I wonder if you can get that famous 'key card' for the other POL vessels in the hangar...Maybe some dialogue trigger? I will try it at the risk to lose rep with POL, also trying to hack the restricted area of the station, guess I could find some good loot here... Also I have another plan to directly invade this zyrax transport lurking around, that would solve all the problem in 1-go, but it will be rather hard and foolish I find it good that the initial Scout wreckage is set the Public, probably meaning you can return to it without being attacked by enemies if you are docked with something, the large constructor on board is precious. In such scenarios there is no way to change your reputation with a faction, right?
Like in normal survival game, they are just decor, only minable asteroids (which are technically POIs) can be harvested and by design there are none in the system.
Forget about EVA booster when starting... Instead focus on some medecines which you certainly need to reach the station. Some parameters are random at the start, like the fridge content, if you find meat in it that's very good - guess why, otherwise you need to invent something else... Spoiler No need for EVA booster when starting, use the various boosters that are available, they help, see the numbers when you install them in the Armor Locker. But without some medecnes you won't make it to the station, look for stuff that can raise your body temp. Once on the station you can buy a EVA booster - and more ressources for your wreckage as a provisory base, the large constructor on it is precious, as well as the 'Public' status of the wreckage meaning you shouldn't get attacked once inside. The hard game starts after you reach the station...I advice to make a backup at this point before going on.
Its probably a deformable surface area limit due to processing / memory costs when I think about it. Lots of small asteroids would add up to a lot of surface. They seem to have simple collision shapes too, as you say, decor.
That's the approach I took. The first time I tried it, I thought that this can't possibly be how the Devs intended me to reach the station so I just reloaded to explore other options. I saw it was possible of course, just not desired. In the end though, for me at leat not having the lucky EVA booster loot spawns other have, it was the only viable option. I've documented my approach thus far in this thread. The next steps to leave the system are pretty straight-forward, but involve dodging, or destroying, Drones and avoiding a PV while collecting the required resources. I'm not currently sure if this will be enjoyable or end up just frustrating due to enemy numbers. I did debate thinking waaay outside the box by attacking POL once I had what I needed from them and making friends with the Zirax... I've done that before (not this scenario) and game was very easy from that point on lol.
Then you might enjoy this scenario: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2827006530&searchtext=
Back on-topic. I do have an issue which is an existing problem but it's death with this scenario. I arrived on Charon Moon, and moved to a resource deposit in neutral territory. After a little mining I came under fire. I initially thought perhaps a Drone had snuck on me, but no, it was in fact nothing. Well, it was a Zirax Laser trooper but effectively nothing as the dude was shooting me from well outside of render range. I got back in the SV and shot off rather rapidly away from the laser fire and he was still firing. My SV's Generator gets sniped by this invisible enemy, so I go God Mode to see what's going on. I travel a couple of hundred metres before the Zirax guy is rendered in. In fact, I saw the muzzle flashes reflected off a surface rock before he rendered in, actually behind that rock. This render distance issue - nothing new - is clearly highlighted in this scenario. Observing totally clear terrain - I did look carefully before landing at the deposit - not actually be clear due to something not rendering in is bad. Having enemies able to shoot well beyond their render range is of course worse. Can render ranges for ground troops be increased? If an NPC is able to fire at the player they MUST be rendered in. Note: I know turrets do this but I'm not sure if NPC's do. Basically, a turret might start shooting at the player just as they enter firing range. However, then retreating well outside of that firing range will see the turret fire several more shots before it stops. These shots may or may not hit the player's vessel. In this scenario, that Zirax Trooper must have just moved into firing range - HE moved, not ME, I was stationary - though still not rendered. I then moved over 100 metres away from him, but the shots kept coming in, the final one sniping the Generator. I know this isn't directly related to this scenario, but this is valid feedback based on my experiences and this existing render range issue has a serious impact. Edit: this issue is not consistent. For example, I just buzzed another deposit and could clearly see - and kill - a Zirax Laser Trooper there. Why are these troops sometimes not rendered in? Btw: what's with the constant "Warning/GameAnalytucs: Event queue: Failed to send events to collector - Retrying next time" every seven or eight seconds about?
