Warning: Bugged trophies

[Dauersack]

This thread is supposed to be a warning to potential new players, as well as a place to hopefully gather some helpful information for me and others who are affected by this games buggy trophies, either now or in future. Anyone who thinks about buying this game needs to be aware of the potential bugs with the trophies, I sure as hell would have thought twice about buying it had I known about this beforehand.

 

Most of the games trophies did not pop normally for me despite all conditions for them to pop being met several times over, some have popped with several hour delays or after some trickery, some actually popped normally, others required special measures to pop. Some pm exchanges have told me that not all players seem to have these kinds of issues at least. Looking around online also has confirmed that not everyone is affected by it, not a lot of information on trophies/achievements bugging out, though there are posts about it, but first let's talk about which trophies were affected for me and which are not.

 

Update: Some of the trophies just seem bugged in general, though not severely, they will unlock with delays or small trickery like restarting the game and fulfilling the requirements again, or waiting in the option menu for a while. The ones that bugged out hard likely did so because of issues with the userdata, caused by not playing in the required order, which would not be a problem in a somewhat normally programmed game. The game is very badly programmed, as are its trophies, this is pretty obvious given that starting the tutorial will instantly unlock the trophy for landing on a desert planet that is normally supposed to unlock when landing on the D class planet in new game. Further disruption was likely caused by me abandoning the tutorial on my very first go because I only wanted to unlock a single bronze anyway during that session, as well as me starting out with some challenges that play on the planet types that also unlock trophies for landing on them (though they sadly did not unlock them), further confusing the game and being the most likely cause given that, except for 2, all the trophies that bugged out hard had specific planetary requirements like landing on specific planets or reaching a certain population on specific planets. Deleting the user profile over and over again led to any trophies, except the tutorial one which required a more advanced trick, unlocking after a while.

 

 

Clean trophies from my experience, these unlocked right after fulfilling the trophies conditions without any issues.

 

Link To The Future

Build two structures and connect them

 

Desert Landing (unlocked in tutorial, which is a desert planet, not the new game or challenge desert planet)
Land on the desert planet

 

Megastructures

Build all massive structures

 

Challenger
Complete one challenge

 

Express Starport

Complete Starport Atlantis challenge in less than 15 days

 

 

 

Hyper Megalomaniac
Build monoliths on all planets

 

 

Absolute Domination

Complete all milestones on all planets

 

 

 

 

 

All of them popped with no delay and no other issues.

 

 

Next are trophies that have popped with some issues, and since thats most of them I will not bother to post trophy icons for them or their requirement since they all fall into the same category anyway.

 

Space Farmer, Capitalist, Cyber Miner, Robo Colony, High Spirits, Stargazer, Steel Dome, Hoarder,  Police State, Genetic Engineer, Hyper Challenger and Express Dark Colony.

Most of them are basic trophies you unlock casually while playing, building certain buildings and having certain numbers of some resources, citizens or bots. None of them unlocked normally, some unlocked without doing anything special a few minutes or an hour after meeting the requirements, others showed no signs of doing so. A few of them then popped after restarting the game and loading the save, two did not unlock even after that but after yet again restarting, reloading and finally pressing options and spending a few seconds in that menu they popped for some reason. Hyper Challenger and Express Dark Colony do not really seem like they fit in this list, and their easier counterparts unlocked normally, which I think mainly happened because I unlocked these two at the same time due to the challenge in question that I sped through also being my 4th challenge, though they unlocked with the same methods, just took a few extra minutes.

 

 

Now to the real stinkers and what I have done to unlock them.

 

Planetary Apprentice
Complete tutorial

This one seemed straightforward, there is a tutorial, you complete it and thats that, sadly that is not how it went. I completed the tutorial, nothing, did it again, still nothing, did it a few times more but the result was always the same. As a more radical method I saved my files on an external hard drive, deleted the game, deleted my game data on the ps4, reinstalled the game for a clean start and completed the tutorial once again, but it still refused to unlock. Given that there is no way to save in the tutorial I was kinda at my wits end for this one, small variations like completing the tutorial with different game speed did not do anything.

