SW3, Bug

[grinningsphinx]

In the optional Astartes mission, i bought a flight of 4 mercs from the station. I used them to farm the sector for a bit and they all died. Now i cannot buy another flight of mercs without them ALL warping in as Hostile....all reds and it doesnt matter which flight i choose. Saving/reloading doesnt help so its a saved script error i guess somewhere. Basically makes the game unplayable because of the huge wave of fighter guards around the MS... And if youve followed the storyline youve only 3 gen 2 fighters and some gen 3 weapons on the MS.


I havent done any sort of cheating in the game thus far, but missions like this warrant it. The programmers have no sense of difficulty pacing whatsoever.

[Trucidation]

Uh, that sector is "owned" by merc faction. By farming them, you've flagged them as hostile.

Edit:
The problem stems from hired mercs sharing same faction as "mercenary faction", that's my best guess. Solution, don't hire mercs until you've met a rep-fixer who can fix your problem with mercs.

Edit 2:
This is similar to the berserk hack bug to un-hostile them, and then suddenly having your other allies hostile you.

[grinningsphinx]

effectively it makes the mission un-completeable. I didnt do any special farming or cheats before reaching this point, and there is NO way to clear the fighter waves around the Astarte without being able to hire a merc flight.


More shit programming on the part of the Devs.....Hired mercs should generate there own faction.

[Trucidation]

That's certainly short-sighted on their part, but mercs suck up valuable exp. As you've probably read elsewhere, we hardly bother hiring them unless it's like near the endgame where you just want more bodies around. Even then they manage to die early in the confrontation.

This mission, uncompleteable or bugged? lol... many of us have cleared that entire sector out plenty of times without needing to hire mercs, even on hard mode. Plus, who says you need to fight them - you could always farm pirates elsewhere and use the loot gained to pay these guys off. Smart people will pick their battles wisely. It's the same like that guy who complained having always to mash the reload button and pray his team survives the next attempt. You don't learn anything that way.

[grinningsphinx]

That's certainly short-sighted on their part, but mercs suck up valuable exp. As you've probably read elsewhere, we hardly bother hiring them unless it's like near the endgame where you just want more bodies around. Even then they manage to die early in the confrontation.

This mission, uncompleteable or bugged? lol... many of us have cleared that entire sector out plenty of times without needing to hire mercs, even on hard mode. Plus, who says you need to fight them - you could always farm pirates elsewhere and use the loot gained to pay these guys off. Smart people will pick their battles wisely. It's the same like that guy who complained having always to mash the reload button and pray his team survives the next attempt. You don't learn anything that way.



Hmm....Xp is tiny anyway, and at the standard rate, only used to buy up your piloting for more advanced fighters.

Exactly, u use them for what i do, damage sinks...invaluable when fighting superior enemies.


I can guarantee you that you cant do it following the regular missions path like i did... You simply dont have enough creds or XP to even fly the advanced fighters at that point. I even did a little farming beforehand, and im no noob when it comes to these games....I started on Elite for the C-64 way back when lol..


Btw, it would take QUITE a long time to farm up 300,000 creds at this point in the game, using usual methods. Hell, i didnt even KNOW there were hidden caches of anything until i read some posts here...and the first inkling you get is at Hapheastus...and i thought i could range the turrets with particle guns lol..silly me...so i was waiting till I had some serious long range missiles to go back and check stuff out.

[grinningsphinx]

Since im saved to the system and if you leave the mission auto fails, I used Goblins script change to alter the rate of XP gain...Killing some mercs for awhile will hopefully net me some skills to fly the Gen 3 or 4 fighters, heh.

[Trucidation]

Yeah if you stuck to the mission script before that, there's not much wiggle room. That's one of the things they need to fix. If they didn't hide the quest text with FILETYPE DYNAMIC I'd change some dialog to make it clearer what's expected of the player at some points.

If you played Elite then you're certainly more experienced than me; I count Privateer and Freelancer as my early space sims (my favourite C-64 games would be Marble Madness and Archon). I didn't really get into Elite or maybe I just preferred the game not to be that open ended. So I wonder why you're complaining here, this game certainly isn't as challenging.

Prior to reaching this system you do remember the game asks for permission to auto-jump long distance, right? Shortcuts like that may seem like great convenience -- but by skipping all that "tedious" travel time, you miss out on huge opportunities. Of course, the grinding nature doesn't suit many people, but it's like life; if you take the easy way out, you'll pay for it later. You just happened to find out the hard way.

Fortunately for players, there are save games you can load from.