Chased down for not completing mission in time

[THFCLegend]

Hi All,

Started playing Elite Dangerous recently and still learning the game's eccentricities.

I took on a bunch of missions, but one expired before I could complete it because I didn't get a change to play Elite until the next night.

Now, I have a ship chasing me down all the time and pulling me out of frame drive in any system I go to, and then destroying me if I don't dump my cargo. I preferred not to as I had some black boxes. But of course, I lost those when I got blown up. I'd spent a good few hours recovering three of them dancing wildly above a planetary body which made them very difficult to recover. Really thought I'd done well, only to lose them when I got destroyed for this non-game reason.

I think this is a bit of an unfair game mechanic, or bug, even? The chasing ship only wants 11k value in cargo to be dumped, but destroyed me as it was black boxes which didn't have the value. Will my game experience be littered with reprisals because I simply cannot get to play it when I thought I could? It means I may have to pass up lots of juicy missions. Seems a bit unfair to have such a pain of a punishment in the game for something that happened in the real world that I can't control.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[Hossi]

If he wanted xCr worth of cargo he was a pirate, pure and simple. Its not his fault that all your cargo was mission cargo, and that you had to few for him.
If he is persitent than he is a mission pirate, if you win the interdiction once he will give up.

Regarding the expiration of missions, only two things will happen:
-You will get a fine based on the worth of the mission cargo, but since fines dont mature to bounys anymore that cant be the reason for an attack
-Your standing with the mission giver will drop, if its low enough they will send someone to chase you down. But you need to fail a lot of missions for this to happen, and you will get a message informing you of this

 

[Requiem Mortis]

Time marches on in elite even when not logged in...great if you want Power Play modules and you go on holiday for a month, not so great with missions as they time out, as you've found to your cost. When I play I tend to only pick missions I know I'm going to be able to complete within that session....although one does get tempted upon occasion if stacking missions to a certain destination (data delivery anyone) before logging out for the night.

Welcome to the game.

 

[Hanerib]

You can have pirates after your cargo, contract killers tailing you, several if you're lucky, and bounty hunters. Authority ships may want to interdict too sometimes. In deep space you can sometimes meet murderous npcs that just start shooting without scanning first.

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

When I play I tend to only pick missions I know I'm going to be able to complete within that session...

This is how I play too, and have never had any issues. I've failed missions, certainly, but not by running out of time. I like that planning/thinking aspect of it all.

And no need to be too greedy in mission stacking. Credits and the things you want will come to you in time, just be patient, relax, and enjoy the journey.

 

[ShimEnki]

But you need to fail a lot of missions for this to happen, and you will get a message informing you of this

That may have been true cmdr, but not now it seems.

From my experience anyways, it now has taken only one abandon mission with an allied faction even, to trigger an angry NPC on your tail.
I nice opportunity for chem manipulators I have found. That will be decoded/nerfed now of course

 

[THFCLegend]

Thanks for the reply.

Since then now, I also got a small bounty on my head for flying too close to a base that wouldn't let me land. Apparently I was trespassing. So I flew to the system's main space station to see if I could pay it off or sort it out or something but got attacked as I was about to dock, got blown up, and woke up in a penal colony at a star system four jumps away. Jumped back, and haven't been attacked since by anyone. Relief. Seems getting blown up is a good way to get a pirate off your back. As Arnold Rimmer once said, dying doesn't neccessarily mean the end of your career. May try it more often ;-)

So now back to the lucrative salvage missions. Except now, it seem that all the canisters I go after seem to be caught up in a planet's gravity well and are impossible to catch as my ship is bouncing around all over the place. When I try to get close to them. I tend to end up destroying them by accident instead of scooping them up ;-(

 

[Darkhaert]

Thanks for the reply.

Since then now, I also got a small bounty on my head for flying too close to a base that wouldn't let me land. Apparently I was trespassing. So I flew to the system's main space station to see if I could pay it off or sort it out or something but got attacked as I was about to dock, got blown up, and woke up in a penal colony at a star system four jumps away. Jumped back, and haven't been attacked since by anyone. Relief. Seems getting blown up is a good way to get a pirate off your back. As Arnold Rimmer once said, dying doesn't neccessarily mean the end of your career. May try it more often ;-)

So now back to the lucrative salvage missions. Except now, it seem that all the canisters I go after seem to be caught up in a planet's gravity well and are impossible to catch as my ship is bouncing around all over the place. When I try to get close to them. I tend to end up destroying them by accident instead of scooping them up ;-(

Get yerself some limpets my friend makes that a tad bit easier.