More feedback: I'm fighting the now never-ending spam of Space Drones when I fly around - really, they just keep respawning and I've killed a lot, though not as many as I should have. The reason for this is because the space drones constantly appear to "vibrate" as they move, resulting in movement that isn't smooth. Even with the cross hair right over them, it often doesn't go red and shots miss, despite being perfectly on-target and insta-hit as I'm using a Gatling gun. We'd need an SV-mounted shotgun to counter this...not a terrible idea! Obviously the "vibration" is some sort of issue - it's rare I engage space drones in an SV with fixed guns like this, turrets work fine - but is the constant Drone spam intended in this scenario? My first attempt of this Scenario saw major Drone spam very early on, my second (current) attempt saw just one Drone that kept its distance. Now I'm flying around the main planet, I'd say that a new Drone is spawning every couple of minutes, it's a bit silly. I have ZERO opportunity to loot a drone before one or two more are suddenly under 1.5km away. Seems a bit of a cheesy way to make things harder. Thought: I'd say the Space Drone movement is akin to how the player moves in space with the Jetpack - which is jarringly not smooth (despite good fps) vs. walking around in gravity when in a space POI or Base.
From what I saw on the map, the entire Charon moon is Zyrax territory, but I may have missed some neutral part.
There are some areas of unclaimed territory, though they are small. I thought I'd gotten lucky when I found a deposit in said Neutral territory as I knew it should at least mean less enemies. Still, the one that was there didn't render lol.
I just took a different approach to this Scenario, one that I'd planned to investigate. However, it lead to arbitrary game restrictions getting in the way which partially scuppered things. Also, based on what I've found, I don't think Eleon anticipated this approach... Spoiler There's a Zirax vessel patrolling the area around the planet, I captured it intact! It's a Sparrow, as is the Scout ship the player starts off in, so I had a good idea where the Core was and I managed to snipe it with minimal collateral damage. Ship of course glitched out for a bit with invisible walls and the like, but it eventually settled down. I placed a Core I had with me to ensure it was mine. So, I now have - in theory - a fully operational CV with Warp capability! Of course, it's not quite as simple as that. First, it needs a Cockpit, but I have the materials to craft one of those now. The thing is, one of those arbitrary restrictions comes into force here - not unexpected - in that I cannot control this vessel even with a Cockpit. Shame. Secondly, this ship is TERRAN not Zirax, it has a Terran crew... my emershun is ruined! Was I betrayed by members of my own fleet? Assuming this vessel doesn't despawn as soon as I move away - very high likelihood that it does - then I now have all the parts I need to restore the wrecked Scout SV (which is also a Sparrow of course) to full working order. I already have sufficient pentaxid and fuel, so it's just salvaging the bit using the Multi-tool, then shipping them over. Lots of busy work when I should just be able to fly the Sparrow in my view. If this Zirax (lies!) Sparrow does despawn, I will cheat in the Blueprint I just made of it, as that's DAFT and I don't accept it. I captured a ship, I should be able to keep it. Period. Ideally we should be able to make it flyable again - many CV's in the past have been able to be retrofitted into fully flyable player-owned vessels. It's hit or miss whether this will be possible. Oddly, very oddly in fact, it generally ships the player doesn't have to work hard to get that have been flyable in my past experience. Any ships that needs effort generally isn't, such as Patrol Vessels. This Sparrow is an easy enough ship to capture, the only difficultly being the glitchy nature of a moving ship - often my hits with a Gatling passed right through the ship during my capture attempt. I still think we should be allow to properly capture a ship though...should there be some additional gameplay mechanic / tech to allow us to do this do you think? Edit: Yes, the Sparrow despawned the moment I got within about two or so km. It was present until that point as I checked the registry. This appears to be broken "clean up" logic as the game basically just deleted a CV of mine. I will spawn it back in from that BP I took. This sort of thing really shouldn't still be happening!
Spoiler If you succeed in capturing the vessel you have a simple solution to end the scenario, but I think it's not a solution that the designers have taken in account. The reason is that normally, captured vessels will despawn after some short time (self-destruction by its crew), but going out of render range and returning will avoid this, a detail that the game code was up to now not able to avoid - for the joy of all of us. You won't be able to place a cockpit to take control of the vessel (same for any such capture in the Survival game), but you certainly have all you need to salvage and get a warp drive together with some Pentaxid bought at the station in order to warp to destination with whatever other vessel.
