Academy quest step "Build the Academy" is bugged and can't be completed.  There's two major bugs:

BUG #1.

1. Description

The quest step that asks you to contribute to global minor faction population. Should there be a turn timer here or not? Nothing happens when it goes to zero (there's no quest fail announcement or anything), but if the timer gets to zero the quest can't be completed either.

1. Example screenshots:

In my Riftborn game I managed to fill the pop requirement after the timer was over, but nothing happens. No fail, no completion, the quest just stays in your log forever. 

United Empire game: Quest at the start (I didn't try finishing this one due to most likely hitting the same bug again, plus bug #2 also makes it way more time consuming)

What I'm assuming is going on is that something got mixed up when making this co-op quest, because there's both types of global co-op quests; 

-the types with a turn timer but no upper completion limit and the reward goes to the best contributors at the end of the timer (f.ex. highest Food or Industry producing system)

-the types where there's an upper limit (f.ex. raise the Dust or Science output in the galaxy to a certain level) and the reward goes to the best contributors, but no turn timer

and the Academy quest accidentally got assigned both values.

1. Steps to Reproduce

Start the Academy co-op quest "Build the Academy". Try to finish the quest while turn timer is 0.

1. Reproducibility

Both the timer and pop requirement have appeared in all my games. If that itself the bug then 5/5. Haven't tried out completing the quest in more than one game due to Bug #2 making the requirement rather ridiculously time-consuming.

1. Expected Behavior?

I'm supposing one of these should be the expected behavior

A. There should be no turn timer and no "failure state". The quest completes once the required pop amount is reached. (most likely considering the wording)

B. There should be a turn timer and no "failure state", and no pop limit required to achieve. Once the turns are up the biggest contributor gets the reward. The quest completes.

C. Both the timer and required pop limit are intended, there is a failure state and the quest simply bugs out by not presenting a "quest failed" message. (least likely due to this quest line being an important global storyline quest)

BUG #2.

2. Description

Same quest. The quest seems to only count the player's own minor faction populations into quest completion requirement.

2. Steps to Reproduce

Start the Academy co-op quest "Build the Academy".

2. Reproducibility

5/5

Expected Behavior

Quest counts all the participating players and AI's minor faction pop units into the required amount.

NOTES:

Latest version. I also discussed the bugs elsewhere and someone said they managed to complete the quest once, but only when managing to adhere to both Bug #1 and Bug #2's limitations, namely completing the quest in the time limit using only the player's own minor faction pops since other players aren't counted.

SAVE FILES ATTACHED

ACADEMY BUGGED RIFTBORN.zip

ACADEMY BUGGED UE.zip

Update:

It seems bug #2 turned out to be even worse than I thought. Continuation to previous UE save: I have 165 minor faction pops, but the quest shows only 107. So not only is it not counting all players' minor faction pops, it isn't even counting my own.

Hypothesis:

-The game is only counting my primary species towards the quest goal for some reason. Population screen shows a slightly lower number, but I'm assuming it isn't counting my Mezari in transit. By the way, the leftover Imperial pops are another bug; if you convert from UE to Mezari while having pops in transit, the pops in transit retain their original Imperial type after arriving.

SAVE FILE:

UE ACADEMY BUGGED 2.zip

Please fix the Academy quest line hastily. There's other thread where people are talking about other various issues with Academy related quests as well. This was a big, hyped up major feature and I'm sure you've put a lot of work into this, but releasing a game in a state where the main plot quests aren't even functional is something that needs to be taken care of with utmost priority.

One last save file as continuation to same UE game. It seems the quest counter has actually gone completely bonkers as it counts even less pops than it did before. I have no idea what's going on. Quest goal shows 51/212 minor faction pops in entire galaxy, while my own empire alone has whopping 258 minor faction pops.

UE ACADEMY BUGGED 3.zip

EDIT:

Went back to check and also attached new save of an older Horatio game, same bug. 113 minor faction pops in my empire alone, while the quest counter for galaxy wide minor faction pop number shows 88/116.

HORATIO ACADEMY BUGGED.zip

@Hera35: We've been looking further into these issues and found a fix. This is a quest we thought was fully functional for the release. The fix will be part of the upcoming updates, hopefully for the next one. Thank you all for this very useful report and sorry for the inconvenient.