Horizons Pirate / Liberate / Filch missions are impossible!

[127Tom]

Okay, so my main dream is to become a pirate in this game. I have now a Vulture ship with best tier equipment.
It's ofcourse equipped with hatch breaker and collector limpets too.

The problem is that it takes so god damn long time before my target drops the important cargo. And the limpets are so incredibly slow and you can only deploy one at a time (why???!)
And when I am not even half through collecting my      ofcourse imperial ships come in to the rescue.

I have played this game a long time and I have yet to accomplish this mission. It's        * annoying!!!

It's a sci-fi game, and this limpet controller thing is way too tedious. It should be a faster way to collect important cargo. Also why you have to manually search for the cargo? Why can't there be a "next target" button
for cargo same as for ships?

Any tips?

 

[Drelthar]

Yep, I really think these missions need to be looked at again by the developers. Something needs to be done to allow you to get out of there with the loot before seven bajillion security ships melt you.

It's probably do-able in a huge war ship like a butter/corvette/anaconda, but in the ships you actually expect to be pirates, (in my mind anyway) fast, nippy, stealthy things, you wont have the chance to get the cargo you need most of the time before the cops are crushing you.

The missions cargo should drop first, or the cargo as a whole should drop faster.


Limpets are indeed way too slow, that could really use sorting out, and they should really just do away with the limpets/cargo they are carrying being able to smash into your ship, so you can actually move more than 1ms while they are coming in to drop things off without blowing everything up.

 

[lomac]

agree 100% and i have done it in an a rated conda. target drops so much cargo but only once did i get all of the mission items before destroying them because you keep having to take their shields down. i mean literally dozens of cargo canisters out.

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

I see these missions asking for 45 stolen items. I mean I don't think it's doable 45 tons of Uranium or Consumer Tech.

At least not in one instance.

 

[127Tom]

Yes, and as a pirate you would avoid fighting with the authority and getting huge bounties on your head.

 

[znôrt]

Yes, and as a pirate you would avoid fighting with the authority and getting huge bounties on your head.

you wouldn't get very far running away in a vulture anyway

(that's metaphorically speaking. you can of course always high wake)

 

[Casey Casem]

Yup. These types of missions are more frustrating than enjoyable because you're fighting against the game mechanics rather than the game content.

Another mission type that needs review: assassination mission... Please wait one hour for your small window of opportunity to find him. Um. No thanks.

 

[Chris Simon]

I just wonder if these people, complaining that Police won't let them rob people in peace are the same people that also complain that cops is incompetent and crime has no real impact for player.
I swear these two types of threads look like identical twins, just with different eye colour...

 

[lomac]

Yep, I really think these missions need to be looked at again by the developers. Something needs to be done to allow you to get out of there with the loot before seven bajillion security ships melt you.

It's probably do-able in a huge war ship like a butter/corvette/anaconda, but in the ships you actually expect to be pirates, (in my mind anyway) fast, nippy, stealthy things, you wont have the chance to get the cargo you need most of the time before the cops are crushing you.

The missions cargo should drop first, or the cargo as a whole should drop faster.


Limpets are indeed way too slow, that could really use sorting out, and they should really just do away with the limpets/cargo they are carrying being able to smash into your ship, so you can actually move more than 1ms while they are coming in to drop things off without blowing everything up.

So I can't do them in my Conda either. I can last for a long time against the authorities but the problem is my target drops a whole bunch of junk. Sometimes after the dust clears I just can't find all the mission cargo! I'll get 3 out of 4 gems and like 20 other cargo items. Then of course if you kill him too early that's the end of that, he doesn't reappear in another mission instance, your employers even tell you so. I mean I let him get his shield back 4 or 5 times, I'm just trying to keep his shields down because I don't really know what's required for the hatchbreaker to work right.

I'm about to go give this another try but I've been pretty frustrated trying to do those "liberate" missions, I'd given up on them as well.

Oh - you can control more than one, you just need a larger class controller, which won't really happen in your Vulture OP. C3 controls 2 and C5 controls 3 at a time.

 

[Chris Simon]

I see these missions asking for 45 stolen items. I mean I don't think it's doable 45 tons of Uranium or Consumer Tech.

At least not in one instance.

That's why we have Unidentified signal sources.

So I can't do them in my Conda either. I can last for a long time against the authorities but the problem is my target drops a whole bunch of junk. Sometimes after the dust clears I just can't find all the mission cargo! I'll get 3 out of 4 gems and like 20 other cargo items. Then of course if you kill him too early that's the end of that, he doesn't reappear in another mission instance, your employers even tell you so. I mean I let him get his shield back 4 or 5 times, I'm just trying to keep his shields down because I don't really know what's required for the hatchbreaker to work right.

I'm about to go give this another try but I've been pretty frustrated trying to do those "liberate" missions, I'd given up on them as well.

Oh - you can control more than one, you just need a larger class controller, which won't really happen in your Vulture OP. C3 controls 2 and C5 controls 3 at a time.

You only need his shields down to attach the hatch breaker. After that they can go back up.

