Unexpected visitors to my Hyperion Vanguard

glenmcd · Post by **glenmcd** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 14:13

I'm mostly flying a Hyperion Vanguard at the moment, and in a Terran Patrol mission I was stationary, just checking a few messages and managing a few sales in between battles. To my surprise, I saw a neutral ship docking onto my ship! The Hyperion can dock two fighters, one under each wing. I checked the info on the docked ship, and it was the Terran guy that was joining me on the patrol. He was flying an M3 I think. I got to wondering how I could take advantage of this (sell his ship with him in it etc) but then some enemy ships turned up and he undocked and went to fight them. Okay that was a week ago. Just now, I was doing the mission where you have to rescue Patricia Heywood and some Terran guy. They are in space in their spacesuits. I managed to pickup Patricia, but no matter what I did, I just couldn't pick up the Terran guy. I reloaded and tried again, and this time I picked up the Terran guy first. Now I couldn't pickup Patricia! In frustration I swapped into my docked Kestrel, and attempted to pickup Patricia in that. I found it difficult, because Patricia was moving very close to my Hyperion. By the time I was 100M or so from her, she docked her spacesuit into the Hyperion. Okay I thought, whatever! I had to take the two of them to some Terran station. I looked in the cargobay and there was only one person. When I checked the "landed" list, there was Patricia in her spacesuit, as a docked "ship". The terran guy jumped out at the Terran station okay, but Patricia wouldn't budge. So then I reloaded yet again, and this time I undocked the Kestrel from the Hyperion, commanded the Hyperion to go to next sector, and did that part of the mission in the Kestrel. All worked fine.

Why does everyone want to dock in my Hyperion?

Rive · Post by **Rive** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 14:25

For ships it's easy, it's the feature of the follow/protect command which makes them dock if no enemies to fight.

For spaceshuits... Well THAT's new

Next time I will try to dock instead of just beam up on one of my ship after repairs

Playbahnosh · Post by **Playbahnosh** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 14:27

Who wouldn't want to dock in Hyperion

On the other hand, maybe it has something to do with the mission scripting. I did the Terran missions in a Scimitar and later the Springy, so I can't tell. However, after I finished FF I did all missions from then on in my Griffon, but nobody wanted to dock in my ship (I still had 2 free docking spaces left).

I have a theory though. Bailed pilots always head for nearest friendly station or dock and dock there, even on that mission this might be still valid. Since the Hyperion is not an easily acquirable ship, it wasn't calculated into the scripts when they did this mission. Maybe Patricia and the terran guy recognized your ship as a friendly port and acted accordingly.

On the docking M3, I think those ships assigned to you in missions are considered part of your wing by the computer, and as such, they will either follow your through space, or dock to your ship when not in combat. This is the only explanation I can think of.

Venereus · Post by **Venereus** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 18:05

I can confirm this, both Terran ships that come along for the Xenon patrol dock with the Hyperion, and so does Patricia's Elite. Wich is great when you have the overtuned one and can fly faster than they can.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 18:08

I wonder if anyone has tried being devious and has sold off a ship (say a captured TM hulk) with the wingmen aboard, and what that may do to the plot.

AgamemnonArgon · Post by **AgamemnonArgon** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 19:10

Having flown a Cerberus during the Terran plot, I can say the Terrans also docked onto my own ship.

perkint · Post by **perkint** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 20:05

Any ship which is either homebased to a ship, or running protect ship orders, will dock at the one they are protecting/homebased to, when there are no enemies nearby. The mission sets the Terrans to protect you so if you have any free docking slots, they're gonna hop on board!

Tim

SIMON POPPLEWELL · Post by **SIMON POPPLEWELL** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 20:07

Alan Phipps wrote:I wonder if anyone has tried being devious and has sold off a ship (say a captured TM hulk) with the wingmen aboard, and what that may do to the plot.

Probably break it! Why I are you willing to try?

Edit - Actually thinking back I did once sell my Nova with Capt Pearle onboard iirc. I then remember seeing him in a space suit in a Paranid sector getting blasted by a Paranid fleet.

This was an early patched version though...

sjones25 · Post by **sjones25** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 20:41

SIMON POPPLEWELL wrote:Actually thinking back I did once sell my Nova with Capt Pearle onboard iirc. I then remember seeing him in a space suit in a Paranid sector getting blasted by a Paranid fleet. This was an early patched version though...

Post by **Nanook** » Wed, 2. Mar 11, 21:30

Rive wrote:For ships it's easy, it's the feature of the follow/protect command which makes them dock if no enemies to fight.

And spacesuits are classified as 'ships' in the game, so it's logical that they follow the same rules.

For spaceshuits... Well THAT's new Next time I will try to dock instead of just beam up on one of my ship after repairs

Unfortunately, it's not 'new'. My first run through of the Terran plot, way back in version 1.1 or 1.2, I used a TM for that mission because it could carry the Teladianium I needed, as well as my personal fighter. And when I went to undock and collect the 'passengers', they instead docked in the empty slots of my TM, thus breaking the mission.

Triaxx2 · Post by **Triaxx2** » Thu, 3. Mar 11, 01:08

Hm... y, l, enter, exchange freight?

StarSword · Post by **StarSword** » Thu, 3. Mar 11, 01:37

I did that mission in my Zephyrus, but I had all my fighters docked so it was a non-issue.

Post by **Nanook** » Thu, 3. Mar 11, 02:17

Triaxx2 wrote:Hm... y, l, enter, exchange freight?

Spacesuits aren't treated as freight when they dock, they're 'ships'. So I guess I don't understand what you're getting at. Are you trying to exchange freight with the docked spacesuits?

Not sure what good that'll do.

glenmcd · Post by **glenmcd** » Thu, 3. Mar 11, 02:41

Nanook wrote:My first run through of the Terran plot, way back in version 1.1 or 1.2, I used a TM for that mission because it could carry the Teladianium I needed, as well as my personal fighter. And when I went to undock and collect the 'passengers', they instead docked in the empty slots of my TM, thus breaking the mission.

Good stuff. So at least now we know that it's not a Hyperion only issue. And that the workaround is to have all docking spaces filled for this mission. Because it was impossible for me to pick up the 2nd spaceman, it seems like he/she had already made the decision to dock? I now remember that when I was chasing him/her, rather than simply floating along in space in a straight line and slowing down gradually, they slowed down and then were chasing my Hyperion while I was chasing them. So we were going around in circles. When I made a pass to collect, they seemed to be actively avoiding any collision, although I was able to use strafe several times to get into correct position for a pickup. But they just passed right through the ship every time. The change in behaviour seemed to happen after I had picked up the first spaceman (either one).

Snafu_X3 · Post by **Snafu_X3** » Thu, 3. Mar 11, 03:44

FWIW Special Command S/W adds 'collect astronaut' to the Special menu (amongst other things). It can be activated remotely, although that's prolly not much use in this scenario - just make sure the ship has CLS installed!

Ozkar · Post by **Ozkar** » Thu, 3. Mar 11, 08:19

If spacesuits still have their racial affiliations then I suppose the trick of setting their race to hostile might work (I remember reading about that when people would cap an M7 and its escorts would re-dock filling up the slots). Just make sure you turn off your guns or poor Patricia and the Terran guy (I can't remember his name either) will be turned into salsa.

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Unexpected visitors to my Hyperion Vanguard

Unexpected visitors to my Hyperion Vanguard