 

Possible cause for a bug: Abandoned the tutorial on my first go because I only started the game to unlock a single bronze in order to make the game visible on my profile. The trophy unlocked just fine on an alt account.

 

Solution: Thanks to @HuntingFever for this idea. Create an alternate profile on your console in offline mode, log out your main one, start the game, go right to the tutorial (don't click on any other mode as I am not sure accepting the reroute to the tutorial works) and finish it, hopefully unlocking the trophy, close the game, log in with your main and sync it. I have not tried the online offline switching in the middle of completing it like someone else suggested, so there is a small chance that also managed to unlock it, you may want to try that before putting in the effort of creating another profile.

 

Frozen Landing / Moon Landing / Storm Landing

3 trophies same concept, starting a game on the planet in question so the colony ship lands there, which unlocked fine for the desert planet but refused to do it for the others. Not much to do except trying it repeatedly, which did not unlock them, or just further playing on a planet, which also did not unlock them, or reinstalling, which did not unlock them.

 

Possible cause for a bug: I did not play new game right away after the tutorial, I went with challenges because they banned some buildings, making the first games far smaller in scope and therefore easier to manage. That would be a possible explanation for the Frozen Landing bugging out as one of the challenges was on a frozen planet. Perhaps the desert planet unlocking on the tutorial world confused it, really not sure what exactly caused it.

 

Solution: Currently unlocked: all. Deleting the user profile and landing on the planet in question over and over again ultimately led to it popping for all, took quite a few tries though. Just to be safe I recommend to avoid the challenges until they are all unlocked, as the game seems to be too badly programmed to fully differentiate between challenge planets and normal game planets, a theory that is supported by the desert landing trophy being unlocked in the freaking tutorial, even if doing the challenges on these planets did not do the same for the respective trophies, it may confuse the game by telling it that you already played on such a world and therefore not give you the trophies without a fight.

 

Desert Base / Frozen Base / Moon Base / Storm Base

Same shit as the ones above really, just with reaching 100 colonists on each planet, and this time not even the desert one unlocked normally. Going far above 100 did nothing, reloading, options, reinstalling and reloading, nothing did anything, even intentionally murdered some of my colonists to go below 100 and go over 100 a second time in the same game, still no success.

 

Possible reason for a bug: None really, unless they are tied to their respective Landing counterparts, though in that case at least Desert Base should have unlocked normally.

 

Solution: Desert Base unlocked together with Overpopulation when I loaded up one of my savefiles on a desert planet after deleting the user profile. Frozen Base unlocked with a big delay on another savefile, while the last 2 unlocked normally after the game data was deleted. While this solution ultimately led to me unlocking these trophies, it messed up the milestones, so they had to be done all over again in order to unlock the trophy for milestones and building a monolith everywhere.

 

Overpopulation
Build a base with at least 350 colonists

When I reached 352, one of the games many bugs somehow made no new colonists appear, increasing prestige and having welfare above 90% did nothing to change that, the mechanic was just gone from that save. Going at exactly 350, or above to 352 did nothing though so I doubt going higher than that would have changed anything. Saved right before going to 350 to repeat it, nothing unlocked it though. Did some fooling around with bots and visitors, all were fruitless, same with the good old option menu, save and reload, close game and reload, somehow this one is more broken than the delayed ones despite being pretty much the same kind of trophy, this one bugged out the hard way.

 

Possible reason for a bug: No clue whatsoever

 

Solution: Same as with the planetary ones. Unlocked instantly after I deleted the user profile and then reloaded a savefile of mine that was close to meet the requirements, when it passed the 350 population it unlocked the trophy, as well as the one for the citizens on the desert planet. The fact that this was the only not planet specific trophy to require the deletion of the user data to pop is pretty confusing to me.

 

 

I am certain that I can't be the only one who ran into such issues with this game, so I hope this thread ends up helping a few unlucky players, and deters people who are not into bad games with buggy trophies from even starting this abomination of a game. Definitely one of the buggiest games I have played so far, trophies, gameplay, mechanics, just a big mess that I will never go back to. In fact I don't ever want to play any game from this developer again.

