[DUP][#5757] 4 and 5-Star-Ressource finding missions

[Grimm_87]

Dear community, dear Egosoft Dev Team,

while playing the amazing space sim of X4 in v9.0. and without any mods, we ran into quite a bit of trouble with one of the faction mission chains which requiring us to locate a 4- or 5-star resource field.
During that ARG find 4-star silicon mission, we spent around 10 hours searching and scouting Antigone Memorial, using 14 exploration ships and manually deploying more than 150 resource probes.
Many probes reported 4-star yields (visually on the map), some exceeding 356,000, yet the mission's objective was never completed always saying "Insufficient resource levels detected by probe".

Instead of assuming the mission was bugged, we wanted to understand how it actually works. So we spent another 20 hours extracting and analysing the Mission Director (MD) scripts that we extracted with X Tools, effectively trying to reverse engineer the Find Resources mission.

As far as we could determine mission success depends solely on:
- Probe.bestyieldrating >= ResourceYieldRatingList.
- Mission guidance is generated through find_closest_resource.
- Both bestyieldrating and find_closest_resource appear to be implemented engine-side rather than in the MD scripts.

This leaves us with one important question:

Does find_closest_resource "guarantee" that the selected resource field satisfies the required bestyieldrating, or can it return a field with a lower rating?

While researching this, we also found many posts from players claiming that high-rating resource missions are "impossible" since 9.0 and suggesting that the only solution is to skip or abort them.
At the moment, we occasionally encounter missions that appear impossible despite extensive searching, and we're trying to determine whether this is intended behaviour, a rare edge case, or simply something we've misunderstood.
We'd therefore be very interested to hear about other players' experiences.

If anyone from the Egosoft team happens to read this, we'd greatly appreciate it if you could take a quick look at our findings and let us know whether our understanding is correct or if we've overlooked something.

Thanks in advance, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this!

EDIT July 3rd: I just noticed the NPC that had to be picked up for that precise quest, is now stuck as a passenger aboard the Mining ship, that I used to pick her up with.
I canceled the quest days ago (in the save I wanted to keep playing), basically right after opening this topic. The NPS name is "Lissa Naser". She wont leave, I cant communicate to her nor command her.
I tried to fly to the station where she was picked up before. She stays in the crew quarters of the ship. Even though there is no more mission about her, she is still part of my savegame, being named in one <connections>.

<connections>
<connection connection="entities">
<component class="npc" macro="character_argon_female_afr_civ_02_macro" connection="parentconnection" name="Lissa Naser" code="NEC-560" owner="player" known="1" read="0" page="10109" id="[0xe18fcbf]">
<movement class="crowdagent">
<target refobject="[0x352fe]">
<offset>
<position x="17.268" y="-2.489" z="19.662"/>
<rotation yaw="-90.00001"/>
</offset>
</target>
<time start="256024.095"/>
<offset>
<position x="19.567" z="-0.7461"/>
<rotation yaw="179.9131"/>
</offset>
</movement>
<offset>
<position x="19.567" z="-0.7461"/>
<rotation yaw="179.9131"/>
</offset>
<traits flags="mission|remotecommable|customconversation|intransit|temporary" role="passenger">
<skills morale="1" piloting="4"/>
</traits>
<entity type="crowd"/>
<blackboard>
<value name="$StateMachine" type="cue" value="708785"/>
<value name="$HiringFee" type="money" value="685000"/>
<value name="$casual" type="integer" value="1"/>
<value name="$state_machine_critical" type="integer"/>
</blackboard>
<npcseed seed="6475752893133423343"/>
<npcanimation currentanimation="walking01" walking="1">
<currentsequence type="walking" behavior="generic" startpose="walking" endpose="walking" animation="walking01"/>
</npcanimation>
<connections>
<connection connection="roomtarget" id="[0xc1d63c4]">
<connected connection="[0xa059dca]"/>
</connection>
<connection connection="roleobject" id="[0xe191d42]">
<connected connection="[0xe19ff61]"/>
</connection>
<connection connection="roomposition" id="[0xe188c29]">
<connected connection="[0xe1acd33]"/>
</connection>
</connections>

[Otichoo]

Having this issue as well. It is quite infuriating since this was a mission provided by the Teladi after doing a few guild mission for them

However I noticed something : In the place where it was saying insuficient level, some other ships were mining ... but then I went to another part of that sector which nobody was mining and it worked fine. Could the NPC mining reduce the overall level that that the game mission thinks it should be?

Also for the people that say just abandon them or skip them: Please stop. All you do is covering a problem instead of helping EgoSoft to have it fixed. How about we fix it instead of just telling people how they should play their game

[zorcki]

Hello,
Version : 9.00 (611726) - French
Mods : No mods / Vanilla game

Problem :
During the Antigone Trade Guild mission "Market Manipulation" (Manipulation du Marché), the objective "Find ore in space" (Trouver du minerai dans le vide) does not complete.
I placed multiple Resource Probes on large Silicon asteroid fields in Antigone Memorial, including very dense clusters. The probe detects Silicon but always says "insufficient resource level". I tried several different locations, waited more than 15 minutes each time, and restarted the game. The objective never validates.

Screenshot: https://i.postimg.cc/L5rhfXt2/Capture-d ... 115017.png

Savegame : https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/w59v5vy9 ... zgyio&dl=0


Thank you for your help!

[Alan Phipps]

Please see this thread. The [#5757] indicates that the devs know about it and it is on their list of investigations. Asteroids you can see when in-sector close to them and the resource probe results are not directly related.

[Grimm_87]

I havent seen that one. Thanks for letting me know!
Maybe my thoughts on it will help the devs solve Case [5757]