fucking bug!

has anyone encountered this bug - i am talking about the mission when you are about to escort the MCA freighters to their base through the Toad Skin L-point. I am sick of this shit already! got my game patched, but it's all the same. getting to the meeting point, then traveling to the st. george's l-point, then traveling to the toad skin and when i reach it out there the mission is over because it seems i left the convoy behind. a few times i have made it successfully throught the l-point, destroyed all mines and marauders and then travelled to the destination, being intercepted couple of times and EACH time no matter that I destroyed all marauders or even before they have appeared, the game ends because a freighter hass been destroyed out of nowhere. well, fuck off! i am sick of this shit! i loved this game, spent money on it, made everything i had to do to play it right and i am getting stuck at this very point for 2 weeks. so, PLEASE, someone tell me what's the fucking problem ;-(

Welcome to the forum, Pro_01.

EoC can be maddening at times, especially if a bug exists. Most of the time it's not even a bug. Sometimes the mission is waiting for a specific action... and typically the player is unaware of that needed action. Something reviewers were very critical of when it was released.

I personally have yelled curses which would curl the hair of an sailor.

I have a few questions before I'll know enough to be of assistance:

1.) Okay. You travel to the meeting point. You're assigned some rather useless wingmen and then travel to the Toad Skin L-point. There you're greeted by a slew of mines and Marauders. You wipe out the mines and enemy ships. Then the convoy arrives. Correct? Have you had any problems up to this point in the mission?

2.) You formate with the lead ship of the convoy. (It is very important on this mission to get very close to the lead ship. Otherwise, when the convoy is disrupted, you can get thrown thousands of kilometers away when they're disrupted. I usually get about 20 meters above the lead ship and point myself in it's direction before hitting auto-formate.)

3.) During transit, the Marauders disrupt the convoy's LDS bubble and do their little kamakazee-thing. You ruthlessly kill 'em all. What do you do then? (HINT: If any freighters have been damaged in any way, wait for them to completely repair themselves before once again formatting with the lead ship. You'll have to endure several repetitions of "All ships, formate with the convoy group.", but it'll keep you from losing freighters the next time the Marauders attack. Once again, when all ships are at 100%, get right on top of the lead ship before hitting auto-formate.)

4.) If all goes as planned, the Marauders will hit the convoy 3 times before you get to your destination. Once there you'll be asked to dock and get a really, really cool reward: The Tachyon-Class Patcom.

At what point do things go wrong when you go through this mission? Are the freighters, once disrupted, too far away to get to when the Marauders attack? Or something else?

hey, Shane! thanks for the assistance! sorry for the offensive language I used in my post, but the after fifth time I encountered the bug I decided I'll just have to get drunk to go through this

so the problem with the mission is that most of the time I don't even get to Toad Skin in the right manner. everything is as you describe it in the first point - I get to the meeting point, listen to all the crap, get confirmation from the wings it's all set (the strange thing here is that I have to move quite away from the meeting point in order to trigger the last event), get to St. George and when I do the jump to Toad Skin and I end up at a location where there are neither mines, no marauders. at this time the convoy starts yelling it's under attack and Clay comes up with "damn it, kid, you knew these freighters can not defend themselves" and that's where it all ends.

a couple of times I made it through the jump, killed the marauders, destroyed the mines, the convoy jumped, I formated, got disrupted couple of times and even that I have destroyed the marauders even before they have reached the freighters, one of them ends up destroyed out of nowhere. I never made it to the third disruption or the base.

but the jump situation is most annoying of all. I tried different approaches - skipped dialogues, checked the map, confirmed jumps, travelled back and forth, but I can't get the bug pattern

... get to St. George and when I do the jump to Toad Skin and I end up at a location where there are neither mines, no marauders. at this time the convoy starts yelling it's under attack and Clay comes up with "damn it, kid, you knew these freighters can not defend themselves" and that's where it all ends.

Ah... this is a common problem also.

Anytime you hit autopilot, the game does a path-finding check. Basically a determination of what L-points to go through to get you to your destination fastest.

The location of the rendevous point is in a very bad place; right in a grey-zone where, if the player presses autopilot, the engine has a choice of two routes to get you to the correct destination. Both routes take you where you need to go, but the mission allows one and chalks up a failure if the other route is taken.

To work around this bug: When you leave the rendevous point, fly a good ways manually (using LDS) before hitting f6. This should get you out of the grey-area and direct you towards the right route.

I've played through EoC several times, and have never had a problem doing it this way.

Good luck with it. If you encounter more problems (or if for some reason this does not work), just post.

Cheers.

thanks, Shane. i did not quite get the idea of the "good ways", but I did the following - after debriefing, selected St. George from the map as usual, flew towards it manually using LDS, then selected Toad Skin waypoint as it was in the contacts panel (did not go to the map, scroll all the way to it and confirm), then jumped. First couple of times I did indeed jumped correctly in the mine field, but both times the mysteriously exploding freighter during the second attack bug occured. From this moment on, I get to the wrong l-point once again every time I jump. There is something new however - a couple of times when I manually operated the LDS, I accidentally passed by the l-point and ended up a few thousand kilometers past it. both times I got a mission failure immediatelly I got out of the LDS. this is getting way beyond me now and I feel really stupid

is there anyone who has a save just after this very mission? or alternativelly, is there anyone who wants me to send my save get it back to me once the mission is passed?

Link to Save Game Page: i-war2.com/downloads_6.htm

If you'd like, send your savegame to me and I'll see what's going on. I'm at shanemaness (at) charter.net.

(replace the (at) with @)