Bugs:K240

This page details bugs of K240.

K240 suffers from various bugs, including one major game-breaking bug. Since 2023, a fan-made patch called K240-Bugfix fixes several of these issues.

Fleet Crash Bug

A critical bug can occur as a result of fleet movement. When fleet is sent to an asteroid, it may appear to teleport instantly to the target asteroid, while the ships which comprise that fleet remain at the origin. When the fleet is sent elsewhere, the game will crash. It may be possible to resolve the issue by disbanding the fleet.

This bug appears in the original release, K240 v1.886. A patched release, K240 v2.000, appears to fix that bug. This is the only bug addressed by the v2.000 release.

Ship Repair Bug

The Repair Facility building fails to properly repair ships as described in the game's manual. This has three main issues.

Only ships in hangars are repaired, not ships in orbit. This means large ships can never be repaired.

Shields are not properly taken into account when repairing ships. A ship damaged below its base Armour value will only ever repair to the base Armour value for the ship class.

Ships with any amount of intact shields, i.e. more Armour than the base for the ship class, will continue to repair above their maximum. They will repair like this up to a maximum of 255. One more point of repair will loop back around to 0, which will effectively destroy the ship, as ships at 0 Armour do not repair further.

Asteros Ore and Powerplant Bugs

Asteros ore will deplete from a colonized asteroid, even if no Mines are build. The cause is one of several bugs and quirks in the Powerplant code.

According to the game's manual, the intended effect is that each Powerplant consumes 1 unit of Asteros every 4 days, producing 32 MW/day, and 8 MW/day if out of Asteros. Instead, each colonized asteroid loses 1 Asteros every 4 days, regardless of the number of Powerplants. This occurs even if there are zero Powerplants. Each Powerplant produces 32 MW/day if there is any un-mined Asteros left, and cannot use mined Asteros at all.

The 8 MW/day secondary power mentioned in the manual also does not occur; is likely a misreading of the code for the C.P.U., which produces 8 MW/day and appears next to the Powerplant in the code. The Powerplant blueprint also incorrectly states the amount of power produced by the Powerplant as 20 MW/day; 32 is hexadecimal 0x20.

Other Ore Bugs

Selenium appears to be generated incorrectly. In asteroids where Selenium is found, it has a minimum value of 500 units and a maximum of 100, which doesn't make sense. In practice, due to the way the RNG works, this results in a range from 500 to 898. It may be that the Selenium maximum was intended to be 1000.

When shipbuilding is under construction, a shipyard may incorrectly report that there is insufficient ore. This mainly occurs when building an Orbital Space Dock, or building a large ship using the Orbital Space Dock, since the ores used by small ships are usually plentiful. The reason is that the shipyard window compares the amount of ore in storage to the total amount needed, instead of the remaining amount needed. Despite the incorrect readout, the ship builds as normal.

Warp Generator Bugs

The Warp Generator is a technology which allows a ship to phase out for three days out of every five, reducing all damage taken to one point. However, it doesn't always work as intended.

When hit with a Static Inducer, the Warp Generator will cause the ship to take 1 damage instead of the usual 0.

Warp Generator has no effect when used by alien ships. The graphical effect still occurs, but damage is not reduced.

The sprites for the Warp Generator and Static Inducer appear to be mixed up between the ship construction screen and the blueprint shop screen. In the blueprint shop, the X-shaped blueprint is the Static Inducer, while in the ship building screen it is the Warp Generator that is X-shaped.

Photon/Plasma Mix-Up

The Photon Cannon ship hardpoint deals more damage than the Plasma Cannon, despite the Plasma Cannon being twice as expensive. Photon dealing more damage is consistent throughout the game, such as in surface-to-air turrets.

Spy Peek

When pressing a hotkey to go from one asteroid to another, the screen moves to the asteroid before checking whether the player is permitted to do so. This allows the player to peek at alien asteroids briefly without a spy satellite in orbit.

Missing Missile Sprite Animations

Several missile sprites have animations which are never seen. This is because animations are is paused when a window is open. This includes the missile construction window, which is the only screen where the missile sprites are visible.

Date Loop

Each mission starts play on date E2.380.01 and increments at a rate of 01 per day. However, if you play long enough to reach E2.999.99, it loops around to E2.000.01. You would need to play the same mission for over 32 hours in-game time to reach this, and in practice the timer pauses when any window is open.

There is no day 00, so each year is actually 99 days long, not 100. Also, events like mining or repair which are said to occur every n days actually occur on days divisible by n instead. For example, a Mine should drill one ore every four days, but after day 96 it will not mine again until day 4, seven days later.

Kll-Kp-Qua Dummied Building

The first alien, the Kll-Kp-Qua, will occasionally build a tactical group of four buildings, three of which are the Turret (blue and red type, in fact Plasma Turret), Missile Bay, and Screen Generator. The fourth building occupies the slot normally used by the Anti-Missile Pod, but this alien does not have this technology, and has no building which occupies that slot.

The result is that they still place a scaffold for the building, but it does not produce any building. It may be related to the Science Hive, a missing building for which a sprite and entry exist two slots after the Anti-Missile Pod, but it is not included in any possible build group. It may also be that the Anti-Missile Pod was simply removed from this alien to reduce their difficulty, as they are the first alien in the game.

Clicking on an alien scaffold while in Tactical building view can cause junk to appear on the screen.

Ship Armour bug

The Orbital Space Dock, and all ships built with the Orbital Space Dock, start with -1 Armour for each of six unused or empty hardpoint slots. For example, a Terminator with all 4 hardpoint slots filled will start with -2 Armour, and one with all four hardpoints empty will start with -6 Armour.