Horizons Let's Do The Interdiction Time Warp Again.. and Again

[Mundo54]

Okay, so everyone is going to laugh, except for the passenger missions people, some of them might get it. But the combat people will cringe for sure. I'm using a Federal Corvette - 60-1st Class as a bulk passenger ship. My Python passenger variant can only carry 39-1st class and my Conda, well, it's just not as much fun to fly. Both the Conda and my Cutter don't handle as well as the Corvette.

So my first mistake was being greedy, any passengers Cmdr pilot will tell you that. But Mount Sunday in the Dinda system was offering up 5 bulk passenger missions, that would end up netting me 4.5-Mil, for just one relatively quick run to the Bayley Installation planetary outpost in the [LP 470-30] system. Like who could say no to that, bring hither le gravy to my bank account.

So I'm nicely settled into the 7,868-ls run to [LP 470-30 B 3] and then I get 3 messages that 3 of my passengers are going to be attacked. This harkens back to the being greedy thing, because now it's time to pay the piper. I handle the en-route interdictions fine. The yank-back isn't as noticeable, I can live with it anyway.

But then I kinda got a little miffed for the last 2-3 interdictions when I'm more than half-way down the HUD ladder to the OC marker, and I get nailed with yet another interdiction. My bad I guess for not putting the pedal to the metal. But the Corvette is a big bird and I don't want to push my luck by hitting orbit too fast and too heavy, although my build is a little on the light side, at only around 1,318-tons.

So with 1,200-hrs in-country now, I still need to come to terms with A) my own mortality and B) how is it that I can be that close to heaven, gaining the safety of orbital cruise, to be interdicted and end up around 60-ls back out in space, each time.

So I have a theory. I wasn't actually in orbit around the planet, a mere few seconds from entering orbital cruise. I was hallucinating that whole experience, each time. I was still well back in space, on approach to the planet. So I'm thinking it must be fumes in the cockpit, maybe the glue still isn't dry for the swanky carpeting that I had installed.?!?

 

[Mike Reacher]

Your theory is wrong.
The interdictions can pull you back a long way. I have been pulled out of planetary orbit up to 70+ light seconds.
Yes! You can now be interdicted in orbit. Even in surface cruising. But that is not a pull back.
I was interdicted in a multi-interdiction way once. 3 times as I was about to dock in a station I was pulled back about 30 LS each time. And it was by the same NPC.

 

[Mundo54]

Your theory is wrong.
The interdictions can pull you back a long way. I have been pulled out of planetary orbit up to 70+ light seconds.
Yes! You can now be interdicted in orbit. Even in surface cruising. But that is not a pull back.
I was interdicted in a multi-interdiction way once. 3 times as I was about to dock in a station I was pulled back about 30 LS each time. And it was by the same NPC.

Wow, good and bad to hear, all at the same time. I had thought that orbital cruise was safe, at least. And I thought that the yank-back, as I call it, was because of the server-delayed delivery of the initiation of the NPC interdiction. Because it does seem to vary. I've been interdicted very close to planets before and after submitting and getting pulled out of SC, I was almost at the same location.

But taking on multiple bulk-passenger missions at the same time, is kind of a lottery. Most of the time what I do when I get an attack warning, is to give priority to that mission first, get it done and out of the way. And then I do the same thing for any other attack warnings that pop up.

I have the Python setup to handle 104 economy class passengers, over 5-cabins. So I can often have more than 5-missions on board at a time. I'm never really sure if it matters all that much what passenger class, the cabins are. I think as long as you have enough cabins, and you're patient enough to pour over the missions to find the good ones, the game adapts to whatever ship you throw at it. At least that's my impression anyway. If you're well allied with a number of factions, the pay-outs seem about the same, overall.

Most of the time the game is pretty reasonable with the number of NPC interdictions it throws at you. And like people have said in other threads, it adds a little spice to the game, it livens up the passenger missions. But when I kept getting yanked out of orbit in the Corvette, it was like one of those dreams where you can never seem to get to the end of the hallway. [cool]

 

[Mundo54]

I did have some quick questions about the Eliminate Enemies messages before everyone disappears back into the Ether.

The Target Time quoted, is that when you can expect the enemies, 18:26 from the time the message was viewed in this case, or is it a time-window, i.e., you could be vulnerable to an attack for the next 18:26. And the target count shown [1/2]. I assume that means a wing of two NPC pirates. So you could get interdicted twice, before they give up.

This attack/interdiction never cropped up this morning, and most of the time when they do, they're pretty feeble.. not that I'm complaining!!

P.S. One thing is certain, the Corvette is really paying off in this configuration. Last night I had one passenger mission worth 7.5-Mil into one of the Witchhaul bases, an estimated 169,000-ls, which would have taken about 12-mins, give or take. But before I could get to the mission, I got a re-direct request to a more or less normal destination, it took no time at all.

 

[Mike Reacher]

One more thing about interdictions:-
As I press J on the keyboard, to drop out of supercruise, I can be interdicted at that exact moment. That is disconcerting as I'm not sure if the J is delayed, or the interdiction takes priority.
Sometimes, the interdiction just disappears from the game, and sometimes it actually does have priority. (Submit and shoot)

As for the target time, I'm sure that is when the target is supposed to be available to destroy. Don't take this as 100% correct. I may be wrong.

