I haven't seen anything about this here so I'll make a thread. Several weeks ago Brentor was voted in commander on emp_canyon and could not place any refs (but could place buildings). This seemed like just usual strangeness, think he was able to fix it by exiting game and rejoining. A week or so ago I experienced the same thing, was voted in as commander on emp_canyon (I think with like 1 vote or something) and was unable to place any refineries, but was able to place buildings like normal. Could be a map specific bug, can't really say. No clue how to reproduce, figured I'd report it. What I recall of the round in case it helps: Opted in late, was 3 players on my team including myself. Got 1 vote and became commander. Did not join a squad. After commander vote ended I had neglected to choose a spawn point, went and selected spawn point and then spawned. Business as usual from there aside from not being able to place refineries.
I want to say I've had this happen to me on coast, but I think it was actually green but no refs could be placed. I think after someone hopped in and dropped a couple of refs I could do it too after I got back into the comm seat, but that was like 2 months ago or something so my memory was a bit hazy. But yeah, sometimes comm that's voted in can't place ref.
The reason I asked is because generally red/yellow mean the build is being prevented clientside and green means that the build is being prevented server side. For the ref not to dock to the resource point probably means either the trace isn't colliding with a resource point or its colliding with something else before it hits it. But I doubt there is anything anyone can do about these problems without reproducible steps.
Pretty much this. Similar problems tend to occur on Cyclopean and Streets of Fire. A change to ref placement is scheduled for the upcoming version. (Though a script/research tweak will probably come first) Which will fix this altogether.