Seriously, what the fuck. I'm tired of this bullshit. I have tried this mission a dozen fucking times. Either the UNO gets blown up by fighters because I can't shoot them unless I use my rear PBCs, or the goddamned SCRIPTED sequence, which is apparently only when CF-Omega rams me or something never happens and all the fighters blow me to bits. I'm pretty sure I got it ONCE but the game fucking crashed, presumably loading the cutscene.

Yes, I'm very upset.

[EDIT] Obscene rage edited out.

I'm shamed to admit that I scripted that part of the mission, and I'm sorry you're having trouble with it. In my defense it was one of the first scripts I wrote for the I-War games.

However that mission was extensively tested at the time, and in the many years I've been supporting the game I've not heard of any major issues with the script.

There have been some script issues reported on this forum which I've never seen before, which could be an issue with the game running too fast on modern hardware. I know this can cause problems with weapon damage not registering in some circumstances.

It may be better to use the cheats to trigger the next section of the mission to bypass the part you're having trouble with.

Maybe scripting problems are caused by multithreading, setting affinity to one processor might help, with Imgcfg for example.

I gave up and used cheats, and now one of two things happen: I either let myself get damaged and get so damaged from getting rammed by one of the fighters that I lose all thrusters and just spin around uselessly (and for some reason none of it gets repaired. I just sit there with a roundabout 10% hull and the damage teams apparently dead... or something), or a few times I managed to almost get it right but didn't separate soon enough and killed myself along with the Dreadnaught hull.

[EDIT] Well, finally, after some strategic use of cheats, I finally managed to pull it off, and it didn't crash when it loaded the CG movie. Guess I had to sleep on it and wait until my rage had worn down. But why'd the final cutscene have to end so vaguely? That's not fair. :(

I wish we'd had the budget to go back through I-War 1 and add save points like we did in Defiance. It'd have saved a lot of the frustration.

I still think that some of these issues people are having is to do with the game running on modern machines. It was never that buggy as far as I can remember. It'd be interesting to try the GOG version (without the glide wrapper) on a machine from that era.

OK, so the UNO crashing into the Excalibur is actually a good thing. And then? I don't get any triggers or further dialogue at all after that happens.

EDIT: Okay, I finally got through this one. I'm sorry for Ravenger, but the scripting is the most awful part of this mission. Totally dependent on luck, like we were playing with some freakin' slot machines. It discourages and even punishes lateral thinking.

First you find out you can't damage the Excalibur beyond 20 percent by shooting it, because the script says so. The game wants that UNO ship to survive long enough to crash into the Excalibur. Fine, let's give it that.

So after that I guess you can now knock down the ship by ramming into it with the Aggressor shield, like I did on "At all costs". Right? Wrong: the script still won't allow it to be damaged above 20 percent.

So the official guide says you should ram it and detach the comm module at the last second. After a few attempts I finally pull that off, but all I get is a message of the Dreadnought being destroyed by the Excalibur. Let's thank the script again.

Try again (it's like the tenth time by now). This time I can't outrun that last C-Fighter launched by the Excalibur, so it reaches to me. I unload all my missiles at guns at it. Nope, the script caps the damage of that one too at 20 percent!

It fires at me and, with its usual no-more-than-two-or-three hits, disables my guns and missiles. A dialogue follows: hey, so that's the trigger the script expects!

Well, let's ram this ship then. I can't because, along with the weapons, that last fighter also damaged other vital systems, which prevents me from moving towards the ship. No problem, let's assign repair teams. Sorry, no can do: the script has frozen every repair activity for all components!

The first time my heat array and cooling systems had been disabled and I had to inexorably watch the temperature rise until my ship blew up.

The second and third time, my yaw, pitch and roll thrusters had been disabled, so I couldn't align with the Excalibur.

The fourth time, most power grids had been disabled and I couldn't gain the required speed.

By the time I was granted the astral conjunction that put me in a condition to complete the mission, it must have been my fortieth attempt or so.

This is insane.

If the source codes to this game are still out there somewhere, I would make it a matter of urgency that the scripting (and the damage model and a few other things) be patched, lest the entire game be taken off GOG until it stops being an exercise in frustration.