Polaris Ningues bug workaround?

[fext]

After the Old Quarry quest, the questline ends with a reported bug, when, after Pendrell is confronted, the Polaris cruiser and rocket drones attacks the player.
I tried to avoid any combat within the science station location, getting to console, talk to Rend, then to Pendrell, which cannot be stopped unless I shoot him, then back to Rend who was all pals and flowers with me, but the damned Rocket drones keep shooting and even destroy the Science station when I am inside.

So anyone knows what to do with that? If I shoot the drones I get a huge rep hit.

[japp_02]

Try to move out of sight of the drones without killing one, use your hover bike.
The worst that can happen is that you lose rep with Polaris (the bug), but your mission is already over, so no need to kill something. To regain rep use the console command,
faction rep local Pol 20500

[fext]

1. The workaroud:
do not shoot Pendrell. At this point, simply click all remaining quest phases as complete. Optionally ignore the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that you should at least read the description of the quest.

2. Bug details (in case somebody will try to fix it):
The breaking point seems to be the moment where the player shoots Pendrell.
BEFORE the drones just flied around and did not attack anything, both the bomber drones and the rocket drones that are a part of the "rescue mission" under Polaris banner.
AFTER the fight really starts. The Polaris drones first attack the bombers, the base starts shooting at the bombers as well, and once the bombers are down, the base stops shooting, but the Polaris rocket drones start shooting player.

My guess is that there is some sort of switch flag that is supposed to stop the fighting once Pendrell is down but it does work in inverse, STARTING the fight once Pendrell is down. Alternatively the attack on Pendrell may be evaluated as an attack on Polaris personel, however the popularity drop does not occur at this point but later after shooting back at the rocket drones.

I also though that the bug may be caused by player SV so tried to complete the qest after walking to the science station and leaving my SV at my base, but the bug was the same.

Fun fact: once I clicked out the quest as completed, both the bomber drones and the polaris rocket drones were still flying around the base, but the polaris drones were no longer marked as such and were named Damaged cannon drones instead. Also the shopkeeper droid at the base started to offer considerably worse prices, possibly as if I had low reputation with the faction.

[fext]

Originally posted by japp_02:

Try to move out of sight of the drones without killing one, use your hover bike.
The worst that can happen is that you lose rep with Polaris (the bug), but your mission is already over, so no need to kill something. To regain rep use the console command, make a search, I've already explained it, I don't remember the exact command by now.

Running away does not work, sadly, I tried, but the drones follow. During one of my tries I just jumped into my SV and flew away but the drones slowly followed me to my base and attacked it. Strangely both the base and the SV never shot back.

Regaining the rep is indeed possible, namely after you receive the reputation badge after completion of the quest, but I do the faction quests mainly for the rep, so no point doing it this way.

But thanks a lot anyway!

[ravien_ff]

I haven't done the missions but is the guy you're supposed to shoot the same faction as the drones? Or is he unfactioned or a different faction?

[fext]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

I haven't done the missions but is the guy you're supposed to shoot the same faction as the drones? Or is he unfactioned or a different faction?

He is a Polaris management who is, judging from the ingame texts, working for some pirate clan in disguise. Obviously a megacorporation manager would NEVER really try to exploit any resources of a planet for profit and his/her carreer boost so it was sort of obvious from the beginning he is under a false flag. :)
So after being uncovered, he summons some bomber drones on his own colleagues and base, one of the base scentists promptly calls for help which warps in immediatelly and you are supposed to shoot the guy after IDA switches your blaster to stun only, and then he teleports away after some threats that he will log his main. At this point you should win but the cavalry that was summoned to save the day starts shooting you instead.

[japp_02]

The drones have obviously the wrong faction - technically speaking, not story-wise. That's what's causing the bug. I guess if they were neutral or fiendly to you they would just spawn and do nothing, for 'faction wars' it's maybe impossible to do so without them also being hostile to you, therefore the illogical sequence. They should make these drones Polaris, and all enemies to you in this mission Warlords, then it would probably work.

[ravien_ff]

What faction is the NPC? The actual faction of the NPC itself.

[Mordtziel]

Yea, fun bug. When I did this, I promptly shot down both drones at the base after realizing they were shooting at me, leading me to become unfriendly, which triggered the entire base being hostile with me. Thus I couldn't turn in the quest. So I retreated back to my outpost which I had thankfully set up cannon turrets at which took care of the 5 or 6 waves of drones without continuing to damage my rep. The outpost was also thankfully out of range of the CV's patrol range. After doing this and repairing my own SV, I headed back out and spent a couple hours killing raptors and arachnids in their territory while outrunning the CV and avoiding their actual base to get my rep back to neutral to be able to turn the quest in.

All in all, very annoying bug. Sounds like fext has it figured out in their post.

[HurtfulPlayer97]

It's been a year and they still haven't fixed this f*****g bug?!?!
But we got a DLC.

[HurtfulPlayer97]

I guess the Dev's realize almost nobody does their quests anyway so why bother...

[chaney]

Known reported bug for quite some time. The fix I used was to open the console to identify the rogue drones and delete them, as suggested in a thread on their website forum. Sad that such a bug persists so long. I stopped playing the generally fun game as this kind of 4th wall destruction wore too thin too frequently.

[japp_02]

The bug is that you lose reputation with Polaris which you should not. Please do a bug report and if done already add new information if you can. I will in the comming days doing this mission (again), you will find my bug report if adequate or my comments to other reports in the official forums where you can add your own which will be highly welcome. The bug section of the official forum is here:
https://empyriononline.com/forums/bugs.24/

Here the simplest workaround that should work for everyone:
End the mission in whatever way, stay alive, and at the end check your reputation with Polaris in the F1 > Faction tab. If your reputation is not friendly, then launch the console and enter this command:

faction rep local Pol 20500

That's it, your rep with Polaris is friendly as it should be (+500 points for your efforts). You can go on after checking oncscreen that the mission is over, if it's not over for some reason, then go in the mission section of the PDA, chose the last mission step and chose to SKIP it.

(Edited my first response above.)

[mystikmind2005]

The first time i did this mission last year, i did not get this bug.

Did the mission again yesterday on the same computer, same game install and the bug happened!

This time i had a CV with a shield parked close by, it quickly destroyed everything it wanted to destroy while i went and shot the dude. The POL cruiser and the two drones were the only flying things remaining. I spoke to the other dude and the mission registered as complete.

The cruiser is not shooting at me but the drones are. My CV is not shooting at them. And my rep with POL was friendly... (i made sure i had a decent buffer of rep above friendly before starting this mission)

The drones could barely do any damage to my shields, so i could afford to ignore them anyway.

I did not really have anything left to do on the planet, and as far as looting goes, well, i got a CV, so there is no loot here worth my time.

I did notice a 'convoy' near the obelisk marked in yellow which i was expecting the missions would direct me to confront but it never did, which i found strange?

I went there anyway and shot a few dudes and recovered a Tales of Tash and that was it.

Then i left the planet, no harm, no foul caused by the bug.

[ravien_ff]

What's the faction of the NPC you kill for the mission?

[Kassonnade]

I did that mission today and I can confirm the bug. Even leaving the playfield, going to Masperon, leaving the game, reload game and back to Ningues, the rogue drones were still there waiting for me.

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

What's the faction of the NPC you kill for the mission?

The NPC (Commander Pendrell) appears as a Polaris officer but is in fact member / affiliate of the Salurians. But the drones and PV that attack the player are attached to Polaris, and shooting them lowers reputation with Polaris. I did the cheat suggested by Japp_02 and after destroying the drones I restored my "friendly" reputation with Polaris via the console.