The Bactrian mystery

[robmathes]

I've been reading through old forum posts about how to get the City-Ship license. The topic of the City-Ship license has been shrouded in mystery for a long time. At one point, a clearly defined process had been established and posted about but it seems it's no longer valid. I've been trying to figure how to get this license in my game but to no avail. The one major thing I really don't understand (from a game design perspective) is why the developers would put the City-Ship license in the game (and allow the player to window-shop the Bactrian) but then make it so elusive to attain. I'm all in favor of a lengthy quest line or even a full adventure that must be completed to acquire the City-Ship license. But as it stands, there seem to be multiple unidentified prerequisites to the City-Ship license goal that, if you don't do the exact correct unidentified thing at the exact correct unidentified time in your game, then you lose your chance to get the license, forever.

Why are the developers so against making the quest clearly defined? As a player, I can tell you without a doubt that it is very off-putting to set a goal for yourself to get the Bactrian only to find out later that it's impossible because you did or didn't do this other completely unrelated thing earlier in the game that nobody told you about and you had no way of knowing what impact it would have.

I've been trying to get help on this topic for weeks. Most Endless Sky forums are ghost towns (sadly) and I can't find the Discord channel that I've seen talked about (if that channel still exists, I'd love to know how to find it. Searching Discord for "Endless Sky" nets zero results). I did manage to get one response on another steam community thread but that thread was promptly locked as "necro" the next day. I mean, seriously?

As a last resort, I'd even be willing to tap into my game save file and edit the requirements to "fix" the availability of the City-Ship license quests. I don't want to hack it, I really just want the quests to be available to so I can play through them and earn it myself. I play the game to experience it, not to be done with it.

A little help, please?

[Goose]

i like how they make you bend over backwards and jump through 80 different hoops to get a village with 2 thrusters behind it, yet i can do basically nothing for freeworlds and be allowed to purchase one of the most powerful human warships ever.

[Amazinite]

Originally posted by robmathes:

But as it stands, there seem to be multiple unidentified prerequisites to the City-Ship license goal that, if you don't do the exact correct unidentified thing at the exact correct unidentified time in your game, then you lose your chance to get the license, forever.

Why are the developers so against making the quest clearly defined? As a player, I can tell you without a doubt that it is very off-putting to set a goal for yourself to get the Bactrian only to find out later that it's impossible because you did or didn't do this other completely unrelated thing earlier in the game that nobody told you about and you had no way of knowing what impact it would have.

Not sure what you're referring to at all. There are no timed requirements where if you miss them you never get another chance for anything in the game outside of like three or four missions unrelated to the city-ship license before the bombs on Gemini and Martini drop.

I can't find the Discord channel that I've seen talked about (if that channel still exists, I'd love to know how to find it. Searching Discord for "Endless Sky" nets zero results).

The link to the channel is in the game's credits on the main menu. It's at the very top as soon as you start the game along with some other relevant links.

A little help, please?

The only prerequisites to getting the missions for the city-ship license are the following:
1. Have a combat rating of 5 or higher.
2. Have at least 50 tons of cargo space in your fleet.
3. Have discovered the Hai.
4. Not be in the middle of the main campaign. (i.e. you can't have joined the Free Worlds, or in the future some other faction, but not finished the campaign.) This applies to start all the mission chains needed for the Bactrian. (i.e. if you start a chain of missions then start the main campaign, you could finish that chain without being stopped.)

So long as you meet those requirements, all the relevant missions should be able to offer for you if you're checking various spaceports in the Deep.

If you're still having trouble, here are all the relevant missions.
1. The Terminus Exploration mission. This will offer on either Memory, Haze, or Nifel.
2. Deep Convoy missions. These will offer anywhere in the Deep that is within 2 jumps of the Gomeisa system. There are three of them, but only one is required. At the end of these missions they will tell you to do the following point.
3. Three "mystery delivery" or "mystery retrieval" jobs from the jobs board.
4. The Mystery Cubes missions. This will offer once you've done at least one of point 2 and finished point 3, and meet prerequisite 1.
5. The Project Hawking mission. This will offer once you've done point 4, and meet prerequisite 2.
6. The Deep Remnant missions. This will offer once you've done points 1 and 4, and meet prerequisite 3.
7. The Scientist Rescue missions. This will offer once you've done points 5 and 6, and is the last string of missions required to gain the city-ship license.

