When attempting to pursue a scanner bounty target, they will not respond to attempts to start dialogue.
They show up red in the Scanner, scanning them will reveal their names, bounty value, and list of infractions, the quest progress will be notified, but moving in to talk with them and start the arrest/kill/stun process does nothing when the actor is activated. Attempting a kill or stun in this stage of things will cause a crime event.
I observed how the original copysource Scanner bounty quest (SFBGS003_BountyScannerQuest "Bounty Hunting" [QUST:FD00556E]) behaves under the hood. For the dialogue scene (SFBGS003_BountyTarget_Greet_Scene [SCEN:FD005782] (in SFBGS003_BountyScannerQuest "Bounty Hunting" [QUST:FD00556E]) to work, it needs the following conditions:
Subject is alias ref 017 BountyTarget = 1
GetStageDone 100 (Target scanned, set when player scans target) = 1
GetStageDone 240 (Scene Complete) = 0
GetStageDone 475 (Attack Player) = 0
GetStageDone 900 (Bounty Complete) = 0
I did GetStageDone checks in the console on the quest (since SQV and GetStage seem to always report 999 for that quest) and could watch GetStageDone 100 flip from 0 to 1 after scanning the target. All GetStageDone checks remained at 0 while I repeatedly poked the NPC with no response.
This appears to be a bug that doesn't affect everyone, but persistently and seemingly permanently affects those who have it. It may or may not be affected by other mods, but I cannot find anything interfering with the quests via SF1Edit. All four of the quest's copies seem not to work either.
Issue Data
Issue #36550: Scanner bounty targets will not respond to attempts to start dialogue to continue process