Everyone knows this bloody mission. Guys get spaced, yada. here's my problem with it: Why the feck do Morgan's cronies invariably blow me out of space every time we get to the pirate hoard? I've beaten the game once before on the hard-copy version, so I know that's not what's supposed to happen. It's happened three times in a row now. Getting irritated.

I'm having similar issues. I've been stuck on this one a while and now it's just crashing at the point Morgan's command section docks with me.

After about five more tries thanks to scripting failure - I've been getting a lot of those - I managed to get past it. I dunno why but I'm getting a lot of scripting failures in missions. I was too attentive in Test Pilot and shot the Tug going for Purple Leader before it docked with him, for example. The game's not hard, but the massive amount of scripting is pretty unforgiving later on. And why is it that I have to shoot hostiles with my rear PBC once they hit a damage threshold? All the time and seekers I wasted before figuring that little fact out.

And now Metallake is doing it too. I'll have nuked the entire first squadron minus one corvette, usually Rock of Ages, and as I'm fending off the COSA PatCom I see 'Rock of Ages has destroyed Alabama.' ONE CORVETTE seems to have annihilated the carrier all by itself.

WHAT THE FUCK. How is it I've never had this many issues when I played it from the CDs?! This is ridiculous!

I've been having a ton of scripting torture as well. This is my first time through the game, and it's becoming quite an annoyance despite all the things I like about iWAR.

The first time playing Morgan I planted all the mines with no trouble, but every time since 4 out of 6 of the mines either go flying far off into the asteroids and never come back, blow up the crate they're supposed to attach to, or blow up when they get close to the crate they're supposed to attach to. I've tried it 6-7 times now, and I'm about to quit and jump to EoC.

Maybe it is a timing issue due to processor speed changes? Did you try turning off speedstep\cool and quiet?

Ravenger will know more about the scripting as he was one of the developers.

There may well be issues with the game when running on modern PCs, as the game wasn't designed to go over 100fps because the internal timers work in centi-seconds.

Remember this game was developed on Pentium 90 PCs, and the average frame-rate in software mode was probably around 15fps max, and normally lower. On later 3DFX based PCs with faster processors you could possibly get up to 30fps on a good day - at 640x480!

Forcing vsync on in your graphics card to limit the refresh rate to 60fps may help. If you can force the frame-rate to 30fps that may be even better.

If you're really having trouble there's no shame in turning on the cheats and making yourself invincible for a short time, or using the mission skipping function to skip past checks which aren't firing correctly.

To be honest GOG have worked a miracle in getting the game running on modern PCs. I could never get it working on XP, let alone Windows 7. The game was produced in at a time when there's a bit of a black-hole in game compatibility. Any DOS games can be run fairly easily on DOSBOX. Windows 2000/XP based games generally work on modern OSes. Anything developed for Windows 95/98/ME can be very tricky to get working on modern OSes.

Thanks for the responses, guys. I did manage to finish the mission, even though I only placed 5 of the 6 mines (the last one blew up just before it got to the crate). Turns out you don't absolutely have to place all 6, even though the objective documents gives you a red status for that part if you don't manage them all.

Things are going a bit smoother now. You just have to remember to think like an unforgiving stickler of a computer from the mid- to late- 1990s and not deviate form your mission directives too much.

In any case, way more to like than dislike, although I'm getting antsy to start EoC, so I may push through Defiance with some impatience. I may write up a more thorough review when I'm done.

I'd be happy to read it. After al, EoC is completely and utterly different from I-War/Defiance. The only thing they have in common is the genre, spaceflight simulator with Newtonian physics. Still, if you don't mind its flaws too much, EoC is a very good game with gorgeous graphics.

I'm stuck at the same mission. By now I can place the mines pretty quickly* and then jump to Morgan. However, when I lead them back he says "One for each crate" and then I simply get blown to bits. Anyone can tell me how to avoid that? Is there any trick to make this ambush work?

Sometimes they also just kill me outright when I find them. He tells me I'm about to get boarded, I sit and do nothing and all of a sudden they attack?!

Any help would be appreciated o_O

*Note on the mines since I would have been thankful to have this info about an hour ago: they actually have a nice reach, you can place them from 7km away. Just make sure to LOCK ON to your target! Not only select a container via [<] or [>] but then LOCK them with [ / ] ! This seems to be the key. If you fire them out of reach they seem to explode after a few 100m. If you are in range and locked on, they often seem to just fly away in a random direction. I think this is because they can only dock from one side at the containers and sometimes need to circle the target container in order to do so. Note that they are also fire and forget, which is the only nice thing about them. And lastly, I usually fire them while standing still, but I'm not sure if that is important.
tl;dr: Get as close as about 7km to the target container; LOCK ON; fire; turn away and go for the next one.

**edit: I finally managed to "beat" the mission. You can lure them back to the trap either as soon as they start firing, or they actually want you to lead them to the ambush. Then just keep flying. Once they get there, I have no idea what happened, but from some 40km away I watched while at least one got destroyed and suddenly some other guy was there as well and I just zipped back and forth unloading my missiles until everything was dead. Shame though, really would have liked this to get played out as intended, but at least now I can continue -_-

Yep. That's how I ended up as well. That mission's scripting is just too complex and restrictive, especially when you have no earthly idea what you're supposed to do or how to go about it. Fortunately I haven't encountered another one quite that bad...yet.

Still a fun game though. I just wish it were more freeform about how to accomplish your mission goals.

If anyone's still having trouble with this...I found this mission terribly hard Back In The Day. Timing issues might make it worse, but I did discover my whole walkthrough is still up thanks to the Wayback Machine, so here's the page on Morgan if you want tactical, rather than technical, assistance.