Got a temporary captain on the Skunk!

Zloth · Post by **Zloth** » Sun, 22. Mar 15, 06:12

Minor issue...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =411889642

I bought a construction ship and noticed that the captain is actually pretty good for once. After the construction ship anchored itself and started building, I checked her details while on board the construction ship, highlighted the row that said she was working on the construction ship, then told her to get on board the Skunk. And off she went!

However, when I bought a ship and went back to the crew quarters to ask her to work there, she only gives one option: goodbye. So now she's just taking up space.

I presume she'll vanish as soon as I hire another captain. Still, it would be nice if I had the option to space... <ahem> to allow her to return to her shipyard on her own. Or better yet make that the option instead of returning to the Skunk. Or even more better yet, the option to hire her.

Goobers · Post by **Goobers** » Sun, 22. Mar 15, 06:27

Actually, it's more likely that she's flat out stuck on your Skunk for the rest of the game. Passengers on the Skunk don't get replaced, they stay until you assign them to a ship or fire them.

If your dialog is missing those options... well...

HunZolka · Post by **HunZolka** » Sun, 22. Mar 15, 11:26

HI, I had the same problem with the campaign Tarains' captain, whom I called back to the Skunk.

You will need to edit your save file to make him disappear.
Find him by name, make sure that his 'owner' is displayed as 'player' so you won't remove someone else by mistake, and delete the whole block.

It can be a bit hard to find, especially if you have multiple ships and a large number of employees.
For example an architect in my 'cargo' is referred like this:

<connection connection="connection_npc15">
<component class="npc" macro="character_ar_female_architekt_macro" connection="commandroomslot" name="Jennaia Ohneaim" owner="player" page="10104" id="[0x9cbe]">
...
</connection>

You might also try to look for the 'commandroomslot' text in the file, as it determines that the npc is in the skunk's back room.

You can remove the npc by selecting and deleting the whole block between the <connection></connection> tags, including the tags themselves.

I hope it is understandable, what I mean.

Edit: before messing directly in the save file, it is recommended to make a backup of the file.

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Sun, 22. Mar 15, 12:33

Hi there,

If save game files from unmodified games could be posted somewhere and hyperlinked here, Devs may be able to fix the issue.

There are some other tips, like providing a dxdiag, here:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=347235

Regards,
Sparks

Zloth · Post by **Zloth** » Sun, 22. Mar 15, 21:58

It sounds like something that's repeatable by steps to me, Sparky.

1. Buy a new capital ship.
2. With at least one spot open in the Skunk, board the capital ship.
3. Talk to the captain and get ship details.
4. Select the captain under the ship details and get the captain's details.
5. Select the line saying where the captain is working. "Come aboard" button enables.
6. Click the button. Captain vanishes (no animation gets played) but the captain does announce that she/he's on the ship after a few seconds.

The button should probably never enable or, if asked to come on board, the captain should give the same 'no' response that station staff give if you try to hire them. Letting you pay to hire them might be harder but would be a nice option.

HunZolka & Goobers are right, too - there's no getting the captain off the ship that I can find. That makes this issue not-so-minor in my book.

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Sun, 22. Mar 15, 22:07

Thanks for the reply, Zloth. It's an interesting one o.0

Post by **Nanook** » Tue, 24. Mar 15, 01:01

You should be able to avoid it by hiring a new captain onboard the Skunk, then going to the crew quarters and telling him/her to work on the new ship. The original captain supplied by the shipyard should then just disappear. The problem may occur when you encounter/talk to the original captain, thus giving them 'permanence' in the universe. Of course, maybe the whole thing could've been avoided by Egosoft not supplying new ships with pilots/captains and letting the player do it. It would also give the 'if you leave your ship here very long we'll have to charge you' message a real meaning.

Post by **florianlt** » Tue, 24. Mar 15, 10:45

Fixed in an upcoming build.

Goobers · Post by **Goobers** » Tue, 24. Mar 15, 11:20

Nanook wrote:You should be able to avoid it by hiring a new captain onboard the Skunk, then going to the crew quarters and telling him/her to work on the new ship. The original captain supplied by the shipyard should then just disappear. The problem may occur when you encounter/talk to the original captain, thus giving them 'permanence' in the universe. Of course, maybe the whole thing could've been avoided by Egosoft not supplying new ships with pilots/captains and letting the player do it. It would also give the 'if you leave your ship here very long we'll have to charge you' message a real meaning.

The same can be said if the captain/pilot were generated with the same kind of "permanence" as any other hire-able NPC (could easily tag a "hire captain" cost/option to the build order of the ship). If I were to guess, there was probably some effort to save on either programming or memory/data usage (or both) by tying NPC ships to non-permanent captains... since you can never (in-game) steal a ship WITH a captain/pilot staying on board.

~~~~~ following was in a hacked game ~~~~~

I hacked my save to "steal" an NPC freighter that was passing by, (change the owner of the CAPTAIN, not the ship to player)... the captain was equally problematic. I could (ATTEMPT!! to) replace the captain, but he didn't exist afterwards (expected him to be in the Skunk).... despite taking ownership of him to steal the ship.

~~~~~

But truth be told... when I first bought my own freighter, I had fully expected the ship to come WITHOUT a captain, requiring me to hire one on top of the engineer and defense officer (upkeep).

Post by **Nanook** » Tue, 24. Mar 15, 19:58

Captains that come with purchased ships are always crap anyway. And since I could never transfer them to another ship, there's no way I was going to train them up. Considering all that, I always hire my own to replace the 'starter captain'. It would be nice if Egosoft did something about this, although I'm guessing it would be 'low priority'.