X3TC Goner Plot Aborted

[M-K]

Hi all, I'm just doing the goner plot (really sucks btw.) and I've reached the mission where

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you have to defend the council ships

and altho it was marked no time limit,

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after i ignored the second attack

it told me: Mission Aborted. Do I get it again or am I screwed? I mean it's a req. for other plots... Any help will be appreciated. Thx

[caddman]

I think thats happened to me as well, Im pretty sure if you wait a few minutes on seta the mission will restart, in a different sector, if not you may have to reload to an earlier save.

[Alan Phipps]

IIRC you often don't even have time to jump to the sector of the respective Goner ship (which cannot be killed anyway) before local forces wipe the attackers out and the sub-task ends. I had about three or four of those where I didn't even leave the sector I was in and they just carried on with the next task after a while.

That is if you are at the point I am thinking of, mind you.

[jubbbird]

Ah ha, this is the last thread I've found using search that mentions the Goner plot, and potential bugs/issues, and I was just about to post a new question about how those "quick, run and defend the ship/station" sub-missions keep ending moments after I've received the mission, even though I haven't actually done anything.

I was convinced it was a bug and that I'd have to restart the plot, if not the game, just to actually experience the plot properly. The missions are either 'average' or 'hard' and I have yet to experience a 'hard' mission I'm obligated to complete, so I assume it was broken.

So what are the chances I'll conveniently get to skip through this entire portion of the game because the police just happen to be nearby in each sector?

On one hand I'm quite happy that this kind of thing can happen, as it adds to the ethos of a more life-like universe. On the other, however, I never cease to be surprised at how many oddities there are in this game that could almost be considered bugs, or design flaws. Sometimes the line is a little blurry, it seems.

[Coreblimey]

I found that if you started the Goner Plot (and OFF for that matter) with too high a fight rank, the number of enemies in each protect mission was so ridiculously high that you couldn't complete them without resorting to using cheats! (Well at least I couldn't!)

[jubbbird]

I've been retrying this mission many times this evening, and I've finally spotted something that IS troubling.

Aside from the fact that after the first 'protect the truelight seeker' mission the only *two* subsequent missions I've actually been blessed with time enough to experience involved poxy little goner ships being one-shotted by M8s, I did finally have the opportunity to complete a jump to Company Strength in time to see the current station mission end, receive instructions to move up to Bright Profit for another one, and then moments later it shifted once more to a station right in front of me - within radar range.

I was able to witness that before the mission ended itself again, there were NO attackers present. I made my way toward the station from the moment the mission began and it auto-ended to present me with a 'working' M8 assassination alternative in Tears of Greed.

Clearly in this case no pirates were spawned, and now I suspect it's not that they're being dispatched before I get there (to have that happen so many times consecutively is surely astonomical) but in fact the mission IS bugged and as there are no pirates about it promptly moves on.

Of course the next one was another M8 and my Cutlass wasn't fast enough to intercept the single missile that flattened the Goner M5.

If this isn't bugged, then these Goner chaps cry wolf an awful lot.

[Nanook]

As I recall, the pirates in those missions enter/spawn at one of the gates. So unless you were in radar range of both the gate and the station at the same time, those pirates very well may have been killed off by the locals. Sometimes they also get into it with TM weapons dealers and their escorts, and losing.

And to add to all that, sometimes I've noticed they spawn on the other side of a gate and have to enter the sector from there, meaning they have an even better chance of getting blown up. So maybe it's not a bug, per se, but simply the RNG having a bit of fun with you.

[jubbbird]

Well I wasn't gonna restart any more just to actually get a mission I could do myself, so I let it pan out and moved right along to claiming the Truelight Seeker. I rather feel I've missed out on the first serious, 'obligatory' combat opportunity.