Well, I had a nice rant, but the next day I was right back at it. Was close enough to the end that I was able to power through to the end and get to P2.
The two constant bugs I deal with now involve the inventory blipout when capturing another ship and the time slowing power being ****ed up. There wasn't any grace period where shit worked right; much like Tupalov's torpedoes, they went active the minute the game launched. I've just learned to deal with it. Whenever I take over an enemy ship I go back, grab all the cargo, takeover the new ship, then redock with my old ship, reselect it as my home ship, and put the cargo back in the hold. It's a pain, but it works. Also, if you register a ship in space when you first capture it, the fee is substantially less, which is nice.
I bypassed all the Constellation crap this time around. One weird thing, which is apparently pretty rare, is that this time around when I went to the Lodge I encountered my own character. I recruited him as a follower, so now I'm going through the game with myself. Obviously a lot of content isn't available now. I guess I could have Sarah as a follower/crewmember, but I'm kind of sick of her shit, so I've left her in the Lodge so far. Perhaps I'll make her a follower again to see if the romance thing works (I'm not going to **** myself
), but so far I just have the robot and the extra me. Other me isn't nearly as annoying as the other followers, except he's always reminding me how bad the atmosphere is and that we need our spacesuits, even in New Atlantis. It seems like there's no way to find Andreja, and I haven't been to Akila yet, so I don't know how/if the Rangers quest will work. No sign of whiny Sam or his mouthy brat, or the odious Barrett, which is wonderful. I've mainly been killing pirates, stealing ships and upgrading stuff at my own pace, while tinkering a bit with outposts, which is still clunky and shitty but I'm getting better at it. The game seems to work better without the main story line mucking shit up. So far, anyway (knock on wood). I guess if it starts ****ing up again I'll power through to the next level and do it all over again.