Curse the Escaped Criminals Sidequest (Resolved but have question)

[ZeldaTheSwordsman 40]

TSF Bounty: Escaped Criminals.

This blasted sidequest is officially my arch-nemesis.

I had hoped that TSLRCM would fix this buggy trainwreck of a sidequest that's practically luck-based to make work right in vanilla. But no, even with the RCM it breaks. Screw Obsidian's useless sloppy incompetent bozo programmers, and screw the LucasArts exec who insisted on rushing the smegging game out. 😡 They never appeared in the Dock Module after I told Dol Gren I'd seen them in the Czerka office, no matter what I took care of. And now I'm at the point where I can take the shuttle down to the Restoration Zone. Lovely...

What's the order of operations to make this work while helping the Ithorians? If there isn't actually one, what do I need to tinker with in KSE to make this damn quest work?

Okay, they spawned in the restoration zone anyway... Am I just imagining that the docks encounter was supposed to be a thing?

Edited June 30, 2021 by ZeldaTheSwordsman
Overall resolved..

[Thor110 441]

2 hours ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

TSF Bounty: Escaped Criminals.

This blasted sidequest is officially my arch-nemesis.

I had hoped that TSLRCM would fix this buggy trainwreck of a sidequest that's practically luck-based to make work right in vanilla. But no, even with the RCM it breaks. Screw Obsidian's useless sloppy incompetent bozo programmers, and screw the LucasArts exec who insisted on rushing the smegging game out. 😡 They never appeared in the Dock Module after I told Dol Gren I'd seen them in the Czerka office, no matter what I took care of. And now I'm at the point where I can take the shuttle down to the Restoration Zone. Lovely...

What's the order of operations to make this work while helping the Ithorians? If there isn't actually one, what do I need to tinker with in KSE to make this damn quest work?

Oh this is an awkward one, you have to catch them in the Czerka compound before the final fight there when helping Czerka.

As for while helping the Ithorians I believe you run into them at the Restoration Zone...

UPDATE : A quick google search could have solved your problem also...

https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/896i42/kotor_2_escaped_criminals_quest/

All I googled was "ithorians escaped criminals kotor 2" and there were a lot of answers / links and a lot of people with the same problem as you.

Edited June 30, 2021 by Thor110
UPDATE : Google is your friend.

[ZeldaTheSwordsman 40]

1 hour ago, Thor110 said:

Oh this is an awkward one, you have to catch them in the Czerka compound before the final fight there when helping Czerka.

As for while helping the Ithorians I believe you run into them at the Restoration Zone...

UPDATE : A quick google search could have solved your problem also...

https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/896i42/kotor_2_escaped_criminals_quest/

All I googled was "ithorians escaped criminals kotor 2" and there were a lot of answers / links and a lot of people with the same problem as you.

I tried Googling back in January when I had the quest break on me in the Xbox version, (where they didn't appear on Telos' surface as they should even after catching them in not only Lorso's office but also the hangar, and telling Grenn about it); I was helping the Ithorians that time too. What I found was of decidedly limited use, with a lot of disagreements and maybes. And naturally several of them just say to use the "lie to Grenn" exploit, which is not helpful; I want to complete this stupid thing legit (or at least relatively so).
Some people insisted you had to work with Czerka for it to work (which I knew couldn't be true, I'd run into them on at least one prior playthrough and I always go Light Side). But I got some conflicting orders of operations of what you supposedly have to do when while siding with the Ithorians for them to spawn in the Restoration Zone. I followed a recommended order found on I think GameFAQs - which required basically restarting Citadel Station from scratch - and they still failed to spawn in the Restoration Zone. At that point I gave up. That would be why I said this quest is my archnemesis

The most concrete thing I got from my searches at the time was a note that the global for their Restoration Zone appearance was apparently improperly linked to conversations with Chodo; this is listed on the swkotorwiki wiki on fandom, although I think the place I found it mentioned the specific global by name.

And the thread you linked doesn't even mention the problem I had this specific time - them never appearing at the docks after catching them in Czerka's offices - or even the encounter at the docks at all (or is my memory playing tricks on me about that even existing?).

