I've played through FNV a few times now and have hit a problem with our ghoul soldier friend. I generally enjoy playing more empathetic, helpful characters, so try to get the best outcomes on most of my playthroughs. On my first and third playthroughs, I had no problems getting Sgt Astor to accept Edwards (passed an Int check to say Edwards wasn't feral). Second playthrough was Legion, so didn't bother with the quest. Fourth playthrough, I had installed Dead Money, and suddenly, Astor wouldn't give me any dialogue other than that Edwards should be put down. No Int check available. After a lot of reloading and redoing the quest, I finally got him to give the line about going to Echo, so I concluded the quest that way. There was no Int check and no option to have Edwards rejoin Astor's team.
Latest playthrough, I couldn't even get the Echo option.
Now, I'm aware the quest is buggy but it worked fine for me prior to installing Dead Money. Does anyone happen to know if Dead Money is responsible for causing a problem with this quest? The other possible cause I'm wondering about is that my last two characters have 10 int so I am wondering if the game reads 10 as 1 or something stupid like that, making it impossible to get the Int check option.

I don't know the specifics of what might be the problem and I don't have the DLC but I often have to keep cycling through dialogue on the Edwards part of the Searchlight quests until I find the option, when speaking with Edwards, to go and speak with Astor. Maybe it's something like that?. I don't like the Searchlight quests....I never seem to get things done there. I've never seen a holy hand grenade and now I just avoid the place! Good luck.

The skill/special checks should come up in dialog regardless of whether you have a suffient amount to pass them. This was one of the changes Josh made in NV. If you don't have enough points, it'll show up red when you try to select the dialog option, but it should be there nontheless.

-Gunny out.

I don't think Dead Money's to blame since it happened to me before I installed that.

Not sure, but the problem may be having all ten dog-tags in the inventory. Try looting just a few, then go do the whole Edwards / Astor thing before collecting the rest. See if that works?

Hmm you might be right there - first couple of times I couldn't find enough ghoul soldiers and had to console in a dogtag or two to finish the quest. I'll check it out.

@Kicenna - the holy frag grenade only appears with Wild Wasteland trait selected. It's in the basemant of the more ruined of the two churches (the one with the geckos in the cellar, as opposed to the one with Logan and his friends) and takes the place of the mini nuke that is normally there.

Oh thanks...that's good to know. I stopped taking WW because I wanted the YCS186. I've never been able to get through the quests finding all the dogtags or finding the radiation suits or even getting into the fire station. Maybe some day. I've looked at the wiki and read suggestions here but I think I'm doing things "out of order." I might try again another time. It's not a necessary area to my game or rep and I hate that ticking sound from the radiation! Maybe that's my problem.

I gotta agree. Quite frankly this quest is a pain in the ass. I've even resorted to toggling god mode on to stop the radiation just to scour the place to find all the damn dogtags. The last time I did it, I found the last two on ghouls I knew I didn't kill, but they were already dead. I *never* turn on the turrets, just for this reason. But, nonetheless, they were already dead. This time the quest bugged at Boxcars and I couldn't complete it so I just killed that jack ass in the basemant and "~unlocked" the doors to the police station and firehouse. At least that way I didn't get stuck with any stupid NCR gear tagged as quest items forever stuck in my inventory.

-Gunny out.

Yeah I've had bugged Boxcars a few times. Honestly, this sort of thing annoys me more than the crashes because with those, at least you can restart the client.
(I also think it'd be nice to be able to return that NCR equipment back to the NCR).

Right, I've checked it and Astor will give the dialogue about the ranger camp if you haven't returned all the dogtags yet. So that appears to be the way to go. (Although, annoyingly, now I can't find the tenth tag...and yes I do have Edwards' tag). This quest does seem to be fraught with problems, doesn't it?