++ and +++ settlement scan missions not fun. impossibly frustrating.

[Navian]

i've attemped dozens of these different settlement scan missions now, and i've been unable to complete one ++ or +++ mission. Since Horizons first gave us these bases, it remains an unusable portion of the game to me.

I would like to see a video of FDev demonstrating how these missions are possible with endless waves of goliaths, guardians, skimmers, and turrets coming at you. I see nothing on base scanning in 2 years on youTube, nothing useful on reddit, little reliable in the fdev forums. No methods hold up to infinite enemies.

In attempts to explore different bases in order to identify and take down security measures or open gates to get to the mission target, i'm finding it endlessly frustrating. Silently or agressively; creeping around corners and repeatedly killing and rearming and repairing and sneaking and eventually the waves catch up and kill you after hours of effort. This devalues the entire planetary experience.

 

[Kissamies]

I just drive in like I own the place, scan the thing and drive out. Sure they start shooting at me at some point, but I don't waste time trying to shoot back. At most I find a sheltered position for the scanning. Usually works very well. Can be a bit challenging on +++ bases if the scannable is in a funly position, but I haven't failed for a long time. Sometimes lose the SRV when escaping. Usually it's the chasing ship.

 

[Maolagin]

I suspect there aren't much in the way of guides for these missions because the efficient "meta" approach is to do the scans directly from a ship. You need something small and maneuverable, but if you can get the cockpit within a few tens of meters of the scan target, the ship's data link scanner will work.

If you find that boring and want to use the SRV, my suggestion is to make a few close passes in your ship first to get a good sense of the layout. Then drop fast, deploy the SRV as close to the target as possible, dismiss your ship so it's safely out of the way, and dash for the scan target.

 

[Jmanis]

1. Fly to target
2. Scan
3. Fly away

Alternately, most barriers can be circumvented just by boosting over the top of them, as most facilities are on low-gravity environs.

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

in my experience, attempting these missions in the ship is much more difficult because base defences are much stronger against ships. Unless you're flying an engineered meta medium or large ship you really shouldn't try to do these things from the ship.

You set down outside the base's controlled airspace, 3-4km , drive to the base, keep all pips on shields unless you need all pips on engines for your boosters and you will probably need that at least once to get to the thing to scan. Generally speaking this will require at least one big jump. Once scanned, get out with all pips on shields. If you don't get beyond the perimeter of the base before a ship jumps in and tails you, and your ship can't take whatever jumped in, just blow the SRV.

 

[Jmanis]

in my experience, attempting these missions in the ship is much more difficult because base defences are much stronger against ships. Unless you're flying an engineered meta medium or large ship you really shouldn't try to do these things from the ship.

Dumbfire missiles into the base defence powerplant sorts that out pretty quickly.

Also depends heavily on they type. High Security +++ maybe, but low-security +++ and lower are a milk run. That said, high security +++ in my general-purpose Python (ie. designed for hauling mostly, not a specific meta-built combat vessel) does them without too much concern. 4 pips to sys and away you go.

+'s relate to the size of the base.
No/Low/Med/High security refer to the level of defences.

EDIT: FWIW, name a (reasonable) ship and target location, and I'll go scan the core data point with vanilla fits and get away & video it. Emphasis on reasonable... a Sidewinder/Hauler/Adder/T6/7/9 would get massacred, but doing these in a Cobra/Viper/Courier is entirely viable.

 

[B.Roberts]

As it was mentioned earlier land your ship 4-5 km away and get into SRV. Target terminal (white target on the radar, which when targeted will tell you "Mission Target"), drive straight to the terminal with all power to shields and scan it from your turret using data link scaner which is built into the SRV (you have to assign it to some fire group). You going to have few seconds before defenses will start shooting. As soon as scan complete drive straight away as fast as you can. Once you get out of defenses range recall your ship and fly to the nearest interstellar factor to wipe out your bounty that you going to get. Return to the station where you got the mission and get your reward. Pretty easy once you got the idea.

