'Enraged Engineer'

The preceding story mission was: 'Daring Rescue'
The following story mission is: 'Rise Of Vendetta'

This is the story mission following on from Daring Rescue. Isaak is not happy that the Mantis still have his wife locked up in a floating cage on Technatoria, so asks you to scavenge tech pods so he can build a killer rescue ship, named Vendetta.

Picture stolen from V1-Hyper. Go visit
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Pirate Galaxy
and apologise for me.

This is one of those 'go here, find and collect the pod, repeat' missions. There are five pods spread across Commerce Central and it does take a while to journey through the CC maze.

What makes this mission strange is that it doesn't seem to matter if you get podded. After I collected the first two tech pods I got destroyed, after trying to grab the third (Deluvian Graphite) without clearing the area of mantis first. I was expecting to have to start again but the mission allowed me to continue, I could just go back and try to get the third tech pod again. I suppose if your ship can be beamed back to the hangar with all its equipment intact then it's reasonable that the tech pods would survive too. It does make the mission very easy and I suspect that it's a mistake. Cash in quick before they fix it.

You have the option to return to Isaak in his hide-out after collecting each tech pod but I didn't, and it makes no sense to do so. It would just add a lot of time and risk to the mission. If I was designing this, I'd treat a return to Isaak as a 'save'. In other words if you get fragged then all the tech pods you were carrying are lost. If you already took them back to Isaak then you don't have to repeat the collection. I'm convinced that was the intention of the mission designer, but I've done it now and have the 789 crystals to prove it.

Other things about the mission make me suspect an error. There is no % completed status change as you collect each pod. Maybe if I'd took them back to Isaak as I went along it would have showed. Also when I returned with all the tech pods at the end of the mission he appeared briefly saying thanks but go and get the rest. Never mind.

One last thing. Once you've collected the last of the tech pods go to orbit, then land and travel to Isaak's hideout. It cuts out a lot of the winding and dangerous maze.

Next mission, 'Rise of Vendetta'.