Unclaimable ship in Aldrin (AP)

[Sovereign01]

I found an abandoned Enhanced Mako in Aldrin as a derelict (had to use the findwares script to get the co-ordinates and then reloaded to remove the modified tag) way off the beaten path. The ship appears on the screen but not on sensors so I cannot target it, so of course I cannot claim it.

Is there a way of claiming the ship? What's weird is that when I spacewalk to it and use the repair laser it actually moves by itself before stopping again.

[Alan Phipps]

The moving away is common and correct behaviour for any unclaimed ship being hit by any sort of laser. It is an automatic self-preservation routine for unoccupied ships.

The fact that the ship cannot be targeted and does not appear on the sector map or gravidar when close by is worrying and means that the ship or your game installation may be corrupt. Have you verified the Steam gamefile caches for X3TC and X3AP separately?

If that proves OK then it is likely that the problem with that ship is now stored in your gamesave and there may be no (vanilla-safe) way of recovering it properly.

[Sovereign01]

I'll verify the integrity of the game cache for AP (I don't use Steam for TC) and see what happens. Interesting- I just got a message that 1 file failed to validate and will be reacquired.

I have to wonder if it's something to do with it being Aldrin where the distances are vast- in many ways it's like the Aran in TC. I'm literally within spitting distance of this thing and I've found that it is destroyable if I ram it.

EDIT: The ship doesn't show up in the encyclopedia either, but ramming it will cause it to appear in the "Objects destroyed" section.

[Alan Phipps]

You need to verify the Steam TC files separately as well since X3AP uses a lot of the TC base files and Steam TC is installed to support X3AP.

[Sovereign01]

Not sure how to do that because my TC install is from a physical disk, in Steam TC isn't installed so of course the "local files" section for TC is greyed out.

[Alan Phipps]

If you have the option in your Library, just get Steam to install X3TC. The download will be very small because you already have most of it.

That will not in any way affect your disk install of TC and you don't have to play it direct from Steam afterwards. Then you can independently verify *all* the TC files used by AP which gives you greater confidence in the install.

I rather think that will all prove OK anyway and that you instead have a rare and unlucky in-game single ship type corruption/error that is unfortunately now stored in your saves.

I don't have an Enhanced Mako anywhere in my vanilla X3AP game to check as the abandoned ships are differently randomised by type and location from a list of Kha'ak and Enhanced/Advanced/Prototype/Experimental ship types at each gamestart.

[Sovereign01]

I did verify TC and AP files and no difference, looks like that Mako Enh. is going to remain unclaimable. At least it's only an M4 so it's no great loss. It does make me wonder if either the Enh. Kea or Medusa Prot. are ever among the possible ships.