Saw it Coming?

[caysesc]

Does anyone know what the real requirements are for this achievement? I'm five runs in and it's the only achievement that I'm stuck on.

Doing all the camp quests or doing none at all, having a squad sitting on the camp when it happens or leaving it for literal months, saving Biff or letting him die, and the event seems to resolve the same way every time. Talking to Faucheaux and him walking off, with the same four clues to be found in the camp after the fight

[D13]

I don't know, but for what it's worth - I went from Ernie to the nearest mine, then Fleatown, then towards the suspected location of the President in the north east. I don't think I completed any quests after Ernie. While traveling through the Cursed Forest, I got a Snype call ordering me to the refugee camp, which I ignored, received a related Grand Chienne newsletter shortly after, and at some point around that time the achievement was unlocked up on Steam.

In other words, I didn't really do anything remarkable.

Maybe this Reddit post will help you (heavy spoilers!)

[Attempt]

SPOILERS AHEAD:

I don't think this is a conditional achievement, it just unlocks as you progress the story. The notes linked in the previous response are from the Defeat the Legion quest and describe what triggers the call to get to the refugee camp. This quest is called Betrayal and upon completion it gives the Saw it Coming achievement. I don't have a super detailed understanding of the quest system internals but as far as I can tell the Betrayal quest always completes successfully after the world flip. So whether you go to the camp and do the big battle or whether you skipped the fight by moving close to the Majors camp: after the enemy army squads wreck all your shit and you get the 3 quests to defeat the Major, Colonel and Corazon you should also have gotten the achievement.

[caysesc]

The completion rate of the achievement on Steam really looks like it's either conditional on something or that it's in some way broken.

If it was tied to nothing more than triggering the world flip quest, I'd have had it four runs ago.

[D13]

Maybe it's something like actually opening one of the resulting emails, or clicking on the quest itself (in "Notes"). I'm  mentioning this because for the "ambushed diamond shipment" achievement, a successful ambush or even selling the obtained diamonds is not enough, they have to be moved into an inventory for the achievement to register.

[VidarNL]

Probably tied to gathering enough clues first before talking to Faucheaux? I think I got a message saying "gathered enough clues" or something during the conversation.

[Attempt]

The only check when the achievement is granted is completion of the Betrayal quest which seems to complete unconditionally after the game flips the world and does some housekeeping (failing/removing some side quests). This quest is also the only place where the achievement is referenced.

The whole evidence thing is a different quest that is active long after the Betrayal quest completes, spans multiple locations across the entire map and affects whether you can clear A.I.M. from the accusations.

Completion rates can be misleading. Take the Tactician achievement, controlling 50 sectors. By the time the world flip happens most players will have gotten this (unless you do Time is Money, Lone Wolf) yet Steam shows only 35% compared to the 25% for Saw it coming. Another example: In Ori and the Will of Wisps (over 2 years old, very popular) 40% never got the achievement for making it to a central early game area.

9 hours ago, caysesc said:

If it was tied to nothing more than triggering the world flip quest, I'd have had it four runs ago.

Makes sense, either I am missing something obvious or it is bugged.

If any of you are curious about poking around in the game files for yourself:

Use https://github.com/nickelc/hpk to extract the hpk archives (Data & Lua mostly). Some of the lua files are in a binary intermediary format for which you need https://github.com/HansWessels/unluac. There is a mod on nexus with all the necessary tools: https://www.nexusmods.com/jaggedalliance3/mods/38?tab=posts where you basically just run the .bat file (if you get an error you might have download the .NET 6.0 runtime https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/6.0)

Two relevant files are Data\Achievement.lua (search for "SawItComing") and Data\QuestsDef\04_Betrayal.lua (search for "TCE_ResolveQuest" and work your way backwards). It is all very declarative and fairly straight forward, but having a decent text editor with syntax highlighting and code folding (sublime, notepad++, ...) will make navigation easier.