REF: Warning! Illegal ship type: XX or Unidentified ship.

[texwiller]

Good morning, fellow CNOs!

I'm experiencing difficulties with the "Illegal ship type" warning. 
Playing now in the ealy '60's, I have designed and commissioned a class of CA, CL and DDs to rebuild my fleet after a protracted war. 
After a few turns, I saved the game and exited the program.

I resumed the game after a few days.
After surpassing the usual "Warning" messages and returning to the main screen, I shifted to the "Build Ship" page, where the ominous warning messages started to pop-up.  Moving back to the main page, I started to "Open [the] data" of all the ships in the Fleet. Eventually, I found that those very same new units designed and commissioned in the previous session were "Unidentified Ships".  The "ship design file" is indeed in the relevant folder, but as I opened it, the infamous "Error: Illegal Design" appeared for each of them. The ships are obviously a liability and despite the time and money invested in them, they are absolutely useless. 

It is indeed frustrating and since it's a recurrent error, I would like to hear if there's any solution to this obnoxious issue.
Can I pick your brain about it? Thanks for your time and patience. 
TEX

[aeson]

I've never seen that happen. It sounds to me like your design files became corrupted somehow.

Also, what 'usual warning messages' are you seeing when you start / load the game?

[texwiller]

Hello there aeson, 
thanks for the quick reply.

About the files becoming "corrupt"… I wonder if might it be of any help to know that the "RTW2" folder is NOT located on an actual computer: I actually installed the game on a Corsair Flash Voyager® GTX USB 3.0 256GB flash drive. Since I commute A LOT, I have the possibility to run RTW2 on a variety of computers (company laptop, company desktop, personal laptop and so on).

The "unusual warning messages" is actually a long series of "Warning! Illegal ship type: Unidentified ship" pop-ups: when I took the attached screenshot, I counted 134 clicks on the "OK" button, before the game started. 



[EDIT: the same "Warning! Illegal ship type:Unidentified ship" pop-ups attacks me every time an enemy ship is seized while under construction in my home country (e.g.: playing now as Germany, while at war with Japan for 2 months, I have seized 13 Japanese ships in various stages of construction in my docks. Oddly enough: I can't see their specs, can't complete them and my only choice is to scrap them]  

[williammiller]

Hello texwiller - The game is not designed to run from a portable drive, hence the issues you have encountered. The games' APS (Anti-Piracy System) will trigger if the game is ran on multiple machines without being activated. I would be happy to help you activate the game on another machine if needed, just let me know.

FYI, here is the help thread on activation and related issues: nws-online.proboards.com/thread/2094/issues-activation-online-store

Thanks!

[texwiller]

Hello there William,
thanks for your reply.
I had no idea that the APS could spring in a legitimately-licensed and activated copy of RTW2: few months ago Christopher D. helped me solve an issue I experienced with the activation code.
At the time of purchasing RTW2 I was stationed overseas and I dowloaded and installed it directly on the GTX, since I was mainly using a company-owned laptop with no Admin privileges.
Thanks!