Capturing Mission Ships

Shield Status: -2147483648%

The Enhanced Arada is the best playable ship in Override, and its only drawback is the necessity of choosing sides in the Strand War to acquire it. The Voinian Dreadnought and the modified Igazra with the green beam are two of the best escort ships. However, what about other, less powerful ships that require the same strategy to gain?

Have you ever flown The Nadir, or one of the modified Turncoats that accompany it? What about the Strange Asteroid from the Igadzra string? It is with regard to the latter that I made this topic's subtitle. When you fly the Strange Asteroid, your shield and fuel statuses both appear to be -2^31%. Also, it is the only playable ship I know of without the ability to turn, which makes it rather amusing to pilot. It makes a funny escort too. Sure, it's useless, but at least I can say I've done it!

Anyway, to my knowledge, there are exactly 6 ships that can only be garnered during, or in some cases after aborting, missions. They are, in alphabetical order:

Enhanced Arada
Igazra (with green beam)
Strange Asteroid
The Nadir
Turncoat (with rockets)
Voinian Dreadnought

How many have you flown?

ps. did I miss any mission-only ships?

EDIT: Spelled "Nadir" correctly.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 18 March 2006 - 04:02 PM

How exactly do you get these?

1.Accept the mission triggering apperance of desired über-ship

2.Wait for ship(s) to appear in target system

3. Abort mission

4. Disable desired ship

5. Attempt capture (if failure occurs, revert to last saved point)

6. Rinse and Repeat

Interesting enough, the Nadir has one helluva turn rate, that makes Azdaras turn like a cow Voinian Dreadnought, seriously it is impossible to control it because of the ridiculous turn-rate hehe, I swear that turncoat must be on crack, speed, and what-have-you's.

Its odd that a Strange Asteroid should have almost infinitely negative shielding. So, how does that work? Does it instantly blow up? Cant it stand one hit? Because according to a website, it has 0 shielding but 40 armor. So, does this happen when you pilot totally unshielded ships? Because Kris Hausers Star Wars plug-in has a buyable totally unshielded ship, TIE Fighter. It has only 20 armor. Oh, and does having negative fuel mean it cant jump? That means it makes the game useless. Or perhaps it means it has infinite fuel.

Oh, and I havent flown any of them. I wish to fly the En. Arada though.... if its as good as you say. And the Beam Igazra... I think it caused 5 damage, quite good.

You also missed the prototype azdara which has one point of shield and no armor because on the mission to escort it, it was meant to be destroyed.

General Cade Smart, on Apr 28 2005, 09:05 AM, said:

Its odd that a Strange Asteroid should have almost infinitely negative shielding. So, how does that work? Does it instantly blow up? Cant it stand one hit? Because according to a website, it has 0 shielding but 40 armor. So, does this happen when you pilot totally unshielded ships? Because Kris Hausers Star Wars plug-in has a buyable totally unshielded ship, TIE Fighter. It has only 20 armor. Oh, and does having negative fuel mean it cant jump? That means it makes the game useless. Or perhaps it means it has infinite fuel.

Oh, and I havent flown any of them. I wish to fly the En. Arada though.... if its as good as you say. And the Beam Igazra... I think it caused 5 damage, quite good.
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The Strange Asteroid has zero shields and zero fuel, according to the EVO data files. In-game, however, when you pilot it, those stats show up in the player info dialog box as I stated. It does not instantly blow up, and the mission in which it appears requires the player to disable it.

The Enhanced Arada has an amazing shield recharge rate of 1% every 5 frames, which is 6% per second. It has 800 shields (which displays as 80 in game, because Override shows all ships' shields and armor as one tenth of their actual value), so it recovers them 48 shield points per second. That means anything dealing less than an average of 48 DPS (damage per second) to shields cannot kill it. A blaze turret deals 30 DPS if every shot hits, so a UE Destroyer could conceivably deal 90 DPS and defeat the Arada; except, of course, for the fact that the Enhanced Arada completely outflies the destroyer, and can easily escape from the crossfire for the few moments required to recover its shielding.

When you fly one as your own, you can buy a shield generator to further improve the speed of your defense-recovery. That outfit has a ModVal of 10, which I believe means you recover 3 shield points per second. If you also buy 4 shield enhancers as well, each of which gives you 50 shield points, you then have 1,000 shields that recover at 63 points per second. (Unless I'm wrong on the generator: it might make you recover 3% per second, which would mean with that and the four enhancers the Arada would replenish its shields at 90 points per second.)

