'Doubling' Bug Makes ARC Goal Impossible

[LordNikon]

Hey, new to the forums here.

I got Uplink several years ago in college, finished it, stuck it in a box. Just recently pulled it out again to kill some time with. I don't really remember much about my first experiences, but I know that the patches have changed things up quite a bit.

This time around, I'm noticing I get the 'Doubling' bug a lot. Like every time. So far this time around I've only been trying to work for ARC, so it may also render Arunmor unattainable as well.

The problem is that each plot point happens twice. You get each assignment from ARC twice, and news stories concerning Arunmor's retaliation against ARC happen twice. I've searched the forums, found it mentioned a few times, with speculations on the cause that don't really seem to apply to my case.

I'd just treat it as annoying, but...

Even though you are given each assignment twice, once you reply successfully to one message, replies to the other message are ignored. You can only pull off each special mission once. The second assignment just stays there in the corner until you abandon it, or until the endgame (when they all go away for some reason).

However, judging by the double 'News Stories', the opposition is succeeding twice for each special mission. You may notice as each special mission is accomplished, the tide of 'Faith Version vs. Revelation Version' swings back and forth. Since the Arunmor side wins each special mission twice as often as you can win yours, that means that by the endgame, Faith is more advanced than Revelation, and Revelation hardly does anything when used.

I've read about and tried various ways of increasing the efficiency of Revelation. I've tried using it on all machines with minimal security. I've tried running it on all machines with maximum security. I've tried going through all the machines I'm planning to infect one time, uploading the virus and turning off security but not activating, until I've got a string lined up that I just go through as fast as possible (just logging on, going to console, and running Revelation). I can only get about 5 or 6 computers infected at a time, and the glowing red squares stay really small, before Arunmor starts cleaning them up as fast as I infect them. Then Uplink Corporation shuts me down for working for ARC, whether I've been cleaning up my trail as I go or not.

I've started new profiles, and they each keep coming up with this bug. The doubles don't happen at the very beginning. One thing that I think may be starting the bug, is that I never really have all the tools to accomplish the first ARC mission before somebody else does, but if you reply to their email after somebody else infects the first computer, you can claim credit for it. I'm probably being too picky about my missions; I could probably beat the first one if I took 'Negative Karma' type missions and made the money to buy the necessary tools. It just seems more in keeping with the 'Tyler Durden/Fight Club' objective of ARC to be taking missions that damage computer systems, rather than people.

The only other source of the bug might be that I make backups of my profiles, and use them if I got careless or distracted during a mission.

At this point I'm debating removing and reinstalling the game to see if the problem goes away, or just removing it and doing something productive instead. I just thought that since I hadn't seen the bug addressed properly here, that I'd warn others who might encounter it that it's going to prevent them from winning.