Newcomer / Intro Urgent kill order mission: What am I doing wrong?

Maize · Sep 15, 2019

Okay, I took an urgent kill order mission. The instructions say to go to such and such a planetary base and interact with the hub access terminal to find out where the target is. After reading several posts from people who apparently have managed to scan the hub access terminal from their ships in flight and who say this is the easiest method, I tried that first, but it just never even showed up as an object at all. I then went all the way back to where my ships were stored and got my exploration ship (which has a landing bay), landed a couple of kilometres out, and came in with an SRV. After an absolutely surreal amount of futzing around, that would have embarrassed anyone, I did finally find the Hub Access Terminal, approach it, scan it with the data link scanner, ask it out to dinner, etc., etc., but nothing seems to make the mission progress. It's still telling me to interact with the Hub Access Terminal to find out where my target is. Meanwhile, I've run up 11,000 credits in fines, I have a bounty, and both of my ships plus my SRV all need repair. (I also read somewhere that the base defences don't attack you until you scan the Hub Access Terminal, but that wasn't the case for me -- they started attacking me immediately.)

Some of my issues were just my unfamiliarity with this type of mission and the techniques involved. Some of the issues were, I genuinely think, horrible interface design. But I feel like I've waded through most of that and I'm still stumped. Other messages that I've read don't seem to even mention this portion of things as a problem.

Factabulous · Sep 15, 2019

If you scanned the correct terminal it should give you a message in your inbox and update the mission in the transaction tab. Normally there are several terminals at a base and if you scan the wrong one the mission doesn't move on, so maybe you scanned the wrong one (normally it is the first one to show when you approach in a ship, another advantage of doing it from the ship). Or you have the composition scanner also bound and didn't complete the d/l scan because the c/s finished first. Or you were at the wrong base. Those are the only ones that come to mind

Maize · Sep 16, 2019

Factabulous said:
If you scanned the correct terminal it should give you a message in your inbox and update the mission in the transaction tab. Normally there are several terminals at a base and if you scan the wrong one the mission doesn't move on, so maybe you scanned the wrong one (normally it is the first one to show when you approach in a ship, another advantage of doing it from the ship). Or you have the composition scanner also bound and didn't complete the d/l scan because the c/s finished first. Or you were at the wrong base. Those are the only ones that come to mind

Hm. It was definitely the right terminal, because it took me FOREVER to find it. And I'm sure about it being the right base. I'll double-check that I didn't just composition scan it, though.

Maize · Sep 16, 2019

Okay, so I went back, double checked that I'm at the right base, definitely could not scan it from the ship (I think because it remains inactive if I'm just hovering the ship there), landed and deployed the SRV, discovered that you can't scan it if the ship is nearby, got back on the ship, backed it up about 1.5km, landed again, went out in the SRV, literally unbound everything but the data link scanner from all the fire groups, found the correct terminal (it actually does everything in its power to prevent you from doing so -- far from being the default thing shown, you pretty much have to touch your nose to it before it will let you select it), and then ran the data link scanner. It tells me it's been accessed. When I back out of the turret mode and re-target it, it tells me it's been scanned. I truck back to the ship and reboard, but no e-mail message or anything else to let me continue the mission.

The only weird thing I can see is that there's a slight discrepancy in the e-mail describing this step of the mission:

The message body says "interface with the Hub Access Terminal", but the "INTERFACE TARGET" says "INTERFACE WITH TERMINAL ATTACHED TO A HUB ACCESS TERMINAL". Are those different?

Maize · Sep 16, 2019

Okay, well, I got it figured out. You had to hack the Operations Terminal, not the Hub Access Terminal.

Like, I have no idea why you have to do that. But I got frustrated and just drove around accessing them all, and then I accessed the Operations Terminal, I got the exprected e-mail message.

Maize · Sep 16, 2019

Wow, is this mission every buggy. What the message finally told me was that the target would be in the KOAMUL system. So I went to head there. I did notice that if you clicked "Open Galactic Map," it highlighted the neighbouring AC YANYAMYAM system, but I went to KOAMUL anyway because it's very clearly what it said in the text. There was nothing there, but the nav panel showed AC YANYAMYAM as a mission location, so I jumped there and the target was in that system. Sheesh.

williamyjk · Sep 16, 2019

I admire your persistence. I tried a couple of these missions and the rewards are not worth the efforts.

Factabulous · Sep 16, 2019

Ok, seems the real problem is you are in a n00b ship. I guess anaconda

it's not possible to scan those data points from many on the largest ships. Time to break out an eagle and try again.

The galmap can sometimes make it difficult to see which star is targeted - though the handy mission icon should help (I think it's switch on by default). You'll get used to it, I guess it's confusing at first.

Target systems can change as the mission progresses, but normally you have to meet an NPC for that to happen - I can believe it also happens on system entry.

