Noob question: pirate jumped away, how to refind pirate?

I have no wake scanner. The pirate I am chasing jumped away with FSD. How can I refind this pirate? I went to the beacon but no luck.

Thanks.
 
Wake scan and follow. Its more imersive.

I will next time, but currently not a wake scanner in my possession.

If your on a mission, jump into fsd and it will show up again in your navigation panel.

Mm, I tried, nothing. I found the original nav beacon. From there I got a message to look around in a nearby system, which I did and where I first found the pirate. After a brief fight, the pirate got away (FSD), and now nowhere to be found. Flew back with FSD to where I got my mission, to the original nav beacon, and to the system I had to look around. Any other tips?

Thanks!
 
Probably best to abandon and try again anew. Dont be affraid of a little bad faction rep now and again. Its easy to rectify.
 
I would stay at the nav beacon for a bit and take on a few other pirates - it may come to you. GIve a few then jump out of the system your in and back to restart the scenario.
 
Pirates and Military NPCs can high wake when their hull is low, but I doubt they'll spawn in the other system if you scan the wake and follow.
 
If your mission timer isn't up, you can try jumping out and into the system you found the pirate in. It used to work back when I was playing, but that was a long time ago.
 
don't bother with wake scan and follow. currently there is a bug where NPC's will auto jump immediately upon interdiction or dropping in on their wake once they have taken damage and ran.

if you want a ship to stick around be sure to target its FSD first or carry grom bombs.
 
Trouble is it'll turn up again, surprised to see you and with magically no damage - there's no immersion when it comes to NPC's unfortunately.

The damage was carried over last time I tried Low Temp Diamond theft. Has this been removed, or did I just dream that scenario ? - which is possible.
 
To answer various questions in the thread:

NPCs always high-wake. The game has a very poor record when it comes to persistence of NPCs, but if you scan the wake and follow the NPC to another system (following a wake is done by activating your FSD with the scanned wake targetted), the game will remember their state (name, ship, damage, cargo etc..). Recently Frontier has fixed the alignment of FSD wakes with the skybox, but I doubt the game will persist the NPC across instances if you don't explicitely tells it to (by jumping via the scanned wake) and I'm not able to test that atm. Note that for mission NPCs, the NPC may no longer be a valid target mission in a different system unless Frontier have fixed that since, so make sure to double check.

Now regarding mission NPCs, if one escapes and you can't follow it (say, you have no wake scanner), you can make the NPC re-spawn by going back into supercruise rather than following the NPC into hyperspace (if it doesn't respawn, try jumping out of the system and back in). For all intents and purposes this will be a new NPC. It will not keep any damage you have previously done it it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the NPC can fly a different ship entirely. This is just one way where the game fails wrt NPC persistence as Frontier has to explicitely deal with it on a case-by-case basis. You'd think by now they would have added more persistence to mission NPCs but ah well.
 
They fail with persistence in general due to the code architecture tbh. No hope of changing that unless significant, "new-era-type" overhaul.
 
Well I never! - thanks for clearing that up, Jukelo & GODofDUTY83. I stand corrected.
I'm basing my experience on the pirates coming to find me, rather than me chasing them. At least it sounds like the NPC's are partially persistent.
 
What has worked for me if I don't have a wake scanner is to allign myself with the NPC's High Wake then just start selecting destinations in my Nav panel from closest to farthest. If one destination aligns perfectly with the high wake then that's where it went.
 
To answer various questions in the thread:

NPCs always high-wake. The game has a very poor record when it comes to persistence of NPCs, but if you scan the wake and follow the NPC to another system (following a wake is done by activating your FSD with the scanned wake targetted), the game will remember their state (name, ship, damage, cargo etc..). Recently Frontier has fixed the alignment of FSD wakes with the skybox, but I doubt the game will persist the NPC across instances if you don't explicitely tells it to (by jumping via the scanned wake) and I'm not able to test that atm. Note that for mission NPCs, the NPC may no longer be a valid target mission in a different system unless Frontier have fixed that since, so make sure to double check.

Now regarding mission NPCs, if one escapes and you can't follow it (say, you have no wake scanner), you can make the NPC re-spawn by going back into supercruise rather than following the NPC into hyperspace (if it doesn't respawn, try jumping out of the system and back in). For all intents and purposes this will be a new NPC. It will not keep any damage you have previously done it it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the NPC can fly a different ship entirely. This is just one way where the game fails wrt NPC persistence as Frontier has to explicitely deal with it on a case-by-case basis. You'd think by now they would have added more persistence to mission NPCs but ah well.

Yes, NPC's always high wake, they never go back to SC (although obviously their new version turns up there again :)).

After a previous thread about this, I actually tested out following a mission target pirate waking out. Scanned its wake, followed to the new system and... Nothing there. Waited a minute or so but nothing turned up, and obviously it should have been there before me. Went back to the original system, and they immediately interdicted me. So I'm no longer convinced following NPC's is worth it, or that their damage remains persistent if you do follow them since they may well not be there.

In terms of destroying mission targets outside of the system given in the mission, again, I haven't tested this recently, but it certainly was the case that they didn't count against the mission previously. Unfortunately, I think this is based upon how the mission templates work rather than NPC persistence. The mission says go to system x and do something, and clearly if you go to system y and do something it isn't going to trigger the mission.

One other thing I've noticed with pirate assassination missions recently is that the pirate aways seems to be there as soon as you jump into a system, and will sometimes attack you before you scan the nav beacon. If however you subsequently scan the nav beacon, it sometimes inserts the wrinkle to go to a different system to meet an informant who will then direct you to another system to find the target. It's a bit of a mess sometimes.
 
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