[#5949][9.0] Split plot stuck after fleet delivery

[dachszavac]

Hi folks!

I kindly ask for some help resolving my save stuck at "Declaration of Curbs" mission.
The save is version 9.00, English, unmodded.
Game start is Fires of Defeat.
DLCs are Timelines, Cradle of Humanity, Kingdom End, Split Vendetta and Tides of Avarice.

The problem:
* during the Split plot, side with Curbs
* get to the point where you need to deliver the fleet
* deliver fleet to the drop point and do the handover
* the ships start patrolling Heart of Acrimony II and keep doing it forever
* the mission changes to spacefly caviar delivery, but no navigation is available (regardless if there is caviar in inventory or not)
* the Curbs carrier can not be found in The Boneyard
* unable to progress regardless of fleet delivery circumstances: in sector/out of sector, etc.

I'm unfamiliar with the game file format and content, so not sure what to look for.
However, I assume the Ravenous Wight carrier disappeared at some point during the game.
I can basically exclude Xenon-based destruction as there have not been Xenon ships in the area at all since I did the first part of the plot that requires you to first land on the carrier.
I'm not sure if ZYA patrols could have wandered into the Boneyard as they have been plentiful.
A lot of game time has passed between the Hall of Judgement events and building the Curbs fleet. I basically did Kingdom End and Avarice plots in between without paying attention if the Ravenous Wight is still there. Because of this, I don't have a save where I can find it in the Boneyard.

In the following save, the fleet is ready to be dropped off in Heart of Acrimony II. Doing so will demonstrate the problem.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J88-uX ... sp=sharing

Would it be possible to patch up this save return the Ravenous Wight where it's supposed to be?
I'm assuming it's not supposed to just spawn during the fleet handover, in which case it's another problem entirely.

Thank you!

P.S. I have not noticed any other missing ships/stations/NPSc or similar incidents.
The game plays normally outside of the described bug.

[Alan Phipps]

I delivered your fleet OK and had a look after the subsequent guidance for the caviar delivery did not appear. It appears that the only Split Raptor existing in that save is one from a ZYA Carrier patrol. The Ravenous Wight does not seem to exist any more in the save, neither in the Boneyard nor elsewhere.

The Ravenous Wight is placed in the Boneyard much earlier than the fleet delivery within the Split DLC for the original arrival at it of the player in the Tuatara Coffin Ship and the preliminary discussions with the Curbs - so it must have been there in your game then.

I'm afraid that save patching is not something the devs can do unless it is a hotfix released generally to address multiple users' affected gamesaves.

[dachszavac]

Hi Alan, thanks for the quick reply and for taking a look!

So, if I understand, this may or may not be a bug, but for whatever reason the Ravenous Wight that should be there is simply not.

Is there anything I can attempt to do to unblock myself? Example:
* try finding a way to edit the ship into the save
* use a mod/cheat/edit to skip this part of the mission
* completely restart the Split plot by flipping some state in the save

I'm assuming that doing some of the above might be possible, but time consuming and prone to cause unintented consequences (bugs).

[Alan Phipps]

A dev once said of a different stuck plot that retriggering it via save edits would be a huge task as the whole plot code and mission director parts would be impacted and all the mission starting conditions would need to be set up correctly again.

Read here what experienced Scripts and Modding posters had to say about another such request.

Anyway, we are now getting far off scope for this forum even though it is definitely a bug of some sort that you are seeing.

Is there not an earlier save you could check to see if the R Wight is in the Boneyard and maybe play on from that again? (Yes, a pain, but perhaps less risky overall.)

[dachszavac]

Yeah, completely understand.
It was worth a shot asking, thank you again for the help Alan!
No, I have four saves I rotate and the same situation is present in all of them. Oh well...

I might play aournd with editing the save one day as a puzzle exercise
Anyhow, if I ever find a workaround I'll report back so others may find it. But considering the change needed and not actually knowing the root cause, unlikely.

Is there a bug tracker where I should report the issue for the record, or is leaving it here in the forum as is sufficient?

[Alan Phipps]

Leave it here. If/when the devs put it on their tracker for possible investigation then the thread title will get a number such as [#xxxx]. That's not a guarantee of either fix or investigation but it's a good start towards that. My only concern is that I think you are the only player reporting this specific issue and so your cause conditions are likely fairly unique and might have needed a save from before the problem happened to help the devs see what caused it all. Good luck anyway.