V1.54 - Manhattan - Cpt. Shaftoe and his mystical death and how to possibly avoid it

[Hanzu 10]

When you need to go to talk to Cpt. Shaftoe only one player should approach him alone and once he starts to talk stop right there and do not move or go any closer. Other players should wait outside the base in a vehicle and if they are human players minimize their activity. Do not touch the poles or cables holding the camouflage net. Do not drive vehicles inside the base. If you drive over or shoot to camouflage net support structures, they will collapse and kill Cpt. Shaftoe. Many players may have never understood what happened and they thought he was sniped because blood and bullet hole are modeled to his dead body.

Also do not bring any new vehicles or park old vehicles inside FOB Manhattan or interact with moving AI friendles there. It may result moving AI friendlies to change their scripted paths and walk too near Cpt. Shaftoe or the camouflage net with undesired effects.

At least in some old patches Cpt. Shaftoe also had a bad habit of glitching himself to death with his chair, table or laptop.

The developers could easily change this in some future patch and really remove all furniture around him and the net over him and put him in the place where he is safe. Some mission designer thought everything looks nice with that furniture and laptop, but I tell you Shaftoe just looks stupid when he stands there with his feet sticking through that chair structures.

In the end when you talk with him second time and he says something about russian peacekeepers the screen should fade to black and Debriefing screen should appear. If it fades anywhere before talking about peacekeepers, then something went wrong.

If no Debriefing screen appear but game just ends and you are brought to Harvest Red mission selection screen with no next mission unlocked, it is a real proof that something went wrong in there and you didn't actually complete successfully but the game just failed and ended.

If you are playing this in multiplayer coop, try telling other players to wait outside the server for awhile and play that part alone using the closest save available. You can always stop on the road outside the base and choose ESC and Suspend to have so called continue save. Next time you start, you should be able to start from there.

Always remember to take backups of your savegames every time you quit playing or crash.

Savegames are located here, just copy whole folder structure there holding your player name:

Default player profile In Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsUserAccountname\My Documents\ArmA 2

Other player profiles in Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsUserAccountname\My Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles

Default player profile In Windows 7: C:\User\YourWindowsUserAccountname\My Documents\ArmA 2

Other player profiles in Windows 7: C:\User\YourWindowsUserAccountname\My Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles

So if a bug or savegame corrupt has happened you can delete your old profile folder and copy that backup in place same and hope you can continue from there and complete the mission with less work than using revert and going to the start of the mission.

If destructive effects of a bug are saved in your savegame and you have no earlier saves before that bug happened, then only revert may help you.

I wonder if the developers have realized automatic savegame backup would have saved Arma 2 series players from so many problems and frustration.

Edited May 17, 2011 by Hanzu
Updated information a little.

[Confu 10]

This was really helpful, thanks a lot.

The way Arma 2 deals with savegames frustrated me a little before "supposedly completing" Manhattan and getting stuck finding Shaftoe dead, so I was lucky to find a backed up savegame where I could enter the base again without "messing around" (and him still alive).

Hope it will work this time.

Complexity has it´s drawbacks...

Edited May 16, 2011 by Confu

[Confu 10]

It worked. Finished Manhattan with all tasks accomplished, despite capturing the one who blew his house. :)

Thanks again for your suggestion about how this bug arises (?) and how to avoid it.

Your explanation makes sense to me somehow, BUT one (i.e. casual gamer) will never think of the AI to probably kind of accidentally kill a mission critical NPC by parking a vehicle inside the base... (As I did...)

Friendly (and not playing a role in the mission anyway) AI is supposed to do nothing or at least nothing harmful while not in focus by the player ;)

Well, now that the problem seems to be solved and can be avoided (if U know how to), it draws an "interesting" light and insight on the complexity of the game.

Troubleshooting guides/suggestions like this should be highlighted or prioritised (?) in the forums to make them easier to find and prevent newbies like me of getting utterly frustrated before getting even a glance on the potentials Arma 2 surely has.

Thanks again and regards,

Confu

PS: The timeout function of the forums could be a little expanded, too... btw... ;)

PPS: Just backing up the content of "...\ArmA 2\Saved\ca\missions\campaign" folder worked fine for me so far. While playing SP only yet.

Edited May 18, 2011 by Confu

[Hanzu 10]

It worked. Finished Manhattan with all tasks accomplished, despite capturing the one who blew his house. :)

Yes the one who blows up Nikolayev's house cannot be captured. Assuming the bomber is the same as Villager standing in north part of Khelm and trying to shoot you with Makarov pistol when you go close to him. No matter how much you wound him, he will not surrender. I even tried to hit him with APC, but no surrender. Fresh info about the subject here: http://www.dev-heaven.net/issues/12248

Thanks again for your suggestion about how this bug arises (?) and how to avoid it.

Your explanation makes sense to me somehow, BUT one (i.e. casual gamer) will never think of the AI to probably kind of accidentally kill a mission critical NPC by parking a vehicle inside the base... (As I did...)

