Escort missions broken (ship following through highways)

[snwboardn21]

Last night I was doing an escort mission and the way that, the ships you are following, interact with highways seems not to work very well. I picked up a mission and was supposed to escort a ship and once we went through the worm hole somehow they disappeared, instead of getting behind them I jumped in front.

It then told me to get out of the highway and go back for them, I had no clue where they were going. So I get out of the highway, get into another highway to go back for them, get back in the original highway and try to go behind them, to find out they were out of the highway and traveling next to it, very slowly... So I have been playing for 2 hours and that mission is still active and the ship has still not reached their destination.

I am assuming if it is broken following an NPC mission, it is probably also broken following your own ship through a highway. They are just flying parallel to the highway with the highway on their left hand side about 10 or 15 meters away. I would suggest some kind of looping script to check their status and make sure they are inside the highway still. I don't know how they got booted from it but once they were, they refused to get back on it.

[dmk]

small spoiler:

Spoiler

Show

there is such mission in plot.

only way to do it with bugs (some of them introduced in 1.17)
always be near that ship, very close and jump to highway right after him
and try immediately begin fly behind him in highway
at point of leaving highway move aside don't bump into him on exit.

[KRM398]

escort missions have a few other problems too, like sending you to 'dock at station' that isnt even a dock with icons floating in the air, and freighters flying THROUGH stations right through the side of some pieces and out the back, we dont get away with that, and the AI is dead stupid, moving down the highway on the outside for miles before entering sometimes. (not just escorts either)

[spankahontis]

I've suffered similar problems, the pathfinding on the freighters is terrible.
They bounce off the Stations, fly straight into them.
One time my Freight got out of the Highway in the Middle of nowhere, an hours travel before we reached the station he was supposed to get to and even then it circled around the station like it was confused to where it was meant to park?

I just left it to hopefully find it's way to do something else.

[drseuss620]

I had a freighter banging into the side of a station over and over... I just took another mission and left... about 20 minutes later I got a message saying I had completed the original escort mission.

A later escort mission had me bring a freighter to an empty area of space very close to a station.

The biggest issue I have with the escort missions is once you are given a mission, you are told to go to the area where the freighter comes out of dock... Twice now I have had the dock lit up as the mission objective while the freight flys away. I only realize it is the freighter I need to follow when enemies spawn and start attacking it.

[C3453R]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... ortMission

[snwboardn21]

I haven't had those particular issues, with the ship I am supposed to be escorting not being highlighted. I have noticed that the AI path finding around stations is terrible. As soon as they are taken off of whatever rails they were flying on, they are completely idiotic.

It wouldn't be so bad but then once inside the geometry they then try to avoid the geometry that they are inside of... This causes them to very slowly make their way through the inside of stations. If they are going to fly through stations, at least let them go in a straight line through them.