Issues during "Last Watch" + Gren missing at Stardock afterwards

[gck]

I've recently played through "Last Watch" after having destroyed all minor + major arrays, but ran into a couple of issues doing so (which are all interconnected, I suppose, or have the same root cause). I'm playing the Gamepass version on XBox Series X.

• Everything works well until after defeating the Watchtower fleet and docking with Heimdall station (I've double-checked that the "Deal with station defenses" quest item is checked off and I don't get Gren's "oh, you are too late" voice line before boarding the station, e.g. I've tried reloading my save(s) before this mission multiple times and try to do things subtly differently, but I always get the same progression of issues afterwards)
• While the first part of the station works fine, I've noticed intense performance issues in the second cell (with the large open windows and the final boss/warden), up to the point where the audio effects are getting distorted/stretched and I'm down to maybe 2-3 fps.
• I couldn't really figure out why at first (switching to "performance" mode had almost no impact), but then I saw that there is a large number of watchtower ships visible through the station windows, all of them shooting at my fleet ships (which don't appear to be engaging) – an extremely large number, which certainly looks to be buggy (they're nearly bumping into each other at all times, because it is that crowded).
• I also noticed that the "Deal with station defenses" objective has unchecked itself.
• If I backtrack all the way to my ship, board it and undock, I'm confronted with this insanely large Watchtower fleet (and super low FPS again). I've actually managed to defeat all the ships, so that the "Deal with station defenses" objective gets checked again), but when I board the station and run over to the second cell again, the same thing happens, e.g. the objective unchecks and a large group of Watchtower ships jumps in again.
• I can actually play towards the second cell with a lot of patience (due to the extremely low FPS), up until the point where I'm supposed to enter the Skydrop.
• Most of the time, the Skydrop won't engage after sitting down, e.g. the door doesn't close, and the game just remains at this state indefinitely. I think this is due to the extremely low FPS and memory pressure (I get graphical glitches, too), which may cause some script not to trigger.
• Eventually, I managed to get the Skydrop to engage after reloading saves for a long time (both with and without Torin being alive)
• The next scene on the planet works fine, e.g. FPS are okay again, Gren lands, and I can board his ship. The only problem: Gren will repeatedly say his "oh no, you were too late and need to deal with more watchtower ships" line, while the "Deal with station defenses" objective will periodically update as either unchecked, and then checked again, as if in an infinite loop.
• When Gren takes off and we switch back to space, all the Watchtower ships are there, FPS drop to the single digits again, Gren will stare at me and alternate between "it won't take long to dock" and "oh no, you are too late", and fly around in circles while a ton of Watchtower ships fire at his ship, however without effect.
• He'll never dock with my ship. Since that's the Starborn Guardian, and not being able to dock with it appears to be a known bug <https://forum.kinggathcreations.com/threads/last-watch-bug-report-spoiler.531/#post-2652> anyway, I've done the workaround from this thread, e.g. talk to Gren on the planet, don't board his ship, but rather fast-travel back to the Stardock.
• Boarding Stardock will successfully finish the "Last Watch" mission – If I look at the "Completed" mission tab, the "Deal with station defenses" in the finished mission will be either checked or unchecked, depending on the timing I had when boarding Stardock (remember, this objective alternates between checked and unchecked for me).
• At Stardock, things appear to be mostly fine again: Harper and Torin are there (and I can finish the activity of speaking to them).
• However, Gren is nowhere to be found. When I engage the "Speak to Gren at Stardock" activity, the quest marker will appear at my ship's docking port, but if I board my ship, the quest marker is visible somewhere on the Stardock again (It's rather clearly visible when looking through the Guardian's large windows). If I enter Stardock again, the quest marker is back the docking port.
• If I jump back to Heimdall station, I can fight all those Watchtower ships that are somewhat "left over" – When I defeat them all, they won't respawn anymore at this time.

So I suppose the root issue is that the "Deal with station defenses" objective somehow re-triggers for me when I enter the second cell of Heimdall station, which may be something to look into.

However, my main personal question: Is there any sort of workaround to get Gren to appear at Stardock again? Speaking to him is the only Watchtower activity I'm still missing, and I've already tried things like sleeping for 48h hours, traveling to different places and back to Stardock, checking the entire workshop area including the hidden room at the bottom (also with "Sense star stuff"), but alas, no Gren

 

[twolargepepperoni]

Thank you for your detailed report - could you please post up your modlist? And can I check that you are on our latest build please (1.0.2v4).

