This one threw up an unusual problem during my current playthrough. On approach to Bonaire, I ran into a Spanish convoy and captured three ships, then realised that I wouldn't be able to capture the Sirena until I'd sold them. So I went into town, sold the ships, then headed round to Palm Beach, where there was no Sirena. Upon landing I met a crewman who said that there was a pirate ship out there, and the dialog gave me two choices - board it at once or put to sea to attack it.
First I tried the option to board at once. That led to a deck battle, and then a game crash. A bit of tweaking to the code which transfers you back to shore fixed that.
Then I tried the option to attack the ship by sea. There was still no sign of the Sirena, and a quick check of the code showed why - that dialog branch does nothing, the game seems to assume that the Sirena is already there. (So why wouldn't you attack it before landing?) I added a bit of quest code to put the Sirena back in place, and a bit of dialog code to trigger it, and then - still no Sirena. "compile.log" indicated that the code had run and then the sea AI group had been deleted. A 'DumpAttributes' on the captain showed that he had surrendered. Modifying the new code to delete his "Surrendered" attribute fixed that, the Sirena appeared, but was still flying a white flag. Checking the captain's attributes again showed that his nation was 9, which is "NEUTRAL_NATION" - presumably a surrendered ship changes its nation to that. Another addition to the new code to set the captain's nation to "PIRATE", and finally the Sirena showed up, already very damaged. Best guess: while I was busy clobbering Spaniards, someone else was busy clobbering the Sirena, which then surrendered.
The end result should be that if you arrive at Bonaire and the Sirena is missing, and you don't want to negotiate with Alistair Garcilaso for the treasure, you now have a chance to put the ship back in place and then capture it in the normal way.
First I tried the option to board at once. That led to a deck battle, and then a game crash. A bit of tweaking to the code which transfers you back to shore fixed that.
Then I tried the option to attack the ship by sea. There was still no sign of the Sirena, and a quick check of the code showed why - that dialog branch does nothing, the game seems to assume that the Sirena is already there. (So why wouldn't you attack it before landing?) I added a bit of quest code to put the Sirena back in place, and a bit of dialog code to trigger it, and then - still no Sirena. "compile.log" indicated that the code had run and then the sea AI group had been deleted. A 'DumpAttributes' on the captain showed that he had surrendered. Modifying the new code to delete his "Surrendered" attribute fixed that, the Sirena appeared, but was still flying a white flag. Checking the captain's attributes again showed that his nation was 9, which is "NEUTRAL_NATION" - presumably a surrendered ship changes its nation to that. Another addition to the new code to set the captain's nation to "PIRATE", and finally the Sirena showed up, already very damaged. Best guess: while I was busy clobbering Spaniards, someone else was busy clobbering the Sirena, which then surrendered.
The end result should be that if you arrive at Bonaire and the Sirena is missing, and you don't want to negotiate with Alistair Garcilaso for the treasure, you now have a chance to put the ship back in place and then capture it in the normal way.