Edited September 17, 2022 by Dauersack

[Dauersack]

Update: Testing around a bit more and exchanging some information indicates that the issue is tied to the user profile with some of the trophies. Deleting it and starting fresh but using ones own savefiles allowed me to unlock some of the bugged trophies, like the one for 100 pops on a desert planet, 350 total pops and landing on a frozen planet (used my save for that because the frozen planet is not unlocked by default), even landing on a gas giant moon popped but with a MASSIVE several hour delay, though not yet the one for landing on a storm planet. I have tried that before but was not successful, and it is far from reliable so it has to be done several times with some trophies, but it does work.

 

The trophy for 100 citizens on a frozen planet unlocked with a big delay as well, the one for 100 citizens on a gas giant moon has yet to unlock, same for the storm planet. Even with the deleted user profile it still seems to be highly luck based, very delayed and fiddling around with it by endless reloading and restarting seems mandatory. Starting fresh again repeatedly and reloading the saves on the planets in question will ultimately result in all of the planet specific ones being unlocked, of that I have no doubt by now, though it will probably take me a while because all this fooling around with my savefiles and userdata, all the restarting, not to mention the game crashing every other time I go back to the main menu in order to reload, really kill my motivation to even start up my console.

I can only hope that the big trophy for all the milestones will not bug out, as for that one the trick with the user data is not an option due to the fact that deleting the user profile gets rid of the milestones for good, and even reloading a game with them all completed does not switch them back to completed. This means that once the planet specific trophies are out of the way I have to redo them all on the 4 planets, meaning I had to do most of this twice, and hope the trophy actually unlocks so that I can finally move on to the rest of the challenges, some of which I will also have to redo.

The one trophy that still vehemently refuses to unlock despite everything, even deleted user profile, is the one for completing the tutorial. I have tried everything several times at this point except for trying to do it on another console, so due to a lack of options I will not bother with it anymore until every other trophy is out of the way, and with my motivation being low that may take a few weeks, because as I already hinted at, the games buggy, shitty and barely working as intended at times so motivating myself to put in the hours will be a slow process.

Tutorial one out of the way due to some player input, solution is posted above, or read the post below me if you are interested.

 

I have not yet touched any of the challenges with the new user profile, so it makes sense for me to assume that me doing the challenges before the normal game had something to do with it completely shitting itself and making it impossible to pop some of the trophies, as the challenges also have desert, frozen, gas giant and storm planets that may confuse the game when they are started in that mode first instead of the normal mode. Does not explain why the tutorial trophy broke or why the one for 350 total pops gave me trouble despite not being planet specific, though if it allows me to unlock all the others, even if it is with delays and requiring tons of reloads, restarts and deleting the user profile over and over again, then that explanation is good enough for me.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Dauersack

[HuntingFever]

One thing you can try for the Tutorial trophy is to create a new user profile on your console but don't connect it to PSN, just boot up the game and get the trophy then close the game. Now sign into PSN with the login details of your primary account, then sync the trophies. By doing this, the trophy should appear in the trophy list on your main profile - if it does, great, delete the other account then go about your day but if it doesn't, I'm out of ideas .

[Dauersack]

On 9/7/2022 at 1:56 AM, HuntingFever said:

One thing you can try for the Tutorial trophy is to create a new user profile on your console but don't connect it to PSN, just boot up the game and get the trophy then close the game. Now sign into PSN with the login details of your primary account, then sync the trophies. By doing this, the trophy should appear in the trophy list on your main profile - if it does, great, delete the other account then go about your day but if it doesn't, I'm out of ideas .

Ha, that actually did the trick. Unlocked it just fine on the new account, likely because this time I actually finished the tutorial on the first go instead of leaving the game after unlocking one trophy, also no detour to the challenges, this saves me the trouble of trying it with another console. Thank you very much for this idea

 

Edited October 19, 2023 by Dauersack