Reason for failure, is the prison ship destroyed. Are you fireing on the Pirates? Also, are you running any mods?

I've tried both with and without mods. Same effect.

And I'm not firing on pirates because we haven't reached there yet.

I join up and we get the intro speil from Epsilon one, then the mayday, then the mission assignment screen, and before I can even acknowledge that, the mission failure pops up. No chance to do anything.

Do you hook up and auto pilot there, or do you fly manuly to the ship? Hook up, meaning using the form up on wing command.

I formed up... you've got to, it's a goal.

A friend helped me out on this one.... He suggested that I load the no-cd/fixed executable from this site.

I did and it worked. Must have been a bug in the original exe.

You got me wondering what disk you have.
It doesn't by any chance say "ubisoft" on it anywhere?

This happened to me in my first FL days.... ahhh, the memories...
I was using the "Refire rate Mod" but that made the bad guys shoot so fast that I couldn't even get to that ship...

Where abouts is the no-cd executable fix? My laptop's cd/dvd drive has been randomly ejecting discs ever since a game (NAMCO museum... avoid!) installed some DRM junk...

...insert disc...
...randomly ejected....
...insert disc...
...start Freelancer...
...randomly ejected...
...punch Pac-man...

Ad bellum currimus.