Question Broke the Maul quest by hanging around HQ

[LittleNike]

I'm pretty sure I know how it happened, and I think just a small change in how the quest is marked for the player would prevent the issue for others.

What happened: I went out with Lia and saved Maul, then headed back to Starlight (my HQ) to wait for her. Talked to Jammer, then just puttered around sorting inventory and crafting until the quest marker to talk to her showed up. It showed up over her head before she was at the settlement, and Maul wasn't with her (having never done the quest, I didn't know this was potentially a problem). When I went to talk to her, she didn't respond (Jammer also didn't respond, so I figured they had to talk to each other) so I followed her until she got to the settlement, close to where Jammer was and tried again. Maul flickered into and out of existence a couple times, then disappeared. Lia and Jammer would then only give their generic dialogue (what you want to do, Boss? selling collars and wall busters). Waited a few minutes, but nothing happened - they kept with the generic dialogue.

I then loaded a save from before I went out with Ophelia and redid the quest, but this time went to a different settlement after talking to Jammer the first time. When I went back, the scene played without a hitch.

I figure me spamming the interaction button with Ophelia (and/or Jammer) is probably what broke the script, but when the quest says to talk to Ophelia, that's probably what most people will do. If instead it said 'Wait for Ophelia and Maul to arrive at HQ' and the quest marker would spawn at the meeting location instead of over her head (like for the wall buster quest), it would probably solve any issues like mine.

It's a fun quest, and redoing it wasn't that big a deal, although it ends up being a bit of a time-sink if you have to do it twice, with the waiting around.

 

[nzane]

Yeah interacting with them in the middle of a scene can even cause a dialogue camera softlock for me.

Things I've learned so far so the triggers won't break:

If NPC attacks a key actor in a scene, it wil break
Re load a save before entering the scene trigger area and use the console command "kah" , retry.

If a key NPC gets stuck with an object while in the path to a scripted scene, it will break.
You know the drill, re load, try to remove/disable object, retry.

Quicksaving/saving in the middle of a scripted scene and trying to re load that save for X reason, sometimes can break the scene too.
Roll back to a save where you haven't started the quest and try again , try to not save too often until you complete the quest succesfully.

Interacting with NPC in the middle of a scene can cause a softlock, I've find out this is more common when NPCs are supposed to be in a scene but a key NPC is missing from being there, way to fix is wait until they're all in the spot then try to get close to them and wait for them to engage in dialogue with you, if they don't, try interacting.


Imho if gath would have make the quests so the trigger would be the objectives instead of a check to see if the scenes have happened, scenes would still be bugged, but we at least would be able to proccees with the questline.