However, what really makes it great, is putting Dospect Armor on it. Then you have 600 armor in addition to 800 shields. You can then either buy a couple of turrets (phase and blaze are the most space-effective) and a couple of cannons (same as with turrets), or max out on engine upgrades and the like, and get four cannons.

If you choose the former route you end up with a veritably invinsible light destroyer. Earlier today I took down the U.E.S. Incontrovertible with that setup, going toe to toe the whole time and without any help from escorts. I had 100% shields almost the entire time. (When a rocket hit me they dropped to around 97%, but they were immediately full again.)

If you choose the latter you get a heavy fighter with the mobility of a crescent fighter and the same survivability as in the previous paragraph. The only downside is that you lose some of your firepower. Swivel Phase Cannons help you hit your target when you are moving rapidly.

In both of those setups I can survive indefinitely against the Council Station defense fleet while my escorts pile heavy fire onto them. My escorts are Voinian Dreadnoughts.

I also have a pilot flying a Dreadnought. I made a simple plugin so that I could keep the stock weapons when I capture it (all I did was make outfits for them, and none of the outfits are salable so I can't just empty everything for inordinate free space to use.) After I ran out of Salvo Rockets (which I gave a mass of two tons each, just like every other Voinian rocket,) I filled up what free space I could muster with neutron turrets. After the usual shield, armor, mobility, and fuel upgrades, I finished off with 8 Miranu Defense Systems and 165 Defense Pods. That ship can last a long time against Council Station, and even longer when I cloak, but not forever the way the Enhanced Arada can.

Coraxus, on Apr 28 2005, 09:20 AM, said:

You also missed the prototype azdara which has one point of shield and no armor because on the mission to escort it, it was meant to be destroyed.
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That ship cannot be captured by the player though. There is also an Enhanced Azdara with the fastest possible shield recharge rate, 1, but that too has zero armor and thus cannot be disabled and so can't be captured.

Many ships in the game have no armor, meaning that even though they are common enough and not mission-specific, they still cannot be captured. The Crescent Fighter, Krait, and Azdara, for starters, but they can be purchased, so their uncapturability is trivial. The Zidagar and Zachit fighters, though, can never be flown by the player in the stock game, which I consider to be a flaw.

I captured that beam Igazra in 1.0.0; upon capture the beam went missing, or i had it until i landed and went o the outfitter, cant remember, was years ago :?

The 'Green Beam' had weapon specs but no outfit, as a result the weapon only stays with the ship as long as you don't visit an outfitter. Same goes for the voinian dreadnaught's weaponry.

Oh, and you don't need to do the Zidagar string to encounter Igazra's equiped with the self-styled Igadzra Beam. Just hang around Igadzra space until a përs Igazra pops by, some have crescent fighter bays and some are the special Igazra with the beam (tested this--took an eternity though).

In addition to special mission ships there are two përs with special weapons, one being The Disco Bison (w/the Disco machine gun), and there is a renegade arada (who's name escapes me) equiped with a turreted phase beamer. The ships revert to standard when captured however--a pity really.

Qaanol, on Apr 28 2005, 05:12 PM, said:

I also have a pilot flying a Dreadnought. I made a simple plugin so that I could keep the stock weapons when I capture it (all I did was make outfits for them, and none of the outfits are salable so I can't just empty everything for inordinate free space to use.) After I ran out of Salvo Rockets (which I gave a mass of two tons each, just like every other Voinian rocket,) I filled up what free space I could muster with neutron turrets. After the usual shield, armor, mobility, and fuel upgrades, I finished off with 8 Miranu Defense Systems and 165 Defense Pods. That ship can last a long time against Council Station, and even longer when I cloak, but not forever the way the Enhanced Arada can.
That ship cannot be captured by the player though. There is also an Enhanced Azdara with the fastest possible shield recharge rate, 1, but that too has zero armor and thus cannot be disabled and so can't be captured.
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Just wondering, did you have to use a plugin that made the likelyhood of capturing the ship 100%? because the chances of capturing it normaly are tiny.

blah sailor of the seas, on May 18 2005, 01:24 AM, said:

Just wondering, did you have to use a plugin that made the likelyhood of capturing the ship 100%? because the chances of capturing it normaly are tiny.
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I assume you're refering to the Voinian Dreadnought. I used no plugins. My method was this:

Fly a crescent fighter with 6 MHF escorts, and trade weapons and eels until 130-odd million credits are earned. Switch to an Azdgari Arada and accept a few renegade bounty hunting missions from independant space. Do not complete them, but simply fly around killing the renegades that show up in every system to improve legal rating everywhere but Freeport, Gorky, and Pariah.

