Vega Strike Forums

Sometimes when I'm doing a mission, the target ship just disappears. Its only a minor hassle when doing patrols/clean sweeps, but its a real bummer in cargo missions; travelling several systems, and then before ya can dock on that moving cargo ship *blink* its GONE.

For cargo missions (and possbily others), the ships have a tendency to SPEC away...

Where do they go? To a planet. Which planet? No clue. Best bet is to lock on them ASAP when you get in range and hit the auto pilot to follow them. For some magical reason, you lose sensor contact with them when they exit sensor range, but you autopilot will stay locked on and follow them all the way to their destination.

Other interesting note - To dock to a ship/planet/base, you actually don't need to request clearence (alt-0), just get close enough to the right spot. Drawback - when you are trying to dock to your cargo mission ship after it arrives by the planet and you keep landing on the planet...

-Edit - patrol, clean sweeps - If the mission ship get damaged enough it'll bug out and SPEC away (It'll usually send you a message like "Holy Crap! your kicking my Butt!"). Most times, the Game will count that as a kill for your mission objective. YaY

Okay, I'll try that autopilot trick. Yeah on some of the missions, the target gets whacked before I get anywhere close but I still get credit for it...sort of balances things out on the patrol/sweep missions. Ive noticed that most of the times a target dissapears while I'm shooting at him, he's near a jump hole....hmmmm....I might just try jumping next time my bunny hops away

yepper - if the Target of your bounty in near a jump point - and sudedenly disappears (your computer should target the Jump point immediatedly after), that is where he/she has gone. Just follow him trough and finish him off for your bounty

Ususally makes it easier as his escort doesn't jump with him, lol

I took the bounty mission from the psychotic mercenary robot in Barnard's Star system; the bunny hopped thru the jump node and I jumped in after him....but by the time I had him targeted he jumped down another hole. Gotta get me a faster ride! I left that mission open for now just in case he screws up and crosses my prow again I actually managed to finish one of those 'lost ship' cargo missions after bumping into the target a couple days and several systems away from when and where the guy was SUPPOSED to be
Is there an upgrade available for one's onboard navigation computer to make it track and update the target when it leaves the designated rendevous?

KillerB wrote:Is there an upgrade available for one's onboard navigation computer to make it track and update the target when it leaves the designated rendevous?

Psychic sensors would indeed be useful but not available just made it so the sensors actually have a limited range a short while ago as before you saw everything in the system which is what you would want i assume so it should be possible to reverse it IIRC it was a change to the sensor definitions in units.csv

Enjoy the Choice

Well the Mission Computer updates when the target ship gets closer. The last mission cargo ship that got away actually rendevoused with me in a closer system than the Mission Computer designated when I took the mission, and the readout on my hud changed to show this...and then jumped away before I could dock with it. If it can tell that the the target cargo ship is getting closer it stands to reason it can tell it left to another system...Interstellar GPS Tracking or something?

That's just that the engine it's self knows where everything is but would it be realistic for the player to know also

Enjoy the Choice

loki1950 wrote:That's just that the engine it's self knows where everything is but would it be realistic for the player to know also

Enjoy the Choice

*Shrug* not for bounty missions, of course the target ship there would be doing his or her best to run and hide....but how about a *GPS for cargo missions?
*Galactic Positioning System
I don't know about anyone else, but I wind up throwing away a lotta really nice stuff when I get fed up trying to chase some schmuck down because he didn't meet me in the right system or he couldn't stick around for a few minutes while I lug his heavy smegging stuff out to him. Stands to reason the shipping companies would come up with a tracking system on a galactic scale for what Fedex is doing on a planetary scale.
Thank goodness I don't have to pay for the goodies I throw away! That could get expensive! I keep imaging this sweaty, overweight and harried middle executive in an expensive but ill-fitting suit smacking his forehead and saying, "That Bubba Fartsworth just cost us another 45 million in lost revenues! I can't believe that idiot skipped out on another pilot who was trying to dock with him with a load of research materials, just because his wife called to tell him she wants another divorce!"

In a way the best of both worlds exists. The "target mission" key n/alt+n, or what ever its called would be of use as it does allow targeting of SOME mission objectives (escortmissions, nav points, etc). Problem is that it doesn't work 100% of the time. Ie cargo mission ships aren't targetable via this command, and I've found in Rlaan space, there is a tendency for about 100-200 Shizu's to be spammed (shizu 101... 102..) all registered with the n/alt+n combe, making navigation a nightmare, let alone finding a mission target.

denyasis wrote:In a way the best of both worlds exists. The "target mission" key n/alt+n, or what ever its called would be of use as it does allow targeting of SOME mission objectives (escortmissions, nav points, etc). Problem is that it doesn't work 100% of the time. Ie cargo mission ships aren't targetable via this command, and I've found in Rlaan space, there is a tendency for about 100-200 Shizu's to be spammed (shizu 101... 102..) all registered with the n/alt+n combe, making navigation a nightmare, let alone finding a mission target.

Okay that's one I hadn't heard of...i'll have to try it next miss I take. ATM I'm fed up with cargo missions...last one I took, I had to chase down the target ship, and then as I was a few hundred meters out he SPEC'd away...and then again, and again, and then after about the dozenth time or so I had to go land on a planet and refuel (and dump his expensive and heavy smegging factory constructors). I was using the 'hey I need to dock' button shift-0. I thought that was supposed to make the target sit still as well as open up the docking target squares?

