Yeah, during election these are my favourite, if not the most "efficient" way[1], primarily because they're technically difficult compared to other missions, as they require nonstandard fits and tactics.
Just some tips from my time doing them.
General tips
- Turn off "report crimes against me"... nothing is worse than the wanted target attacking you, then the cops rock up and kill the target (which will fail the mission for you).
- Never attack the target, only escorts, for reasons I'll get into.
- Don't be scared of high-class hatchbreaker controls (or multiple hatchbreaker controls), as they make overwhelming point defence much more feasible when you have multiple limpets approaching the ship.
- Likewise, don't be frugal with limpets if the target has point defence. With a stack of, say, 12 missions, I'd easily go through a cargo of nearly 100 limpets.
- Launch limpets close to the target. Point defence don't track well when the limpet is in a particular range, and can easily miss the closer the limpet is.
- Use targeted collector limpets to scoop individual target cargo. 1. They're faster and generally won't get hit by point defence, 2. The enemy will try and rescoop cargo, including by using collector limpets. It just helps to get in first.
- More a note: Mission cargo jettisons first, so if you start seeing nonmission cargo, you don't need anymore hatchbreakers, unless the target scoops some back.
- Try and launch limpets from the underside of the ship (i.e where the cargo hatch is). Reason for this is to minimise the amount of time it takes for the limpet to hit it's target. Limpet flight essentially has two phases; approach the ship's cargo hatch, and attach to the hatch. In the approach phase, movement and twisting can really confuse the limpet as it tries to align to being "above" the cargo hatch; this is why it's possible to completely avoid a hatchbreaker by continually rolling. Only when it hits (some distance) directly above the cargo hatch will it try to attach. Once it starts to attach, that's it, no manouvering will disrupt it's approach and it'll land. Launching from under the hatch minimises the amount of alignment it needs to do.
- Provided you don't fail (or succeed!) the mission
- Mission cargo won't jet from your own ship if you get hatch-broken by a pirate, so don't worry too much about enemy hatchbreakers on the way back to base.
There's two sorts of missions you'll see... a lone hauler[2], and an escorted hauler[2].
For Lone Haulers:
- Don't attack. Attacking causes the ship to engage in evasive manouvers and shoot back, which makes hatchbreaking harder (and can get the cops to come if you forget to turn off report crimes). If you only use collectors, they will become hostile, but they won't attack, and won't use evasive manouvers... except to try and rescoop cargo.
- These are easiest to get to the underside of... makes overcoming any PD easier.
For Escorted Haulers:
- It doesn't matter if you attack or not... limpets cause escorts and the hauler to go hostile, and the escort default behaviour is to attack, which causes the whole wing including the hauler to attack and use evasive manouvers. In this case, it's better to just wipe out the escorts (never more than an eagle/sidey or two) and tank the hauler.
- Don't try to knock out the engines or disable the ship. It's simply not worth the effort, and you're more likely to destroy the ship than disable it; they aren't very thick-skinned. Yes, this will cause the dumped cargo to spud out all over the place; Once you get a breaker attached, just let it do it's thing and then scoop the cargo that drops. The problem is if you hit them with another, you might end up with mission cargo such a considerable distance apart it'll despawn when you get to some containers. It's not bad if you lose cans, just re-enter supercruise and jump back in the USS to reset it... but it's just a pain.
Hope that helps!
[1] One of my frustrations that since effect is proportional to reward, and reward isn't proportional to effort, these effects are often way out of whack.
[2] Hauler being the target ship, not necessarily the type. These can vary anywhere from DBS, T7, DBE, T9, Python, even an anaconda in rare cases.