 

[znôrt]

i somehow find it appropriate that you can not duke out an entire high security installation along with its cybernetic defense system with your srv's pea shooter. at some point there has to be a limit!

 

[B.Roberts]

i somehow find it appropriate that you can not duke out an entire high security installation along with its cybernetic defense system with your srv's pea shooter. at some point there has to be a limit!

I actually got engaged in pew-pew with some high security base after accidentally landed too close and it wasn't that dramatic, really. I pulled back, just outside of defense turret's range, parked in the nice spot and was murdering those stupid skimmers one at the time. Problem is that these skimmers appears to be just cloning themselves as fast as you kill them so even if you destroy defense turrets at some point (which I did) skimmers still won't leave you alone. Another thing is every target you hit on that base increases bounty on your head. Key thing with those missions not to get into the fight at all. Just scan and run, that's why they call it Scan Mission.

 

[Jmanis]

I actually got engaged in pew-pew with some high security base after accidentally landed too close and it wasn't that dramatic, really. I pulled back, just outside of defense turret's range, parked in the nice spot and was murdering those stupid skimmers one at the time. Problem is that these skimmers appears to be just cloning themselves as fast as you kill them so even if you destroy defense turrets at some point (which I did) skimmers still won't leave you alone. Another thing is every target you hit on that base increases bounty on your head. Key thing with those missions not to get into the fight at all. Just scan and run, that's why they call it Scan Mission.

There's also powerplants and/or control nodes which disable their respawning. But yes... don't fight, just scan and leg it.

 

[znôrt]

Key thing with those missions not to get into the fight at all. Just scan and run, that's why they call it Scan Mission.

wonder if this has ever been attempted by a group of cmdrs. in enough numbers it should be possible to thin the defenses and then just camp the respawns? just for the giggles, i mean (and the bounties!)

 

[MaxG10]

Hehehe, yeah, can be frustrating in deed. My first planetary scan job, I dashed over the station multiple times to see what's there. Defense turrets? Hmmm.... Before I put my butt in that ugly SRV.....Master Arm!... all guns blasting.... Now, explain to me how they possibly can get them up and working again in that small amount of time.

 

[B.Roberts]

wonder if this has ever been attempted by a group of cmdrs. in enough numbers it should be possible to thin the defenses and then just camp the respawns? just for the giggles, i mean (and the bounties!)

Probably don't even need that many people for that. One or two decent ships to destroy turrets from above and help with skimmers while somebody in the SRV does all the ground work. Idea probably would be somewhat similar to what you do when you using your ship with point defense systems to protect your SRV from missile attack while you dealing with skimmers at guardian site.

 

[Screemonster]

I just use a mamba with a stack of shield boosters and some dumbfires on the smalls. About the only thing I need to use the SRV for is when it's the one base type that requires you to scan the data point to disable the power grid specifically, and the data point doesn't show up until you're closer than 50m (which isn't possible in the mamba as the prow is too long) or the regular search zone outposts. I used to do those ones in my DBX but it lacks the tankiness for actual settlements.

And now I'm curious as to whether the courier or vulture would be able to get close enough given that they can have pretty tanky shields for their size, hmmmmmmm...

 

[B.Roberts]

I just use a mamba with a stack of shield boosters and some dumbfires on the smalls. About the only thing I need to use the SRV for is when it's the one base type that requires you to scan the data point to disable the power grid specifically, and the data point doesn't show up until you're closer than 50m (which isn't possible in the mamba as the prow is too long) or the regular search zone outposts. I used to do those ones in my DBX but it lacks the tankiness for actual settlements.

And now I'm curious as to whether the courier or vulture would be able to get close enough given that they can have pretty tanky shields for their size, hmmmmmmm...

