Bug Report: An Equitable Arrangement

[TheLearnedHand]

Summary:

Game breaking bug in the quest "An Equitable Arrangement." PS5 version. Basically, despite negotiating an alliance between Auntie's Choice and the Order of the Ascendant, when I complete the quest "A Complication with the Computronic Cerebrum," and report back to Ruth as part of the former quest, it railroads me into the quest "Agenda for Altered States" and makes me "kill on sight" with Auntie's Choice. Very frustrating for a 60 hour save.

 

Long Explanation: 

I'm playing on PS5, the game has the most recent update.

I successfully negotiated an alliance with Auntie's Choice and the Order of the Ascendant as part of An Equitable Arrangement, the objective "Handle the Negotiations." I fully gave the Order the Archive and rift tech, had them share the skip drive tech, and didn't talk Ruth Basar out of using the chemicals to interface with the Archive.

Then, I headed to Spireton to and took it over for the Order as directed by Ruth. I also got Auntie Cleo her new robot body, the quest "The Mechanical Matriarch." 

After that, I entered the Archive and got that companion dialogue prompt that triggers right when you enter, but it was wrong, the companions basically stated I should get allies before I try to take the Archive. I ignored that and continued on. I activated the lift, brought the Order folks up from Spireton, restored the Archive and completed the optional objective "Repair Thermal Transfer."

I gave U.N.I.A.C. the Actuational personality, and then handed over the Calcaduceus to Junior Seer Amaryllis, but her dialogue was wrong, she stated something like "you were supposed to get your reinforcements up from Spireton but it looks like you didn't need them anyway." The quest "A Complication with the Computronic Cerebrum" was then completed.

Then, for An Equitable Arrangement, I got the objective "Return to Ruth," the full objective description being "Return to Ruth and give her the news that the Archive is back under Order control." So, I went and talked to her, and she was in her decorative outfit, in the office outside her deprivation chamber, but she had the animation as if she was in the chamber, and then her dialogue played like we were meeting for the first time ever.

She then said something like "we have a report that a rogue agent restored the Archive, know anything about that?" Then, I am prompted to give her the Calcaduceus despite the fact that I already gave it to Amaryllis. Then, she railroads me into doing the quest "An Agenda for Altered States" despite the fact that Auntie Cleo already agreed to give her the chemicals during the negotiations. 

After completing her dialogue, my Auntie's Choice's reputation is set to "kill on sight" and An Equitable Arrangement (as well as every other uncompleted Auntie's Choice quest) is set to "botched" with the description "Auntie's Choice is hostile to you. They won't work with you any longer." 

I tried reloading a save and toying around with decisions. Specifically, I have tried for about 4 hours, three different reload attempts. Main thing I tried was taking Spireton back before even getting the objective to do so, which allows that part of the quest to be skipped, but Amaryllis still had that incorrect dialogue stating that I failed to call for the reinforcements in Spireton. However, my companion dialogue upon entering the Archive seemed to correctly account for the fact that I had indeed recruited allies to take the Archive.

I'm unsure if Spireton has something to do with the main bug, but I feel like something is occuring here to make the game think I stormed the Archive on my own. Another side note, I'm not sure if this is important, but I had previously went into the restricted area of the Auntie's Choice Chemical Factory out of curiosity, and I was not detected. But as a result, the quest note "You infiltrated the Auntie's Choice Chemical Factory and located the chemical dispensary room" is already in the entries upon involuntarily receiving the quest.

As you can imagine, this happening on a 60 something hour save file is quite frustrating.

[Jackalgirl]

"I gave U.N.I.A.C. the Actuational personality, and then handed over the Calcaduceus to Junior Seer Amaryllis, but her dialogue was wrong, she stated something like 'you were supposed to get your reinforcements up from Spireton but it looks like you didn't need them anyway'."

For what it's worth, I noted this as well, on my XBOX Series S (game version 1.0.6.0 - 2313922.0 last tie I checked).  I had activated the Spireton lift and just outside the doors, all of the reinforcements she was chiding me for not having called were in fact present and guarding the bridge.

However, I didn't run into this bug -- that is, when I returned to Ruth, she praised my intervention and both Auntie's and the Order are my allies.  For me, all animations and dialogue were appropriate to the scene (it wasn't as if I were meeting her for the first time).  I otherwise completed all quests similarly to you (though I did talk Ruth out of frying her brains to interface with the Archive).

Question: did you talk with Vicar Laureate Levin prior to meeting Ruth?  I think I almost forgot to talk with him, but he was standing in front of her office when I first gained the opportunity to speak with her (and he lightly chided me about it, saying he'd wanted to speak to me beforehand but "no matter").  I'm wondering if interacting with him is somehow key to this quest.