I don’t know if this has been mentioned before, but I think I’ve found a pretty game-breaking bug. I’m not sure if it’s specific to Freelancer, but it seems to happen pretty consistently.
So basically, whenever I’m dealing with couriers in Freelancer, I usually make them slip with a banana or grapevine since it saves me the trouble of having to isolate them. However, I’ve recently discovered that if you’re performing an illegal action (such as dragging a body) as the courier is being woken up, they will instantly compromise you no matter where you are.
I first discovered this on Ambrose Island. The courier was one of the militia guys in the ruins, so I just made him slip with a banana, took the money and ran for it. One of the guards at the beach exit is an enforcer, so I went to climb down the vine to get past them (which triggers a Hostile Area thing). As I’m doing so, suddenly the game says I’m in Combat out of nowhere. I look around to see what the hell is going on and can’t see anybody that is orange in instinct. Then, after about 15 seconds, the courier from before is sprinting at me at 100 miles an hour, and he’s the only one that has somehow compromised me. There is absolutely no way he could possible have seen me, and even if he had, it wouldn’t have been instant like that.
It happened to me again later in Whitteton Creek. The courier was a lady at the party, who I made slip with a banana as per usual. I then went into Cassidy’s garage and used the generator to pull in a guard. As I’m dragging him to the container, I suddenly get instantly compromised. Again, I look around, and there’s nobody orange. I then realised, “crap, it happened again”, and sure enough, I go to check and the lady at the party has somehow ‘spotted’ me from halfway across the map.
It then happened again in Dubai when I was dragging a body up in the Penthouse. A courier about 3 floors below apparently saw that as they were being woken up. Real cool. I will say that I’m not sure if this is caused by making them slip, or if this is something that always happens with NPCs when being woken up. I’d need to do some testing.
It might just be a coincidence, but this never once happened to me before the update, so it’s possible IOI broke something. Imagine failing your hardcore campaign because of this shit. This is why alt+f4 was so important. I love this game, but it’s still waaaay too broken to not allow players that fail-safe for when crap like this happens.