Smuggler Boss Quest Glitched???

[SlippyBippy]

I am currently on the smuggler boss quest and cant seem to progress at all. I have received the device to jam the smugglers quantum jump. After that it tells me to "find a smuggler hideout and talk to the smugglers" I have been to many of these hideouts but none of them have anything to say regrading where the smuggler boss is located.

[🦊 Hermit]

Basically the same as when you first began the quest. Near every hideout is a smuggler ship - talk to them, agree to take the goods, and they will tell you where Bottan is waiting to receive them. Go there, but this time before he jumps out, jam him.

[Fluffy Pagan]

I'm having an issue with the same mission. I've been bouncing from hideout to hideout and there are no smugglers to speak to for the second part and the stations have nothing to say either.

[rickcarson]

If you spend too long parked in a smuggler sector they (the quest givers) get wiped out by pirates (I think)*. But it's unusual for it to happen in many places all at once.

*This is my theory as it sometimes happens when I've been using one of my ships exclusively to rerun this boss. So after doing him each time I send them back to the smuggler sector to wait for the cooldown to pass, and sometimes I get caught up in other things, so they're there for a while.

[Valck]

Personal experience confirms what rickcarson said, it appears smuggler ships either get wiped out or otherwise leave/despawn after a certain (long-ish) amount of time.

If you have trouble finding smugglers near outposts, maybe try to discover new outposts, which as far as I can tell do have a guaranteed fresh smuggler, *at least* for the initial visit.
It's not a perfect solution, only a workaround, but that's what I resorted to to finish Bottan's story, in more than one galaxy.

[grrantu]

The smuggler will always warp out of the system if there is any combat. That is usually the cause for them being missing. If you are flying around in a powerful ship with auto turrets in an area where there are enemy ships, you may not even notice the combat because you destroy the enemy ship while loading. You might try turning off your guns before warping into a system with a smuggler base. Also I seem to remember that there are no Botan smuggler ships inside the ring but I could be wrong there.