Elite / Frontier Frontier Elite 2 - "All bays full" forever?

[maxyb]

I just started a game of FE2, and jumped into the Ross 154 system, which has only one starport. I try to land there, but i get "CLEARANCE DENIED - all bays full, try again later". I try again later, bays are still full. Bays seem to be full forever... I can wait days and days, and bays are still full.

Normally I would just go on to the next starport in the system, but this is the only starport. Now here's the kicker: jumping into this system used my last ton of Hydrogen. I can't buy any more unless I land somewhere.

Is there any way out of this other cheating and hacking my save file?

 

[rgmarett]

You could land on the planet surface with the starport in sight. Set your stardreamer going on full speed until you see when a bay becomes empty. Just to warn you though, you can wait weeks for an empty bay.

 

[DraQ]

I once had similar situation except I was carrying parcel for military, was flying Viper and some moron rammed me in the thruster when I was approaching the planet.

If you can afford to wait, just land rough near the starport (make sure you can see the pads) and wait till one of the pads clears.

If you can't, you need a laser, preferably some missiles, 10000, or, at the very least 600cr for fines and some serious dogfighting skills.
The simplest way to that is attacking landed ship directly, but it will incur 10000cr fine. The more sophisticated way would be to fire a missile at it - it may help somewhat with the fine, but it's uncertain method. In any case, you will earn the wrath of the police, so here's the most sophisticated way:

Fire your laser randomly, you'll get 600cr fine and police Vipers will swarm you and try to take you down - the thing is, that they will fire their lasers and missiles a lot, and you should try to exploit it by trying to make them hit the landed craft. In any case you'll have to survive battle with Sirocco Station police force, but 600cr is less than 10000.

 

[potsmoke66]

a wise precaution

allways save a game before you jump and one after you jumped.
it gives you some chances.

if the situation (no matter which) persists after reloading and entering the system. perform a "game reset", that means quit game and restart from last savegame BEFORE you jumped, that will flush the process memory of FE2/FFE, else some stuff stays even after a reload and re-enter of a system.

---

or play the AMIGA CD32 version of FE2, if your emulator is proper setup (and the startup-sequence includes a assign for the non-volatile RAM, NVRAM), it allows you to quicksave a game AFTER you jumped, reloading such a quicksave is like a game-reset (you will enter right with the jump into the system). sometimes it even shortens distance to the target, because sometimes (very rarely) you materialise on the opposite side of the system.

further it's the most bugfixed and stable version of FE2 and has the "new ZZ-1 navigation aid", you might know from FFE (select target for autopilot from table).

i know it can't be cheat as easy as the PC-DOS version, but some tricks might work still.

btw, i played both DOS & CD32 version emulated not so long ago and i feel the CD32 version runs much better, rather the DOS version via DOS-box. ok, textures are missing in the amiga ver. but apart from that, most feel better with AMIGA/ATARI versions (i first played CD32 FE2 anyway...).

 

[maxyb]

Thanks guys! Rough landing and star dreaming for a couple months did the trick, but in the future I will just save more often

 

[porl]

Thanks guys! Rough landing and star dreaming for a couple months did the trick, but in the future I will just save more often

Sounds like you just learned the first rule of the Elite series "Always save, alot" it also pays to have multiple saves and not overwrite just one saved game (thats me second rule)

 

[turwhitt]

Yeah, my philosophy is keep 3 saves:

1) That you religiously save once every game week at your next available docking

2) Saved just before leaving any dock

3) An ongoing save that you use at any time


I have also had saves become corrupted, so that no. 1 has saved my hide.

Saves are only a few k in size, so don't be stingy!

 

[DraQ]

You can also just keep the extensions on and periodically remove excess saves.

 

[Bikky]

Yeah, Saves galore....

I ended up going back 2 months (when i was playing a bit most nights) to an old save, cos i stuffed something up. Never gone back to using single saves after that, it was always version saving.....


With the exception of a one off I did. To see how I would do without the rollback option. I started off FFE in Lave.... 18 times.... but the only save was done at the end of playing. Then I reloaded and resumed, and never went back on saves. It was hard work, and stressful, but fun.