Dismissing Escorts

So, I have aquired (ie captured) a couple escorts to protect my brand new Lazira - a couple Helians, 1 Voinian Heavy FIghter (picked up during the First Pick Up The Spy mission), and by some INSANE bit of fortune from the Random Number Generator a Turncoat (captured at only a 7% success rate).

Then I run into a Hellcat Helian, manage to disable i.. and find I can't capture it because, Im guessing, my fleet has reached its maximum. Makes sense.. there'd be no challenge with an infinite fleet (though it WOULD be fun).

So, lets say this happens again.. how do I dismiss one of my regular Helians.. send it away or whatever, so I can get something better?

I'm playing the EVO addon for EVN for Windows, by the way.

Your maximum fleet size is six escorts, not counting carried fighters. If you board a ship and find that the capture chance is 0%, then you've reached your maximum fleet size. If, however, you are merely prevented from boarding the ship, then it's a mission-related ship; those can only be boarded if the mission requires it (in which case you won't be able to capture it anyway).

Anyway, to dismiss an escort, hold down Option+Tab to select only escorts. Find the one you want, communicate with it, and choose the "release" option. You can also sell captured escorts in shipyards in EVN, though it's possible that feature was turned off for the EVO port.

You should be able to still sell in the EVO port by pressing S in the escort communication. You probably won't see any indication that anything has happened at this point but the next time you land at a port with a shipyard it will be sold off.

All that aside though, you won't actually achieve anything by releasing a standard Helian and capturing, say, Hellcat Helian because your pilot only keeps track of the base ship ID for all your escorts. Ie, it will just be another standard Helian when you capture it.

So no shiny missiles for me? Darn.

In other news, I was confused because Windows doesnt have an 'option' key, but I just found out I can mouse click on them to target them. I completely forgot abotu the mouse because the only time I use it in EV is on planets

By the way... am I missing somethign or can you no longer use the cargo space in you escorts for trade cargo? In the EVC mod I could use it for trade, not mission, cargo.. but i dont see that option now. Is this true?

This post has been edited by Dionysus : 19 March 2007 - 05:04 PM

There should be a Windows-equivalent of the Option key, but I don't know if it's Control, Shift, or Meta ('scuse me, Alt) for EV. Experiment a bit.

As for using escorts' cargo space, it depends on the escort type. The space in warships and fightercraft is unavailable; Wimpy Trader and Brave Trader cargospace is.

Alt <=> Option. These are one and the same, the only difference is a mac keyboard says Option on the key in addition to alt.

Hm, is the escort type something I ought to change in the port so that you can use cargo space of any escort?

This post has been edited by Guy : 19 March 2007 - 06:48 PM

Better not; that would also affect how the escorts behave when you haven't directly ordered them about (I think).

I dunno Derakon, currently the Helians do NOT auto-attack - you must command them - and you still can't use their cargo space. Helians seem to me the closest thing to the Clipper of EVC whose cargo space you COULD use. Earlir in the game (EVC), I had an army of Clippers escorting my Corvette... used the Corvette's space for mission cargo, and storing goods captured from Confeds and Pirates in my fleet.

When I needed escorts, I bought/captured Laizras. They provide lightening-quick "auto-attack" protection. Once I was into the mission strings, I didn't use my cargo space too much so I only kept the bare minimum to do missions, which is 30T IIRC?

Re EVC: I seem to remember being able to use Argosy escort cargo space.