Friendly (and not playing a role in the mission anyway) AI is supposed to do nothing or at least nothing harmful while not in focus by the player ;)

They could easily fix one issue by changing camouglage net from heavy damage causing object to light non-damage causing object. There are only small chances to get fixes like that by reporting them to CIT and that is why I've not done it.

Well, now that the problem seems to be solved and can be avoided (if U know how to), it draws an "interesting" light and insight on the complexity of the game.

BTW. What patch were you using? I tried to remove "V1.54" from this thread title, since it is still true in latest patches too and probably will be forever.

Troubleshooting guides/suggestions like this should be highlighted or prioritised (?) in the forums to make them easier to find and prevent newbies like me of getting utterly frustrated before getting even a glance on the potentials Arma 2 surely has.

There is a sticky function in the forums, but as you see this is pretty much the only subforum here without any stickies. Nothing we can do about it without beeing a moderator.

PS: The timeout function of the forums could be a little expanded, too... btw... ;)

I agree and I have suggested that to deaf ears. Setting it to 1 year or completely removing it would considerably help getting less threads about same things, but they want to keep it that way and in a result every week new members will answer to threads that are older than 4 months, because there are so many forums without this rule and they do not notice this forum has a rule for that. What you could do to obey rules would be to start new thread and start it with a link to the old thread. After many members would do this, maybe they could realize we would be better without that rule.

PPS: Just backing up the content of "...\ArmA 2\Saved\ca\missions\campaign" folder worked fine for me so far. While playing SP only yet.

Actually I've been doing the same lately. Much faster to copy that folder in the middle of the game than the whole profile.

Edited May 19, 2011 by Hanzu

[Confu 10]

Thanks for the detailed feedback again!

To clear up some misunderstandings;

I meant, I could not capture Nikolayev, assuming that he blew himself up (suicide) ;)

But I followed your link and that´s an interesting issue, too.

If the bombing guy is critical for the mission script, maybe you should just not be able to see him, instead of making him invulnerable. Not that realistic...

About Shaftoes "death from above"; I think it´s worth posting it to CIT since I found quite some threads in forums (in here and in other forums) concerning this issue. But no one found a working (!) solution like you, instead of restarting the mission from the very beginning (and probably making the same "mistakes" over and over again...).:banghead:

So if you know the problem and have a solution, why not post it there!

Timeout/ 4 month rule:

I was talking about automatically logging off the forums, while typing a reply, but I still agree to you about the 4 month rule. (Didn´t really notice that, too, but you´re surely right.):ok:

Version:

I got Arma 2 via Steam on an occasional sale (for cheap :) ). It´s autopatched to 1.09.78183.

Did not try later patches yet, because Steam tends to mess up things sometimes... If you know what I mean.

Backups:

Before reading your post, I thought about the necessity to maybe backup my player profile, too. If you advance in the SP missions, could there be anything stored in the player profile which will make it impossible to "jump back"? "Achievements" or sth. Dunno...

Well, just had a look at the file, there should probably be nothing in it, that should change during SP missions. Except difficulty settings...

That´s it for now. Thanks again, regards, Confu

[lugiahua 26]

interesting...I played that mission several times, but never encounter this glitch.

[Hanzu 10]

interesting...I played that mission several times, but never encounter this glitch.

The most common reason why Shaftoe dies is then player drives inside FOB Manhattan to resupply at ammo and weapon crates behind Shaftoe or drives inside FOB Manhattan to talk to Shaftoe. Hitting camouflage net support ropes with any vehicle instantly drops camouglage net which covers not only Shaftoe but also resupply area all they way to UAV control station.

BIS fixed something already in patches 1.04 and 1.05 but I think they didn't realize there were more reasons why Shaftoe dies if precautions I wrote above are not followed.

Even if you park your vehicle away from camouflage net. Note that when you Get Out, AI may jump to driver seat and move vehicle a little and accidentally cut camouflage net support ropes.

This player didn't realize he made camouflage net to fell down and kill Cpt. Shaftoe:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=83312

Other reports about Shaftoe beeing dead:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1904200

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1545119

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=77862

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1538506&postcount=492

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1733750&postcount=131

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1537836&postcount=104

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1523877&postcount=112

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1518693&postcount=8

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1492544&postcount=8

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1460010&postcount=20

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1438711&postcount=6

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1438937&postcount=11

EDIT

Looks like camouflage nets suddenly were made non lethal in somewhere around 1.59 patch and even though I recently dropped many camouflage nets over Razor Team and other AI with 1.60 BETA, I did not get any damage done.

However I noticed even more common old reason for Cpt. Shaftoe's death is his chair which will first wound him and then kill him when he changes the direction he is facing. So I made a ticket for that bug http://dev-heaven.net/issues/25560 and fortunately the developers fixed it.

With the latest information the fix should be included in 1.60 final patch.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Hanzu
Bug fixed

[jakerod 254]

Easy fix... this allowdamage false