Recon Limpet Controller, flight path fails to connect to holograms

Ricardo Escobar · Jun 21, 2025

Limpets in general were nerfed quite a while ago, they can{t be used anymore to pick up materials from the ground, for example.
I understand that. What I don't understand is why Recon limpet controllers seem to just hang around holograms in space ports, they seem to never figure out a path to the hologram.
This is making hacking holograms practically impossible, so if you have a power play mission to hack holograms, good luck to have at least one hologram hacked.
I dunno who changed limpets flight paths, but I hope they get it fixed.
If it isn't broken, don't touch it.

Nidoboros · Jun 21, 2025

Ricardo Escobar said:
Limpets in general were nerfed quite a while ago, they can{t be used anymore to pick up materials from the ground, for example.
I understand that. What I don't understand is why Recon limpet controllers seem to just hang around holograms in space ports, they seem to never figure out a path to the hologram.
This is making hacking holograms practically impossible, so if you have a power play mission to hack holograms, good luck to have at least one hologram hacked.
I dunno who changed limpets flight paths, but I hope they get it fixed.
If it isn't broken, don't touch it.

Did you target the hologram first, or did they just used to go from one to the next?

Ian Doncaster · Jun 21, 2025

There seems to be a problem with them catching the rotating holograms specifically - ones at outposts or non-rotating asteroid bases connect properly every time.

I'm not sure there's previously been a case where limpets would have needed to lock on to something rotating with a station, so maybe this never worked (it's been like this since the start of hologram hacking, anyway)

Generally I find if it's a large base with 10 or so, 2 or 3 might miss, and retrying those might pick up another 1.
If it's a smaller set of holograms (or a friendly system so fewer are hackable) then that often ends up being one connecting, and one missing entirely.

The behaviour when they miss is weird, too - it's not that they just keep trying to catch it and never quite make it, they fly in the general direction and then something goes wrong and they drift off very slowly into deep space.

(Someone did report it at https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/73029 but this is exactly the sort of bug the issue tracker is designed to stop Frontier finding out about, so we'll just have to accept it's a permanent part of the game)

CMDR X · Jun 24, 2025

Ricardo Escobar said:
Limpets in general were nerfed quite a while ago, they can't be used anymore to pick up materials from the ground, for example.
I understand that.

I don't. A collector is a collector. It shouldn't matter where it is collecting from. That's when I stopped gathering ground mats. Not wasting my time dorking around in that dumb little puke mobile.

.

M. Grey · Jun 24, 2025

Hacking Hologram works well for me, but it's a matter of Ship poistion and targetting.
Make sure your ship is parallel to the station and you're not too far away, maybe 500-700m.
Also the target holo should be a bit below your crosshair, like 2-3x the distance from center to lower arc.
With that I have like 90% success rate.

x

__

Hologramm

Ricardo Escobar · Tuesday at 2:55 PM

Ian Doncaster said:
There seems to be a problem with them catching the rotating holograms specifically - ones at outposts or non-rotating asteroid bases connect properly every time.

I'm not sure there's previously been a case where limpets would have needed to lock on to something rotating with a station, so maybe this never worked (it's been like this since the start of hologram hacking, anyway)

Generally I find if it's a large base with 10 or so, 2 or 3 might miss, and retrying those might pick up another 1.
If it's a smaller set of holograms (or a friendly system so fewer are hackable) then that often ends up being one connecting, and one missing entirely.

The behaviour when they miss is weird, too - it's not that they just keep trying to catch it and never quite make it, they fly in the general direction and then something goes wrong and they drift off very slowly into deep space.

(Someone did report it at https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/73029 but this is exactly the sort of bug the issue tracker is designed to stop Frontier finding out about, so we'll just have to accept it's a permanent part of the game)

It worked properly before the Limpet nerf patch.

Ricardo Escobar · Tuesday at 2:56 PM

M. Grey said:
Hacking Hologram works well for me, but it's a matter of Ship poistion and targetting.
Make sure your ship is parallel to the station and you're not too far away, maybe 500-700m.
Also the target holo should be a bit below your crosshair, like 2-3x the distance from center to lower arc.
With that I have like 90% success rate.

x

__

Hologramm

If the limpet requires for me to do a dance and line up the stars for it to do it's job, then is not working.

Ricardo Escobar · Tuesday at 2:57 PM

Nidoboros said:
Did you target the hologram first, or did they just used to go from one to the next?

Yes, I target the hologram first.

Pville_Piper · Tuesday at 5:12 PM

I've run both the operations multi limpets and the recon limpets controller at the same time, one of the was prone to this issue and the other wasn't. I can't remember which one...

