Signwriting projects

[tiddy ogg]

This isn't dramatic enough to put into the support forum, just a query.
My char was changing the sign on a longboat attached to his larger vessel. He then hopped into the longboat to visit a port, halfway through the project. Returning to his "mother ship" I found the project cancelled. Assuming this isn't some cock-up on my part, that seems a reasonable thing to do, to save a bunch of half-finished limbo project hanging around.
But on the same basis, I've seen, I'm sure, a bunch of lock picking projects hanging around once the vehicle appertaining to the project has long since departed.

[Chris Johnson]

This behaviour is by design

Sign writing projects are cancelled if the target (boat or land vehicle) moves from the parent area (by undocking or travel) . Each location can only have one sign project associated with it at any one time so we have to remove projects when a vehicle moves.

Lock picking projects on the other hand do remain if the target moves. No progress is made on them if the target is no longer there but can be worked on if the target comes back. Lock picking can be considered as part of the combat system in some cases and as such it's felt that cancelling lock breaking projects whenever a boat undocks would would overly favour the Locks defender .

This does mean that locks can have more than one lock breaking project associated with them (in different locations) and that they persist after vehicles are no longer in the same location.

ProgD may remove some of the older projects from time to time as part of general housekeeping (but never at the request of a player).