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Shuttle Follies


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Ok, I'm deep in Credian territory and I blow away an enemy Megaron. It spews a cargo pod, when I check it's contents - whoopee! a bunch of junk and an OTS missile! So I order a Marine into SC-1 and send him out to pick up the pod, which he does. He heads back to base, then a cloaked carrier opens fire, disabling the shuttle and killing the marine. Apparently, the poor leatherneck died with his foot stomped on the accelerator pedal, because the shuttle takes off at 700 kph. The cloaked Firestorm apparently decides it has better things to do and slinks off. So I take off after the shuttle in my Megaron. Knowing there's no way I can keep up with SC-1, I send a Marine down to SC-4 (which is a Shuttle Mk3, much faster than SC-1) and launch him with orders to tow SC-1. After a long chase, SC-4 finally catches up to SC-1 and tractors it. I order SC-4 to deliver SC-1 back to my Megaron, thinking I can tractor the wrecked shuttle into the bay. When SC-4 releases the tractor beam, SC-1 takes off like a greyhound. Crap! The dead marine still has his foot on the accelerator! So I order SC-4 to tow SC-1 again. He does and halts. I bring the CC up to about 10 km away and order it to halt and turn on autopilot. I launch all my fighters as an escort to the CC, just in case something happens. And then I take my first EVA.

After a few minutes of fumbling around like Resnig, and flying myself into my Megaron's fins, I finally get the hang of EVA and jet over to the tractored SC-1. I board it, shove the dead marine into the copilot seat, and order SC-4 to release his tractor beam and to return to base. It takes off like a greyhound again, and apparently the shuttle is so trashed that I have no steering and no retrorockets. So the shuttle is condemned to flying at 700 kph in its current direction, forever. I load the OTS missile into a cargo pod and eject the pod, so I can at least get something back on this evdeavor. Then I exit the shuttle, order SC-4 to halt and start jetting over to him. Halfway there, I figure there must be an easier way to do this, so I check TACOPS, and sure enough, I can order SC-4 to fly right to me, which I do and board that shuttle. I get frustrated, save my game and quit for now.

Now I'm wondering what to do about SC-1. It's trashed and out of control, but I can't replace it unless it is destroyed. So do I have to have a fighter catch up to it and destroy it? Or maybe when it runs out of charge, it will stop, and I can recover it?

By the way, I love the fact that this game is so open ended that I can get myself into stupid situations like this.

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quote:

shove the dead marine into the copilot seat


Fantastic, this had me laughing for ages!

Thats the problem with this game you can get immersed in it so deeply ! :-)

quote:

condemned to flying at 700 kph in its current direction, forever.

Couldn't you kill the power to the engines and use the cruiser to retrieve it for repairs?

[ 06-01-2004, 04:59 PM: Message edited by: Kazinar ]

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>Couldn't you kill the power to the engines and use the cruiser to retrieve it for repairs?

Oddly enough, no. I shut off the engines and it would still go running off at 700 kph. I suspect it had to do with how trashed the computers in the shuttle were. My final solution was: 1) tractor it with SC-4 2) Go EVA, enter the tractored shuttle and lower the shields, leave the shuttle and 3) shoot the shuttle with my rifle til it exploded. I tried it once using missiles from my CC, but forgot to lower the shields...so i ended up damaging the shuttle that was tractoring it.

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Why not order SC-4 to return to base when it has the SC-1 in the tractor beam...? Will it dock with your cc and deliver the SC-1 too...?

Just guessing....

[ 06-03-2004, 11:59 AM: Message edited by: DennyMala ]

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>Why not order SC-4 to return to base when it has the SC-1 in the tractor beam...? Will it dock with your cc and deliver the SC-1 too...?

Just guessing....

Tried that. SC-4 released SC-1. SC-1 took off again.

>Or maybe have the towing shuttle stop and position your CC infront of it by a fair distance before having the tractor release.

Well, that might have worked. I was getting pretty frustrated by then though.

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quote:

Originally posted by Reno:

Or maybe have the towing shuttle stop and position your CC infront of it by a fair distance before having the tractor release.

Talk about one large-scale game of 'catch'...

sounds like a game of "keep away"

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If you bring the disabled shuttle in close to the cc with the towing shuttle, target it and attempt capture, your cc shields will go down and the tractor beam will activate. Then order the towing shuttle halt and then deactivate its tractor beam. You will "hand off" the shuttle at that time.

I've had this happen to me a few times.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Heh, shuttles can be amusing ^^

My own recent experience was a shuttle that, upon exiting a planets atmosphere...would fall back onto the planet with its rear end smashing into the ground, pointing me straight up. Then it falls upside down, and flies forward quite a ways until I shut off the auto-pilot and right the craft myself. Heck, I even tried giving the autopilot an order to return to the Galatea (yes, I named my ship after the Descent: Freespace command ship), and the same thing happened again ^^;;

You're not the only one with amusing troubles with shuttles, so dun feel alone ^^

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