 

[gck]

Thanks for coming back to me! Here's my full load order:

Shattered Space                                       ???
Deimog                                                1.0.69
Tracker's Alliance: The Vulture                       1.0
Escape                                                1.0.18
The Perfect Recipe                                    21
At Hell's Gate                                        1.0.58
McClarence Outfitters                                 1.0.5RC2
Watchtower                                            1.0.2v4
KZ Mantis 2.0                                         1.1
Starborn Gravis Suit                                  1.0
Craftable Starborn Suits & Skins                      1.4.1
Starborn Legendary Reroll (Achievement friendly)      1.20
Smarter Spacesuit Auto-Hide                           2.2.0
Proper Companion Previews (Achievement friendly)      1.00
No Chameleon Effect for you                           1.00
No Chameleon Effect for Companions                    1.00
Blackout Drumbeat Skin                                1.0
LUMI Rifle System                                     1.1
Bedlam – Dungeon Randomizer                           2.0.0
Gorefield                                             1.6.9
Starborn Among Us                                     1.00
Craftable NovaStrike                                  1.00

And yes, I'm on the most recent Watchtower version 1.0.2v4 and did a full delete/install-from-scratch cycle when trying to solve my issues by myself.

Regarding my "missing Gren at Stardock" issue, is there maybe a secret side-effect or special incantation (like sleeping for 48h for vendor inventories to reset) to reset/reinitialize his position, maybe?

 

[twolargepepperoni]

It's hard to know for certain because we haven't been able to reproduce this as of the latest patch. That being said, do you happen to have a save from when you landed at the drop pod? I know Gren didn't dock correctly with your ship, however we added another failsafe for this in the last patch - save inside the ship and reload it. This should correct the issue. If you have a save from around that point, I'd appreciate you trying that - if it works, Gren should also be correctly moved to Stardock.

 

[gck]

I do in fact have a save at just the right spot, but unfortunately the save/reload tip inside the ship didn't work for me :-(

It appears to be less of an issue of Gren not managing to dock with my ship, but not even attempting it, as he's busy engaging with or dodging all the Watchtower ships that are still around due to the underlying bug, so while he gets close to my Guardian at times, he doesn't even slow down but keeps turning in circles, trying to shoot at the Watchtower ships (I think that's what's happing at least).

Here's a screenshot showing this (even though I only managed to take a screen capture with some of the Watchtower ships visible – there's actually a huge number of them.

 

[gck]

Alright, as an update for anybody else running into this weird "Watchtower ships keeps respawning indefinitely" issue or has trouble getting Gren to dock with their ship, I apparently came up with a somewhat unusual, yet effective solution.

Since Gren can't dock with my ship due to all these Watchtower ships being around, I thought I'd try to come up with a way to destroy the ships, so what I did was

• Use "Gravity Well" in the cockpit to get Gren out of the pilot seat without angering my companion and Torin, then sitting down in the cockpit chair myself.
• You're now piloting the Sledgehammer and can engage the Watchtower ships
• Since there were literally dozens of them, the framerate is rather low, and new ships will jump in every minute or so, it's impossible to win this fight by normal means. Thus, I installed the mod "The Cheat Terminal" and used it to enable "God mode" and give the ship various weapon damage multipliers, so that cleaning up the Watchtower ships goes fast and easy.
• With the Watchtower ships gone, I could now dock with my home ship myself. This will trigger the dialog lines the same as if Gren did the docking, which appears to be encouraging.
• I disabled all the cheats from "The Cheat Terminal" again, resetting everything to normal.
• I board my original ship, undock and travel to the Stardock.
• Gren, Torin and Harper are now available for their final conversation as they should, and everything seems fine!

I suppose if anybody runs into the same issue, that'll be helpul!

 

[gck]

It's hard to know for certain because we haven't been able to reproduce this as of the latest patch.

Following up on my workaround above, I've found another issue that you may be able to reproduce, because I'm unsure if it's directly related to my "ships keep respawning indefinitely" issue or rather my workaround of taking Gren's ship over – The issue: After finishing the "Last Watch" mission this way, my character now uses Gren's grunts and "Sustained damage!" voice lines when it takes damage

I've reloaded my "on the planet" save multiple times, and it's completely reproducible on 1.0.2v4, like this:

• At the end of "Last Watch", board Gren's ship and let it take off to space.
• In space, go to the cockpit before Gren docks. Use a power like "Gravity Well" (or just shoot him) to get Gren out of the pilot seat.
• Sit down in the pilot seat yourself and proceed to dock with your ship.
• This will end the "Last Watch" mission, so you can go back to Stardock.
• Everything works fine apparently (Gren, Torin and Harper all there), and you can proceed to talk to all of them.
• Save your game.
• Load that save.
• Your character's damage grunts are now Gren's grunts and occasionally his "Sustained damage!" voice line.

