Why does the quest "No Sudden Moves" Require Receiving a Bounty?

[coldreactive]

It's a "Main Story" Quest that gets an artifact. It will also BLOCK Vlad from allowing you to talk to him about the next temple as well. In addition, no UC Ship will allow me to pay off my bounty, requiring me to go to prison the moment I get back to New Atlantis. What's more is, there's no non-rude option to pick when talking to the Commander who greets you at prison: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1148758905703366726/1148902344843595816/SPOILER_Starfield_2023-09-06_03-47-06.jpg

This guide said you can pay it off, but I couldn't: https://gamerant.com/starfield-no-sudden-moves/

Evidence: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1148758905703366726/1148901416291794994/SPOILER_image.png

[coldreactive]

Another quirk about this: If you shoot their ship as you approach, you get no bounty, and it allows you to kill everyone on the ship without consequence whatsoever. But the moment you take the artifact, you get 500 Credit bounty, even if no one is alive on the ship to report it.

[coldreactive]

You also cannot fast travel to towns you have a bounty with: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1148758905703366726/1149008819138089041/SPOILER_Starfield_2023-09-06_10-50-20.jpg

[coldreactive]

Also, if you land on Mars and walk into Cydonia, everyone will be hostile and you cannot surrender if you have a bounty.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1148758905703366726/1149012078586245181/SPOILER_Starfield_2023-09-06_11-02-13.jpg

[coldreactive]

After I decided to go and build an outpost for the first time and put down a bounty terminal, I was greeted with this: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1148758905703366726/1149016647370289152/SPOILER_Starfield_2023-09-06_11-21-33.jpg

[saice]

Having done this the quickest way to pay off is to fast travel to Neon its Free Col so you can pay off your bounty there. Just make sure to fast travel to Neon Core as to not do any of the space flight stuff.

[Trip]

This ticked me off to no end last night, to the point I quit in disgust.

I'm not playing a thief character. I don't steal. I have been doing tons of jobs hunting down pirates. I don't pirate.

I have half a million in the bank, money is no object for me. I can throw that down and more. I have no problems going to the most dangerous of places to get you a replacement ANYTHING.

But no, I have to be a thief and a pirate. What stupidly lazy writing and quest design.

[maeharaprojekt]

I was surprised at first that I got kidnapped when trying to pay off an 18 credit bounty, butthe UC SysDef Commander's explanation was just a weak justification for forcing the MC to do a job that the UC's intelligence agency was too lazy or incompetent to accomplish on their own.

Also, Constellation needs to hire a intelligence agent or an electronic countermeasures specialist.

[coldreactive]

Seems like the Wanted trait is forcing me into this. Because I created two new fresh characters, one with the wanted trait and one without. The one WITH the wanted trait couldn't pay off the bounty at a guard after meleeing a civilian after freshly off the frontier from Kreet. But the one WITHOUT the trait could pay it off at the guard.

Yes, these were fresh characters. Level 2 and all that, literally just landed for the first time at New Atlantis, melee'd the first person they saw, surrendered.

[Lackadaisy]

Originally posted by Trip:

This ticked me off to no end last night, to the point I quit in disgust.

I'm not playing a thief character. I don't steal. I have been doing tons of jobs hunting down pirates. I don't pirate.

I have half a million in the bank, money is no object for me. I can throw that down and more. I have no problems going to the most dangerous of places to get you a replacement ANYTHING.

But no, I have to be a thief and a pirate. What stupidly lazy writing and quest design.

I feel the same way.
I refused to complete the quest by stealing and did side quests instead because I didn't want to steal. Now I can't complete the quest because when I return to the Scow, I can dock but the door is closed with no option to open.

Not sure what to do because the main story won't progress.

[Oatmeal]

Making the player get a bounty is so salty for a Role playing game like this.

Really bummed there is ZERO way to avoid this. As I am trying to be a fairly good Role.

The industry is right. Not every game can be BG3.
Gtfo deff just Lazy design here.

[magickmynd]

If I have to steal, so be it. But there at least should be an option to steal it without getting caught and without getting a bounty.

Even a character with maxed out stealth abilities and the void form power can't get this artifact without getting a bounty and that's just silly.

Max out your persuasion, your stealth, your powers, anything you want, doesn't matter, you get a bounty.

Considering that nearly every other mission in the game has at least 2 options for deciding what to do and multiple ways to approach it I don't get why they decided that this one specific mission had to be this way.

Especially since you can still do the undercover mission for UC SysDef if you do the UC Vanguard quest line, you don't have to have a bounty to trigger it. And you can steal any other item in the game without instantly getting a bounty so long as you are not caught. So why?

[Lackadaisy]

It appears stealing the artifact from the Scow is required as part of the story line. It leads to getting a bounty and being arrested which opens up some side missions.

If you don't steal the artifact from the Petrov and leave the Scow, you will be locked out of the ship and unable to continue the main story.

[Zarathustra[H]]

I just encountered this as well and I am absolutely livid and in disbelief.

I don't play "bad guys" in games. My character is squeaky clean. I've jettisoned every single piece of contraband I've come across, and never hurt an NPC that wasn't a pirate, a spacer or some other "bad guy".

I don't believe in moral ambiguity. This quest essentially ruins the game.

[Fear2288]

Bethesda does enjoy “forcing your hand” sometimes, and it seems like no matter how many times those types of quests are met with negative reactions - they keep doing them.

Skyrim had a lot: needing to kill Parthy to keep recruiting Blades, getting dragon hunting quests, and using Sky Haven Temple as a quasi-player home/base, pretty much all the Daedric quests didn’t have a “good guy” option (and that Molag Bal one literally locked you in a room until you murdered someone), that one where you get tricked into causing the ship to sink and kill a bunch of people, being forced to start the College of Mages AND Thieves Guild questlines as a part of the main quest, etc.

[sirBlue]

Originally posted by coldreactive:

It's a "Main Story" Quest that gets an artifact. It will also BLOCK Vlad from allowing you to talk to him about the next temple as well. In addition, no UC Ship will allow me to pay off my bounty, requiring me to go to prison the moment I get back to New Atlantis. What's more is, there's no non-rude option to pick when talking to the Commander who greets you at prison: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1148758905703366726/1148902344843595816/SPOILER_Starfield_2023-09-06_03-47-06.jpg

This guide said you can pay it off, but I couldn't: https://gamerant.com/starfield-no-sudden-moves/

Evidence: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1148758905703366726/1148901416291794994/SPOILER_image.png

You can go to Cydonia to the tracker agent and let your bounty be removed that way.