Have I locked myself out of the Free Worlds storyline by letting too much time pass?

[Mharr]

I got as far as the second escort mission then wandered off thinking that was just a repeatable procedural thing, (also worst mission type in all games) worked towards a bigger ship, filled out the map, found the wider world and some non verbal guys, many years pass...

I finally return to Free Worlds space and run into some more story missions testing the air quality but those seem to go nowhere, so look up some guides and apparently there's a *lot* of ways into that storyline, mostly gated behind combat rank 5 which I still hadn't reached organically.

So, ground that out but there's still absolutely nothing happening around here. Am I now in a state of either start over or hack the save?

[andrewhcit]

Unless you wandered off during the mission and failed the deadline, the passage of time shouldn't stop story missions from coming up.

[Mharr]

Pretty sure I never started that second mission, but it's gone now. The guides say there should be at least two other routes into joining/averting the war tho?

Might need to throw this save at the devs, maybe I bugged it.

[Startome]

It might be bugged, or iirc it is possible to effectively decline to participate. Maybe you accidentally told them to shove off?

Definitely worth having someone take a look at your save to be sure, there are a few folks super familiar with the campaign mission chains.

[Mharr]

Is this a subreddit / discord type of operation?

[sergekoriakin]

You can test you save file here http://endlesssky.500mb.net. You can select your game version - 9.16 as last stable steam or 10.2 as a newest steam beta.
There is so many tabs with different missions. You need "human/free world 0 prologue" and "human/free world 1 start".
I am making this staff for myself to test any ideas so sorry for lost disign and possiblr bugs.

[sergekoriakin]

Found you saved game. You stopped at mission FW Commitment (Join the Free world). You need "to help" FW one more time to close condition `"assisted free worlds" >= 3`. Now you have only 2. Looks like you failed escort missions and FW bounty.
I am not sure there is anothere possibility "to help" FW. There is only 4 possibility and you missed 2.

The solution is edit you save game directly

- find a lines with "FW Bounty 1: declined" and next line "FW Bounty 1: offered" and delete them both.
This allow you to take FW bounty missions again. This quests contain 3 missions - one with fighters next with Behemoth and third with Osprey. You can take a misson and reload your save game again. After you can found system where pirate in `info` section

- And the second solution - delete line with "event: fw escorts abandon timer". Looks like you wait too long to take next FW escort mission. You still need to complete 2 of this line - escort something to Tazared and save freighter.

[sergekoriakin]

In my opinion it's a bug in game logic. Civil war is a main quest line in all quest lines of the game. Just because it locked many of them. So to block it so eazy it's not a good point...

[Mharr]

Turns out the bounties still hadn't triggered at all, I lucked out and found a random drop advanced FTL drive and while exploring those options all the bounty missions suddenly started popping on the way through FW space. (Like eight years after they were supposed to probably) Maybe the trigger isn't exactly on combat rank 5 but 100 points into it or something?

... that does seem like a very high ranking gate if you're just trading and running story missions and not grinding dozens of high level kills for the loot. It's not like this game forces you to fight random encounters to the death.

Thanks for all the links to game tools though, really good to know they exist in an emergency!

[sergekoriakin]

There is a simple bounty missions you can take in mission window. Just for money and captured ships, great way to upgrade you fleet, if you like human ships. And where is a FW bounty missions you can take at starport at FW planet. This case you up a counter "assisted free worlds".

I am missed a simplest possibility to turn the war on. Just find line "assisted free worlds" 2 in your game file and make it 3 or 4. Next time you visit FW planet the war is near the start

[Mharr]

Oh, there is another possibility - does having an active duel mission elsewhere in the galaxy prevent some story missions appearing? I was working towards a certain rubix cube looking license at the time and that did seem to affect spawning and events generally while the named target was live and jumping around.

[sergekoriakin]

The trigger, i am talking about just giving you an invitation to visit Bourne (FW capital planet) to sign your side in future war, no vizit - no war and invitation can wait as long as you need. If you making a missions for Deep it's better to hold starting a "civil war" awhile, because all north sector including Deep been closed for a long time. The Deep quest line ended with Belhezub campaine and saving a sience vessel.

[Mharr]

Yeah that did unlock after a bunch of authored bounty missions finally showed up, and those bounty missions also operated as duels. I'm wondering if only one duel can be active at a time so those might have been blocked while I had an active target on the other end of space.