Yeah, that was my not very well worded meaning for "random".  
 
I've only ever seen low to high as each take lane is stacked on the next.  Obviously there's some catalyst for it, just nothing I've run into.   Either that, or I have tracks in this state that I just haven't expanded!
 
I am curious though... when the lanes are numbered in reverse, is the latest take still on top, despite it's number?

I am finding putting region based effects on a lane causes all the other takes in the selected area to disappear and the new region edited clip to occupy the bottom (oldest) lane.  I discovered this by accident, because the first lane was a guide vocal and I had subsequently muted that lane.  When I created the a region based Melodyne edit, I could not hear the vocal anymore and that's when I expanded out the lanes and saw the problem.  I would have either expected that the melodyne clip should have stayed on the layer it was being applied to, or created a new lane - not re-use the original take lane.
 
So, while the layers are much better in X3, there are indeed still some strange quirks.

stevec
 curious though... when the lanes are numbered in reverse, is the latest take still on top, despite it's number?

 
Based on what he's shown and said so far, it appears to me that the lanes are numbered correctly according to the take order, but the lanes are not placed consistently descending order according to those numbers.
 
The only way I've been able to get lanes out of order like this is by deleting and then undoing the delete. When you undelete a lane, it gets restored one position higher in the stack. And if you delete and undelete several, they'll maintain their descending order, but will all be above the lane that they were previously below. This works fine if you delete takes from the top down, and then decided to restore them, but things get weird otherwise. In a perfect world, I think lanes would have an immutable position index so they would always restore to their original order. This might incidentally squash whatever bug is causing this faulty ordering.
 
I'm wondering if some if this might have to do with opening old projects in X3.

This is indeed an X2 project that I've moved to X3b.  It was about 1/2 done in X2. 
 
I use "comp" two different ways.  I use it to help write and develop new lead sections and then I'll use it to get the "keeper" tracks.  I was in the write and develop stage in X3b when I noticed the comp numbering issue.  The way I write and develop is to put a track in loop mode and start laying down ideas for a lead section.  Normally, I record about 10 to 20 takes to see if something bubbles up that I like.  Then I'll hit undo recording, which removes all takes, and I'll start refining the lead ideas.  The process continues until I've got some pretty solid lead ideas and then I'll set up as session specifically to get the keeper tracks.  So, during the write and develop stage I do not delete individual takes.  Instead, I undo the whole session so that I can start again building on the previous ideas...mentally.

brundlefly
Based on what he's shown and said so far, it appears to me that the lanes are numbered correctly according to the take order, but the lanes are not placed consistently descending order according to those numbers.

This is indeed my experience
 

brundlefly
I'm wondering if some if this might have to do with opening old projects in X3.

 
Possibly.  The two songs on which I have noticed problems were both initiated in earlier versions of Sonar.

Interesting...   I haven't done any comping in pre-X3 projects, and also haven't seen any mis-numbered lanes.   So perhaps there's something to Dave's suggestion that the version where the project originated is a factor...
 

stevec
Interesting...   I haven't done any comping in pre-X3 projects, and also haven't seen any mis-numbered lanes.   So perhaps there's something to Dave's suggestion that the version where the project originated is a factor...
 

Well, that will be easy enough to test.  I'll give it a shot later today.

Cool, I'm certainly curious to see what happens!
 

I've seen this once as well. Can't reproduce it. I even the session with takes 1 -10 starting at 1 going down to 10 and takes 11 - 18 from 18 going down so takes 18 and 1 were next to each other. I was loop recording whether that's relevant or not but I couldn't reproduce it in the same project or since.

Just got through with a new session and this issue not only popped up, it got much much worse.  This is a project I started in X2a, not sure it this is a factor or not.
 
I was recording three harmony parts at one, each to its own track.  We punched in an average of 8 times each at 6 different parts of the song, for around 50 takes total takes per track.  Things seemed to go smoothly until I tried to edit the various takes down to one or two "keepers" per section for further work.  The symptoms are:
 
1) takes out of order as described above.  One chunk will be in descending order, and then another chunk in ascending order.  Total of around 4-5 "chunks" in various orders, with a few random stragglers thrown in for god measure (e.g., take #24 down at the bottom while 20-23 and 25-28 are all above).
 
2) even better, there are multiple takes that are doubled.  The clips are not doubled, but there are e.g. two takes #16 one with a clip and one without
 
3) dragging clips around to clean them up results in frequent random behavior that seems related to the take doubling noted above.  Sometimes moving a clip to an empty spot on e.g. take #16 results in it seeming  to disappear. I noticed this in X2a as well and had thought it was fixed in X3.  Perhaps a new twist, or at least I only just noticed, is that I can sometimes find the clip at the *other* take 16.  
 
4) more than one clip on some takes.  Given the way we recorded this should not have happened.
 
In short, this was a major mess that took me a long time to try to partially fix out so I could recreate usable tracks.  I did not notice anything like this on other projects, but I never had this many takes before.  I am curious if anyone else uses this many takes and what your experience has been.
 
I already sent a bug report about the track order issue and they responded it was being investigated. I will follow up with this additional info.