SW3, Bug

Yeah if you stuck to the mission script before that, there's not much wiggle room. That's one of the things they need to fix. If they didn't hide the quest text with FILETYPE DYNAMIC I'd change some dialog to make it clearer what's expected of the player at some points.

If you played Elite then you're certainly more experienced than me; I count Privateer and Freelancer as my early space sims (my favourite C-64 games would be Marble Madness and Archon). I didn't really get into Elite or maybe I just preferred the game not to be that open ended. So I wonder why you're complaining here, this game certainly isn't as challenging.

Prior to reaching this system you do remember the game asks for permission to auto-jump long distance, right? Shortcuts like that may seem like great convenience -- but by skipping all that "tedious" travel time, you miss out on huge opportunities. Of course, the grinding nature doesn't suit many people, but it's like life; if you take the easy way out, you'll pay for it later. You just happened to find out the hard way.

Fortunately for players, there are save games you can load from.