"Complete the Manufacturing Site" contract soft lock

Brian Ellis shared this bug 40 days ago
Submitted

Repro steps:

  1. Accept the "Complete the Manufacturing Site" contract in the Verdure sector.
  2. Travel to the Viridian Halo and find the manufacturing site.
  3. Weld up any block, and note that the completed block count on the corresponding module increases to 1.
  4. Grind the block back down completely. Notice that the completed block count on that module goes back to 0, but the projection of the block does not reappear.
  5. Attempt to place a new instance of that block on the grid. Notice that it gives you an "unauthorized action" error because you are not the grid owner.
  6. You are now soft locked; there is no way to complete the contract.

Replies (3)

photo
2

Same problem with contract "Engineering - Industrial Foothold" with "Objective 2: Complete the Manufacturing Site". Removed Conveyor Curved to replace it with Conveyor T-Junction. But getting the message "Unauthorized Action : You don't have permission to perform this block placement operation on the target grid.

If I am not allowed to place a block, I should not be able to remove one.

photo
2

Yea. I learned early on that altering the anything within the contract while it's active is a bad idea. One you can't add anything and the BP vanishes when the item is welded up. This isn't a bug but it's a pain. I would suggest having 2-3 saves before doing anything like contracts, building ships, and such. I have restarted over so many times because I don't do this often enough or just forget to.

photo
1

I have the same issue, and worse, my auto save was just AFTER I removed the block. My last active save was 4 hours of playtime earlier. Is there a way to use a debug command to complete a contract so I can continue?

While not technically a bug, perhaps, any small slip-up that causes a soft lock is very player unfriendly. I was thinking like an engineer at the time -- I part built a wall then realized I needed to be on the inside next. So instead of finishing it and flying around to the door, I broke it down to turn around and rebuild it from the inside. Nope.

I have been also considering this issue and see several solutions --

1. (The best IMHO) - if you build a block then grind it down, the projected block should be reinstated.

2. You are not allowed to grind any block once started. (ie, Olivier's solution).

3. You can grind down blocks, but the completion count is not decremented

4. You can replace any removed block with the exact same one in the same orientation.

5. There is some way to bulk refresh all unbuilt blocks on a project.

There may yet be other options, but I think this covers probably the majority of them. They also likely have differing complexity to implement in the code, so one might be quicker/easier to do than the others. I do think it is worth a fix for player friendliness, soft locking is pretty depressing.

photo
1

I found that you can go back a save. Forgot how though. Would have to look. I think it's where you change from Survival to creative.

photo
1

you can also abandon the contract and re-take it and it will fix the block projections.

photo
1

Not directly related to this exact bug with contracts, but when I first encountered the demonstration in the story of the conveyors, I grinded down the small conveyors to replace them with large conveyors to see if it affected resource transfer speed; Of course, it refused to let me place the large conveyor to test. Luckily this did not soft-lock anything, but I know that if I encountered such a thing so early, then they should probably look into how ownership works. Multiplayer isn't within the immediate horizon, but sooner than later MP will exist, and when it does block ownership should be long figured out.

I quite liked in SE1 how grinding down and rebuilding a part gave you "ownership" of it, it kind of felt like hacking in a way. Can't there be some sort of interface that can be accessed, like how Cyberpunk did the RAM hacking, that might give you temporary control over some features?

photo
Leave a Comment
 
Attach a file
Access denied
Access denied