A quick way to verify this is to jump off the top of Gren's workshop all the way down, since that will definitely trigger a "damage" grunt.

I haven't figured out any way to rectify this again (as it's super annoying – I'm playing a female character, even). What I've already tried was going to an Enhance to change my character's pronouns, assuming that this may reset this, but the pronouns don't seem to matter – The grunts are always Gren's. I've also tried a mod called "A new you" that let's you redo the entire character generation process, changing the character completely, but that didn't help either.

Therefore, it'd assume that the issue is somewhere else, like the mission not having completed properly or something like that. Maybe this is something that could be fixed in a future update?

 

[twolargepepperoni]

Oh wow that is very bizarre! I have forwarded this onto our lead developer to look into, very odd that you've inherited these voice types.

Are you still using sledgeback by any chance? If so, try swapping ships (pilot it around for a bit to be certain), and see if it still occurs.

My main concern is your original bug where too many ships spawned in, since that was the catalyst for all of this - something went very wrong for you here, and while I am glad the workaround allowed you to progress, I am not surprised there are unintended side effects. I have opened a ticket and included your load order just in case we get any other reports, or a save we can reproduce that issue from.

If you happen to have a save from before this quest triggered, or if you ever happen to go through Unity and repeat that quest - I would be very interested to know if this issue is consistent for you, or if perhaps something just went wonky on that initial run.

 

[gck]

Oh wow that is very bizarre! I have forwarded this onto our lead developer to look into, very odd that you've inherited these voice types.

It is indeed, and it even took me a bit to figure out that it was Gren's voice – I had tortured the poor guy a bit in his workshop, so that I could compare the grunts, but the "Sustained damage!" line is the clearest sign.

Are you still using sledgeback by any chance? If so, try swapping ships (pilot it around for a bit to be certain), and see if it still occurs.

No, I don't even have the Sledgeback in my fleet and never used it, apart from during the workaround – I've already switched my home ship once since (from the Guardian to a custom one) and back, but that didn't fix the voice problem.

My main concern is your original bug where too many ships spawned in, since that was the catalyst for all of this - something went very wrong for you here, and while I am glad the workaround allowed you to progress, I am not surprised there are unintended side effects.

Yes, the "ships keep respawning" problem is definitely the core trigger, but I'd wonder if the "character's voice becomes Gren's voice" issue is reproducible without it, just by kicking Gren out of the pilot seat and taking over the Sledgeback yourself to dock, e.g. without the "ships respawning" issue around it.

If you happen to have a save from before this quest triggered, or if you ever happen to go through Unity and repeat that quest - I would be very interested to know if this issue is consistent for you, or if perhaps something just went wonky on that initial run.

I do in fact have a save right before triggering "Last Watch" by talking to Torin about it, since I had the feeling this may be a "point of no return" situation. I did play through the mission 3 times, actually, since I always got stuck at the final docking scene, due to the ships still being around, so that was/is entirely reproducible for me. Going through the Unity will be hard to try for me, since there's quite a lot of content to play through before making it to "Last Watch" again.

Some other probably noteworthy points I could imagine to be relevant are

• I destroyed all arrays before triggering "Last Watch", up to the point where Harper tells me that there are no more arrays around.
• I did not have any other issues during any Watchtower content (and I really enjoyed it much, by the way! ) – The missions all worked fine for me, and I don't think I did anything out of the ordinary (just following objectives).
• From my load order list above, I've disabled all mods below "Watchtower" except for "Starborn Legendary Reroll" once to try playing through "Last Watch" (with more mods disabled, my save doesn't load anymore), but I had the "ships keep respawning" irregardless: I suppose it's either not influenced by the other mods, or the save file is already messed up to begin with.
• I do have a "Watchtower Battleship III" (with upgraded weapons) in my fleet when attacking the station – I'm not sure if this could play a role, but it's maybe worth mentioning.
• I do not have the Sledgeback in my fleet (or own it as a ship – I didn't even know that was possible!)
• I'm using a Starborn Venator armor that's been split into suit and helmet, as well as upgraded, with the "Starborn Legendary Reroll" mod, and I use the Novastrike rifle. There's also some "Shattered Space" stuff in my inventory, mostly resources like Vortex cysts and so on. Other than that, I don't have anything particularly out-of-the-ordinary on my character.

