Spec Ops Missions can be incompletable

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Short and sweet - I have a mission for 50M Cr to kill 30 civilians. Any time I engage any of these civilians in a 1-Billion Cr, engineered ship, they immediately warp out. I can't use my FSD interrupt missile, as even with a direct hit... the NPC's seem to ignore it - and it's too hard to use reliably because they coast along in a group of 8 or so, all with PD. With no tools to stop them or slow them down, they just leave before I can do enough damage to actually hit drives, FSD, or power plant. They just drop a couple mines and warp out in 15 seconds.

In over an hour, I was able to secure one kill across three of these mission target locations. Each time I attempt this, they all warp out.

Please take a look at this, if possible.

 

[Jmanis]

Interesting. Normally, they don't collectively respond to aggro... only the ones you attack will respond. The main issue I encounter is when focusing on one target, it can lead me away from the pack causing them to drop off radar.... but I never have issue killing them, and that's usually in a python or krait. What weapons are you using?

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Interesting. Normally, they don't collectively respond to aggro... only the ones you attack will respond. The main issue I encounter is when focusing on one target, it can lead me away from the pack causing them to drop off radar.... but I never have issue killing them, and that's usually in a python or krait. What weapons are you using?

They do only individually respond, but after a short time, all ships warp out, regardless of whether I'd interacted with them or not.

I was using an Anaconda with 5 Multicannons (3 C3, 2 C2), a class 4 beam laser, and a pair of missile rakcs (one seeker with drag drives, one dumbfire with fsd interrupt).

I've now switched to a twin-PA Vulture. Hopefully I have better luck with a stronger alpha-strike capability.

EDIT: Not really.

 

[Jmanis]

They do only individually respond, but after a short time, all ships warp out, regardless of whether I'd interacted with them or not.

I was using an Anaconda with 5 Multicannons (3 C3, 2 C2), a class 4 beam laser, and a pair of missile rakcs (one seeker with drag drives, one dumbfire with fsd interrupt).

I've now switched to a twin-PA Vulture. Hopefully I have better luck with a stronger alpha-strike capability.

Huh... I know they flee pretty quickly, but my Krait MK2 never has problems taking down any single target before they jump. That's an OC C3 Beam, 2 x OC Multicannons , one Corrosive, one autoloader, and 2 x C2 Guardian Shard Cannon.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Huh... I know they flee pretty quickly, but my Krait MK2 never has problems taking down any single target before they jump. That's an OC C3 Beam, 2 x OC Multicannons , one Corrosive, one autoloader, and 2 x C2 Guardian Shard Cannon.

Can I ask what Elite rank you are? I'm Dangerous, facing Dangerous/Deadly NPCs.

 

[Jmanis]

Can I ask what Elite rank you are? I'm Dangerous, facing Dangerous/Deadly NPCs.

Elite, facing the same.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I don't do these for similar frustrations, and it would be better if the ships hung around for a bit, but it's not an issue of being able to kill them...

My usual take on Pirate Massacres is to go in with my ship, tag all the enemies so I have 8 ships wailing on me and then fend them off, because of the same issue of a single aggressor leading me away from the pack and losing the targets... doesn't work for Spec Ops though, because of the mine-dump and flee, so I'm lucky to get three kills per USS before I lose them on radar.

 

[St0rmFury]

Just a wild guess here, since transient signals like HGE seem to refresh on a full relog (quit to desktop) you can try doing that when all your targets warp out.

1. Supercruise to target signal
2. Pick the weakest target and wail on it till it's dead
3. See if there's anymore around, repeat step 2
4. If none are left, quit to desktop and restart the game
5. Engage supercruise, the target signal should be behind you (like how you farm HGE)
6. Do a 180° and repeat until mission complete
7. Never do wet work and spec ops missions anymore, it's just not worth the trouble

 

[Bigmaec]

Pretty sure the answer is "more frags"

Nothing has more alpha damage than a good old handful of frags.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Pretty sure the answer is "more frags"

Nothing has more alpha damage than a good old handful of frags.

This, I had the most fun trying these in a double shot pacifier Krait II, I love being able to burst down the first ship in one reload sometimes, but I still usually average 2-3 kills per instance in these because fixed weapons are difficult to use and large ship builds are too slow to catch up to the numble Saud Krugers.

