Quest: Worker Welfare - ship is gone

[Lesnoj]

Please Egosoft,
make it possible that at the end of this quest, players can retrieve their ships.
I used my Experimental Shuttle, and now it's completely gone with no way to recover it.
Alternatively, provide an option to reset the chosen ship and deliver a different one.
Thank you.

[jlehtone]

Did the mission briefings say anything about what will happen with the ship? (I can't remember.)
If not, then the wording should be improved.
If it does, then we have a user error.

The obvious solution (for a player) is to load an earlier save and choose "a different timeline".

[db48x]

The mission specifically tells you that the ship and pilot will both go off to race in the league.

[Good Wizard]

Please Egosoft,
make it possible that at the end of this quest, players can retrieve their ships.
I used my Experimental Shuttle, and now it's completely gone with no way to recover it.
Alternatively, provide an option to reset the chosen ship and deliver a different one.
Thank you.

The mission says clearly to 'deliver' a ship - so it should be clear, that you will give it to the NPC (Drekk Wadda?).

The only thing different to other ship delivery missions is, that you have to 'prove the ships worth' by doing the race.

There is another trap in this mission: If you deliver the ship, any personnel in it, including the pilot, will be gone too. So if you have a good pilot in the ship, remove them first. Also the mission will ask you to find a good (2 star +) pilot after giving up the ship.

So the best way here is, buy or take a ship beforehand and check its values, there are specific requirements. Remove all but one newbie pilot, deliver it, do the race and give it up. Next acquire a pilot, give them seminars to bring them at 2 stars and tell them to work at the station, where it all happened - mission done.

If you buy a PAR ship, ideally a Pegasus Vanguard with the right engines you will meet the requirements without any ship modifications.

But never use an unique ship, like the Geometric Owl or something like, because you will loose the ship: 'deliver the ship' ...

I did a spoiler post over at the German spoiler forums for this mission, I now translated it and you can find it here.

[Vadi]

I also found the wording to be unclear.

[stooper88]

Others have pointed out that the dialogue even states that the player owns the ship (and the pilot), so I don't think it's fair to place all culpability on the player(s). My personal view is that using separate save slots is a very good habit to practice in any game, especially when undertaking new quests.

Doubtless, a quick search will reveal countless examples of players being surprised and dismayed by the loss of some prized or special ship due to this mission. So regardless of the perspectives, it's undeniable that this quest does cause a lot of confusion and regret. As such, it should be fairly trivial as well as highly warranted for ES to update the mission to emphasize that the ship and pilot in question will be permanently lost.