Engineers Guide: Fast way to find Occupied Escape Pods near Colonia

Here’s a tip if you are looking for Occupied Escape Pods to unlock Etienne Dorn in the Los system. It’s a fast way to collect them.

1:
Equip your ship with a Hatch Breaker Limpet Controller, a Collector Limpet Controller and a good number of limpets. I bought 60.

2: Go to the Luchtaine system near Colonia. When you are there head for the A 1 Gas Giant.

3: When you are within 1000 ls you’ll spot a Distress Call in the Nav Panel. Head for it and drop out of Supercruise when you are close enough. (Changes were made in 3.3, and if you don’t see the Distress Call try using the DSS to probe planet 1).

4: You’ll immediately spot a large Megaship. You’ll also spot a number of ships flying around, and they may be pirates and hostile. Fight them if necessary or go into Supercruise and drop again and hope you have better luck this time. Often you’ll only meet rescue ships.

5: Approach the Megaship. It’s badly damaged, inoperable and decommissioned. What you are about to do isn’t illegal here.

6: Target the Megaship and scan it with your Data Link Scanner and head for “Escape Hatch 3” under “Contacts”. When you are close enough you can use your Data Link Scanner again which will reveal a “Limpet Docking Point” under “Sub-targets”. Target the “Limpet Docking Point” and release a Hatch Breaker Limpet.

7: When the hatch doors open a good number of things will be blasted into space, and among them most likely some Occupied Escape Pods for you to collect with your Collector Limpets.

8: While your limpets are collecting you can target the “Limpet Docking Point” again and open the doors again with the Hatch Breaker Limpets. More pods will be ejected. You can do this a number of times.

I got 17 Occupied Escape Pods on my first try. More will spawn if you leave and return.

You may have to move your ship around to let the limpets get the pods without getting destroyed, and some of the pods may be trapped within the graphics and be unable to reach. You may also find a few in the Cargo Bays on the Megaship.

Hope this helps some of you. Sure beats the loooooooooong time it will take to collect Occupied Escape Pods on planets or in USS’ :D.

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“Kraken’s Retreat”. Home of engineer Etienne Dorn in the Los system:
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Have fun (y)
This guide is great except for one important detail. The spacecraft that has the escape pods isn't a Megaship. Megaships are a specific sort of thing in ED. They show up in the System Map and they can be located through 3rd party sites like Inara, EDDB etc. The location in Luchtaine that has all the escape pods is different. It won't appear on the system map. I eventually found it by accident near one of the gas giants.
 
This guide is great except for one important detail. The spacecraft that has the escape pods isn't a Megaship. Megaships are a specific sort of thing in ED. They show up in the System Map and they can be located through 3rd party sites like Inara, EDDB etc. The location in Luchtaine that has all the escape pods is different. It won't appear on the system map. I eventually found it by accident near one of the gas giants.
"Megaship" in Elite Dangerous can refer to two different things

1) Large Dockable NPC ships - sometimes shown as "Civilian Cruiser" - like Foster Terminal or Dove Enigma. These are basically stations with a different model, and appear on the system map. Data-link scanning them does nothing. Politically these can be owned by any faction in the system.

2) Large Undockable NPC ships that don't appear on the system map but are detectable with the FSS. These can either be
a) intact, like the other ones that move around the Colonia region every couple of weeks
b) damaged, like the one in Luchtaine, or many in Thargoid-attacked systems around the bubble
Data-link scanning them reveals a large number of subtargets which can be interacted with further. Politically these are always under the control of the system owner.

(If you get a mission to "disable the megaship turrets" from a faction - if you poke around the Colonia region, you'll find some - this will always be referring to the undockable sort. If you try to disable the turrets on a dockable megaship you will end up very dead)


Just to show it's not just us, Frontier do this too: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/beyond-chapter-four-3-3-patch-notes.463020/
of the references to megaships, the ones under "Megaships and Installations", "Scenarios" and "Thargoids" refer to type 2, while the "Megaships" heading under "Bug fixes and improvements" refers to type 1.
 
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You get free pods now on the system with the quest of Ghost Ship, in Chukchan. Just log-in log-out and you get a free occupied pod, in 15 -20 minutes you get the required 25 easy.
 
