[XT] Owned TL - how to deploy an ore mine?

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Curunauth
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[XT] Owned TL - how to deploy an ore mine?

Post by Curunauth » Sun, 9. Mar 14, 07:37

I recently completed the Perseus mission string and got a shiny new Boron Orca. After figuring out how to buy a factory in it (for some reason, you can't buy if you dock yourself - you have to order it to dock from another ship), I went to deploy my newly purchased Ore mine, and I can't make it work. While flying the Orca, I can't find any command to deploy a carried factory (it appears in the "eject freight" list but selecting it there does nothing and leaves the cargo bay empty). If I'm outside of the ship and within 5km, I can order it to "drop my freight here" just like a hired TL, but it never does anything, no matter if I have the asteroid targeted or just have recently targeted and checked info on it. I tried parking it within 5km of the asteroid and giving the order, still no good.

. . . it occurs to me as I write this that I did initially scan the asteroid and then fly to the TL and order it to drop while it was still quite far away - did that result in a 'stuck order' kind of like the 'land in shipyard command' ? I'll test that . . .

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Sabrina Bergin
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Post by Sabrina Bergin » Sun, 9. Mar 14, 08:13

look in the command menu under special and you will see drop station that will then go to the positioning menu.

pjknibbs
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Post by pjknibbs » Sun, 9. Mar 14, 08:13

Are you actually in the sector yourself at the time? You have to be, in order to drop a station. I'm a bit puzzled that you weren't able to buy a station when flying the TL yourself, though, because I'm pretty sure that was possible in X-Tension--been a very long time since I played it, though!

Curunauth
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Post by Curunauth » Sun, 9. Mar 14, 13:32

shaun - I think you may be referring to a later game; I'm playing X-Tension and the only menus (in this case, screens of options rather than proper menus) available when flying are those in the ship info screen and in communication the drop freight option is top-level (option 6 or 7). There is no positioning screen/menu: in X-BTF and X-Tension, factories are dropped some distance in front of the ship that ordered the drop (and always oriented North), or on the last asteroid that the ordering ship scanned (targeted and brought up info screen, while equipped with a mineral scanner).

pjknibbs - Yes, I'm in sector. I scanned the asteroid, then tried telling mine to drop [when I was flying something else], in varying conditions including having all the ships within 5km of the asteroid - one time I got a message saying "order confirmed" or some such but it didn't actually drop the station, and every other time I didn't even get a voice response, it just dropped out of the communication screen when I selected the drop freight order.

When I dock my TL at a shipyard, the first buy menu that comes up has the stations in it, but no matter how empty my cargo hold is, it shows 0 space (in the lower left, where it shows 0 or 1 depending on if you have an empty hired TL docked) and says "you can't buy this because you don't have space" if I try to buy one. Exiting that buy screen pops up the equipment buy screen (much like when ordering new ships), and exiting that screen irritatingly turns on the engines, leaving dock. It also appears to be


TL ships overall are a bit hairy in X-Tension (I'm using the GOG version, which may matter?) - all ships have some steering jitter, but the extremely low turn speed on TLs means that the jitter can overwhelm the actual steering. Sometimes it is literally impossible to turn in a desired direction - at times, any turn command will send the ship in the same direction. This effect seems to be caused by the low speed - turning on SETA makes turns much smoother and more consistent, but steering in SETA is only possible via MARS (ie, I need a target to turn to, which doesn't work for distant asteroids, since they can't be selected from the sector menu). For locations that are not factories I can select in the sector menu, I have to "steer" the TL by getting in a smaller ship, positioning myself where I want the TL to point, and issuing a follow command.

I really hope I can make this work, because hired TL ships can't jump and are super slow, making setting up factories a long and irritating process. I was looking forward to having one that could make round trips at reasonable speed. :-/

Curunauth
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Post by Curunauth » Tue, 11. Mar 14, 04:28

Turns out I was right about it being some sort of command lock-up. I went to an earlier save, got everything within 5km, and issued the command to my TL (via comm from another ship, still haven't found a way to do it from on board the TL), got "command acknowledged", and a bit later the mine-landing cutscene happened.

It seems that the command should only be issued once and there may be a delay before it works. It may be critical that the TL is within 5km of the asteroid too.

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