Don't know about Vulture but Courier probably would. That thing is pretty good at sneaking into all kinds of dangerous places. Lol

 

[Screemonster]

Don't know about Vulture but Courier probably would. That thing is pretty good at sneaking into all kinds of dangerous places. Lol

Well, the mamba can definitely get into scanning range of the thing - most mission-related data points show up at around 1.5km out and can be scanned within 100m which is plenty of distance for the mamba, but the little outpost ones don't appear on the scanner (and thus can't be targeted) until you're much closer than that. DBXs and Cobras, if they park their nose on the tower, have no problem resolving them as a target.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

It's perfectly possible to do these in a Sidewinder. You've just got to get in there quick and fly out at no more than 200m altitude for some of the turrets to lose visibility. It does help that mine boosts to nearly 600m/s though.

 

[Misty_Dark]

Like others have said, you can scan from your ship, simply fly in, find the beacon, scan, and then get out of there fast... Alot faster and in most cases safer...
If you still want to do it in your SRV, speed and jumping is your best friend here... drive like you stole your SRV... and he biggest threat is going to be the ships that hunts you when you escape... even if they are no longer sniping experts they still do a really good tracking... I wish it was as easy to hit skimmers/Goliats as NPC seems to hit my SRV... Trying to take out defenses is mostly a waste of time...especially in your SRV, as the time to hit the generator is often same or more than what it would take you to scan the beacon...




Back in the days, before we had these missions, these +++ stations where a real threat to get to close too... we spent hours trying to overpower the defences as a wing, everytime we made some significant progress, we got ambushed by ships attacking us from "behind"... we only ever managed to get a SRV inside these structures to see the beacon a few times, before the SRV got blown up by some sniping ship that could hit you with pinpoint accuracy, even when you hid benneath overhangs etc ... then we got generators etc, on these places to take out... and now they are by comparison very easy, even if it is a +++ security rating... I miss those... I was very reluctant to take these missions when I saw the +++ tag... until I tried them, had some limited success in my SRV, until someone told me, you could do the scanning from your ship.. and then it got very easy....

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

Dumbfire missiles into the base defence powerplant sorts that out pretty quickly.

Also depends heavily on they type. High Security +++ maybe, but low-security +++ and lower are a milk run. That said, high security +++ in my general-purpose Python (ie. designed for hauling mostly, not a specific meta-built combat vessel) does them without too much concern. 4 pips to sys and away you go.

+'s relate to the size of the base.
No/Low/Med/High security refer to the level of defences.

EDIT: FWIW, name a (reasonable) ship and target location, and I'll go scan the core data point with vanilla fits and get away & video it. Emphasis on reasonable... a Sidewinder/Hauler/Adder/T6/7/9 would get massacred, but doing these in a Cobra/Viper/Courier is entirely viable.

Well until recently, the ships I flew most on missions/pve were Sidwinder/Hauler/Adder/T9. Nowadays I'm in my Keelback or Asp Scout. I keep the Krait MkII or Anaconda handy for whenever I need them. Not sure I buy that on the Cobra/Viper though. I went to do a courier mission in the Asp Scout at a base I didn't know I was hostile to because I hadn't checked in the map and I was down 1 second or even less after they started firing on me and I had the largest or second-largest shield on that ship. It was almost as quick as I go down in the Sidewinder.

 

[Maolagin]

Well until recently, the ships I flew most on missions/pve were Sidwinder/Hauler/Adder/T9. Nowadays I'm in my Keelback or Asp Scout. I keep the Krait MkII or Anaconda handy for whenever I need them. Not sure I buy that on the Cobra/Viper though. I went to do a courier mission in the Asp Scout at a base I didn't know I was hostile to because I hadn't checked in the map and I was down 1 second or even less after they started firing on me and I had the largest or second-largest shield on that ship. It was almost as quick as I go down in the Sidewinder.

It sounds like you're talking about a dockable surface port though. Starport defenses are significantly more potent than what settlements / bases have.