Thanks for explaining this, James! It feels nice to once again understand the logic of the game.
Indeed, I played the previous build of the game (v0_851) before this one (v12_02_2018) and have old saves lying around. With the new build, I started anew, to start harvesting bugs anew.
While we are on the topic of save files, are all of the save files represented by one physical file? (savedGames_1_11_2017.gd on my system). I'm asking because I wanted to post a save file on a forum, but I'm not sure if I am in fact posting all of them.