Task scheduling gets stuck

I am currently trying to get my grip on OptaPlanner as it seems to be the perfect solution for a problem I have.

Basically the Project job scheduling example is what I am going for, but as I only know my Java basics this is way to complex to start with. So I am trying to start with a very limited example and work my way up from there:

I have tasks with a duration and one defined predecessor. The planning entity is the time each task starts.

I have a hard score that punishes tasks starting before starttime+duration of its predecessor. I also have a soft score that tries to reduce gaps, keeping the overall process as short as possible.

public HardSoftScore calculateScore(Schedule schedule) {
    int hardScore = 0;
    int softScore = 0;

    for (Task task : schedule.getTaskList()) {
        int endTime = task.getAllocation().getStartTime() + task.getDuration();
        softScore = -endTime;

        for (Task task2 : schedule.getTaskList()) {
            if(task.getId()!=task2.getId()){
                if( task2.getPredecessorId()==task.getId()) {
                    if (endTime > task2.getAllocation().getStartTime()) {
                        hardScore += task2.getAllocation().getStartTime() - endTime;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    return HardSoftScore.valueOf(hardScore, softScore);

}

This is the solver config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<solver>
    <!--<environmentMode>FAST_ASSERT</environmentMode>-->

    <!-- Domain model configuration -->
    <solutionClass>com.foo.scheduler.domain.Schedule</solutionClass>
    <planningEntityClass>com.foo.scheduler.domain.Task</planningEntityClass>

    <!-- Score configuration -->
    <scoreDirectorFactory>
        <scoreDefinitionType>HARD_SOFT</scoreDefinitionType>
        <simpleScoreCalculatorClass>com.foo.scheduler.solver.score.SchedulingSimpleScoreCalculator</simpleScoreCalculatorClass>
    </scoreDirectorFactory>

    <!-- Optimization algorithms configuration -->
    <termination>
        <maximumSecondsSpend>100</maximumSecondsSpend>
    </termination>
    <constructionHeuristic>
        <constructionHeuristicType>FIRST_FIT</constructionHeuristicType>
    </constructionHeuristic>
    <localSearch>
        <acceptor>
            <entityTabuSize>7</entityTabuSize>
        </acceptor>
        <forager>
            <acceptedCountLimit>1000</acceptedCountLimit>
        </forager>
    </localSearch>
</solver>

The problem is that this works great as long as I only have the hard score. But of course it has gaps. As soon as I add the soft score everything gets stuck after about 10 steps. Why?

[...]
2014-05-03 20:01:31,966 [main] DEBUG     Step index (10), time spend (495), score (-35hard/-66soft),     best score (-34hard/-68soft), accepted/selected move count (1000/19884) for picked step (com.foo.scheduler.domain.Task@35480096 => com.foo.scheduler.domain.Allocation@f9a4520).
2014-05-03 20:03:11,471 [main] DEBUG     Step index (11), time spend (100000), score (-35hard/-65soft),     best score (-34hard/-68soft), accepted/selected move count (0/105934687) for picked step (com.foo.scheduler.domain.Task@7050c91f => com.foo.scheduler.domain.Allocation@47c44bd4).