that ^^ level of communication and detail.

 

Obviously, devs & coders are typically super busy and rarely have time to partake in these forums, but still...i really wish EA would allow more BioWare devs to post from behind-the-code-curtain like this more often. imho, it would go a long way with building (or re-building) community trust as we head into what's probably gonna be the twilight of SWTOR's 10+ year run here soon.

 

So, THANK YOU Ms. Jen Harkness, hectic hardworking dev who hasn't posted since 2013 (and thank you Mr. Musco for endorsing the transparency) .

 

./tip-hat

+1

2011 early access founder here too. I haven't seen such an in-depth post like this. I too would love for more. I, though not a programmer, have seen and messed with code in modding (breaking games mostly b/c I didn't know code) and understand how cache, servers, client and their interaction works. It's painful to see the complaints by those that don't know how it works, nor how hectic the dev schedule is. This brings so much clarity, and worded in such a wonderful way that's easy for those not familiar with it to understand.

[HKtheindomitable]

(awesome post by JenHarkness)

 

Thank you so much for this post. So awesome! Great explanation.

 

PLEASE DO MORE OF THESE! "How it works." posts. Too many think it's a push of a button or a few key strokes and you're done. SCORPION and other shows involving "hacking" and/or "programming" are so far off the mark. I would love to see posts about "Why x is limited." or "Why x can't be done." Thinks like hood toggle, chat bubbles, weapon outfit designer, weapon dye. And even like "What can cause x to break and be hard to fix." and "Why does x that seems a simple fix is more complicated to fix than y which seems very complex." or even "Why making x, y, and z is not a quick process." We don't need company secrets. Basic common dev knowledge like what this post has. Like basic knowledge helping folks to understand how the PC model works.

[Alssaran]

As a founder in SWTOR and IT engineer, that was actually hilarious to read. Thank you.

 

Also, appreciate the transparency of explaining exactly what went wrong. It might not be necessary for people to understand that something has been fixed, but it's interesting to read in such a transparent way nonetheless.