It's actually much easier to use the Heavy Sniper. Park ABOVE the drones, level your ship, exit the cockpit & one-shot them from above. I never once used Gatlings and had no trouble using the Heavy Sniper. Once they are cleared out you're free to mine. Just check you're radar from time to time for incoming drones.
I have a suggestion, what about a stowaway option... ? You could have Pol trade ships passing the Scout slowly bound for the station and leaving by the same route, like a bus service. If they had internal temperature support the player can access then you could make your avatar a hitchiker and get out near the station. Lore could be they are busting a Zirax blockade of the station by hiding on the edge of the atmosphere of Nemesis among debris from the scout hence they are moving slowly to avoid detection. Just a thought, perhaps another scenario since this one is set up already. BTW I did try the Nemesis suit jump approach and was able to set up a survival base after a little pew pew. Was fun to be a lava planet survivor hero.
Jumping out of the ship with a sleeping bag was how they made the decent from orbit in "The Ragged Astronauts" trilogy from 1986 by Bob Shaw. Fun read if you can find it. I just got back to the fleet (trade+scout>sv+moon>warp) but it hung as soon as I tried to speak to the officer of the deck. They had a great critter- a sort of mildly sentient soap balloon about half a meter around that drifted in the wind ... easy one shot kill but when burst it releases a cloud of neurotoxic vapor that would move with the wind for a bit. Those things get so bad the humans decide to escape the planet in hot air balloons via a barbell shaped passage of atmosphere around two impossibly close planets.
Doesn't really work in space. By the time I stop and get out of the SV the Drone is either too far away, or already on an attack run. I had to fly with auto-brake off to continually dodge incoming fire from several Drones. The issue here is the flaky SV flight controls - it's simply not smooth and will regularly exaggerate the actual input from the player, plus the Drones vibrate / wobble as they fly - almost like network lag - they don't move smoothly either. @japp_02 Spoiler This is not a timed self-destruct like with Planetary Patrol Vessels, rather it looks like broken "tidy up" code. If you do either of these things the ship will just VANISH, not self-destruct: 1) If you fly out of render range and return, the ship will vanish, despite remaining for many many hours (potentially) if you don't return - as can be seen in the registry. 2) If you save then reload the ship will vanish a few seconds after reloading. If you hang out near the ship, it won't vanish, so it's the act of returning to it after being away, or saving and reloading after placing a Core that causes the ship to despawn. I cannot believe that this is anything other than a bug. This never used to happen, but I cannot recall when it started. At the end of the day, I did the work to disable a (fake) Zirax CV and place my own Core with the intent to salvage its parts as I could not simply place my own Cockpit and fly it. The game decided to make my CV (cos that's who owns it now) vanish the moment I approached it again after being away or if I dared reload. The gameplay loop should go as follows as far as I'm concerned: 1) Time and effort expended to capture a ship. 2) Core placed on ship and salvaging starts. 3) I would have made it operational with a Cockpit, but that's artificially blocked by the game. Booo! 4) I shuttle back and forth steadily salvaging all the good components from the captured (fake) Zirax CV. 5) I restored the player's "Scout" CV to make it flyable. 6) I return to the captured CV and finish off looting. Anything player-owned that just vanishes is broken behaviour. I'm not fan of PV's "self destructing" either, I really don't understand why Eleon doesn't like us keeping our captures - especially considering how frustratingly buggy it can be to actually board a stationary neutered ship due to massive invisible wall issues. Having a previously captured ship just arbitrarily vanish when the player approaches / reloads though? Nope. Totally broken. As such, I consider my "solution" to this Scenario perfectly valid as I was simply bypassing a bug where something of mine vanished when it should not. The thing is, some CV's encountered in the game can be fully restored and flown by the player, others cannot and those that cannot suffer from this insta-despawn when approaching bug.
Aww, Spoiler I can't continue playing after completing the mission... wanted to have that promised R&R on the water world...