(And I don't do passenger missions)

 

[Mundo54]

One more thing about interdictions:-
As I press J on the keyboard, to drop out of supercruise, I can be interdicted at that exact moment. That is disconcerting as I'm not sure if the J is delayed, or the interdiction takes priority.
Sometimes, the interdiction just disappears from the game, and sometimes it actually does have priority. (Submit and shoot)

As for the target time, I'm sure that is when the target is supposed to be available to destroy. Don't take this as 100% correct. I may be wrong.

(And I don't do passenger missions)

I've had some really weird 'almost' interdictions too; I'm just about to drop out of SC, or I'm on the brink of making a jump. The timing was odd, like you say, but the game almost always erred in my favour in those instances, so no complaints from me on those ones anyway.

I think you're right about the target time. It's when they might show up and it's the in-game clock time, on the HUD. I should have realized that. On another passenger mission I watched that more closely and when the clock struck nine, I got a [Direct] text message from the would-be NPC attacker. But I was right on the brink of arriving at the orbital station at that point, to drop off the passengers.

The standard bulk-passenger missions are pretty lame. Nothing more than slightly dressed-up canned cargo missions, for the most part. But they pay really well, almost ridiculously so. In 3-4 days I'm up around 100-Mil from my 'low' point of 369-Mil after I finished paying for the Cutter, which is equipped, for now, to carry 480-tons of cargo. But the canned missions for cargo are a joke in comparison, it's not worth running them. I've looked at the 3rd party web sites for setting up trade runs, but the pay-out's just don't seem to be there.

So I'm taking a break with the Cobra Mk3 and running some canister recovery missions and some planet settlement scan missions. I'm also trying some of the covert planet settlement missions which are a little more hairy. And because I'm allied with all the factions at Mount Sunday, the better planet settlement missions pay out at around 2-3 Mil each.

But it's not all about the money, it's about having fun too. They're offering some decent skimmer-kill missions. But they almost always end up in week-long bounties; dormant or otherwise. And then the game devolves into an exercise in bounty management, and that can put a dampener on normal operations.

I tried one chained follow-up assassination mission with my FAS, and I spotted the target briefly when I honked the system with my ADS, but then he disappeared and he never showed up again, even though I was in the right target-time window. I would try a few of those, they sure offer enough of them, but I need to check the forums to see how to handle them, if there are any issues, etc.

 

[Mundo54]

Your theory is wrong.
The interdictions can pull you back a long way. I have been pulled out of planetary orbit up to 70+ light seconds.
Yes! You can now be interdicted in orbit. Even in surface cruising. But that is not a pull back.
I was interdicted in a multi-interdiction way once. 3 times as I was about to dock in a station I was pulled back about 30 LS each time. And it was by the same NPC.

Okay, in case anyone is still listening, I just had the weirdest interdiction ever. And this is like Twilight Zone material, and then some. I had just landed at Kozlov Base on [Witchhaul B 7 a]. I unloaded the passengers, collected my loot and that also cleared the Eliminate Enemies message for those passengers too.. it was gone from the comms panel, or so I thought.

The next drop-off was at Hawkes' Progress on the same planet and I always have a little trouble with these. I get balled up as I'm climbing out, which way to go. So I ended up climbing out of orbital cruise, just a bit, before I got my bearings and I started heading back down towards Hawkes' Progress.

And once again, I'm half-way down the ladder to orbital cruise and I get the [Direct] text message that I'm going to be interdicted, but what the hump, I'm thinking, the attack notice had been cleared. It was for the last group of passengers.?!?

And to quote you, Mike, wham, I end up about 70+ light seconds out in space after I submit to the interdiction. But I was never even out in space in this case.?!?

So I figure, whoever this NPC pirate was, and I should have got more info on him and his ship, because not only do we want his FSD Interdictor, we want to reverse engineer it, build our own and start marketing them!! Because this guy was able to pull my 1,350-ton Federal Corvette, 70+ light seconds out into space, and no doubt from some rinky-dink like ship. I hope it wasn't a Sidey because that would be really embarrassing back at The Spacers Bar, I would have to buy all the rounds.

But just think of the potential military market here, or using this Interdictor Module as a tractor beam to farm ice from asteroids for some really cool home brew. After all, the glaciers on our planet are melting at a pretty fast rate, so the beer products made from glacial ice are dropping off exponentially. (kind of like my faith in FDev..)

The only thing I figure, is that the sysop's at Frontier are getting into the Christmas eggnog just a little too early this year, and someone's not watching the hard-coded NPC interdictions console, closely enough. Although I'm not complaining too much, because the three passenger runs into this region of Witchhaul, on this trip, netted me around 10-Mil.

** Edited ** In complicated multi-mission scenario's like this, i.e., a few mission objectives on the same planet, in particular, it's probably better to exit to the Main Menu and start again. This is what I should have done after the first stop at Kozlov Base, to possibly clear the game state (the lingering bogus Interdiction). I often have to do this anyway, because some of the post 2.4 bugs make it hard to find any additional nearby missions objectives, on planetary bodies in the same star system.