Ahh ok. Yeah I haven't been doing planetside missions in my ships since I had a hard time with them early on and figured they were gimmicked to try and make you do them in SRV. When I don't do them in an SRV I always do them in the Krait MkII. Later on I did notice that small ones got pretty small but I just figured that even one anti-ship gun still does a ton of damage; might make it doable, but it's still designed for the SRV. I'll keep in mind to take my Viper IV out to do a ++ and see how it goes.
++ and +++ settlement scan missions not fun. impossibly frustrating.
- Thread starter Navian
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Ahh ok. Yeah I haven't been doing planetside missions in my ships since I had a hard time with them early on and figured they were gimmicked to try and make you do them in SRV. When I don't do them in an SRV I always do them in the Krait MkII. Later on I did notice that small ones got pretty small but I just figured that even one anti-ship gun still does a ton of damage; might make it doable, but it's still designed for the SRV. I'll keep in mind to take my Viper IV out to do a ++ and see how it goes.
Oh yeah, trying to (accidentally) dock somewhere you are hostile[1] to is waaay more dangerous than trying to get a scan from a +++ High Security settlement.... noting that being hostile to the owner of a High Sec +++ settlement there will also make things more problematic.
The key is acting fast, knowing your target and taking full advantage of the trespass timer (and having a decent shield tank)
And yeah... trying to do those scans in big and slow ships, or the really small ships... you're going to have a rough ride. Although it is engineered now, my original mission Python featured:
- ~200t of cargo
- Hatch Breaker
- Collector
- 6A shields + 4 x Shield Booster
- Twin MC and Beam + Dumbfires
... but it's weakness is/was still (now that it's engineered) it's speed... something which vipers/cobra's or, as one poster mentioned above, a 600m/s Sidewinder won't have issue with.
Still happy to do the core point of any settlement with any reasonable ship choice as a demonstration (i.e not trying to be a braggart, genuinely want to show & tell... just no point doing one of the ones in my area since I'm so used to them; better to do it with one you're struggling with)
[1] Not that you can, something I'm still angsty about getting removed generally.
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Do you have a specific base in mind?
These are size indicators and generally mean less than security rating.
Almost always faster and safer to ignore these terminals and jump over stuff, unless gravity is quite high.
They are easiest in smaller ships with cockpits at the nose, but can be done in almost anything. Only a few bases have enough firepower to take down any well Engineered vessel quickly, and most damage can be mitigated with chaff.
They are much less tedious in smaller ships or ships with cockpits at the nose, but are possible in the Mamba (the nose is only ~47m long) and even in the Corvette and Anaconda, if you are inverted and angled just right as the bridges are elevated.
While doable, I think the snag you'll hit there is that many targets are tucked in to corners with taller structures around them, meaning you lose that 3m give.
Do them enough times and eventually you'll remember each type of base and exactly where the particular beacon your suppose to scan is. Then as the other's have stated, Get in, Scan, Get out.
ALWAYS park your ship far enough away to avoid any trespass or you risk getting a bounty. Once you've got the base directions down pat. ALWAYS dismiss your ship. It can and will save you some day.
After scanning, for some reason, unless I go away at least 4 to 5 kilo's after scanning. My ship will always land closer to the base, causing me to be under fire when I take off.
IF you've activated the ship generally parked near a +++. Get in, Scan, Get out and IF you've dismissed you ship. Just let the police kill ya. You will respawn in you ship in space.
Okay, I took my courier out to give it a go, and it looks like the mamba's shielding was totally overkill. I'm out of weapons range in the courier before any defending ships parked at the base have a chance to take off and its 567 shields with 60% thermal resist are more than adequate to tank the base's turrets in the time it takes to charge a boost, at which point said turrets cease to be relevant in zero time flat.
My MO is usually to dive-bomb the target with 4 pips in sys, impacting about 100-200m/s, scan the target, then boost out horizontally, skating the surface. Turrets often sit behind other structures, so flying low only gets you hit by the turrets that can see you. Trying to boost to escape altitude just means you're a target for all turrets
Yep, although turrets are nearly always lasers and seem to have the same damage falloff so if you're in a ship that boosts over 500 then you're over the falloff range almost instantly and completely safe in about 6 seconds. Boom & zoom is the wayMy MO is usually to dive-bomb the target with 4 pips in sys, impacting about 100-200m/s, scan the target, then boost out horizontally, skating the surface. Turrets often sit behind other structures, so flying low only gets you hit by the turrets that can see you. Trying to boost to escape altitude just means you're a target for all turrets
okay so I finally wrangled my screen recording software into working so here's my first ever video on the youtubes showing how to do a scan on a high security settlement
I actually messed up a little by firing chaff too late, but I included my ship stats in the video.
