Patrol missions and individual ship scans

KillJoy · Post by **KillJoy** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:42 pm

Hey all,

I'm fairly new to the game (had it about a week), and I think I've got most things figured out. However I'm having trouble running In-System patrol missions.

I sign up for a 4 or 5 point patrol, and once I get out into space I find my VDU says something like "Scan Planet X, Scan Planet Y, and Scan andolian:schroedinger".

My problem is with the last bit. In the system there always appear to be a ton of andolian:schroedinger ships (or whatever type of ship, depending on the system). I gather that the mission is asking me to scan a particular craft rather than just one of that class, since I can get really close (< 2 km) to a given ship and sit there for 5 minutes, but my computer never marks that item as complete.

Have any of you ever run across this? If so, do you have any tips for distinguishing one ship from another of the same class and faction? I'm afraid I keep checking the same 3 or 4 ships over again without getting around to check them all.

Thanks in advance.

[edited to add..]
I'm using the Windoze 0.4.3 binary install with no patches, if that makes a difference.

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:04 am

that would be incredibly frustrating I guess.

Hey coders! Why not mention the name too in missions.

Why not try the downloadable development version? It's at the future developments forums. Follow the instructions on it.

jere19 · Post by **jere19** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:30 am

Well, i guess the developpement version won't help for the moment, i'm using it and encountering the same problems... (i posted on it in bug-triage yesterday, i hadn't seen this post)

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 3:18 pm

I think it has something to do with savegames. I noticed it too - Once I wandered in rlaan space, stopped in one system and there spawned many Shizu ships. I left the game a bit and when I loaded the savegame, the button "cycle through bases" (I think it was something like that), I could also select the Shizu ships. Before leaving the game they were defined as starships, not bases.

Stakhanov · Post by **Stakhanov** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 3:23 pm

Yeah , it is very annoying. My way to solve it is to reload the game to cause the mission to change until it includes no ships. It requires some patience ! The easier way is to just abord the mission from a computer terminal. You should do that when there are 2 planets and 2047 ships around.

Another issue is targetting. If you have been frustrated with crates from destroyed ships , use the N key to cycle through significant targets. If there are 3125 vitik supercapital ships around , use P to select a planet or jump point and cycle through targets from there. Just in case you find the aeran homeworld system

KillJoy · Post by **KillJoy** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 3:39 pm

Thanks all. That was very helpful. I did end up aborting that mission. For the moment I'm making a comfortable living trading cargo and blasting priates.

I can live with the limitations on some things for now -- after all, there is so much other fun stuff to do that I won't really miss the occasional (nearly) impossible patrol mission.

Thanks for the tip on saving and restarting too. I'll have to try that sometime.

Dark-Blood-Hound · Post by **Dark-Blood-Hound** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 11:22 pm

Most of the time the Patrol missions I stumble across are usely just Scanning planets, or Wormholes, started at like 5 Scan points, goes right up to 9 points! Then goes back down again...

Vector_Matt · Post by **Vector_Matt** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 11:31 pm

Dark-Blood-Hound wrote:Most of the time the Patrol missions I stumble across are usely just Scanning planets, or Wormholes, started at like 5 Scan points, goes right up to 9 points! Then goes back down again...

Please look at the dates on threads before you post. If it's more than a few weeks old don't even bother replying to the thread unless you have something that is very relevant to the discussion.

Mods, this guy seems to have gotten most of his 70 posts from spamming, please do something about him/her/it.