 

[twolargepepperoni]

Thank you for the additional information. We have blocked the piloting of Gren's ship for future updates, as this was definitely not intended. Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to fix this issue on your save - things went off the rails as soon as more ships spawned in, and snowballed from there. If this bug consistently occurs for you even before Last Watch is triggered in your journal, this strongly indicates to me that there is some kind of mod conflict in your load order, especially since this has not yet been reproducible on a minimal LO or reported by others. I have included your mod list in the ticket for this, but being on xbox, this is not something we can troubleshoot in a timely manner (since we don't have a reproducible save to work with). Other than going through a process of elimination with your modlist (we have a guide on that here), and testing from the save made before this quest triggered, I'm not sure what else to suggest - you could try Unity, though the problem may occur again if the cause is indeed mod conflict related. We will try to narrow down the root cause as well - but if you happen to beat us to it, please do let me know so we can either try to implement a workaround for the conflct, or add it to our mod interactions list. I appreciate that you have already tried disabling other mods but unfortunately that doesn't necessarily rule out a conflict just yet either, if the 'damage was done' so to speak much earlier in the save. We will continue to look into this as well - I'm sorry you've run into issues here.

 

[gck]

Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to fix this issue on your save - things went off the rails as soon as more ships spawned in, and snowballed from there.

Yes, thanks for looking at it anyway! It really appears as if I can't seem to get rid of my character doing Gren's pain grunts anymore on my most current save – I've already tried plenty of things, like changing pronouns at Enhance, taking over another hostile ship and piloting it, switching home ships, and so on, even trying to load my save with Watchtower disabled with the goal of re-enabling it later, but that crashes on-save later...

I'll keep playing around with it, but I think I'll go back to my save on the planet and finish the quest via fast traveling instead. Gren won't be at Stardock, but missing out on the final sky drops is definitely less jarring than his grunts and voice lines whenever I'm getting hit!

I appreciate that you have already tried disabling other mods but unfortunately that doesn't necessarily rule out a conflict just yet either, if the 'damage was done' so to speak much earlier in the save.

I think that's most likely what's happening, yes – Maybe there was also a problem in an earlier version of Watchtower: While I updated to the latest version as soon as it became available, I already played through probably half of the mod on the previous version, so maybe something already got flipped in my save there.

For reference though, my mod list from above is "complete" in the sense that I never had any other mod installed and then uninstalled either, so that mod list is exactly the one that was active for my playthrough up until I ran into the ship respawning issue in "Last Watch".

I initially had "Bedlam" or "Starborn among us" suspected as the most likely culprits, since those are the only ones I have that (openly) change things related to enemy encounters (albeit not – intentionally at least – for ship battles), but disabling them directly before I start "Last Watch" doesn't fix it. Very well possible they were already messing with my save beforehand, though.

We will try to narrow down the root cause as well - but if you happen to beat us to it, please do let me know so we can either try to implement a workaround for the conflct, or add it to our mod interactions list.

Thanks, I'll definitely do! I'll also keep a "character does Gren's grunt sounds" save around in case there's something I could try as a test!

We will continue to look into this as well - I'm sorry you've run into issues here.

Thanks so much, I appreciate it! And no worries, software is hard in general and bugs happen – Especially these extra pesky ones that are so difficult to even reproduce!

 

[twolargepepperoni]

We have added some extra measures in place for our next scheduled patch that hopefully reduces the odds of the excessive ships occuring in the first place. Since we haven't reproduced this ourselves (and also can't rule out a mod conflict), I can't say with 100% certainty that it's a solid fix - but once that patch is live, if you happen to play through it again I'd appreciate if you could let me know if it worked for you. The patch is currently with Bethesda's QA, so no release date set yet, but hopefully soon.

 

[gck]

We have added some extra measures in place for our next scheduled patch that hopefully reduces the odds of the excessive ships occuring in the first place. Since we haven't reproduced this ourselves (and also can't rule out a mod conflict), I can't say with 100% certainty that it's a solid fix - but once that patch is live, if you happen to play through it again I'd appreciate if you could let me know if it worked for you. The patch is currently with Bethesda's QA, so no release date set yet, but hopefully soon.

Ah, sorry for the late reply, I was absolutely convinced I had already written!

Yes, of course, I'll test it immediately when the patch comes out – All three things, actually: The "ships keep respawning", the "Gren missing after concluding Last Watch by fast traveling" and the "Gren's voice stuck on character". I still have saves for suitable for all of them.

In the meantime, I've continued playing on the "Gren missing" save (the least "buggy" one for me), and everything Watchtower-related seems to be working fine – Stardock is usable (except for Gren missing, well...), and I've also run into another random Watchtower ambush, which worked perfectly fine, e.g. no infinite ship respawning or anything.