High, I'm running a dell inspiron 5000 gaming laptop with 8gigs RAM, quadcore i7 and a gtx1050 with 4gigsVRAM. I had the graphics default on Auto (very high textures quality, medium on everything else). When the game autosaves, it sometimes lags out, sometimes crashes. This has only happened twice until now, I ignored it as I never lost too much progress. But this is worse.

I was in R&D, just beat the Bloodied Cerberus a few times, (I was farming the parts), and I went back to OPS to fill up my injectables. I saw that the game was autosaving (squares moving), but it wasn't lagging so I turned around and started towards the door. The game then froze. I left it about twenty seconds then hit click once. I decided to be patient, and wait. Eventually, the game resumed, my clicked registered, and my MK.IV firebug arm swung forward. It hit Alec Norris, and he immediately screamed and died. I was prepared for this though. I quickly closed the game, and replaced the "save" file in my documents with one I had copied out earlier. Alas, when I logged back on, Maddy and Alec were gone, and I had a scrap reward for killing them.

Please, how do I fix this? This is terrible! I know a little about managing files, if you gave me instructions on how to respawn them or something, this might be fixed.

I'll check back soon for a reply.

Hi, your settings might be a bit too high given your hardware. Reducing graphical settings should solve the crashes and lags.

Concerning the NPC, there is nothing we can do. The game is coded to save every bit of progress, including mistakes. Alec will be back in NG+ though.

If it can be of any satisfaction, you're not the only one to have killed NPC by mistake.

It doesn't seem right that when enemies are ganging up on you, their hammer swings don't hit each other (fine, I guess, so you have to kill the enemies yourself), but when the PC swings their weapons, they hurt their friends? Friendly fire being enabled for the player side and and disabled for your enemies seems a bit off. Oh well, I'll wait til New Game Plus. Until then, just expect me to find a way to manually save in case of trouble and glitches. Hardcore games with unforgiving saves only work if they punish you for mistakes, and don't erase progress through glitches.