Rescues/hostages target Irradiated Ground rather than my character?

[Yomo Kimyata]

I've been taking out a few Radiation Melee characters out since the IG pulse nerf.  I've been having troubles with hostage missions, but couldn't figure out why until the Rescue Wormy mission.  He stops on the last IG patch and waits there until the new one pops up, then he follows until the next patch.  

 

Since patches only spawn every ten seconds now, this makes things very awkward, especially if there are ambushes as well.  Yes, I can turn it off, but that adds a lot to my vulnerability, especially since I also have to turn off my stealth (which at least makes logical sense).

 

I totally understand why you wanted to nerf IG for AFK farming proc purposes, but is this throwing out the baby with the bath water?

[srmalloy]

IIRC, Irradiated Ground spawns a pseudo-pet for its effects, moving it to your location each time it triggers. I think what happens is that the IG was shifted right before you got close enough to the hostage for it to 'latch on' to you, and it picked the IG pseudo-pet to follow.

 

You should be able to turn off IG for long enough for the hostage to transfer their follow to you, after which they should follow you even if you turn IG back on. A better long-term solution would be to exclude pseudo-pets from the entities that a hostage will follow.