Homeworld: Can't Hyperspace out of Bridge

[backwoods]

Arrrggg! I love this game and been through it 5 times end-to-end. I'm merrily on my 6th pass, everything working perfectly as always, when I suddenly can't jump out at the end of Bridge of Sighs. I give the command to jump, the ships all dock & line up, then nothing more happens. The fleet just sits there all lined up, slowly bobbing. ESC doesn't work, or any other keystrokes. I have to ctl-alt-del & kill the application. There are no application or system event error notices in the event viewer log other than the hung homeworld.

I can still reload the end of earlier missions & hyper.
I loaded saved games from earlier passes and they won't hyper out of Bridge any more either :-O.

NO mods - everything strictly by-the-book. Patched to 1.05.

Athlon 64 running Win XP Pro SP2
DirectX 9.0c.
1 GB RAM, 100G hardrive 80% empty.
Video card Nvidia GeForce 7600S by 3D Fuzion, with latest drivers.
Using game option D3D 1280 x 1024, max palette buffer, been working perfectly.

Turned off antivirus (Bitdefender) and firewall (Windows), no help.

Uninstalled HW, deleted folder, cleaned the registry with CCleaner, reinstalled using original CD into a different location, patched to 1.05, copied saved games back. No help.

Loaded a save from even ealier in the Bridge level & played to the end. No help.

Retired ships until fleet was smaller than on previous successful passes (which also no longer work, but only on this mission). No help.

Used the original CD instead of my work copy for playing. No help.

Did a repair install of XP for other reasons. I hypered out of Bridge! But I needed to keep fighters docked, so I went back, set the keep-docked, and tried again ... NO HYPER ever again X-(, new pass or old saved passes.

Did a clean re-install of the entire computer, starting with formatting the harddrive, and only the latest drivers loaded. No hyper out of Bridge, not even the first time thru. Everything else works!

I am soooo beyond stumped :-?

[mailpup]

I don't think there is anything wrong with your system or the game installation. It's what is known as the Big Fleet Bug. It's a limitation, or bug if you will, that appears at the end of the Bridge of Sighs when you salvage so many frigates that when they line up in military parade formation, the line of frigates hits the map boundary. The excess ships bunch up and since they are not in line in formation, you can't jump out to the next mission.

The number of ships needed to be retired can vary from game to game I've found. One thing that can help move things along is quick docking and hyperjumping immediately afterward. Just for information purposes you can quickdock and while things are at a standstill, you can still maneuver the camera to the end of the frigate line until you reach the map boundary. When you see the number of frigates that have moved out of line, you have an idea of how many frigates you need to retire before you can hyperjump. However, in actual practice you can use the quickdock and quick hyperjump method even while you have some excess frigates. Get rid of two or three at a time until the quickdock, quick hyperjump method finally works. The quick method seems to work best if your frigates are jumbled up and not in formation before you try it.

I hope my explanation wasn't too confusing.

[backwoods]

Oh that sounds like perfect advice mailpup! I do of course tend to salvage everything right down to used Taidan candy wrappers LOL. I've always overflowed the map a little, but yeah maybe this time it's worse or I've been slower about hitting the jump without thinking about it. I do always quickdock or I'd never live to see the end of the lineup ;-). I'll try retiring enough of the ion frigs to stop the overflow, since there's so friggin many.

One quick question: the fleet offers to quickdock after I've commanded the jump. Can I command the quickdock before issueing the jump order?

Thanks :-)

[mailpup]

No, you do have to command the jump first, then do the quickdock/hyperspace. I wasn't real clear about that. I often have groups of my frigates in wall formation or some other formation and placed in the general area of the mothership or elsewhere, as long as they are not close to their parade formation area. I'm not sure if or how it helps but it seems to.

In the last mission you'll notice the frigates hit the map boundary again but since it's the last mission, it doesn't matter.

[backwoods]

Retiring ships eventually did the job :-). I had to ditch a bunch of them, around 30, but I did finally escape LOL. I ended up with an insane amount of RUs I can't use because the fleet is too big - 41K. Thanks again!

[mailpup]

Of course, you could just scuttle the ships. That would be much faster but wasteful.

[backwoods]

Yeah that would have been quicker - old habits die hard .

It prob seems silly to be going thru this thing a 6th time, but darned if every time I've done it I haven't found some new quirk or trick to try that changes the progress. Hats off to the folks that wrote this game . I've been thru HW2, and it was more hard slog and less fun quirks.

This time was the first pass I've been able to have missle destroyers. Before, by the time I got the research I had already salvaged over the cap for destroyers. I finally figured out how to nab all the captured ships on the ghost ship mission so I could reverse engineer the missleD. Yeah I know, late to be finding that out but like I said, .

[mailpup]

I've said it before but the beauty of this game is the numerous different ways you can get through it. BTW, I don't know if you have done this already but you can end up with more ships if you fill your build queue as soon as you get the tech for it. Don't build them out necessarily, just what you need to get by until you salvage what you really need. You can build out in the last mission if you want and have the RU's for it.

For example, in Mission 3 as soon as you capture your first Assault Frigate you gain tech to build certain frigates. Before any other AF's are processed, I fill my build queue with max Support Frigates. If I wait, the salvaged AF's will count against my build queue.

[backwoods]

??? You fill the queue then put them on pause? At the end of 3 and the beginning of 4 (wastelands) I use every RU for salvers and strikes, so I can beat off the Raider strikes then grab the 6 ion frigates that hyper in. Come to think of it, I do pretty much the same thing at the start of 5, plus bombers & some guncorvs so I can stop the AF's that make a beeline for my salvers, then nab the D's and carrier that immediately follow. By then I've got another support nabbed before I can get back to harvesting, and I've got a bunch of frigs. So I like this idea of yours .

[mailpup]

Yes, pause the build immediately after ordering the build. I left that out.

There is another little known trick you can use but you might have to experiment a little, so save your game frequently. Very early in the game when you haven't reached your ship caps yet, you can build some ships without them counting against your ship caps. During some but not all cutscenes (this is where you have to experiment) if you complete any ship builds, they don't count against the ship limits. After the cutscene is over immediately pause all builds. If it you do it right, you can refill your build queue which were maxed out before this. That means those ships are extra bonus ships. To do it right you have to begin your builds ahead of time and pause them. Just before the cutscene starts you restart your builds. Depending on the length of the cutscene you can sometimes get more than one of a particular ship such as salvettes. Because of the limited time before the cutscene starts you only have time to begin building a few ships. Timing is important because the builds have to complete DURING the cutscene (another place to experiment). I usually build extra salvettes this way. Of course, you have to have enough RU's.