If you still aren't getting anything then odds are you declined an important mission at some point in the past. Without your save file I wouldn't be able to tell you which one that is, though.

[Amazinite]

Originally posted by Goose:

i like how they make you bend over backwards and jump through 80 different hoops to get a village with 2 thrusters behind it, yet i can do basically nothing for freeworlds and be allowed to purchase one of the most powerful human warships ever.

It only takes at minimum 17 missions to get a city-ship license. It takes like 85 missions to reach the point where you get the Dreadnought in the Free Worlds campaign. :|

[Waladil]

I do very much agree that the city-ship license should be simpler. It was implemented before a number of the newest ships and groups were added to the game. Back then, the Baccy was kinda just OP because of its big size but since then it's really dropped off in terms of late-game potential because we've gotten so many newer and stronger options.

TBH I just capture one or two and eat the rep penalty nowadays. I'd rather idly blow up pirates than fiddle with the quests. I'm never going to want more than two bactrians (one for general-purpose flagship duties, one for dedicated max-capture capacity)

[DroopingPuppy]

Necro the thread is not considered as the good attitude for most forums and most forums through the whole internet are forbid to necro threads. Simply lock the thread is the normal respond to the necro, and it is only natural. If you want to ask something for long gone thread, please make a new thread and add a link to the old thread.

[Terin]

Originally posted by Amazinite:

Originally posted by Goose:

i like how they make you bend over backwards and jump through 80 different hoops to get a village with 2 thrusters behind it, yet i can do basically nothing for freeworlds and be allowed to purchase one of the most powerful human warships ever.

It only takes at minimum 17 missions to get a city-ship license. It takes like 85 missions to reach the point where you get the Dreadnought in the Free Worlds campaign. :|

It's definitely a lot less missions, but the requirements are much more complicated than the Free Worlds, which is mostly just linearly following the directions. It's thematically appropriate for the Deep, but that doesn't mean it's not overwhelming for some players.

Originally posted by DroopingPuppy:

Necro the thread is not considered as the good attitude for most forums and most forums through the whole internet are forbid to necro threads. Simply lock the thread is the normal respond to the necro, and it is only natural. If you want to ask something for long gone thread, please make a new thread and add a link to the old thread.

The thread is 4 hours old!

[robmathes]

Originally posted by Amazinite:

The link to the channel is in the game's credits on the main menu. It's at the very top as soon as you start the game along with some other relevant links.

Thank you. I'll take a look.

The only prerequisites to getting the missions for the city-ship license are the following:
1. Have a combat rating of 5 or higher.
2. Have at least 50 tons of cargo space in your fleet.
3. Have discovered the Hai.
4. Not be in the middle of the main campaign. (i.e. you can't have joined the Free Worlds, or in the future some other faction, but not finished the campaign.) This applies to start all the mission chains needed for the Bactrian. (i.e. if you start a chain of missions then start the main campaign, you could finish that chain without being stopped.)

So long as you meet those requirements, all the relevant missions should be able to offer for you if you're checking various spaceports in the Deep.

I've finished the FW campaign, discovered the Hai, my combat rating is pretty high (9 or 10). I'll try touring through the Deep again with empty cargo just in case I was always full of trade goods every time I stopped anywhere in the Deep.

If you're still having trouble, here are all the relevant missions.
1. The Terminus Exploration mission. This will offer on either Memory, Haze, or Nifel.
2. Deep Convoy missions. These will offer anywhere in the Deep that is within 2 jumps of the Gomeisa system. There are three of them, but only one is required. At the end of these missions they will tell you to do the following point.
3. Three "mystery delivery" or "mystery retrieval" jobs from the jobs board.
4. The Mystery Cubes missions. This will offer once you've done at least one of point 2 and finished point 3, and meet prerequisite 1.
5. The Project Hawking mission. This will offer once you've done point 4, and meet prerequisite 2.
6. The Deep Remnant missions. This will offer once you've done points 1 and 4, and meet prerequisite 3.
7. The Scientist Rescue missions. This will offer once you've done points 5 and 6, and is the last string of missions required to gain the city-ship license.

