Escorts with no enemies-- Broken?

[pixelBlitzer]

So, I've been working on an AE arc and I've been playing around with Escorts (IE Allied characters who you need to bring to a destination to complete them as an objective), and I've noticed what I believe to be a bug.

 

Any escort who I place in a mission that doesn't have enemies surrounding them (either by setting the enemy group to None Selected or Empty) before you walk up to them will spawn and count as completed without needing to be escorted to their destination. I've tried this both on escorts who want to go to go to the mission entrance, and escorts who want to go to collectables-- in both instances they spawn and count as completed before I even approach them, breaking the sequence of my missions. When I change the escort to have enemies guarding them when they spawn, the game waits for them to get to their destination before counting the objective as completed and triggering whatever comes next, whether it be mission completion or another objective linked to it.

 

I can handwave an in-plot excuse to have these escorts need to be freed from an enemy first, but it does limit what you can do with escorts a teeny bit. Has anyone else run into this issue and/or have a workaround other than putting baddies around my poor escorts?

Edited February 15, 2021 by pixelBlitzer
clarification

[huang3721]

I have stumbled upon this bug, but I haven't found any workaround for an ally that:

1. Has no enemies guarding him/her.
2. Need to be escorted to a certain point.
3. Is a non-optional mission objective. 

If I need points 1 & 2, I set the mission objective to optional.

If I only need point 1, I use Ally Mission instead of Escort Mission.

[pixelBlitzer]

That's super interesting. I wonder if I can trick the sequence into working by making an important NPC optional but tying them to a non-optional collection or something. Thanks for the tip! 🙂

[Ankylosaur]

It's a known thing - though I think it has always been that way so while quirky I just count it as one of the many things in AE you learn to work with. 🙂

 

As my workaround I tend to mention that the person is in the mission waiting for them either in the send off text, the mission entry pop-up or both. 

[Tailcoat]

I'm having the same kind of problem, except my Escort has some enemies. After you rescue her, I want the Boss to spawn and for her to follow you and fight. I tried setting up a collection (the Plot Device that summons the Boss), with the condition that it becomes active "after <character> is rescued" but I still get an error. I wasn't sure if the "rescued" option meant that the objective completed when the player frees the ally, or after the player guides the NPC to the destination. What happens if you just ignore the warning? Can you still publish?

 

Once my ally gets to the objective (the 'Plot Device") and I activate it, she just kind of stays in one place despite having set her to "follow." 

[Darmian]

I've spoofed this by having an escort get to the collection glowie/whatever, state that they have to do something and then run off.  Then respawn the same character a little later as an ally after doing whatever they had to do. You just need an intermediate objective  to trigger the ally spawn for the player to handle otherwise you may get both versions on the map together. The escort needs to reach an exit before the next trigger, so you need to slow the player down enough for that to happen in the right sequence.

[Tailcoat]

6 hours ago, Darmian said:

I've spoofed this by having an escort get to the collection glowie/whatever, state that they have to do something and then run off.  Then respawn the same character a little later as an ally after doing whatever they had to do. You just need an intermediate objective  to trigger the ally spawn for the player to handle otherwise you may get both versions on the map together. The escort needs to reach an exit before the next trigger, so you need to slow the player down enough for that to happen in the right sequence.

 

I tried that too, but I was using a map with a portal and she just hung out at the portal instead of using the "door" so I guess I'll have to use a map with a real door.

[PresidentDSG]

I don't think it's necessarily a bug, but rather just a quirk of how the game counts objectives as completed. Collecting the ally isn't really objective- Removing the enemies around him is. So if there's no enemies to remove, congratulations! Objective's already done. You're amazing.

 

The only real thing you can do about it is just relent and give them enemies for the player to fight. You can play with animations to make it look like the escort/ally is fighting rather than captured- Animations like the various gun shooting ones are good for this.