I was playing a normal "random" map, nothing special. Just finished a normal turn, nothing special.

This message box stating "Accoring to UP law <blah><blah><blah> effective immediately a trade federation <blah><blah><blah> unarmed freighters may not be attacked by any armed ship <blah><blah><blah>" popped up. I pressed "DONE". It popped up again. I pressed "DONE". It popped up AGAIN. I pressed "DONE"..... well I think you've got the gist by now, no?

Nothing, not even Task Manager would force break out of this loop.

I had to hit the plug. Of course, obviously I also could not save at this point, losing me god knows how much gameplay.

To which then f****** Windows 10 forced "f-k u" updates then chose to be a red rag to a bull by deciding to do a massive 2 hours forced update whether I wanted it or not. (So yep, I'm pissed right now :<)

Anyway what just happened with this message box appearing and crashing the game by putting it in a never ending loop?

It was an armed ship with a survey module that was set on "auto survey" and trying to survey an anomaly that just so happened, against all odds, was right in the middle of a trade route and it's freighter was also in that exact same spot at the same time. So the survey ship was trying to "attack" the freighter as well..... but that still doesn't excuse why it then just kept on trying to do it again and again in an eternal loop!

GalCiv2's testers did not spot that one did they? Mind you, it was a once every 50 years event..... trust me to get it no probs, 1 billion to one against may a well be a 1:1 dead cert when it comes to annoying little turd events happening to me! :/

It kept trying to do it again and again because that particular anomaly was being selected again and again as the next one to go for.

I don't understand the auto-survey algorithm, but I do know that if you have a bunch of survey ships spread out and auto-surveying, then they'll eventually all cluster up as they start targeting the same anomalies. They don't just go after the next closest one, or whatever.

Bookwyrm627 is right. Survey ships on auto-survey are always going for the closest anomaly. Because the UP law prevents the ship from actually moving onto the tile, no movement gets spent. So the ship keeps trying and trying, creating the loop.

I've actually run into this issue myself once or twice over the 3000+ hours I've played the game over the years. So I get the frustration. For the future, may I suggest not arming your survey ships while the Trade Federation UP law is active? Or perhaps moving them manually? The auto-survey algorithm just isn't equipped to handle such edge-cases.

At the very least, reduce the auto-save interval to something like 4 weeks. That way you won't lose too much progress, if something bad happens again.