Odd Glitch

Take note: This has never happened before or since now.

I was playing The Fat and Furious mission and decided to do the glitch which allows you to drive in the power plant. When I exited the Stonecutters' tunnel, I did not go to the finish line, but drove down the road to the right of it to go find Smithers. I found his limo as a broken wreck on the poor side of town just before the bridge that leads to the cemetery area. What's weirder is that the yellow flag icon that hovers on top of any vehicle that you race was way up in the air, so I had to turn the camera up to see it. Can anyone explain why these things happened?

The AI in this game acts differently depending on how close the player is to them. The race type AI is more competent when the player is nearby so I'd wager a guess that Smithers just got stuck in the park and rammed into a wall repeatedly until he blew up. I have no idea why the yellow icon would be so high, though.

It didn't seem like he had got stuck somewhere. The wreckage of his limo was facing towards the bridge and was right in front of him. Also, now that I think about it, I remember something else in this mission as well...

It was my first attempt at using the power plant shortcut glitch, and I did it correctly, but when I was partway through the plant, the mission failed me for no apparent reason.

A similar thing happens in the mission "Kang and Kodos Strike Back": I didn't try to race the aliens, instead, I used the debug cam to see where the sedan goes if I don't attempt to race it. It got to a unloaded area of the map, did a few circles, stopped, and then the mission failed.

Why does that happen?

This happens because of Radical. You see, if you'll get too far from the vehicle, the car won't be able to catch up with you, since it will stuck in the unloaded area, thus, a "failsafe" triggers and the mission fails (I don't actually know if this is true, just a suggestion)

That would make sense, yes, RADICAL!

I remember something similar happening to me before, although not with L1M7 but with L6M7. As a kid, in both missions I have done the trick that allows you to finish these missions using the other path than the intended one and I remember once in L6M7, I went the OTHER way around and reach the finish line at Duff brewery and stopped before finish line and saw the Chase Sedan far away and it was having difficulties reaching here as it looked like it was stuck in the air. However I've had sometimes a rare mission failure if I took this path in one other attempt as the game considered I was far behind from the race vehicle, I don't know why exactly this happens as I remember a similar situation last year where I was getting frustrated at the bonus mission in A Day In Life mod (which must have taken me at least 10-15 attempts) where you must collect kids scattered around while preventing a competitor bus from reaching the school. You had the option to destroy the bus (before it reached school) and go back and collect the kids. But for whatever reason if you weren't fast enough (even if the mission didn't give you any timelimit or gave you a generous timelimit), the mission would randomly fail and one time I destroyed the bus earlier, collected kids, just as I'm about to reach the school to finish the mission, the mission failed! I was very confused as to why the mission would just randomly fail like this but thankfully this hasn't happened to me in any other mod or in the original game (in most playthroughs I've done). I never had a mission randomly fail like that in a race especially when I was AHEAD of the opponents.

But yeah if you fall so behind of the opponents, the race usually fails because the game considers you've already lost the race. Hope this helps!

Thanks, [redacted]. I've been looking into it, and from what I can tell, going in the opposite direction in any race means that the area where the opponent is driving unload, added with the fact that the opponent's movement is based off of how close to it you are, you get the weird result of the opponent stopping, taking a while to get to the destination, or (on occasion) just flat-out disappearing.

I understand! Although in those 2 races from original game, I always did them the proper way but it was interesting anyway to experience the other route, just to see what happens. Yeah, I remember now, the opponent is driving in the non-loaded area and that's why it has difficulties reaching the destination, although I don't remember the opponent flat-out disappearing, maybe this is what is causing the mission failure?

Maybe. There were a few occasions in Kang and Kodos Strike Back where I went the opposite direction, and the sedan never came even though I was waiting for it at the brewery. I drove around the entire map but the sedan wasn't there.

Also: You know the alien car you race in Alien Auto Topsy Part III? There have been two occasions where I've been way ahead of it and wondered where it went. Turns out that it had somehow been destroyed.