If you still aren't getting anything then odds are you declined an important mission at some point in the past. Without your save file I wouldn't be able to tell you which one that is, though.

I'm certain I've done 2, 3, 4, and 5. I wasn't sure whether I'd done 1 but since 4 was offered and I completed it then I must have done 1 at some point. Mission 6 has never been offered and I'm pretty sure the only mission I've ever declined was the "Wolf Pack" missions during the FW campaign (which felt dishonorable to me so I said no thanks.)

Can I send my game save file to be examined? Or can you tell me what to look for in the game save file?

[Amazinite]

Sharing your save file would do. Upload it to a service like Google Drive or Pastebin and send the link. I know Pastebin has a file size limit, so you might not be able to upload the whole thing. The relevant part of the save file we need to look at is the conditions section, so ctrl+f (or whatever your search function is) for "conditions" and copy everything that is indented below that.

If you don't want to go through the hassle of uploading it though, I think that the only thing that would be blocking you is if you find "Deep: Remnant 0: declined" (that 0 might be an A or 1 or some other character) or "Terminus exploration: declined".

Something I think is really important to note though is that v0.9.13 JUST released. If you hop onto the beta branch, the Deep: Remnant missions have been changed up quite a bit, so I'd suggest playing through the newer version of these missions. Just be aware though that if you're on Mac, we're seeing reports of people's game crashing on launch with the new release that we're looking into.

[robmathes]

Originally posted by Amazinite:

If you don't want to go through the hassle of uploading it though, I think that the only thing that would be blocking you is if you find "Deep: Remnant 0: declined" (that 0 might be an A or 1 or some other character) or "Terminus exploration: declined".

I definitely found something in my save file. I have two lines that appear as follows:

"Terminus exploration: failed"
"Terminus exploration: offered"

I don't remember this mission at all. How would I go about resetting the mission? Is it something as simple as deleting the "Terminus exploration: failed" line?

Something I think is really important to note though is that v0.9.13 JUST released. If you hop onto the beta branch, the Deep: Remnant missions have been changed up quite a bit, so I'd suggest playing through the newer version of these missions. Just be aware though that if you're on Mac, we're seeing reports of people's game crashing on launch with the new release that we're looking into.

I've been playing v0.9.12. I just opted into the beta on your advice so my next game load should be running v0.9.13 (I'm on a PC).

[Amazinite]

Delete both those lines. The game checks for the "<mission>: offered" line to determine whether or not it should offer a mission to you, so you don't necessarily need to get rid of the failed line, but better to get rid of both in case any future content looks for the failed line.

[robmathes]

Originally posted by Amazinite:

Delete both those lines. The game checks for the "<mission>: offered" line to determine whether or not it should offer a mission to you, so you don't necessarily need to get rid of the failed line, but better to get rid of both in case any future content looks for the failed line.

Did as advised and Terminus Exploration mission triggered. Now to enjoy playing through it! Thank you so much for your help!

[Amazinite]

No problem.

[DroopingPuppy]

Although you already did most part of them, but note that you will know why some of the quests on the table are named so weirdly when you are actually issue the quest such as Project Hawking which is to retrieve the result of Project Hawking.

Also Free Worlds campaign have nothing to do with Bactrian quest line.

Originally posted by Terin:

Originally posted by DroopingPuppy:

Necro the thread is not considered as the good attitude for most forums and most forums through the whole internet are forbid to necro threads. Simply lock the thread is the normal respond to the necro, and it is only natural. If you want to ask something for long gone thread, please make a new thread and add a link to the old thread.

The thread is 4 hours old!

OP necro'd the other thread that is got locked a few days ago, and OP have mentioned it on this thread.