 

[Majic-12]

Welcome to the Elite: Dangerous Learning Cliff.

Frustrating as hell, but if you survive the fall, it's a damn fine game -- warts and all.

 

[Cmdr Lucca1985]

That sounds like its just the game.

Practice winning the interdiction minigame by interdicting some poor weaker sod yourself till you get the hang of it then run until you have a decent ship with high weapons or high boost

At that point you can submit and run or fight

 

[Shiro Akai]

You need to fly pretty slow to scoop items. Too much speed and you'll ram them and destroy, they are quite fragile. Plus they may have expiration time as well - mostly true with mining chunks or things made by shooting at things (like Thagroid barnacles or spires). So slow down, aim with your HUD indicator and it should do the trick. Alternative is to equip limpet controller, load (at rearm facility while on station) some limpets (mind they require cargo space) and forget about manual scooping.

A word about limpets - they have 2 operating mods, both equally moronic.
Mode 1 - target pick up.
Limpet will go straight to your targeted item, pick it up, deliver to your hol, then self destruct. Why? FDEVs decided it's an ammo and it should be expended.

Mode 2 - free pick up - you launch limpets and they will collect ALL items in the vicinity. Including illegal, stolen and otherwise unwanted. Advantage is that single limpet can do multiple runs before it runs out of fuel and self destruct. Drawback is it will collect every trash, sometimes avoiding that particular piece you are after.

As for pirates - they have simple IF-THEN mechanic. IF you have large cargo / IF your cargo is valuable, THEN you'll have a pirate on your tail. Coping with pirates is three-fold:
- don't allow them to pull you out of SC; win interdiction game. IT's easy enough to perform, just aim for the running circle filling LEFT bar (your escape progress) while lowering RIGHT bar (pirate's interdicting progress). When you win this pirate won't bother you anymore. Mind that you can have multiple pirates after you and having chain interdictions isn't rare.
- escape after pull; when you get pulled out don't wait - 4 pips into engines (my default setting is 2-4-0; 2 system, 4 engines, 0 weapons) and boost away, boost, boost and more boost. When you get distance you'll be away his firing range and mass factor. Clear to hit SC.
- fight; when pulled out just deploy hardpoints and blow him out of the sky. If you're skilled and equipped enough.

My call is to avoid, in my entire career I had lost just one iterdiction game and only because escape vector went into the planet I was nearby so I had to avoid hitting it and dropping SC. By the time I maneuvered to see the vector it was all over. Apart that incident I win every other attempt, no matter in what ship, small, fast and agile like Courier or big slow and sluggish like Anaconda or Cutter.

 

[THFCLegend]

Thanks Darkhaert, I'll try that!

 

[THFCLegend]

Great advice Shiro Akai, thank you for taking the time to put it together.

 

[smiths121]

Catching Cargo in a Gravity WelL - have a go at doing it like this:

Select the body in the nav panel so it is the target in the compass.
Target your cargo
Fly behind the cargo so that it is between you and the planet.
Adjust it so that your cargo target and the planet target are aligned

The above should reduced the ship moving around as you are feffectively pointing right at the ground.
The cargo will not wander as you have matched its vector.

Hope this helps
Simon

 

[Finn638]

So now back to the lucrative salvage missions. Except now, it seem that all the canisters I go after seem to be caught up in a planet's gravity well and are impossible to catch as my ship is bouncing around all over the place. When I try to get close to them. I tend to end up destroying them by accident instead of scooping them up ;-(

The mission USS's spawn within 0.5 ls range of the planet, and they spawn in front of you. They don't have a pre-set location that you have to find, they just appear ahead of you. So if you're circling too close to the planet, they they will spawn close to the planet as well - hence why they are falling into the planet. You want to increase your distance from it when you're looking for them (say between 0.2 and 0.5 ls) to make them spawn further away.

If you destroy canisters just jump back in supercruise and another mission USS will spawn next to that planet sooner or later. They will keep spawning until you pick up the number of canisters mission requires. If you drop into a USS and the pirates chase you there, you can just scoop a couple of canisters then jump out and find the next USS.

 

[space voyager]

You need to fly pretty slow to scoop items. Too much speed and you'll ram them and destroy, they are quite fragile. Plus they may have expiration time as well - mostly true with mining chunks or things made by shooting at things (like Thagroid barnacles or spires). So slow down, aim with your HUD indicator and it should do the trick. Alternative is to equip limpet controller, load (at rearm facility while on station) some limpets (mind they require cargo space) and forget about manual scooping.

