I was wondering if anyone knew what exactly the prerequisite is that triggers the next missions after "The Heist" . I know I'm supposed to use the time between missions to pirate some cargo but I don't recall it ever taking this long to trigger the missions before (I've owned I-War 2 since it was initially released). I've actually begun to wonder if I've encounter a bug or something since this is the first time I've played it on a Win7 machine. So far I achieved a rating of "clay's equal" and have pirated over 2000 cargo pods and still no new missions. Have I just forgotten how long this really takes or is something really amiss?

A walkthrough might be helpful. Here's a plain text version:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/913828-independence-war-2-edge-of-chaos/faqs/15430

And you can get a version that integrates with the game itself (it shows up in the in-game Encyclopedia) here: http://www.i-war2.com/downloads.htm. Just scroll down until you find the walkthrough add-on.

If you aren't familiar with the mods already, there are some decent ones here that don't mess up the game. Be sure to get the Multi-Mod add-on so you can run more than one mod at a time. For instance, if you want the walkthrough , along with Custom Jafs (give him a larger ship so he can grab more pods per trip) and No Launch Sequence (to speed up the launch into space), you'll need Multi-Mod to run more than one of them at a time.

Actually you only need multimod to run multimod compatible scripted mods.

Anything which just modifies specific resources like the walkthrough, or which are modified versions of original Particle Systems scripts like Custom Jafs and No Launch Sequence will work fine together.

Multimod compatible mods like Location Finder and Manual Countermeasures which add completely new functionality to the game need Multimod to work nicely together.

Ahh, I was working under the assumption that they were all lumped together since they get turned on in the game menu.

Thank you for responding. I have looked at that particular faq you mention and while it does have some useful information in this case it only added to my confusion, simply because the section of it that covers this part of the game is a little ambiguous.
After the last story mission I completed that faq says that there is a "slight pause" to give the player time to gather cargo and explore before moving on with the story. No problem there, I was planning to do that anyway. My problem is that I can find absolute nothing that even hints as how long the pause actually is or what triggers the next mission. I don't know the exact number but, not counting the numerous times I've gotten blown to bits, I know its been at least 20 hours in game time since the last mission and over 2500 cargo pods. I just can't figure out if it was always that long in my previous play throughs and I'm just getting impatient in my old age or if I am experiencing some kind of bug. I have tried speeding things up by using custom jafs, it was actually one of the first things I did even before asking for help here, and while it has definitely increased the number of pods I collect I still haven't' been able to trigger the next mission.

I think it was only a couple launches for me, and I didn't go nuts pirating. For all I know, you could probably just launch and dock right away.

I'll take a guess that maybe a script got messed up. Here's what I would try: duplicate the last couple missions you performed. For instance, if you had to go to xyz system and do abc, then go back to that system. I usually dock at whatever station happens to be there, just to be certain I didn't miss a script trigger. Then go to the next step, and so on until you've basically re-done that mission. It may be that you simply didn't complete the last step, which is usually going back to talk to whomever gave you the mission.

Also, take a look at your Objectives on the HUD; Shift + O opens the Objectives You might find that this previous mission still has something left for you to complete. If that doesn't help, let me know and I'll try to revert to an old save and maybe see what's going on. I had a couple weird script issues this playthrough, though I don't know if it was because I took some time exploring and accidentally triggered something I shouldn't have. And I think I screwed something else up somewhere since I don't have the Kong as a trading partner (just started Act 3) though I could have sworn I've traded with them on previous plays.

Oh, just thought of another. There is one mission, I think in Act 1, where if you don't deal with it right away it will be taken off your objective list. I think it was one of those group meetings with the Stepsons, and I decided I didn't want to deal with it right away. I launched, farted around for a while, came back to the base, launched again, and found the waypoint was missing and the objectives were no longer listed. Fearing a messed-up script I reloaded an old save and didn't notice any problem after that, beyond not trading with the Kong.

I've just spent the past week or so replaying the game from the beginning and noticed almost immediately that none of the side missions were turning up in my mailbox. I didn't think much of it until I was halfway through act 2, at which point I was stymied by the absence of the mission entitled Blockade Runner. Some dialogue was missing too.

Thinking this was a fluke, I started again only to run into the same problem. After some fruitless Google searches I did a little digging in my file system and found an extra flux.ini in the Virtual Store.

(%LocalAppData%\VirtualStore)

After deleting it I had to change the in-game display settings all over again, but all was right as rain for a short while afterwards. I've moved the 'original' into the VS for the time being and so far it seems to be working.