KillerB wrote:I was using the 'hey I need to dock' button shift-0. I thought that was supposed to make the target sit still as well as open up the docking target squares?

They only sit still for 20 seconds so keep repeating it or use "d" as it does the same and if you happen to be close enough to the docking clamps you dock

Enjoy the Choice

hehe - didn't know that made them sit still. That would be super useful for cargo missions.

I'm afraid I'd have to side with B on the less realism for certain missions. Having some sort of way of tracking certain mission objectives if they leave sensor range would be great. Obviously we don't want to know everything for every mission (bounty, patrol, clean sweep), but in the case of say, escort/cargo missions, if our target is gonna spec away - you'd think they'd let us know

I am doing a cargo mission where I need to find a Mule. It is not found with T or N keys and Alt+N will select some other ship. But I found out this (I have completed one mission this way, so it should work):

When you are in HUD view and the hidden mission target is somewhere within your field of view, tapping Alt+N will make the target crosshair flash on it briefly. Some other ship will be selected, but you will see the direction where the hidden ship is, and can set your course toward it manually. By using low SPEC speed you can get close enough to actually select the right target with Alt+N and request docking permission.

To make sure you have the ship in your FOV to do this trick, you probably need to SPEC about ten light minutes out of the system and turn to look back (so that you "see" the whole system).

It's just that in my current mission the Mule can't resist zooming away to another mysterious location every minute. But I know he's there, I had him once targeted but couldn't disengage my SPEC quickly enough and lost him again. Frustrating.

Welcome eduzk that's a handy find having a way of contacting the mission ship to say you have his goods might be handy.

Enjoy the Choice

loki1950 wrote:Welcome eduzk that's a handy find having a way of contacting the mission ship to say you have his goods might be handy.

Thanks. Yeah, it would be great if you could directly call the ship, or maybe gain contact via other ships of the same flight group. The large ships are easy to find anyway.

While hacking the .config file to fix the ECM bug, i noticed a couple of VERY useful commands that aren't listed in the manual:
alt+1-9 will 'lock' a target in one's navcomp
control+1-9 will bring the target back
I learned the hard way that it's best to SKIP 1, as if one hits SHIFT+1 by mistake one suddenly and maddenly vaporizes
This doesn't ALWAYS work as advertized on TV, sometimes if you have a hostile locked, the nearest hostile will come up in target lock instead of the mission target.
But it does make both the cargo missions, and especially the 'clean sweep' missions MUCH more doable!!

Unfortunately, only 1, 2, and 9 seem to work. That's in Fedora's package, and the SVN. I haven't heard whether that's been fixed yet.

I've been able to use 1 through 9, although like I said above I don't like to use 1 because I've hit the shift key by mistake and then *BOOM* self-destructed.
The only hitch I've found is when doing system sweep missions, when one loses the target ship, trying to bring it back on scope will bring up the nearest hostile instead.
Serves me right making so many enemies I guess

3x more annoying with rescue missions.
I tried, just to check if those missions are fixed. Okay, picked up that chap. Visited every nav point in the system (not only planets) in turn and searched for the ship with maximum-range scanner. Found a lot of its flightgroup, but not it. The next rescue mission: exactly the same.
More bewildering because it doesn't make sense in the first place. Worse, because the mission text explicitly says this guy wants to be hauled to "one of planets" here.

There ware some provisions to add mission targets to a special list so that you could cycle between them.
There is a key for that, IIRC.

If that list doesn't include the rescuee, then it disappeared from the system. I don't think a pod would be able to jump away, so it was either killed or it was never there in the first place.

Does it happen with every rescue mission, to your knowledge?

Because if I could reproduce it easily, I might be able to debug. I don't have that much free time though, and playtesting is a time killer.

klauss wrote:There ware some provisions to add mission targets to a special list so that you could cycle between them.
There is a key for that, IIRC.

Well, yeah, but it's not terribly useful even if the destination is Diligence. It simply buzzs off - out of range, not Significant.

klauss wrote: If that list doesn't include the rescuee, then it disappeared from the system. I don't think a pod would be able to jump away, so it was either killed or it was never there in the first place.

No, that all works. Nav point, then pod, then destination. It's just impossible to find most of the time, since it's not marked the way Defence mission ship is.

klauss wrote: Does it happen with every rescue mission, to your knowledge?

No, the previous time ships could not be found 3 times in row, now it worked two times of three - once really asked for a planet, once i found the destination while walking through all planets close up and cycling targets.
In yet another, i got "pilot died, mission failed" while tractoring him in. So what happened? I ended up with failed mission and... "Pilot" instead of a passenger. Uh...

My point is that even without plain glitches it's a hell of nuisance that both doesn't make any sense to begin with and disagrees with the mission description. There's just no reason to assign anything other than planets and bases. Also, what if his destination will happen to be Hawking (they have internal docks and usually rotate like mad) or something equally un-landable?..

Sometimes landing, saving game, exiting or loading different save & then the one where you were, and then taking off again will make the destination ship reappear. This is an annoying glitch though....and the rescue missions are ticky enough as it is, what with the pilot running out of oxygen before you can get to him half the time and all.