You get free pods now on the system with the quest of Ghost Ship, in Chukchan. Just log-in log-out and you get a free occupied pod, in 15 -20 minutes you get the required 25 easy.

Please read the title again: “......near Colonia”. That’s my point. The reason being that the enginneer who needs the pods to unlock him lives near Colonia. There are several ways to find them in the Bubble - but that’s irrelevant in this thread.
 
Please read the title again: “......near Colonia”. That’s my point. The reason being that the enginneer who needs the pods to unlock him lives near Colonia. There are several ways to find them in the Bubble - but that’s irrelevant in this thread.
And the megaship method is both quicker and more interesting than relogging the same spot for 20 minutes for one pod a time, too...

(There are tip-off sites in the Colonia region where you can relog for an average of one occupied pod per relog, if that's your thing, but it's really not worth doing it that way)
 
Well, I got 25 of them in 15 min or less, is way faster than you think if you relog right near the pod, AND you have your ship parked at 100m ! I stocked them in my FC since I will go to Colonia next week and because planning ahead is a bit smarter...
 
Well, I got 25 of them in 15 min or less, is way faster than you think if you relog right near the pod, AND you have your ship parked at 100m ! I stocked them in my FC since I will go to Colonia next week and because planning ahead is a bit smarter...

Thanks for the info but...

1. This guide was written before FCs so it was far faster to collect them in Colonia to maximize jump range.
2. It is still far far faster to use a jumpconda to get to Colonia and back than to lug a fleet carrier out there.
3. The guide is expressly about finding them in Colonia.

So your info may be great for someone who wants to go out with an FC anyway but, personally, I'd still use the method in this guide since you get multiple per relog instead of just one and you don't have to waste your tritium on extra mass (even if it is trivial). I seem to remember that I only had to relog once when I did it to get the full 25.

Edit: Just checked my notes to confirm; with this megaship, you can use your hatch breaker 4-5 times per instance yielding 15-20 escape pods before it runs out (maybe more?). So you only need to flop once to get your full compliment and you may get lucky and not even have to flop at all.
 
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Thanks so much for your post! Wow, I had never seen a cargo ship like that up close before. The damage/explosions/arcing is pretty epic.
Still trying to figure out what a loner engineer like Etienne would want with working occupied escape pods. Hmmm, probably best not to think about it. LOL

Agreed - and you’re welcome m8 :) .
 
Seems like the guide is temporarily not working as it should because of a bug that hinders cargo to be jettisoned correctly from megaships and the like.

If someone would please clarify this - or report back when the bug is fixed.

Thanks :).
 
Seems like the guide is temporarily not working as it should because of a bug that hinders cargo to be jettisoned correctly from megaships and the like.

If someone would please clarify this - or report back when the bug is fixed.

Thanks :).
I would suggest, check if any carriers are selling them in the vicinity.
 
Seems like the guide is temporarily not working as it should because of a bug that hinders cargo to be jettisoned correctly from megaships and the like.

If someone would please clarify this - or report back when the bug is fixed.

Thanks :).
Are you sure? The bug normally only affects cargo hatches, not escape hatches...
 
I would suggest, check if any carriers are selling them in the vicinity.

I made the guide long before carriers were a thing, and it has helped a lot of people. What I describe in the guide is very easy and fast to do. It perhaps seems complicated at first glance, but I am just being thorough.

Are you sure? The bug normally only affects cargo hatches, not escape hatches...

No, I am not sure at all. I just read it somewhere and therefore wanted to mention it here and ask if anyone in the vicinity would be so kind to check it out.
 
Thanks for the guide! Working fine for me in Jan 2021.

Was just randomly travelling around on my alt account and realised I'd ended up near Colonia, completely unplanned. So I headed there to finish unlocking Etienne and Marsha. I remembered seeing this guide ages ago - it all still works for me exactly as written.
 
Great help, still works but found Hatch Breakers only work 3 times, had to log out & in again, majority of Pods were stuck in mesh or had 'Collector Failed' but were Cargo Scoopable, many thanks.
 
I'm pretty sure he is just lonely and invites them for tea and scones.
He sees them back to a fit and healthy state, pays all their medical bills, and then offers them an apprenticeship in his workshops.
In no way does my good friend Etienne Dorn have any 'dodgy' deals going on with these escape pods.

Signed, Archon 'The King' Delaine. xxx
 
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