Proceed in both the Voinian and United Earth strings simultaneously. Accept the mission to observe the research base. Destroy Kelmaon and be allowed to purchase Voinian Cruisers. Proceed in the Emalghia string until the Hinwar ask for help. Get a Voinian cruiser and 6 Voinian Cruiser escorts. Get d'Erlon's marines' gear.

Now, with the highest possible non-Dreadnought crew, and the best possible non-Dreadnought chance to capture any ship, go to observe the Dreadnought. Land on the station. Take off, abort the observe mission (thus making the Dreadnought's name change from "Dreadnought Prototype" to "Voinian Dreadnought"), disable the Dreadnought, release a Cruiser escort, board the Dreadnought and try to capture it.

If successful, return to Earth and get the observe mission again. If unsuccessful, open the pilot file and try again. Repeat until 7-Dreadnought fleet is extant. Buy weapons as necessary. Proceed in Azdgari string. Capture Enhanced Arada. Outfit as desired. Defeat every defense fleet.

What is this Advanced Arada you speak off? I'm not sure where to find it.

It's a modified Azdgari Arada that's only seen in the Azdgari line.

I don't know most of the specifics, but if I'm correct, it should have the trademark staggering speed and near-impossible shield recharge of the Azdgari.

You can also capture the UE Cruiser which is technically a mission ship from the Voinian point of view. I think they turn up on the attack Verril mission string.

You can also capture a Zidagar or zachit fighter if you are skilled enough. I won't tell you how to do it but you need to make a certain beam weapon with a plug-in editor otherwise everything else is too powerful and will destroy those ships before they are disabled.

--gav

pistgavin, on Jun 28 2005, 04:49 AM, said:

You can also capture the UE Cruiser which is technically a mission ship from the Voinian point of view. I think they turn up on the attack Verril mission string.

You can also capture a Zidagar or zachit fighter if you are skilled enough. I won't tell you how to do it but you need to make a certain beam weapon with a plug-in editor otherwise everything else is too powerful and will destroy those ships before they are disabled.

--gav
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The, um, UE Cruiser can be purchased, you know, after an offshoot in the UE string, which can even be done simultaneously with the Voinian string...

I don't believe you about the armorless fighters being capturable. I made a beam that deals 1 shield damage and no armor damage and even modified the shďps to be weaker and not have noticeable recharge rates. I haven't tried a weapon that deals 1 armor and no shield damage. 0/0 didn't deal any damage. The weapon I tried could take the fighters down to 0% shields but couldn't disable them.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 28 June 2005 - 03:05 PM

You can do it.

It only works 1 out of 10 but if you keep trying it will happen, you just have to be veeeerrrry careful when they get to about 5% shield.

Make them with no weapons and have a mission where about 30 appear (as well as other modifications that might make it easier such as their speed) and just keep trying.

There was a post about how to do this recently on this board I just can't remember which topic... try a search and you might get more help

Oh yes and I know that the UE Cruiser can be bought but in the Voinian string it's technically a mission ship.

And how could you do both at the same time? I know how to initiate it but I always thought the system changes would make it difficult... then again if you did the Voinian string first that would work because hardly anything changes with them.

--gav

This post has been edited by pistgavin : 29 June 2005 - 03:51 AM

Once you've joined both strings, do the Voinian side until you can buy cruisers. This is after the mission where Kelmaon (the second Emalgha world) is wiped out.

Then do the UE string to completion. You don't get to do the end of the Voinian string where you attack Verril and fight UE Cruisers, but you do get all the technology from both sides. Remember: the "Observe Voinian Research Base" mission that grants the cloaking device can be aborted and it will be available again on Earth. This lets you get many Dreadnought escorts, the ship you want for yourself, and still have a cloaking device. You lose the cloak on abort, but you get it back on reaccept.

If you need help with legal ratings, you can buy a fake ID to reset UE status, or you can accept a bounty hunting mission and just fly around killing the renegade ships that follow you. This works to raise your status in almost the whole galaxy. You just have to fly near where you want to land and keep on killing the renegades.

As for capturing Zidagar and Zachit fighters, no thanks. I suppose the same strategy would work on all armorless ships, including against the Azdara, which could be useful in the Zidagar strings, but I don't feel like doing it.