I asked here for three reasons.
1. Hope that people at this place would have either something more concrete for me, or confirmation that there was no reliable order of operations.
2. I'm playing with TSLRCM installed (which I at least thought was obvious from the first post <.>), so I had no idea if orders of operations given for vanilla would be any good anyway.
3. Hope that as this is the KotOR modding hub, someone would know relatively offhand what things I'd have to edit in KSE to force them to spawn as they ought (both for the docks encounter and the Restoration Zone; I think the latter was spawn_killers but I'm not sure).

Thank you for your time all the same.

Edited June 30, 2021 by ZeldaTheSwordsman

[Thor110 441]

27 minutes ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

3. Hope that as this is the KotOR modding hub, someone would know relatively offhand what things I'd have to edit in KSE to force them to spawn as they ought (both for the docks encounter and the Restoration Zone; I think the latter was spawn_killers but I'm not sure).

Well these two statements conflict.

28 minutes ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

I want to complete this stupid thing legit (or at least relatively so).

 

28 minutes ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

2. I'm playing with TSLRCM installed (which I at least thought was obvious from the first post <.>), so I had no idea if orders of operations given for vanilla would be any good anyway.

From what I have seen of your other posts you also have a large number of other mods installed, which can make it a pain to diagnose issues.

 

What I know for certain is that once you see them talking to Jana Lorso of Czerka they run off to the shuttle bay and then you face them off at the Telos Restoration Zone.

 

Dude you just replied to a comment from 11 years ago on GameFaqs... what the hell is wrong with you. Are you that majorly pissed off that the game doesn't work that you are going to go and whine at every corner of the damned internet? - https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/xbox/920194-star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-ii-the-sith-lords/answers/162307-how-do-i-complete-the-escaped-criminals-quest

 

That is not going to help your situation in the slightest.

 

It sounds like you ought to get off your ass and fix it yourself... That's my thinking, heck I did.

[ZeldaTheSwordsman 40]

9 minutes ago, Thor110 said:

Well these two statements conflict.

There's a reason I said relatively. I consider using KSE to forcibly activate the encounters that are supposed to happen anyway to be less of a cheat than using an exploit that doesn't actually resolve the quest; the killers appearing at the docks and then confronting you in the Restoration Zone is legitimately supposed to happen if you've done the prior steps in the quest, telling Grenn

Although I would rather not have to resort to KSE either. KSE is a last-resort option. Good news, I won't have to take it because the situation wasn't as bad as I feared. But I might have a bug to report about the quest anyway.

 

15 minutes ago, Thor110 said:

From what I have seen of your other posts you also have a large number of other mods installed, which can make it a pain to diagnose issues.

It can, although most of the ones I'm using are graphics mods that would be rather unlikely to affect Telos' event flags. And people can at least point out what was or wasn't changed regarding this quest by TSLRCM (which might be better suited to a topic in that section, which I was on the cusp of making before my recent test.)

24 minutes ago, Thor110 said:

What I know for certain is that once you see them talking to Jana Lorso of Czerka they run off to the shuttle bay

Yes, I know that and this is what had me concerned. I'm 90% sure you're supposed to actually see them in the shuttle bay after they've run off, which is what opens the "tell Grenn you killed them" exploit in vanilla; both that and the legit "Tell Grenn you saw them there" option have him respond that it matches the security footage.

However, in this run they did not spawn there. I had them appear in the Lorso's office and run away as normal was able to have the conversation about that (where Grenn says he needs more solid evidence, but not the "matches our security footage" line), but no matter what I did or did not do to further advance the main quest after running into them in Lorso's office they never appeared in the shuttle bay. And so, I assumed the quest had once again borked... My attempts earlier in the year left me rather paranoid about this quest.

Out of desperate hope I loaded the game to see if maybe they'd spawn in the restoration zone despite not seeing them at the docks, and they did... Which was a relief, although now I'm confused and wondering if the docks encounter is my memory playing tricks on me... 😵

7 hours ago, Thor110 said:

Dude you just replied to a comment from 11 years ago on GameFaqs... what the hell is wrong with you.