And also I'd like to point out that a proper pirate ship is decently equipped for taking down shields and everything else is cargo space and speed.
If you guys really trying to do this in Condas and Vultures, well... Please don't blame the game for things it does right. I think you can find other, more complain-worthy issues.

 

[Mugur]

Never did it for missions, but targeting the cargo hatch should make the victim drop the cargo immediately (after the shield of course). And with a proper collector limpets setup you can send several to collect everything in a very small amount of time, without selecting any canister.

 

[Marra Morgan]

Sometimes these missions can be very good, but there's some inconsistencies which generally make me avoid them.

I've had missions to pirate 40-something tons and the target ship turns out to be a Hauler... which means robbing the target, leaving the instance, hope it shows up again and repeat until you've got the required amount. That's a pain and it's just cheesy and immersion breaking.

If you can force them to high-wake they will usually jump to an unpopulated system, where you can mug them. The space-criminal's equivalent of following someone into a dark alley, I suppose!

Okay, so my main dream is to become a pirate in this game. I have now a Vulture ship ...

Any tips?

Lose the Vulture!
I find that multi-role ships are best for piracy as they have enough slots to fit all the tools you need plus cargo space. Visit an engineer for speed mods.

 

[Chris Simon]

^^this!

Like I said, speed and cargo is priceless. Big firepower is worthless - you need to keep your victims alive.

Cobra mk.III and Imperial Courier are around the Vulture's price range, if that's where you're at.

 

[GG7]

I tried a couple of these and then gave up on them.

When the pirate started dropping their cargo, they were dropping dozens and dozens of canisters which I suppose we are expected to manually scan through one by one looking for the 4-8 actual mission target canisters? I managed to find one or two both times I tried, but I was never able to find the total number intermixed in the dozens of identical looking "decoys" before all the canisters started exploding on their own. I assume this is some kind of time restriction mechanic? (Yeah...Why not add yet another annoying layer to an already annoying game mechanic)

Anyway... Considering the low pay on most of these, I would only be doing them for the fun of the mission. Well frankly.... These current hatch breaker limpet related missions are about the most UN FUN missions in the game!

No thanks! Yet another BROKEN mission type that FD's crew obviously never bothered to play test before releasing. [wacky]

 

[Chris Simon]

<snip> ...dozens of canisters which I suppose we are expected to scan one by one trying to find the actual mission target... <snip>

You have a list of all of them in your Contacts menu on the left-hand panel. Just select what you want and send the limpet.

 

[127Tom]

That's why we have Unidentified signal sources.



You only need his shields down to attach the hatch breaker. After that they can go back up.

And also I'd like to point out that a proper pirate ship is decently equipped for taking down shields and everything else is cargo space and speed.
If you guys really trying to do this in Condas and Vultures, well... Please don't blame the game for things it does right. I think you can find other, more complain-worthy issues.

^^this!

Like I said, speed and cargo is priceless. Big firepower is worthless - you need to keep your victims alive.

Cobra mk.III and Imperial Courier are around the Vulture's price range, if that's where you're at.

You have a list of all of them in your Contacts menu on the left-hand panel. Just select what you want and send the limpet.

Chris, it doesn't matter if you do this mission in a Vulture, a Cobra or Viper. I have owned all these ships.
I have no problem escaping the cops, following the Hauler and take down his shield in any of these ships.
The main problem here is that it is impossible to hatch all the objects before you get jumped by the police.

It is the game's fault in this case. The mission is impossible if you need to filch more than 4 cargo containers. Even with just 2 cargo containers you can barely make it since he almost never drop the mission cargo.
And having to browse the items in your left bar is far from fast and intuitive while you fly. Clunky, slow and tedious. They should have it the same way you browse ships on your radar.

I asked for tips / ideas, but so far you brought nothing to the table. Just defending the game like a blind fanboy and won't accept it got some major issues that needs to be addressed.

Something that would fix this issue is to be able to set the limp hatchet to only filch mission cargo. And also being able to send multiple hatchets to pick up floating cargo would help a lot.

 

[Marra Morgan]

The main problem here is that it is impossible to hatch all the objects before you get jumped by the police.

As I said, it's possible to force them to hi-wake to an unpopulated system, but sometimes they just don't jump and you end up smashing them up instead. It's not very reliable

Rather that have the targets being fixed in a system or signal source, I think it would be better to have them spawn in the system at the specified time, but once spawned they will travel through supercruise, dock and move to other systems. This gives you a chance to use the wake scanner to stalk them and mug them when the opportunity is right. The same mechanic could also be used for bounty-hunting and assassination missions.

 

[127Tom]

As I said, it's possible to force them to hi-wake to an unpopulated system, but sometimes they just don't jump and you end up smashing them up instead. It's not very reliable

Rather that have the targets being fixed in a system or signal source, I think it would be better to have them spawn in the system at the specified time, but once spawned they will travel through supercruise, dock and move to other systems. This gives you a chance to use the wake scanner to stalk them and mug them when the opportunity is right. The same mechanic could also be used for bounty-hunting and assassination missions.

Yes, this idea sounded better and more realistic. But still I think it's too scripted when the police arrives. It should be more dynamic / A.I decition if they want to interfere with the distress signal.
Right now the police arrival are 100 % scripted.