Dissapearing ships

[Thrawnizator]

Recently introduced to ICW mod (by DeFreezer link). Enjoying it, but I hit one little snag. I don't know if it is related only to latest version or ICW in general.

Playing as Handy Empire, biggest map. Sending ships to Pantolomin. In orbit Empire has 1x Strike and 1x Carrack. Starting battle closing in on Golan stations and suddenly 3rd (Rebel/Republic) faction appears. Destroyed one Golan and AI executes retreat. Thinking: will be quicker this way than turn on gravity generators and pound everybody. After the battle didn't noticed at first anything.

I took NO loses during tactical combat. Realized that something was not right when looked later for reinforcements over Bilbringi. Looking into Pantolomin fleet and WTH: ships are missing! Capital ships (IIRC Phalanx+Syndic) disappeared leaving only (depleted slightly) screening force.

From what I read 3rd faction appearance is fairly common occurrence and it does mess game in some ways. Any tips?

[Corey]

As it says in the manual, the third faction appearing (raid fleets) is intended, not a bug, and we've never had any other reports of it causing any problem. I'm not sure what happened to you.

[Revanchist]

Recently introduced to ICW mod (by DeFreezer link). Enjoying it, but I hit one little snag. I don't know if it is related only to latest version or ICW in general.

Playing as Handy Empire, biggest map. Sending ships to Pantolomin. In orbit Empire has 1x Strike and 1x Carrack. Starting battle closing in on Golan stations and suddenly 3rd (Rebel/Republic) faction appears. Destroyed one Golan and AI executes retreat. Thinking: will be quicker this way than turn on gravity generators and pound everybody. After the battle didn't noticed at first anything.

I took NO loses during tactical combat. Realized that something was not right when looked later for reinforcements over Bilbringi. Looking into Pantolomin fleet and WTH: ships are missing! Capital ships (IIRC Phalanx+Syndic) disappeared leaving only (depleted slightly) screening force.

From what I read 3rd faction appearance is fairly common occurrence and it does mess game in some ways. Any tips?

Zoom in on the planet to see if the rest of your fleet is actually still there. I had that happen to me recently: galactic map said I had X units above a planet, really I had X+ Y units that they pancaked (2 fleets on the same fleet space).

[Thrawnizator]

I'm not sure either what happened to me. What I'm sure that it happened again once more over Bastion. Left fairly large fleet there. After few weeks all what left was few frigates and corvettes - all battleships just did Pooofff! Had to reinforce planet quickly with Furions - as I discovered it's the easiest way to keep planets (top of the line fighter spam [60-80] + 1-2 interdictors = obliterate anything AI can throw at me at any time)

My theory is: it has something to do with overflow of units on the map + appearance of 3rd faction (often I'm defeated because 3rd faction is eliminated faster than actual AI defender of the planet). I hit 'unresponsive units bug' shortly after conquering Bastion. Used DeFreezer tool - worked like a charm. First time bugged game came back to life - it felt really good after so many years of misery. 

BTW it was 100% repeatable bug. After reloading old save I hit same wall few times in same locations. So I just given up after defreezing. For the moment slowly slugging my way into Eastern part of the Galaxy. If I hit same kind of wall during new campaign I'll yell again.