Oh well, here I am again, the same problem occured again. I am now very confident this is sort of a bug in b14_beta2-3_light.
With 2-3, there has been something done to the smuggling. Earlier, only soldiers would interfere whith smuggling, now it's soldiers or pirates. This is of course an improved gameplay, and more realistic. But, eventually on that occasion, the whole thing might be bugged.
Brief description:
The problem is all about the ship, that attacks the smuggler at sea, when he killed or escaped the attackers at the beach.
(if someone is not familiar with it: when smuggling is done, there is a chance to attract soldiers or pirates. They first go after the smuggler at the beach, and when this is done - both killing all attackers or just jumping into the boat and fleeing works - then there is also a ship that will attack you at sea.)
Now, the problems I actually face are all tied to that ship, which from now I will just call the "pursuer". With the pursuer, there are now 2 problems:
1)
That ship will never ever break from pursuing.To explain, some examples:
With 2-2, I used to get rid them off by just sailing away, and mooring at another bay on that island. By mooring and going on land, even if only for short time, the pursuer seemed to be resetted in some way. When I set sail again, it was gone.
Now with 2-3, it's different.
When I do as described above, the pursuer will wait for me in the very same bay where I went on land. Time does not matter, it waits there half a week later.
It will also pursue one to the port of the same island.
In one case, my smuggling at Bonaire caused some pirates to interfere. The pursuer, this time a pirate sloop at sea followed me straight into Kralendijk harbor. Due to some distance between the pursuer and me, it was not immediately destroyed by the fort. But - 2 days later when I set sail again, the pursuer pirate sloop was right beneath my ship, greeting me with a full broadside. It was still there, after some days. Then, it was sunk by one full salvo of the fort. ;-)
This of course is only entertaining, but does not cause any real problems.
But this one does:
The next smuggling run, it were not pirates, but soldiers interfering. Thus, I was at sea attacked and pursued by a portugese navy sloop. This sloop hunted me to Sao Jorge, where I went on land and no longer thaught about it. When I set sails again a few days later, the sloop was still there, as was the pirate before. This time, the fort did not interfere.
Now I did not want to fire cannons at a portugese navy ship right under the portugese forts 50 cannons. ;-)
Thus, I just fled and hoped to outsail the sloop. Well ... that nasty little pursuer followed me for hours of real time direct sail with open seas mod right up to Bonaire. Which I never reached, because ... the pursuer prevented any "sail ho" or "land ho" message. When I saved the game, it always read "La grenade waters". In fact, I would never ever had escaped that ship. (I am sure about this preventing of any "ho" messages. On such a travel, I usually get half a dozen of them, and this one time not even one. Also, I did reach Bonaire according to the map - my ships icon was right overlaying Bonaire - means I should have got the land ho message a long time ago. This usually happens before the island is actually in sight.)
This I consider a bug.
2)
The pursuer seems to cause another problem, and this is by striking colours. Of course, my first thaught with that annoying pursuer in the above example was to just sink or take the ship. But, before I could do that, it always struck colours.
And then, the real problem occurs:
When the pursuer once struck colours, there won't be a pursuer anymore in the game.
This means, the next time I'm doing smuggling and pirates or soldiers interfere, they will only do so at the beach, but there will be no pursuer. Never, ever, again. And yes, I did test this.
One may think that striking colours can be turned off. But -it actually *is* turned off, in advanced options, which does not prevent the pursuer from striking colours all time the tide of a battle is against it.
Workarounds:
I think I can do for now with an older savegame, and only play smuggling out, when I'm caught by pirates rather than soldiers. A pirate pursuer I can get rid off at the next fort. ;-)
Generally, I think the problem is about some trigger. There should be a way to "reset" this pursuer, so that it does not follow one up to the next island. Perhaps, a script that resets it (make it break off the chase) when a specific distance from the island is reached. When not using direct sail, this is perhaps triggered by hitting the world map. Which is impossible in my case, because I'm an iron man ;-)
Something is wrong with the smuggling, I'd be glad if one would look into it. Im am very sure it's since 2-3, because I never ever encountered these problems with 2-2, and trust me, I always did a lot of smuggling.
Thanks for any help.
