[Cybes]

This is probably a FAQ, but not one to which I've found an answer...

I finish the High Noon mission - Sathanas is history, support fighters mopped up, only things in system are me and the Colossus - but I'm not allowed to leave.  If I jump out, I get stripped of everything for dessertion.

So far, I've run it out to 40-odd minutes, and nobody tells me to come home, and no enemy comes to kill me.

Any pointers on this one would be appreciated.

[Kie99]

Strange.  Has this happened more than once?

[Cybes]

Yes, it's reproduceable - for me, at least.

Given a few more attempts, I've figured out both how to cause it, and how to get past it.

All you need to do to cause it is destroy Sathanas before the fighters.  To have everything work as it's supposed to, just kill the fighters first, and then the biggie.

That strikes me as being the kind of error nobody would ever even think of before it happened.  (I know I wouldn't, and I used to do propper programming before my brain turned to mush

[StratComm]

That's actually a pretty poor design on 's part.  I'm honestly pretty shocked that it wasn't caught and corrected, as it seems letting a fighter or two go while you pound on the biggest threat would be a common decision.

Oh, and

[Col. Fishguts]

Somehow I remember killing Basilisks after the Sath went boom, and I never had any problems to end the mission.
Are you sure that's the real reason ?

[Goober5000]

It's actually a bug in Freespace that's common in this type of scenario but incredibly hard to reproduce.  We still don't know the precise cause of it.

[Cybes]

Oh, so it's a known problem then, Goober?  Odd that I could find no mention of it.  N/M though, I got around it.

I have to say, though, it hasn't been at all hard for me to reproduce so far on that mission.  All I have to do is tell everyone else to go after the enemy fighters, and go take care of the big guy myself.  It's just about guarenteed they aren't going to get the job done by the time I am.  Once the Sathanas goes boom, if there are any enemy fighters left, the mission just won't end.

Oh, and thanks, StratComm.

[karajorma]

That's not due to an error in the mission though. As far as I can see the mission only cares that Cancer wing and the Sathanas have been destroyed.

Could the problem be due to the fact that there are two waves of fighters? Try killing the first wave and then letting the sathanas die. The problem might be due to the sath dying before the final wave gets launched.

[Cybes]

Next time I get to that stage, I'll give that a shot and let you know what happens.  Having got around it, I went on and finished the campaign.  I started a new pilot last night, though, so I'll probably be at that point again in the next day or two.

[Jal-18]

Can't you do it via the Tech Room?

[Cybes]

Indeed I could - if I hadn't scrapped the pilot.  Since the missions aren't available in the simulator until the pilot has at least attempted (or possibly even finished?) them, the new pilot can't do it that way yet.

[karajorma]

If you're using FS2_Open you can simply add the -allslev command line option to make all the missions available.

[Cybes]

Ah.  Well, that will certainly make life easier!  I did not know that - thanks Karajorma!

I played FS2 to death when it was new, and tried FS2open about a year or so ago, but I only got the current version around Monday.  I wonder what else I missed?

[Cybes]

OK, having done a wee bit more playing, as near as I can tell, if the Sathanas dies before the player has killed anything else, it freaks out.  That may not be ironclad, but it's held true for me thus far.

If the player kills even one fighter first, no problem.

I have yet to check if it still happens if I just shoot an enemy fighter.

[StratComm]

I have a suspicion as to what it is.  Order your wingmen to depart off the bat, then kill the Sath, then the fighters.  If you've only got 5 kills and everything is gone, then the second wave of Basilisks isn't launching and so you can't ever actually kill the whole wing (8 fighters).  They launch from the Sathanas' main fighterbay, so I'm guessing that once the Sath is destroyed they don't launch at all.  They should emerge from subspace at some arbitrary location if that's the case, but this may be broken.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by StratComm
They launch from the Sathanas' main fighterbay, so I'm guessing that once the Sath is destroyed they don't launch at all.  They should emerge from subspace at some arbitrary location if that's the case, but this may be broken.

I don't know if it's broken. As far as I know no further waves will appear if the ship they are supposed to arrive from is destroyed. Wasn't that the way Retail handled it?

[Goober5000]

Yup, that's the proper behavior.  The bug is in the recognition that the wing has been destroyed.

[Cybes]

Right then.  So it has nothing to do with my actions before Sathanas dies - it only matters that the second wave had launched.

Goob, if you know what causes it, why is it so hard to reproduce?  Does it not always happen that way?

[karajorma]

Problem probably was that Goober killed the first wave before the Sath died and thus never saw it happening.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by karajorma


I don't know if it's broken. As far as I know no further waves will appear if the ship they are supposed to arrive from is destroyed. Wasn't that the way Retail handled it?

I could have sworn I saw something in the documentation to that effect though.  Of course, it's been ages since I messed with FRED so I could easily be mistaken.