BATTLETECH - Itrom priority contract never appears

[_Quinn]

One line summary of your issue
Itrom priority contract never appears

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
I haven't seen a priority contract in quite some time. I loaded the financial report saves to check when the last time I had one was, and on day 540, I was en route to the "Defense: Smithon" mission. My current save is Day 750... I had assumed it was just taking some time for the Restoration to get its invasion of Itrom ready. (IIRC, the last plot scene mentioned somebody locked up in their own castle as potentially having the dirt necessary to get the Taurians to go home.)

As far as I can tell, I hadn't ever had to do anything in particular, or wait this long, in order to get the next priority mission. Is there anything I can do to save the last 210 days, or do I have to replay "Defense: Smithton" and hope for the best? Thanks.

Steps to reproduce the issue
Unknown. I speculate this has to do with Steam having patched the game twice during this campaign. I'd send along my save game, but it's not at all clear where on the disk it is. (Maybe part of the hashnamed resources?)

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[_Quinn]

In case anybody else has this problem:

The solution turned out to be simple once I understood more than I really wanted to about how the game worked: edit one of the procedurally-generated mission .json files to set NextStoryMilestone to 521. (I determined that the "Itrom Attack" mission would be assigned when this was the case by examining the files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\BATTLETECH\BattleTech_Data\StreamingAssets\data\contracts.) In my case, I had this idea when my next mission was going to be "Brilliant Minds". So I went into the rescue/ folder, made a backup of Rescue_BrilliantMinds.json, and edited it. In particular, I replaced the "OnContractSuccessResults" section with a section stolen from another file in the same directory. I changed

"OnContractSuccessResults": [],

to

"OnContractSuccessResults" : [
{
"Stats" : [
{
"typeString" : "System.Int32",
"name" : "NextStoryMilestone",
"value" : 521,
"set" : true,
"valueConstant" : null
}
]
}
],

and sure enough, after I beat the mission, the priority contract for the assault on Itrom was (finally!) in the list.

I took the mission (and beat it), saved, and restored the backup to make sure I didn't accidentally take another "Brilliant Minds" contract and screw everything up again. Hopefully I don't ever have to do this again...

 

[_Quinn]

A few notes: you'll want to make the edit with a program that understands Unix line endings. I don't know if you need to save with Unix line endings or not. Also, some editors add a trailing newline; I don't know if that matters to BATTLETECH or not, but I made sure to remove it. Finally, if BATTLETECH just gets stuck loading forever, try opening the .json with Firefox; it will complain if the file isn't valid JSON.

Otherwise, things seem to be working well. After the Itrom mission came the defense of Panzyr, so I guess everything is on track.

 

[Lavitzakaria]

Hey so i am also having this issue in the same exact part of the story. Just to make sure I'm doing things right since I don't know how to read code, I will find a mission random mission I need to do, then find the .JSON file for that one, replace the stats with what you entered, beat the mission in the game and the bottom mission should appear? After I beat the mission and itrom appears, do I need to go and replace it back with the original file?

 

[robojordans]

I'm experiencing this issue but the .json edit isn't taking. I'm using Notepad++ so it understands UNIX line endings, and I've followed every other type of solve on the forums. Is my save borked?

 

[BTNomad]

You all aren't on macs by chance are you?

 

[LogicWeasel]

In case anybody else has this problem:

The solution turned out to be simple once I understood more than I really wanted to about how the game worked: edit one of the procedurally-generated mission .json files to set NextStoryMilestone to 521. (I determined that the "Itrom Attack" mission would be assigned when this was the case by examining the files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\BATTLETECH\BattleTech_Data\StreamingAssets\data\contracts.) In my case, I had this idea when my next mission was going to be "Brilliant Minds". So I went into the rescue/ folder, made a backup of Rescue_BrilliantMinds.json, and edited it. In particular, I replaced the "OnContractSuccessResults" section with a section stolen from another file in the same directory. I changed

"OnContractSuccessResults": [],

to

"OnContractSuccessResults" : [
{
"Stats" : [
{
"typeString" : "System.Int32",
"name" : "NextStoryMilestone",
"value" : 521,
"set" : true,
"valueConstant" : null
}
]
}
],

and sure enough, after I beat the mission, the priority contract for the assault on Itrom was (finally!) in the list.

I took the mission (and beat it), saved, and restored the backup to make sure I didn't accidentally take another "Brilliant Minds" contract and screw everything up again. Hopefully I don't ever have to do this again...

I cannot thank you enough for providing the means to fix my bugged storyline. My game (day 660) was hard-stuck just 1 priority story mission after you were and I could not get Defense: Panzyr to load for about 150 in-game days.

I used the method you did to modify a mission json file and set my "value" to 541 (the value that Story mission 15 uses in the json) and amazing, there at long last, is my next story mission. I am so freaking happy I didn't have to start over or just give up on the campaign with the progress I spent time getting (a full 6 assault mechs I had built up from parts and lucky headshots).