Maize · Sep 16, 2019

Factabulous said:
Ok, seems the real problem is you are in a n00b ship. I guess anaconda it's not possible to scan those data points from many on the largest ships. Time to break out an eagle and try again.

I tried it in both of my ships, which are a well-equipped AspX and a well-equipped Vulture.

Factabulous said:
The galmap can sometimes make it difficult to see which star is targeted - though the handy mission icon should help (I think it's switch on by default). You'll get used to it, I guess it's confusing at first.

I've been playing for almost 300 hours (not an 'old hand' by Elite : Dangerous standards, I know, but it's not my first day either). I'm very familiar with the Galmap. This was just my first time doing this particular type of mission. Up until now, I've primarily done deep space exploration, with some occasional trading. I thought I might come back to the bubble and try some new mission types.

Factabulous said:
Target systems can change as the mission progresses, but normally you have to meet an NPC for that to happen - I can believe it also happens on system entry.

Believe me, in this case, the mission was buggy. I've done regular assassination missions (identical to this one but without the scanning-data-ports part) where the system got updated. This was never 'updated' -- the text description of the mission locations never changed, I never contacted anyone or got any messages or e-mails, etc., it remained showing the incorrect data right up until the time I turned it in.

When I posted this, I was sure I must be doing something wrong, and having now worked it out, there were indeed a couple of things I was doing wrong. For example, a big stumbling block was not knowing that to use the data link scanner in the SRV, you need to be in turret mode. No amount of selecting the target and hitting the assigned key will work in driving mode, even though it shows "Data Link Scanner" as an option. So that was indeed something I needed to learn. But having now seen the mission through and turned it in, I can say with 100% surety that the mission description was seriously buggy.

Maize · Sep 16, 2019

williamyjk said:
I admire your persistence. I tried a couple of these missions and the rewards are not worth the efforts.

I think without the bugs it would have been fun just for the variety of activities. The base I'm temporarily operating out of has several more of the same type available and I'm actually eager to try them, having done one. But yeah, money-wise it was definitely not worth it compared to pretty much anything else I could have been doing. The maximum payout was I think 93K. I opted for the Influence+++ option, so I only made 10K -- that's a significant net loss if you factor in fines and bounties incurred (and possibly barely a break-even on the cost of repairs, etc.).

dm06 · Sep 16, 2019

williamyjk said:
I admire your persistence. I tried a couple of these missions and the rewards are not worth the efforts.

Sometimes you need influence and reputations and "rep++++++" is enough to accept the mission.

Once I recorded this (The part how I got to the settlement is skipped):

Off-top: Also I did planetary scan missions - I've scanned the hub but mission trigger did not work. Log out/log in did help: The building first disappeared but after I gain some height appeared back in the same place.

Maize · Sep 16, 2019

dm06 said:
Once I recorded this (The part how I got to the settlement is skipped):

Nice video! You're both a better driver and a better flier than I am.

It was very gratifying to see the part where your SRV got stuck on the ship for a bit until someone shot you free, though. I'm always getting the SRV wedged into things.

Mr_Fy · Dec 30, 2022

I had one of these today. Totally bugged, scanned every Ops Terminal, Data Point and Core Data Terminal and nothing. No mission target. Come on FDev, get a grip please! I had to abandon it in the end. 2 hours wasted.

Fnord Velkor · Dec 30, 2022

Aleks Zuno · Dec 31, 2022

Now that the deed is done, though—

Mr_Fy said:
I had one of these today. Totally bugged, scanned every Ops Terminal, Data Point and Core Data Terminal and nothing. No mission target. Come on FDev, get a grip please! I had to abandon it in the end. 2 hours wasted.

I made a video of a Kill Order mission following a rumour that the Mamba would be too large to use the starship Data Link Scanner at the appropriate terminal. The mission description names the terminal you need, after which you can just put the Data Link Scanner into a starship fire group and remember to deploy hardpoints to use it. I got away without even a trespass fine, though even if that were not the case it should be better than getting a bounty while trying to use the SRV.

The range turned out to be 100 meters, within which the entire 72-meter Mamba fits well enough.

RichardBRiddick · Jan 6, 2025

Aleks Zuno said:
Now that the deed is done, though—

I made a video of a Kill Order mission following a rumour that the Mamba would be too large to use the starship Data Link Scanner at the appropriate terminal. The mission description names the terminal you need, after which you can just put the Data Link Scanner into a starship fire group and remember to deploy hardpoints to use it. I got away without even a trespass fine, though even if that were not the case it should be better than getting a bounty while trying to use the SRV.

The range turned out to be 100 meters, within which the entire 72-meter Mamba fits well enough.

man, you don't know how grateful I am that you made that vid. only tutorial that really showed what you should scan as a target.