A Famous Pirate at Night

[Grey Roger]

Having arrested Charles Baxter and brought him back to Sao Jorge, I am greeted by some soldiers who say it's a good thing I had a friendly flag, earning them this week's award for "Stating The Blatantly Obvious" as sailing into port under an unfriendly flag is a good way to give the fort some gunnery practice even if you aren't in an instantly recognisable pirate ship. Then I teleport to the governor's residence.

Where nobody is home because I arrived at Sao Jorge at night. Getting the reward and continuing the quest looks a bit difficult... There's only one thing for it, which is to go and get drunk.

After a night in the tavern, I go back to the governor's residence as he also owes me a few promotions for doing nasty things to Portugal's other enemies. As it turns out, he remembers that he owes me lots of good stuff for bringing in Baxter. All's well after all - I get the reward and the quest can continue.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Often characters disappear at night which I figure ideally should not happen. If the door is being locked, that'll be good enough.
I seem to remember putting some code in PROGRAM\Characters\characters_init.c ages ago to make characters always present, but I think that didn't work just yet.
This can be done for specific characters in the quest code though; it was definitely done for Robert Christopher Silehard in the Standard storyline at some point.

 

[Grey Roger]

The door wasn't locked, at least from inside, which is a good thing as otherwise I would have been really stuck. The problem is that a locked door from the outside doesn't help against a teleport.

It didn't really matter anyway; I went to the tavern for the night, went back to the residence the following day by the more normal method of walking through the door, and the governor did what he was supposed to to.

I've also on at least one occasion gone to the store, sold a load of goods, then used Fast Travel to get to the shipyard which was deserted because the selling of goods had taken so long that it was now the middle of the night. The same solution worked - leave, spend the night somewhere, return the following day and conduct business as normal.

The only time you teleport into Silehard's residence, he has to be placed there specifically for the encounter because you land in his bedroom, which is not somewhere you visit during normal working hours.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The door wasn't locked, at least from inside, which is a good thing as otherwise I would have been really stuck. The problem is that a locked door from the outside doesn't help against a teleport.

The outside doors lock at night, but indeed the inside ones don't.
I think what happens sometimes is that you teleport RIGHT BEFORE "night" but arrive right after so that the character who is usually there is already gone.
Bit silly, really.

The only time you teleport into Silehard's residence, he has to be placed there specifically for the encounter because you land in his bedroom, which is not somewhere you visit during normal working hours.

Even if you specifically set the guy to the custom location, he won't show up if his "encounter time" is exceeded.
I remember having one helluva fight with that particular scene some time in the past for that very reason.

 

[Grey Roger]

The way that you can teleport before night and arrive after may explain someone else's problem with the church in San Juan during "Strange Things Going On", but not here.
On this occasion it really was night when I arrived at Sao Jorge port. After talking to the soldiers, I teleported to the residence.

Workround: don't bring Charles Baxter in at night. Or do what I did, which is leave the residence, spend the night in the tavern, and go back to the residence the next day.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Should we perhaps try to make ALL characters ALWAYS present?
That should prevent such issues, but might have some unintended side-effects.

Alternatively, if there are specific quest characters we know to be troublesome, then we can make sure at least those are always present.

 

[Bartolomeu o Portugues]

Some code in quests_reaction.c to change temporarily the hours for the location (open 24h) as the hours for the Governor?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I think a closed location isn't a problem, because a quest reload bypasses that.
But indeed the character should probably be set to appear for 24 hours a day, which is not always the case.
Definitely not for governors, so they can be tricky in quest scenes.