Oolite Bulletins

I was carrying out the Black Widow mission and, coincidentally, the first planet I visited after reaching Edorqu was the one where the pirates are (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here).

I got 2 of them, never found any more. Hyperspaced out, looked around other planets, returned to the pirate planet. Again got 2. Repeated this.

On inspecting my saved game none of the ships were set to DESTROYED. Finally had to give up and edit the saved game.

On each visit I more or less wiped out out all spacefaring life in the system (except for cops).

Is this a bug?

As far as none of the ships set to DESTROYED: Yes, that's a bug, and was already corrected in the latest upload Deposed 1.3.2. (I had planned to change the variables to local_variables and had done so already in the death_actions, then changed my mind again, but had forgotten about the already changed variable names. Apologies for that! )

Just download it and install instead of 1.3.1. (Or alternatively open the shipdata.plist and replace the local_variable-names local_depblk1, local_depblk2 and local_depblk3 with the correct mission_variable-names mission_depblk1, mission_depblk2 and mission_depblk3. That's all the patch does.) If you then go hunting again the variables should be set correctly.

As far as the missing third Blackwidow is concerned: I think it should be there. Perhaps he went for as ride while you were busy with the first two? I remember when I did this part of the mission and jumped into the system, there were also some other fights going on, and two of the three Blackwidows were engaged elsewhere. It took me some time and cruising around to find them again. The good thing is: You may get lucky and somebody else will destroy them for you.

Anyway: If you don't find the third one, jumping out and in again will help. Only the not-yet-DESTROYED will be created again.