I released the Protectron which caused a huge fight, during which Mel escaped prison and ran out the front door. When I tried to find him later, his arrow was pointing up into the bleachers somewhere near or above the mayor's office in Diamond City. I've spent hours running around trying to find a path to him, but I just can't. Thinking this might be a bug, I finally resorted to console commands to summon him to me, but nothing I've try has worked:
help mel 0
This returns a TON of results, because "mel" is in "melee". The only references I can find that might be relevant are:
NPC_: (00052174) 'Mel'
VTYP: NPCMMel (00052179) "
I've then tried prid
on both of those IDs (and every number in between), but all of them threw an Invalid object reference error.
If anyone has a solution, either via some hidden path in the game that I just haven't found, or via console commands, I'd love to hear it. I can't progress this quest without him, which means I can't get Hancock as a companion.