Campaign bug: CHOW freighter gets itself stuck inside station geometry

[Lander1979]

2.20 Release version

The first mission for CHOW is to escort a freighter to it's destination, from the get-go the freighter is struggling with the station geometry around it, it eventually clips into a cylinder and is stuck inside.

Link to the Save game file after bug has occured; http://www.mediafire.com/view/5uswv0shh ... ve_010.xml

(if this happens to 1 freighter, I shudder to think what trying to run a trade fleet near one of these stations would be like).

Possible solutions (for the dev's or anyone with modding experience) ;

Overhaul the collision avoidance for the AI.

Alternatively; Add an invisible non-clippable exterior geometry to the station objects that will make the freighters avoid contact with the clippable exterior of the stations.

I hope this gets sorted As Soon As Possible, as It appears to be a MAJOR show-stopper.

this is a link to a save just before the bug occurs; http://www.mediafire.com/view/gsz0n8atm ... ve_001.xml

To re-create the bug; fly to the directed station, wait for the mission dialogue to take place and the mission directive to update, fly to the indicated freighter and attempt to escort it.

thanks.

[Lander1979]

Refering to my post regarding a recent campaign bug I have encountered where an AI controlled ship I am tasked to follow clips and gets stuck inside station geometry, I pose the following questions;

Are Omicron Lyrae (and perhaps all) stations bugged beyond approach for AI controlled ships?

Has anyone else had the same or a similar problem?

Is this happening to all the AI controlled ships in the game?

This is a major showstopper for me and to be honest I am scared to play at all for fear of what my presence will do to AI traffic in the area I'm in.

It's as if when I look at a ship, it gets stage fright and bangs into the nearest object in it's path.

Please don't get me wrong, this isn't a Hate post. I love this game to death and I'm really not sure what to do at the moment.

<Similar posts merged and moved to Tech Sp forum. Alan Phipps>

[ragamer]

I don't want to kill your hopes of an early fix but... It's a common occurrence with any medium freighter escort mission since launch.

Your trade fleet is safe as it will mostly be made of capital trade ships that follow a completely different AI logic were this "bouncing over surface" is not used on day by day approach runs.

On the constructive side of things, if you have a save before the Freighter gets stuck, try to "help it" by colliding against it so you separate it from the "problematic section" before actually reaches it, it's highly immersion breaking, but works most of the time.

[Oman2]

I have seen ships get stuck inside stations, maybe something to do with gaps in collision barriers? I've also got stuck inside stations myself while exploring and/or hiding

What sort of behaviour are you observing? Do all ships crash/get stuck? or only one type (small/cap?).

Personally, aside from getting stuck, I can sit and watch freighters dock with my station very slowly under construction, no problems.

For any ships I've seen stuck (mostly fighters in defend station missions), I've just killed everything else and wandered off, and it respawns/dies/commits suicide on its own. I think going out of the system, or even to the next cluster will collapse the process to a simpler version without collision, kinda like X3.

[Lander1979]

Thanks for your reply Ragamer.
Thanks Alan.

On my second play-through this bug did not occur, and I think I know why...

Initially, I was at a fairly high altitude in the station complex, almost level with the tops of the towers, and I approached the freighter by flying to It's position laterally before descending to it.

I think It tried to fly to me, hitting the overhang of the station in the process, and began it's flight plan at too high an altitude, eventuating in being caught inside the cylinder.

On my second play-through, I approached from an altitude slightly lower than the freighter, the freighter then dropped some altitude towards me before continuing along it's set flight path, clearing all the station obstacles completely.

[YorrickVander]

Sadly this still happens frequently despite a few patch notes relating to it. The best current workaround is (annoying) to leave zone and return. This allows ships stuck inside or against the station geometry to free themselves as out of zone ai ignores collision detection. Having played other ES games I'm used to terrible ai piloting. I would have hoped they'd have gotten better at it over the decades Litcubes 'bounce' mod for X3 may prove to be a winner if it can ever be ported to XR.

[Lander1979]

Thanks for all the input on this, It's good to know that the ships will sort themselves out once I leave the area

I was scared that I was going to end up with every AI ship in the game stuck inside of an object at some point, thankfully that won't be the case!