Tail & Acquire jobs tips?

[Leonem]

Hello there, I'm Just wondering how these jobs actually work.

I'm at City Hall, I call for the job and it tells me that an exchange will happen in the vicinity. But what's the range of that vicinity? Hall and Bathrooms? Can it be on other floors of the Hall? Can it be done outside?

"This person is of average build and average height.

They have blond hair and green eyes.

They will soon leave to exchange the briefcase with another individual.

We need you to tail this citizen.
Photograph the exchange if you can.

Investigate the recipient Provide their name, Steal their briefcase. Then call us.

Do not, under any circumstances, open the briefcase. Understood?"

Then the unknown citizen given in our board is the one with said characteristics and your target, which should be given a briefcase by someone we don't really care about.

So here I am, at the phone booth, waiting to see someone matching the characteristics, with bathrooms, three floors over my head and four streets around... but no match enters nor leave the hall, so I try to wait outside to watch around and see people coming in and out but none fits the bill. The game then ends up telling me that the exchange has been done, for me to run like a headless chicken in the streets around the city hall to no avail.

No one with the traits, no one with a briefcase.

So I quickload and try again and again, but having to wait until the exhange is done everytime in every streets and every floor is tedious and quite unintuitive.

What am I even supposed to do? Wait at the booth? Go outside?
Does the tailing always lead outside? Can the exchange be done in between floors of the same building with two people living the same place? How is the quest generated between the player and NPCs? Can quickloading break the flow of the job?

[Iyasenu]

Wow, I'm not sure.
I haven't had one of these jobs generate outside of a business, such as a Diner.
And in those cases, a few minutes after the call, someone matching the description given would get up and walk out of the building carrying a briefcase, and I'd have to follow them.
The actual exchange would take place in some side street or intersection.

But every time, the person would leave the building they start in, so I'm not sure if the exchange can take place in the same building, but on a different floor.
But, again, I haven't had the job take place in some multi-story place such as the City Hall.

[Benjamin_Bellamarca]

I just completed my first case of this type- it was in a diner. One of the staff members who fit the description left carrying a case. I tailed them half a block behind. They eventually found an open but low traffic spot to do the handoff. I then followed the person who picked up the case and was led back to their apartment. I was then able to acquire the case.

[Isabelle]

i have about 100 hours and i have never once been able to properly complete one of these missions. I'm sure they're possible, I think I've just been unlucky.

[Cookie]

From what I've seen, the person with the briefcase always walks out of the door to the street soon after you complete the phone call. So next time you pick that kind of mission, try watching people headed for the door and see who has a briefcase in their hand.

I'm on my sixth playthrough with about 100 hours in this game, and I think these tail & acquisition cases are buggy. I remember picking the Tail & Acquisition case five times, and three out of the five, the person with the briefcase walked out to a street somewhere and stood still forever. I know that someone is supposed to come to meet them, but that person never showed up. The other two times I tried the case, it worked properly. But three out of five times is a high failure rate, so I just don't pick those missions.

[Depaskala]

For what it's worth (statistically), never had a problem with these cases, apart from some hesitation about the exact moment of the exchange I was supposed to photograph.

[AT-Colt]

I had such a case today and needed to cancel it.
I followed the initial carrier, I took a photograph of the exchange (though no people where visible on the photograph o.O) and tailed the recipient to their appartment. I took the briefcase, identified the recipient, set the photograph up in the case file and... were not able to request a route to finish the quest because something would be missing.