Escort Missions Never End

user1679 · Post by **user1679** » Fri, 20. Jul 18, 23:45

Sorry for the wrong forum but the 'New Topic' button in Technical Support just redirects me to the forum index.

I'm playing X3AP with XRM and a few other scripts installed, on a custom mission (I started with 1,000 credits and a Buster) and have an issue where none of the escort quests will end. I picked up a quest from Terracorp HQ in Home of Light to escort a convoy to the station. I followed the guidance arrows and jumped 2 sectors over and followed the convoy to the station.

Problem is, they won't dock to end the mission. Communicating with the convoy and station once in sector. There is not option to 'complete' a mission. I tried two things:

1. Let the game sit at normal speed for 1 hour. The pirates that kept spawning were easily destroyed by police forces.

2. Let the game sit at 800% SETA for 1/2 hour. The pirates that kept spawning were easily destroyed by police forces.

This has happened with all escort missions, regardless of the sector. I cannot get any of them to complete. My list of mods / scripts are:

* Immersive GUI / HUD (or PureX HUD, not sure which I like better)
* Large Gates
* Auto Jump
* Cheat Package (only activated unlimited salvage insurance)
* Docking Lockup Fix
* Freight Distribution Network Lite (FDNL)
* Gates No Rep Loss
* Marine Repairs
* Numeric Ranks (NRR)
* Follow Me
* Salvage Command Suite
* Salvage Commands and NPCs
* Sector Takeover (STO)
* Phanon Corp (albion prelude only)
* Improved Races
* LIFE

Any script that was part of an SPK file was unpacked using Package Explorer and installed manually.

user1679 · Post by **user1679** » Sat, 21. Jul 18, 09:13

Well, I figured out how to end this mission... I had to leave the sector once the ships had jumped in. As soon as I jumped back into Argon Prime, I got the alerts that the three ships had docked.

Seems a bit exploitable, if I had a better ship, I could've just sat and farmed the endless pirates that spawned because the ships wouldn't dock while I was in the sector.

SirNukes · Post by **SirNukes** » Sat, 21. Jul 18, 21:53

That is a general problem with escort missions, or just merchant ship travel in general. If a ship lining up to dock or go through a gate gets shot, it will cancel its maneuver and start flying in combat zigzags. Slow merchants then take a while after the attacker is dealt with to line up another docking, and in that time the escort mission generates more attackers that disrupt the docking again.

If you go out of sector, ships will dock or go through a gate when reaching it on the map, avoiding the long maneuver. The drawback is that OOS has lower simulation precision, increasing the risk the merchant will get outright killed before its escorts or police engage attackers.

The other solution would be to engage the attackers before they can get a shot off at the merchant, to avoid disruption. I think this is the more generally expected way for the mission to play out. Police ships can't be relied on to engage quickly.

Exploiting this to farm attackers doesn't really matter; combat missions are easy to find if you need more stuff to kill.

TechSY730 · Post by **TechSY730** » Sun, 22. Jul 18, 19:41

LIFE has a known problem where one of its director scripts interferes with missions when ships get attacked. A way to fix it is described at: https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php ... 56#4606456

user1679 · Post by **user1679** » Mon, 23. Jul 18, 04:21

SirNukes wrote: The other solution would be to engage the attackers before they can get a shot off at the merchant, to avoid disruption. I think this is the more generally expected way for the mission to play out. Police ships can't be relied on to engage quickly.

That's what I was doing initially but on a "custom" mission, you only have a buster with a max speed of 140 km/s, 2 guns and 1000 credits. Not enough to money or reputation to buy anything and a ship that's 1/3 the speed of the pirates.

The ship isn't fast enough so the pirates constantly go out of range and the guns aren't strong enough to wear through their shields. I find that some of the haulers seem to stop while I'm in combat and wait.

user1679 · Post by **user1679** » Mon, 23. Jul 18, 04:24

TechSY730 wrote:LIFE has a known problem where one of its director scripts interferes with missions when ships get attacked. A way to fix it is described at: https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php ... 56#4606456

Thanks for the tip, I'll look into it but for now, simply jumping into the next sector and activating SETA seems to make them dock and complete the mission.