And heres my build, though honestly it's overkill.
I tried to get a video recently... but i glitched on the building and died XD
I did another though and didn't record it... +++ High Security, lost half a ring, and that was mostly the impact at ~150m/s
The hardest ones to do from the air are the ones that are "disable the power grid" but want you to scan the emplacement access point instead of blowing up the generator, because you've only really got a short amount of time in the trespass zone to fly around and try and find the access point if you don't know where it is on that settlement type. Then again, those are a pain from the ground too for the same reason. I remember one time doing it in the SRV, the actual ground trespass zone was a relatively small square inside the compound so I assumed it was in there - and as soon as I went in the doors closed and I had to blow up a generator to take out a force field at the top of a ramp to get on the roof, fighting skimmers and turrets the whole way, there was a huge anti-air emplacement turret that blowing up didn't count for completing the mission, I racked up like 10,000 in bounties for destroying skimmers and turrets and generators, and finally after I jumped off the roof of the compound to get outside and did another circuit of the place, I bumped into the emplacement access terminal - outside the trespass zone. Scanned it, thinking it would open a door or something to go in and kill a generator - nope, instantly completed the mission.
Had a fine moment of "after all that bleedin' hassle, that was all I had to do?"
I don't think any settlement type has its no-fly zone on such a short timer that you can't cross through it with a reasonable boost. So just boost low over the facility a time or two to figure out where the "mission objective" terminal is, before going in for the scan.
But also, I think those "disable the emplacement" missions always have a generator you can destroy that will count. It's usually out by the anti-ship turrets, so often targetable from outside the NFZ and well within range of a dumbfire or multicannons or whatever you prefer. You wind up with about the same (small) bounty either way.
What screemonster is referring to is a common bug in these missions though, as nothing flags as a target, so you can't go looking for it. It's worth noting, the mission target usually flags on radar from a km or two out, but when this bug happens nothing appears, and targets such as scan points or generators only appear within 50m or so. Even if you happen upon the right "thing", it's not flagged with red mission target text.
This is really common with smaller bases. One in particular is a common mission target in my region, so I've been able to collect a fair bit of info on the bug.
I've had to finish through a variety of manners. When the mission has been to disable a generator, I've had to:
- scan a random data point;
- destroy a turret
- scan all the multi-point data beacons (where you get the timer come up to scan other points)
- just fail the mission, because I've destroyed everything and scanned everything and not had the mission succeed.
It's a big problem which I reported a while back, but like most bugs these days, just got lost to the ether.
Oh, got it. Yes, I've encountered those too. Usually I've gotten away with scanning some other terminal, but like you I've failed a handful because I couldn't figure out how to get the mission to complete.
I build a viper just for running these missions, but now I usually do the missions in whatever ship I like to fly on that day. Lately I'm running a shieldless FdL, I lost more hull to bouncing on the ground than to enemy fire. But I will not take an Anaconda anymore as the tip of the nose is 98m from where the scanner is. In some installations if you fly a small ship at SRV level nothing will hit you and you can go around and scan everything at a leisurely pace.
The broken ones are interesting. I only had 4 installations where I encountered the bug, therefore I have limited knowledge. I found that if it's the same settlement it's always the same terminal to scan. If 2 installations have an identical layout, it doesn't mean scanning the same terminal in both will trigger the same response. The <50m resolve is a pain the first time I visit an installation and it usually takes multiple loops to find the right trigger terminal.
The broken ones are interesting. I only had 4 installations where I encountered the bug, therefore I have limited knowledge. I found that if it's the same settlement it's always the same terminal to scan. If 2 installations have an identical layout, it doesn't mean scanning the same terminal in both will trigger the same response. The <50m resolve is a pain the first time I visit an installation and it usually takes multiple loops to find the right trigger terminal.