A word about limpets - they have 2 operating mods, both equally moronic.
Mode 1 - target pick up.
Limpet will go straight to your targeted item, pick it up, deliver to your hol, then self destruct. Why? FDEVs decided it's an ammo and it should be expended.

Mode 2 - free pick up - you launch limpets and they will collect ALL items in the vicinity. Including illegal, stolen and otherwise unwanted. Advantage is that single limpet can do multiple runs before it runs out of fuel and self destruct. Drawback is it will collect every trash, sometimes avoiding that particular piece you are after.

As for pirates - they have simple IF-THEN mechanic. IF you have large cargo / IF your cargo is valuable, THEN you'll have a pirate on your tail. Coping with pirates is three-fold:
- don't allow them to pull you out of SC; win interdiction game. IT's easy enough to perform, just aim for the running circle filling LEFT bar (your escape progress) while lowering RIGHT bar (pirate's interdicting progress). When you win this pirate won't bother you anymore. Mind that you can have multiple pirates after you and having chain interdictions isn't rare.
- escape after pull; when you get pulled out don't wait - 4 pips into engines (my default setting is 2-4-0; 2 system, 4 engines, 0 weapons) and boost away, boost, boost and more boost. When you get distance you'll be away his firing range and mass factor. Clear to hit SC.
- fight; when pulled out just deploy hardpoints and blow him out of the sky. If you're skilled and equipped enough.

My call is to avoid, in my entire career I had lost just one iterdiction game and only because escape vector went into the planet I was nearby so I had to avoid hitting it and dropping SC. By the time I maneuvered to see the vector it was all over. Apart that incident I win every other attempt, no matter in what ship, small, fast and agile like Courier or big slow and sluggish like Anaconda or Cutter.

I start the pickup routine by marking all canisters (that aren't already marked as such) as unwanted and limpets will ignore them. You can do this now and the system is great. This way my limpets only pick up materials and mission items unless explicitly told otherwise. Never pick up an illegal item again, just not worth it right now.

 

[Aashenfox]

Thanks for the reply.

Since then now, I also got a small bounty on my head for flying too close to a base that wouldn't let me land. Apparently I was trespassing. So I flew to the system's main space station to see if I could pay it off or sort it out or something but got attacked as I was about to dock, got blown up, and woke up in a penal colony at a star system four jumps away. Jumped back, and haven't been attacked since by anyone. Relief. Seems getting blown up is a good way to get a pirate off your back. As Arnold Rimmer once said, dying doesn't neccessarily mean the end of your career. May try it more often ;-)

So now back to the lucrative salvage missions. Except now, it seem that all the canisters I go after seem to be caught up in a planet's gravity well and are impossible to catch as my ship is bouncing around all over the place. When I try to get close to them. I tend to end up destroying them by accident instead of scooping them up ;-(

It is a clif face as others have said, but you will get used to it and practice makes perfect. Welldone for coming on the forum for insight and answers, that already puts you a cut above the average newbie. Hit me up if you ever need any specific help.

I suggest practicing manual scooping rather than using limpets. When you've mastered it, use limpets if you like, but it is a skill you should learn because it's unfeasible to carry collector limpets in every ship. Good luck and keep on trucking. Black Box missoins are particularly hit n miss in how difficult they can be. Sometimes they'll be a literal cakewalk, sometimes not so much.

 

[THFCLegend]

Thank you smiths121 I will try that ;-)

 

[THFCLegend]

Yeah seen that, thanks!

Using limpets is great, and also fun. However, often now, when I send them out, instead of returning they seem to crash into me, expire, and the cargo is destroyed. I have deployed my cargo scoop prior to sending them out or by the time they return. I even keep my ship still in case it's that. No idea what I'm doing wrong here...?

 

[Viktor Dracul]

Yeah seen that, thanks!

Using limpets is great, and also fun. However, often now, when I send them out, instead of returning they seem to crash into me, expire, and the cargo is destroyed. I have deployed my cargo scoop prior to sending them out or by the time they return. I even keep my ship still in case it's that. No idea what I'm doing wrong here...?

When collecting cargo with limpets you need to watch your speed. Anything above 14m/s and the cargo will likely explode when the limpet deposits it in the scoop. It's worth noting as well that when a limpet deposits cargo the hatch closes momentarily and this increases your speed for a moment. If you have two limpets returning close together this can result in cargo destruction. So best to keep speed around 5m/s to avoid this situation.