IstvaanDCIV · Tuesday at 5:46 PM

CMDR X said:
Not wasting my time dorking around in that dumb little puke mobile.

Do you mean the SRV? Because I've found that problem is easily solved by setting Options > Graphics > Vehicle Maintain Horizon Camera to "On". It keeps the camera more level with the local horizon.

Cmdr Snuffler · Tuesday at 7:50 PM

Cmdrs are saying 2 or 3 will miss...or 90% success rate...all i can say is, meh!!!
I've given up doing them. After a constant, repeated, 100% failure rate i am done. Tried every angle, every distance, every rain dance. Nada. All fail.

Ricardo Escobar · Tuesday at 8:39 PM

Ian Doncaster said:
There seems to be a problem with them catching the rotating holograms specifically - ones at outposts or non-rotating asteroid bases connect properly every time.

I'm not sure there's previously been a case where limpets would have needed to lock on to something rotating with a station, so maybe this never worked (it's been like this since the start of hologram hacking, anyway)

Generally I find if it's a large base with 10 or so, 2 or 3 might miss, and retrying those might pick up another 1.
If it's a smaller set of holograms (or a friendly system so fewer are hackable) then that often ends up being one connecting, and one missing entirely.

The behaviour when they miss is weird, too - it's not that they just keep trying to catch it and never quite make it, they fly in the general direction and then something goes wrong and they drift off very slowly into deep space.

(Someone did report it at https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/73029 but this is exactly the sort of bug the issue tracker is designed to stop Frontier finding out about, so we'll just have to accept it's a permanent part of the game)

Thank you I agree.
I hope they find whomever did this nerf on limpets and they fire his ass.

A man can dream

Jmanis · Tuesday at 10:39 PM

Ian Doncaster said:
There seems to be a problem with them catching the rotating holograms specifically - ones at outposts or non-rotating asteroid bases connect properly every time.

FWIW, this is just the typical MO of limpets right?

Like, the way you avoid hatchbreakers is to just roll so the limpet can never align your cargo hatch for it's final attachment path.

r09u3 · Tuesday at 10:59 PM

Limpits have just gotten dumber across the board. I think they cut their Ram in half to save money or something.

Ian Doncaster · Wednesday at 7:17 AM

Jmanis said:
FWIW, this is just the typical MO of limpets right?

Like, the way you avoid hatchbreakers is to just roll so the limpet can never align your cargo hatch for it's final attachment path.

That's true, but if you rolled as slowly as a station does to avoid a hatchbreaker it wouldn't help you much.

And the hatchbreakers keep trying rather than making one attempt, noticing the target has moved slightly, and slowly drifting away.

Jmanis · Wednesday at 8:37 AM

Ian Doncaster said:
That's true, but if you rolled as slowly as a station does to avoid a hatchbreaker it wouldn't help you much.

And the hatchbreakers keep trying rather than making one attempt, noticing the target has moved slightly, and slowly drifting away.

Does a station roll slowly? Legit question, I think it looks slow, but in reality is much faster... and for a limpet which might not account for that, i think it would make a huge difference to the maths of it.

Ian Doncaster · Wednesday at 8:53 AM

Jmanis said:
Does a station roll slowly? Legit question, I think it looks slow, but in reality is much faster... and for a limpet which might not account for that, i think it would make a huge difference to the maths of it.

I think they are about 80 seconds per revolution, or 4.5 degrees per second. At a distance of about 500m off-axis (and the holograms are quite a bit closer to the centre than that) that's a linear speed of only about 40m/s. Limpets don't normally have trouble connecting with targets moving that slowly.

The slowest normal ship is I think the T-9 at about 6 degrees per second roll rate with no engine pips, the fastest is the Eagle at 226 degrees per second with engineered enhanced thrusters, 4 engine pips, and minimum mass. (Obviously the station needs to be rolling slower than the ships trying to dock with it are)

Neilski · Wednesday at 7:44 PM

Ian Doncaster said:
The slowest normal ship is I think the T-9 at about 6 degrees per second roll rate with no engine pips, the fastest is the Eagle at 226 degrees per second with engineered enhanced thrusters, 4 engine pips, and minimum mass. (Obviously the station needs to be rolling slower than the ships trying to dock with it are)

A few years ago (not quite sure when) the ship handling behaviour was changed - engine pips no longer affect roll or yaw rate.

EDSY gets this right (and says the stock T-9 gets 8.1 degrees/second) but there's a long-standing issue in the Coriolis repo which recognises that the Coriolis calcs for handling are broken.