 

[LifesAJourney]

in a 1-Billion Cr, engineered ship

That's what you're doing wrong.

The targets in 50M missions are hull tanks, they're fast and wake out ASAP. You'd need a fast, agile ship with A LOT of punch and plan your attacks to reduce manouvering on target as much as possible. My favourite picks: beam-MC Krait Phantom and a full-frag Mamba (both will most likely need rearming or ammo synthesis to complete a 50M mission). Still, don't expect to kill more than 2-3 targets in a single instance.

One more advice: 25-35M SpecOps missions take much less time and effort to complete. Cr/hr ratio should be better for them than for 50M missions.

 

[Morbad]

An Anaconda is fine for these mission, though you'll probably get more kills per instance with a faster ship. Just line up behind one, target drives or power plant, and unload. Stay close.

A lot of viable weapon loadouts, but I'd omit the missiles. On an Anaconda, I'd probably have four SRB rails, and four SRB gimbaled MCs, but the conda has good enough convergance and distributor to make almost anything work. Frags will definitely do the trick, but the effective range is worse than even SRB lasers.

 

[Jmanis]

Pretty sure the answer is "more frags"

Nothing has more alpha damage than a good old handful of frags.

C3 guardian shards actually give that a run for their money against shields... last i checked at least. Wonder how the ap shards do now...

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Another thing people might not realize - you can kill civilian ships outside the provided mission signal sources at nav beacons, convoy signals and I assume at res sites by killing the miners or just interdicting civilians from supercruise. These usually won't run and they might be less tanky if they spawn at a lower combat rank (compared to an Elite rank mission NPC).

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Now imagine how well I'd do in my unengineered ships.

 

[HansAcker]

Now imagine how well I'd do in my unengineered ships.

Why would you try to run wing missions solo in a stock sidewinder?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Why would you try to run wing missions solo in a stock sidewinder?

I dunno, why would I even be offered wing missions playing solo?

 

[HansAcker]

I dunno, why would I even be offered wing missions playing solo?

Having more choices is good, right?

You could accept the wing missions while not in a wing, then share them later before they expire.
Others seem to like the challenge of taking on hardier ships on their own.

Wing missions got a blue thingy on their icon, easy to identify and ignore.

 

[Jmanis]

Having more choices is good, right?

A bit OT, but in the case of missions, no, it's a bad thing.

The mission board has a limit of ~70-100 missions per board generation. In a full system, that's 10-15 missions per faction.

The problem being , for almost all states, almost all mission types can be generated, of which there's dozens. Wing missions in particular aren't ideal pickings if you aren't part of a wing... and mission board generation tends to be blobby for <reasons>... so it's not unusual for a mission board to be completely wiped by wing missions or missions you don't want to do with your current ship fit... let alone considering things like looking for particular targets, working for particular factions or other considerations.

In most typical mission boards, that means despite over 100 missions being generated, you may not find any you want to do, which is a pretty bad game experience.

It's why one way Colonia <-> bubble missions got restricted to tourism economies... FD couldn't work out how to prevent them spamming out mission boards with those sorts of missions when all you wanted to do was work within the bubble.

That could be fixed, but it needs a complete overhaul of the mission systems.... which is unlikely to happen. So no, more choice isn't always good, particularly for missions.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Having more choices is good, right?

You could accept the wing missions while not in a wing, then share them later before they expire.
Others seem to like the challenge of taking on hardier ships on their own.

Wing missions got a blue thingy on their icon, easy to identify and ignore.

If I play solo I expect solo missions. When I play open they should spawn there. They are basically just noise that is never any use, because they are nigh impossible for solo players.

 

[Jmanis]

If I play solo I expect solo missions. When I play open they should spawn there. They are basically just noise that is never any use, because they are nigh impossible for solo players.

Not really.

Wing cargo missions are just time consuming due to volumes.
Wing massacres are basically no different to normal Massacres
Wing mining... well... solo mining missions are a joke anyway... Wing mining is more of the same.
Wing assassinations, yeah they're harder. Engineering will get you through.
Wing installation scan and powerplant destruction.. literally identical to their solo counterparts.
Squad defence mission in Odyssey? Did my first one last night, soloed with vanilla equipment.

So, not impossible for a solo player by any stretch. Just not rewarding because of the way rewards work, but refer above again for the need to rework missions.