It may be from 11 years ago, but that thread is one of the first things you come across when Googling the issue. I wanted to warn anyone else who finds that thread that even with the recommended steps it's still not 100% reliable (because TSL is the Sonic '06 of Star Wars games). In response to your reaction here, I deleted and re-did the comment to better get that across.

7 hours ago, Thor110 said:

It sounds like you ought to get off your ass and fix it yourself... That's my thinking, heck I did.

I currently lack the skills to do anything more than adjust globals with KSE (which it turns out I didn't even need to do). My being a compulsive multitasker plus the busy semester I had has meant I've gotten basically nowhere in developing my skills, although I do hope to rectify that over the summer.

[Thor110 441]

5 hours ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

There's a reason I said relatively. I consider using KSE to forcibly activate the encounters that are supposed to happen anyway to be less of a cheat than using an exploit that doesn't actually resolve the quest; the killers appearing at the docks and then confronting you in the Restoration Zone is legitimately supposed to happen if you've done the prior steps in the quest, telling Grenn

Understood.

5 hours ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

And people can at least point out what was or wasn't changed regarding this quest by TSLRCM (which might be better suited to a topic in that section, which I was on the cusp of making before my recent test.)

There is no comprehensive change list of what was done to TSLRCM from what I remember seeing said somewhere around here, I think maybe it was on the KotOR modding discord.

5 hours ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

However, in this run they did not spawn there. I had them appear in the Lorso's office and run away as normal was able to have the conversation about that (where Grenn says he needs more solid evidence, but not the "matches our security footage" line), but no matter what I did or did not do to further advance the main quest after running into them in Lorso's office they never appeared in the shuttle bay. And so, I assumed the quest had once again borked... My attempts earlier in the year left me rather paranoid about this quest.

Have you just made your way to the Restoration Zone to check they aren't spawning there? Also there is a tad more information on the Obsidian forums : https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/42189-tsf-bounty-escaped-criminals/

Though still not all that much.

5 hours ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

I currently lack the skills to do anything more than adjust globals with KSE (which it turns out I didn't even need to do). My being a compulsive multitasker plus the busy semester I had has meant I've gotten basically nowhere in developing my skills, although I do hope to rectify that over the summer.

Again I can understand that, perhaps I was a tad hot-heated earlier but I was essentially more than happy to sit and walk through the problem with you and probably even locate the variable for you to alter in KSE, but then I decided to go play some games instead and then get back to working on my own project.

I believe these are the globals you need to alter, most likely the 200TEL_Killers_Dead, but you could try checking the other variables as well.

Thor110

[ZeldaTheSwordsman 40]

1 hour ago, Thor110 said:

Have you just made your way to the Restoration Zone to check they aren't spawning there?

Funny you should ask that

7 hours ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

Out of desperate hope I loaded the game to see if maybe they'd spawn in the restoration zone despite not seeing them at the docks, and they did... Which was a relief, although now I'm confused and wondering if the docks encounter is my memory playing tricks on me...

I did indeed do so. Hence my changing the thread title again and editing the first post again.

About the KSE globals.. I did some looking into that myself. The one for the Restoration zone would seem to be 231_Killers_Spawn. 202TEL_Killers_Spawn is the control for their spawn in Lorso's office (even though that's actually in 209TEL; modules were evidently relocated and sectioned more, but Obsidian never relabeled the globals to match).. I couldn't find a Boolean for the docks encounter, so either it's either controlled by the numeric version of 202TEL_Killers_Spawn or my memory really has been playing tricks on me this entire time <.> I'll keep older saves around to try sciencing with.

[Thor110 441]

33 minutes ago, ZeldaTheSwordsman said:

or my memory really has been playing tricks on me this entire time <.> I'll keep older saves around to try sciencing with.

I am not sure to be honest, other than the encounter at the docks with five mercenaries when working for Czerka I am not aware of an encounter at the docks with the two killers seen in Jana Lorso's office. Maybe I never triggered it if it is there.